Saturday, January 21, 2006

Lucky Comes Easy

A couple days ago I was watching a video clip from the late Nelson Sullivan [I'll post a seperate memory about my time with Nelson later]. It seemed that Nelson and I crossed paths every time I was in NYC in the 1980s and we developed a casual friendship over the years.

Nelson's "thing" was to take his video camera, hold it at arm's length and basically film himself every night - you, the viewer, went wherever Nelson went and met his friends and saw the inside loop of the 'scene' in a very relaxed, almost private, view.

So, I'm watching this clip of when Nelson and friends went to Bentley's cause Susanne Bartsch was tossing a party for Leigh Bowery's birthday ... it's quite the event, as you would assume with Leigh in the house.

But there's one point in the video where you see the dance floor and you hear the music and I hear a song that I had almost forgotten about! I dash to my shelves and thumb through row after row of LPs until I found it ... an album that I almost wore out back in 1979: Donna Summer's Bad Girls.

The song I heard was a track called "Lucky" -- hypnotic music from the one and only Giorgio Moroder, at his peak! I pulled it out - and spun it several times ... loudly. Then, last night I took the record to Fluid and played it over the dance club system before the doors opened. What an incredible album!!

Don't let the burnt hits like "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls" turn you off - totally give this release another chance. It is truly one of the best early electro releases ... period.

Anyway -- I had to post this, since I just went onto iTunes and bought the Bad Girls Deluxe CD - which has the album as well as several 12" mixes and a few other gems. I am SOOOO living in the past as these songs play ... and loving every minute of it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, Nelson Sullivan. The movies are fanTASTic, although I have only seen snippets

Robby

Anonymous said...

Robert-

That night at Bentley's was the first time Leigh used those lightbulbs in public. Did you notice Leigh doing a hit of poppers on the dancefloor right before LUCKY???

xoxo

mrrobert
archivist for Nelson Sullivan and the last of the great Warhol Superstars