This here Moonshoes “If You Want to Do It” video/single item definitely correlates (in its way) with one of the most unexpectedly delightful prizes ever to emerge from both the notorious K-Tel label and Robert Christgau’s Village Voice Consumer Guide column, in 1996—
Robert Christgau—
Roller Disco: Boogie from the Skating Rinks [K-Tel, 1996]
Was there such a thing as roller disco? Or were there just songs you roller-discoed to? As Frankie Smith might put it: "Willzoo kizzairs?" The few overcollecteds (Cheryl Lynn, Taste of Honey) and underwhelmings (Rick James, Dazz Band) detract barely a whit from a 10-track budget item that peaks with two magnificent rarities: Vaughan Mason’s transcendently utilitarian "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll" and Taana Gardner’s kittenishly walkin’-’round-here-so-intense "Heartbeat." A
http://www.amazon.com/Roller-Disco-Boogie-Skating-Rinks/dp/B000000RS4/
I can personally attest to the truly sublime power of the five tracks I’ve highlighted above, which differ from Xgau’s picks mostly in the case of The Dazz Band’s phenomenal floor-filling anthem, “Let it Whip”, which my dear sister brought back with her from a year spent in the “Jock Dorms” at Wazzoo during 1982-83! And the rest is damned good dancefloor funkiness as well.
Since I only went roller skating twice in my life (at two birthday parties during Winter 1976, while I was in the 7th grade), have never donned spandex attire, and was never old enough to enter Havre, Montana’s sole discotheque (“Gandolph’s”!), this entire Roller Disco phenomenon remains mostly theoretical for me, aside from its CORE, which remains these Miraculous Pleasure Anthems that took American clubs and radio by storm once upon a time, and which have for the most part endured.
That certainly helps to explain the proliferation of Roller Disco-themed cd compilations right down to the present day, of which the one above remains “The Saturday Night Fever”, if not “The Sgt. Pepper” of said genre!
By the by, the Moonshoes video is certainly an astonishing pastiche of post-1974 American Disco and Hollywood Film iconography, from circa-1976 Lower Manhattan gay clubs, to the 1977-78 high water mark of gritty, white-suited Brooklyn boy John Travolta and the doomed glamour of Studio 54, the end grimly foreshadowed in the Caligulan decadence of circa-1979 Casablanca Records, before finally faceplanting with the ever-heinous Olivia Newton-John vehicle, Xanadu (1980).
Between the groovy fonts, rampant neon, otter-sleek spandex, and copiously feathered hair, I’ll bestow a grade of A-Plus for the production design, continuity, and period detail!
On the other hand, the utterly innocuous “If You Want to Do It” itself is precisely the sort of machine-tooled Disco Manqué that appeared in uncountable San Fernando Valley porn films of the pre-video era, the period so brilliantly captured in all its fleeting glory during the first part of Paul Thomas Anderson’s sublime Boogie Nights (1997). And so I have no choice but to deduct for content from the overall grade nearly as much as I’ve already granted for style.
Hence: C-Minus for the music.
The overall grade, since I’m in a generous mood, thanks to that scintillating A/V onslaught: B-Plus, which ain’t bad, then or now!
– Tom Kipp
More Moonshoes info can be found at http://www.souplerecords.com/
