There was just no denying it, by 1978 two things were obvious: one, the Loss Leaders had definitely gone uptown. And two, our buddies in Burbank were definitely in denial over the Disco Monster, at that time raging on radio stations across the country.
Check out this copy from Collectus Interruptus, the only sampler from ‘78: “This is unequivocable party music. Danceable R&B by some of its premier practitioners – none of them, curiously, traversing the well-traveled terrain of disco.” This was to introduce artists like Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the husband-wife team who wrote monster hits for Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross before jumping to Warner Bros. in the early ’70s. Despite the denial, “Don’t Cost You Nothing” from Ashford & Simpson sounds suspiciously like disco. And you can’t blame ‘em; pretty much everyone from the Bee Gees to the Rolling Stones to Kiss at least dipped their toes into the disco waters in 1978.
Collectus Interruptus also featured funk from Bootsy’s Rubber Band and the definitive “Bootzilla”, a tasty “Night People” from the great New Orleans master Allen Toussaint and selections from franchise players Gordon Lightfoot, Gary Wright, George Benson and Seals & Crofts. But it’s an interesting sampler in that you can hear the first stirrings of a few contenders that would soon rise to tame the disco monster: there’s “Soft and Wet,” from the debut LP of an 18-year-old named Prince, the brothers Van Halen introduce themselves with “Runnin’ With The Devil” and this little band outta New Yawk, the Ramones, going to “Rockaway Beach.”
30 Days Out 