The Blindboy Podcast - Damp larkin

Episode Date: January 8, 2020

History of Disco part 3. A look into San francisco's influence on Disco with HI NRG music, particularly the work of underground producer patrick Cowley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Come in boys and girls. Welcome to Cooke Holland's Roller Derby. It's me Blind Boy and this is the Blind Boy Podcast. How is everybody this week? If you're a first time listener, because I'm conscious of a few first time listeners because it's 2020 and I know there's been some recommendations. If you're a first-time listener of this podcast, I recommend going back to some of the earlier podcasts. Don't necessarily have to start here. This is podcast 118, which means there's 118 fucking episodes, which is a lot. So I would recommend not starting here. But you don't have to go back to the very start.

You can if you want. But there's a lot of podcasts there to listen to. And I'd suggest that first before starting here. Because this week's podcast in itself is a continuation on a series of podcasts I've been doing over the past two years by which I mean I've done four podcasts

I believe on the history of disco music and how disco evolved. Into. Techno and house. And shit like that. And I consider. I consider disco to be an incredibly important genre of music.

In how it ushered in electronic music. And it's a very. Just a very fascinating. Postmodern genre. Of. Electronic sound. You know. So I'm fascinated with it. So this week's podcast.

Is going to be another. It's going to tell the story. Of disco. And how disco. Evolved into electronic music. But whereas with the first podcasts. I on New York, Chicago and Detroit, this week I want to focus on San Francisco. Because something in disco music happened in San Francisco at the same time that was separate.

That's quite interesting. at the same time that was separate. That's quite interesting. Before I get into it, what do I need to say? Yes, my BBC series. I've made a television series on BBC, which is on the BBC iPlayer for the next 9 months I believe

and it was released on I think the 23rd of December a really strange no it was released very late December the day after Britain had it's general election

so it kind of got buried a little bit and because it was the end of Christmas BBC didn't put Britain had its general election. So it kind of got buried a little bit. And because it was the end of Christmas. BBC didn't put a huge amount of promotion to it. One of the stories. On my BBC series. We got a lot of influencers to. We got them to sell cyanide. As a weight loss formula.

And that went viral globally which was great but I would ask you get a look at my BBC series it's called Blind by Understries and it's on the BBC iPlayer for the next nine months, get a look at it

it's four four episodes of a documentary one episode is about work where I look at how the boundaries of work are being redefined in the kind of contemporary era have rights are being stripped away rights that would have been earned post Industrial Revolution had been stripped away by the redefinition of language there's another episode on modern slavery there's an episode on the anxiety that we face as part of the internet and there's another episode on how the internet is redefining reality so they're four kind of documentaries as such with a philosophical

thesis and some pranks in them i suppose so get a squint at them if you can and also if i know many of you got my book of short stories for christmas boulevard rain if you did receive my book of short stories for Christmas. And you're reading it. If you wouldn't mind. Would you go onto the Amazon page. And write a nice review. If you enjoyed the book. If you didn't enjoy the book. Don't write a review.

Please if that's okay. But if you did enjoy the book. Write an old Amazon review. For me that would be very helpful God bless you cunts so this week what I want to explore and discuss is a specific type of disco music

from the early 80s late 70s that went by the name of high energy, H-I-N-R-G. And it's unique from other styles of disco music in that it was almost the first to embrace electronic instruments as part of disco. We spoke about post disco music.

