Dreaming a Dream: The Best of Crown Heights Affair

I never really got over the death of disco. It was a dark, creepy time in this country: the beginning of AIDS, yuppies, Lee Iacocca's ugly mug everywhere and the anti-urban, antiminority, faux-patriotic voodoo bullshit of Reaganomics. I had grown up on disco without realizing it; it was simply the stuff I listened to religiously on WABC, the 45s I collected at the local pharmacy. It was listening to The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein and "Flash Light" with my friend Paul while we played Mad Libs and traded comics. When Saturday Night Fever came out I wouldn't see it, on the grounds that it wasn't real. Everybody I listened to was black; the people on Soul Train were black. What were all these white people doing, in white clothes, dancing to white musicians wearing white jumpsuits? To paraphrase Spinal Tap, just how much more white could it be?

Disco wasn't about Studio 54 and cocaine; it wasn't about Liza Fucking Minnelli and goddamn Andy Warhol. And no, it wasn't about tough Italian kids from Brooklyn beating each other up. Disco was hippie music, the true heir to the Summer of Love?embraced, in the beginning, primarily by gay urban minorities, who would spend their Saturday evenings ironing the creases in their Jordache jeans, putting on fresh singlets, tucking packs of Kools into their waist and then waiting giddily to get inside the Loft, Gallery or, later on, Paradise Garage, where protean DJ geniuses like David Mancuso, Nicky Siano and Larry Levan would bring religion to hundreds of bobbing, sweating, joyful bodies until the next afternoon.

At 13 I didn't completely understand the racism and homophobia that were the real catalysts for the Disco Sucks movement. All I knew was that suddenly it wasn't safe for me to listen to the music I had always loved. Sure, I loved Kiss too, and Alice Cooper and the Clash were great, but my heart was more with Lou Rawls than Lou Reed; it was with the Isley Brothers and the Brothers Johnson, Barry White and the Average White Band. Yes, disco became incredibly annoying by the end ("Disco Duck," anyone?), and maybe in retrospect it really did need to be taken out back and shot. But what was forgotten in the mad rush to burn, smash and toss those records was the thing that had made disco so popular to begin with: it was really, really good music, made by people who could play circles around any number of nodding, noodling Johnny Thunders clones.

If you have any doubts, or just want a refreshing reminder of how great disco could be, you might want to pick up Dreaming a Dream: The Best of Crown Heights Affair. Crown Heights Affair was a disco supergroup, hailing from the Brooklyn neighborhood they adopted for their name. UK-based Castle Music has done a beautiful job, releasing a two-disc retrospective that contains 27 tracks spanning a nine-year period, 1975 to 1983. The songs for the most part are dense, layered and complex, propelled by the phenomenal Arnold "Muki" Wilson on bass and Ray Rock on drums. All the disco signifiers are here: four on the floor, open high-hat on the upbeats, sliding octave bass lines; falsetto vocals, clavichord and horns; and, of course, a bunch of handsome brothers in wide-lapel velvet tuxedos, rhinestone vests and gold jumpsuits.

The group's primary success was in the clubs. They never had any big hits, but bubbled up into the Top 50 a number of times over the years, all of which is explained meticulously on the entertaining liner notes. A quarter of a century later, Crown Heights Affair remains one of the most interesting, accomplished groups of the disco era. Some of these tracks certainly sound dated, like the corny "Foxy Lady," and the "Theme from Shaft"-derived "Dancin'." But when they're at their best, as on "Dreaming a Dream," the impossibly fierce "Say a Prayer for Two" or the cheeky "(Do It the) French Way," this is one affair you won't want to end. Put it in the deck, get out those designer jeans and heat up the iron.