I will admit I am a sucker for a song with a great dance beat. Back in 2001 during my clubbing days, I was a real big fan of dance music and spent a few days a week listening to KTU radio or buying dance compilation albums. I used to think One More Time from Daft Punk was the greatest dance song of all time. Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong. The best song was an obscure tune from a Swedish pop group called Alcazar with the title of Crying At The Discoteque. The song was the group’s biggest hit in America, peaking at #44 on the U.S. mainstream dance chart in 2000. I first got wind of the song from a dance compilation CD I bought so I could proudfully acclaim that I owned Lady by Modjo for my music collection. I ended up almost crying at the discoteque because I never heard this great song played while I was doing my disco disco! The song has a distinctive melody and some of the cheesiest lyrics of all time. Check these out: The golden years, The silver tears,You wore a tie like Richard Gere! Back in those days, my brother and I would ride down the highway blasting this tune as we bopped our heads like the Night At The Roxbury guys played by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that I realized that Alcazar had actually sampled the track from an obscure Swedish pop star of the 70’s. Considering most great dance and hip hop melodies are stolen, how can I have been so blind?
The original melody actually was from a super hot 70’s disco queen from France known as Sheila. The song’s title was Spacer, and the tune was as or if not more cheesy than Alcazar’s tune. Sheila oddly enough got her stage name from the title of her first release which was a cover of Tommy Roe’s classic tune. Sheila was actually a folk singer until she changed her music style to disco in 1977.You know what, she was kind of hot and ranks up there with Agnetha from ABBA as my favorite blondes from overseas. Spacer was actually written and produced by the team of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. The song never charted in the US, although it was a big hit overseas and peaked at #18 on the British charts. I’m sure most people don’t even know what this song is. You probably won’t find it on any disco box sets or compilation albums. Just like Crying At The Discoteque, I’ve never heard Spacer at a 70’s night or club which is an outrage. Listen to the song below, and I’m sure you’ll have that melody in your head for the rest of the day. If not, at last you’ll never forget the images from the video. “Because he’s a spacer, a starchaser!” Yah!
Awww, YouTube took the video down. BTW, I think this song is on one of Rhino's "Disco Years" compilations. I'm pretty sure that's how I first heard it. Man, anything produced by Rodgers and Edwards is golden. Chic for the R&R Hall of Fame!!
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