Which. You know would have gone into R&B territory. Classic post disco examples would be maybe. The 80s work of Prince or 1982. Thriller by Michael Jackson that album. That's where disco splintered off into a synthesizer based R&B

that was kind of slowed down that defined a lot of 80s sounds and then the other strand of disco disco evolved into house music into techno music in Chicago in Detroit and in york but then there was a separate type which some of it has its roots it can have shared roots in a little bit of new york there's a genre called italo disco which was an italian version of disco and also the san francisco disco sound and i believe high energy music

traces itself to san francisco and that's what i want to talk about this week crucially too with high energy disco is like all disco music can be seen as an expression of gay culture definitely right in the first uh episode i did about the history of disco i traced it back to the stonewall riots of the late 60s in new york so all disco music definitely has lgbtq roots but that then splintered off into house and techno high energy is probably the most exclusively lgbtq um genre of disco of all of them it was firmly rooted in in gay culture of san franc Francisco and it kind of stayed with an exclusively gay crowd in San Francisco

and it's one of the few musical genres I can think of that also it died out because of the AIDS epidemic. Pretty much fucking the most important producers of high energy disco died of HIV and AIDS and a huge amount of the people who would have been listening to high energy died as a result or if they didn't if they didn't die the spaces where the music was being listened to shut down because of fear around HIV and AIDS in the early 80s and I can't think of any other genre of music that stopped because of an illness now it went on and evolved into other stuff but but high energy itself kind of stopped as a result of HIV and AIDS and what it did to the spaces where

it was being played and the community and I'm also specifically interested with music as you know I'm always interested how there's two things that I love about like I'm obsessed with fucking music history as you know I fucking adore music as you can tell by the amount of music podcasts that I do but what I'm always excited about is how different types and genres of music are shaped by

the environment where they're from, the culture that they're from, and I'm always looking for what I refer to as the memetic mutations within music, by which I mean all art is a conversation, right? Music is a conversation, right? Music is a conversation. When someone creates music and someone else hears it, if that person is creative, they're inspired to make more music based on what they've heard. And from that, a musical conversation happens.

And then kind of a musical scene develops and a sound develops from a community of people who are having a musical conversation. And how you kind of read that is you refer to it as memetics, right? Which is, it's meme. I don't mean meme culture as in how we now understand memes to be with the internet memes. It's different to that. It's a way of measuring culture the way you would genetics.

In a gene pool, successful genes survive and unsuccessful genes don't. So with something like literature or art or music, we replace the word gene with meme. So the theory goes basically that successful ideas in music survive and procreate, and then unsuccessful ideas, ideas that don't kind of catch a crowd or don't get people moving their heads or bopping their feet,

these don't get people moving their heads. Or bopping their feet. These don't survive. But then. Similarly within a gene pool. You get mutations. In evolution of genes. Every so often a mutation happens in a gene pool. And more often than not the mutations are unsuccessful. But sometimes a mutation happens in a gene pool and more often than not the mutations are unsuccessful but sometimes a mutation happens that's highly successful and it spreads everywhere and

something important happens to that gene pool it's the same with music every so often there is a memetic mutation which means that one artist comes along and does something that is incredibly different and unlike anything that exists within the music and that becomes successful other people copy it so what i want to i want to look this week at a specific memetic mutation that happened within disco music in San Francisco in the 70s and early 80s that went on to influence and define music afterwards, alright? So when we're looking at anything that's like

comes from gay culture or queer culture you have to always remember being openly gay is something that like it's was illegal up until the latter part of the 20th century in the majority of western countries so it existed very much underground with a specific set of rules so i spoke about how this unique set of rules and and uh kind of cultural rules as a result of oppression um created the disco scene in new york but in san franc the same thing happened, now what makes, thing with San Francisco, San Francisco has had a fairly strong gay community since after World War II, like San Francisco has the Castro district, which I think Francisco has the, the Castro District,

which I think was the first, the world's first proper like, gay district, and, I mentioned before in the podcast, I did from San Francisco, but, people said the reason,

