Coming soon to a radio near you
Sunshine After Dark, the disco radio hour, will air on Thursday evenings from 7 to 8 pm on CJSR radio in Edmonton. The first episode is slated for October 24th.
I started to seriously research disco around the time that Tim Lawrence published his epic history of the topic, Love Saves the Day. That book gave me a roadmap, and soon I became hooked on finding the next forgotten gem: Patti Jo! Bear Brothers! Minnie Ripperton! Ganymed! Amadeo! Of course, it became natural for me to mix disco together with house music in my sets, especially the West End/Prelude classics, and connect the dots, just like the innovators did back in the day.
But this show is going to pretend that house music hasn't happened yet and will focus exclusively on disco. I'll draw a long arc, starting with the Philadelphia-style soul and R&B of the early 70s, through the commercial explosion and international boom of the rest of that decade, and then, after the sudden implosion of 1979, on into the eclectic 1980s, as the stripped down boogie of the Paradise Garage gradually morphed into garage house, and other styles like italo disco, post-disco and Hi-NRG flourished. The Garage closed in 1987, and that seems like a suitable bookend for the story of Sunshine After Dark.
Stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, check out this mix I made a few years ago with records from Edmonton's Roost Nightclub in-house collection.
I started to seriously research disco around the time that Tim Lawrence published his epic history of the topic, Love Saves the Day. That book gave me a roadmap, and soon I became hooked on finding the next forgotten gem: Patti Jo! Bear Brothers! Minnie Ripperton! Ganymed! Amadeo! Of course, it became natural for me to mix disco together with house music in my sets, especially the West End/Prelude classics, and connect the dots, just like the innovators did back in the day.
But this show is going to pretend that house music hasn't happened yet and will focus exclusively on disco. I'll draw a long arc, starting with the Philadelphia-style soul and R&B of the early 70s, through the commercial explosion and international boom of the rest of that decade, and then, after the sudden implosion of 1979, on into the eclectic 1980s, as the stripped down boogie of the Paradise Garage gradually morphed into garage house, and other styles like italo disco, post-disco and Hi-NRG flourished. The Garage closed in 1987, and that seems like a suitable bookend for the story of Sunshine After Dark.
Stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, check out this mix I made a few years ago with records from Edmonton's Roost Nightclub in-house collection.