Why I’m Obsessed With This KC and the Sunshine Band Song

Dear listeners,

Every infrequently, I’ll be telling you a couple of random music I’m at the moment obsessive about in an try and discover the foundation of this fascination (and maybe persuade you to affix me). Today, it’s a little-known gem from KC and the Sunshine Band.

Yes, KC and the Sunshine Band. Hear me out.

The yr is 1982. Seven years after “(That’s the Way) I Like It.” Three years after the infamous Disco Demolition Night. A yr after the arrival of MTV.

The hit-making components that had labored so nicely for KC and the Sunshine Band all through the business top of disco — from 1975 to 1976, they’d 4 No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100! — was not going to chop it anymore. It was the ’80s now. The future. The second had come to trash the bell-bottoms, purchase a bunch of criminally costly synthesizers, and set a low-budget and audaciously low-concept music video in an deserted arcade. It was time for “(You Said) You’d Gimme Some More,” the irresistible and barely remembered leadoff monitor from the Florida band’s 1982 album, “All in a Night’s Work.”

I used to be beforehand unaware that KC and the Sunshine Band ever appeared like this. There’s a darkish depth to “Gimme Some More” — a warped synthesized bass spine and a hard-driving, mechanized beat that undercuts these signature blasts of celebratory brass. The first time I heard this monitor, I might have simply been satisfied that it was produced not by the group’s founders, Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch, however Giorgio Moroder.

I need to right here confess that the primary time I heard this music was not that way back. And that the rationale it got here into my life is, shall we embrace, unintentionally Anglophobic: Remember proper after Queen Elizabeth died final yr, when a bunch of Irish soccer hooligans went viral for singing some regally disrespectful lyrics to the tune of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Give It Up”? Well, that reminded my boyfriend that “Give It Up” is definitely a fairly nice music, and when he went to stream “All in a Night’s Work,” he stumbled upon this stone-cold jam.

You know these songs that develop into localized smash hits inside your pal circle or group chat? “Gimme Some More” rapidly turned a kind of. It’s now the music I placed on when I’ve management of the aux twine, often difficult unsuspecting folks to guess — simply try to guess — who recorded it. Just a few months in the past I made a pal play it in his automotive after which additionally compelled him to look at all the seven-and-a-half-minute music video. His verdict: “Something about this man’s power is scary to me.”

The Moroder comparability isn’t so far-fetched. The producer behind each Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” (1975) and Blondie’s “Call Me” (1980) made the transition from disco to new wave about as gracefully as a musician might: His was an aesthetic path price following. But it’s simple to know why the ecstatic, upbeat “Give It Up” was a neater promote coming from the “Boogie Shoes” man than the extra aggressive and nervy “Gimme Some More.”

I cannot vouch for each music on “All in a Night’s Work”; the following monitor is titled “Party With Your Body” and incorporates the lyric, “Now Jazzercise is the newest development.” So to make this journey down the rabbit gap of ’80s KC and the Sunshine Band a bit of gentler on you, I’ve made a brief playlist that throws in just a few modern Moroder tracks — ones that additionally bridge these gaps between disco, funk and new wave. I’ve not secured an deserted arcade so that you can dance in. That work I’ll depart as much as you.

Don’t cease what you’re doin’,

Lindsay

The Amplifier Playlist

Listen on Spotify. We replace this playlist with every new publication.

“Gimme Some More (and More)” monitor checklist
Track 1: KC and the Sunshine Band, “(You Said) You’d Gimme Some More”
Track 2: Giorgio Moroder, “Chase”
Track 3: Donna Summer, “Pandora’s Box”
Track 4: Giorgio Moroder, “Palm Springs Drive (American Gigolo Soundtrack Version)”
Track 5: KC and the Sunshine Band, “Give It Up”

Bonus tracks

This week I’m mourning the loss, in a brutal Game 7 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference semifinals, of my beloved however singularly star-crossed Philadelphia 76ers. To them, via tears, I dedicate Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.”

And to candy, 31-year-old Bobi, the world’s oldest dog: Oasis’s “Live Forever.” It is gorgeous to me {that a} canine who was born earlier than the discharge of “Definitely Maybe” remains to be alive.