San Francisco became a hub of, of a gay community, and gay culture, was because, in the specific theatre of World War II they drafted a lot of young American men and women to fight in World War II. Being gay in the military was obviously not something that was accepted in the 1940s so what happened was with the Navy in particular you had a lot

of gay people who were discharged from the military from the US military around the 1940s World War II and because the US involvement in World War II was mostly against the Japanese and the Pacific theater of conflict,

you had a lot of naval bases around the Bay Area in San Francisco on the West Coast. So a lot of these people that were discharged from the military for being gay just kind of said, fuck it, I'll stay here. I'll stay here in San Francisco. Might as well. And then from that, you end up with quite a strong gay community. I want to focus on two San Francisco-based artists that were very important to disco music. I want to focus on Sylvester and a fellow called Patrick Cowley. Mostly Patrick Cowley because Patrick Cowley is who I believe to be the memetic mutation in disco music that created high energy. So what I want to start with is speaking briefly about what's referred to as the summer of love or the counter-cultural revolution in America in the late 60s that was centered around San Francisco.

So basically, quite simply, at the end of the 1960s in America, you had the children, I suppose, no, they were boomers, they were baby boomers. There were children that were born in the World War II baby boom age who came into their 20s from the early to mid 60s. And they rebelled kind of against their parents' generation. They also grew up, I think, with a fair bit of affluence. And from this we got hippies. We know what hippies are all right the hippies

were a large movement of young people who wanted to not get a job they wanted to grow their hair long they wanted to fucking ride each other as much as they wanted they wanted to do drugs they wanted to chill out and they didn't want to live in, to live by the rules of their parents it was also spurred on by the anti-Vietnam movement

a huge catalyst too for the hippie movement I believe was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when people really thought the war was going to end. The Americans and Russians came very close to all out nuclear war. And the sheer terror and irrationality and madness of it.

Spurred about the fucking, the hippies. Why San Francisco but yet they all wanted to go to San Francisco they are the act San Francisco became the hub of this revolution I would say a couple of reasons number one in the 1950s there was the beat poets which would have been again a precursor to the the hippies free thinking people who were interested in art and poetry and they would there would have been a lot of communists and they would have been critical of the american system they kind of set up roots in the 50s in san francisco and the hippies kind of followed that also I think the the weather of the west coast helped as well like the hippies they wanted to go to San Francisco and

live in communes and live in squats you know and good weather helps that shit so this isn't going to be about the hippies but what I do want to speak about is a group, kind of, I suppose you'd call it a, they were a theatrical group, but it was very much a queer theatrical group. And I say queer there now in the academic sense, not in the, not using it as a slur, but it would have been a queer group in the 1960s in san francisco called the cockettes right so i suppose you'd call the cockettes uh a queer theater group and they would have had their origins in so the area in san franc Francisco where a lot of the hippie stuff happened it was a district called Haight Ashbury and the Cockettes met they were living in

what was called a utopian commune right so a lot of the hippies would go to San Francisco to live in communes which meant they might take over a building they might pull their money together and buy it or they could simply be squatting but they would live together in this this instance in a utopian

commune which meant everybody lived in the same building and what they were trying to do i suppose was to live in a way that's deconstructed that didn't have a hegemony it didn't have a the system of power that would have existed in in american capitalist society so it would have been a commune that would have been anti-ownership um anti-enforced heterosexuality, anti-racism, anti-government, just trying to do a new way of utopian living that's different to how society operates. So from the particular commune came this group called the Cockettes, this theatre group. And the Cockettes were founded by a drag performer called Hibiscus. Hibiscus was an actor, born in New York,

who had moved to San Francisco with the hippie movement in about 1966. There's a very, very famous photograph called Flower Power, right? And this is an iconic photograph and the photograph is it's it's an anti-vietnam war demonstration where the u.s national guard are confronting vietnam protesters right and the national guard are facing the protesters with their rifles out and in this photograph there's a person with a bunch of flowers and they're placing a flower into the rifles directly into the rifles of the National Guard and it's an iconic

even the Simpsons made a gag about it I think Lisa Simpson was putting flowers into a soldier's gun in one scene but it's an iconic, even the Simpsons made a gag about it, I think Lisa Simpson was putting flowers into a soldier's gun in one scene, but it's an iconic photograph, and it captured the zeitgeist of the era, because the zeitgeist, like the slogan would have been fucking make love not war, peace not war, and flower power, so Hibiscus, this drag performer who wasn't in drag in the photograph is placing flowers directly into the gun of a soldier with the gun pointed at them which

quite a fucking brave thing to do so it became quite iconic but Hibiscus anyway founded this theatre group called the Cockettes and they were a psychedelic drag theatre group who would kind of ironically subvert American musical theatre tradition. Do you know what i mean they would put on performances that would kind of parody

standards of american musical theater but change up the lyrics to make them kind of cheeky or bawdy and they would dress in drag like hibiscus used to they were all doing acid as well that's the important thing with the when you hear the word psychedelic it means that it was informed by taking acid so incredibly psychedelic surreal performances that parodied the canon of american musicals and hibiscus used to American musicals and Hibiscus used to kind of dress in full drag with a dress but also had

a really long big beard covered in colourful glitter you know so the Cockettes operated like I said as a psychedelic queer theatre and also as a commune and they did

some really forward thinking theatre and also as a commune and they did some just some really forward thinking weird different shit for the time that was quite ahead of its time in terms of questioning gender, questioning

the tradition of American musicals kind of being openly queer in a way that really wasn't acceptable or considered acceptable by society at the time within art and the cockettes were doing it

now they didn't fucking invent drag the tradition of drag I believe has it's roots in the African American community but from the cockettes I believe has its roots in the African American community but from the cockettes who I like actually yeah who came out of the cockettes that was

there was Hibiscus also a drag queen called Divine who went on to work with the brilliant fucking filmmaker John Waters and Divine I think had connections as well with Andy Warhol I'm not sure but

the most interesting member of the Cockettes for me that I want to focus on was a drag queen by the name of Sylvester and the reason I want to focus on Sylvester is like Sylvester went on to become quite an important disco

musician and singer in disco music Sylvester was African American from Los Angeles and his roots he grew up singing in gospel choirs and this is what I find interesting because when I'm tracing the kind of the roots of disco music over in New York or in Detroit if you trace it back to we'll say the African American styles of music

that would have influenced it you've got jazz you've got blues but importantly a huge one is gospel gospel music is African American gospel music is again that would have its roots in African styles of call and response singing but kind of mixed into enforced christianity became a style of church singing that was unique to african-american communities in the south of america and then that travels up to the cities and becomes what we call soul but then that moves on to disco so sylvester kind of was with the cockettes experimenting with you'd have to assume drugs because all the cockettes were taking acid so experimenting with psychedelic substances experimenting with drag and sylvester's thing was whereas the rest of the Cockettes was mainly white

and they were trying to subvert and ironically parody, we'll say, American musical theatre. Sylvester was subverting Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. Josephine Baker was a very famous jazz dancer, African-American jazz dancer of the 1920s, I think. And Sylvester was subverting that, subverting elements of his own African-American culture within the Cockettes. But the most interesting shit that Sylvester did was the post-Cockettes disco music that he was making. Now, what makes Sylvester so unique for me was he was, I think, the first proper disco musician to start embracing electronic instruments within his music. Okay?

When I spoke on previous podcasts, History of Disco Music, and I spoke about how in new york and detroit and chicago how electronic elements in the early to mid 80s started to become part of disco music and it stopped being disco and became house and became techno what was happening there was it was the early djs it was people like frankie knuckles people like larry levant these were djs who were taking pre-existing disco records that didn't contain electronic instruments they were disco records that were made only with traditional human played instruments guitar, drums, bass, keys, orchestra right

the story of how disco becomes house and techno is when DJs who were playing records not instruments in the early 80s in New York, Chicago and Detroit how they start incorporating electronic instruments and drum machines into pre-existing analogue music, we'll say. But with Sylvester, in the mid to late 70s, Sylvester was incorporating electronic music into his songs,

which sets Sylvester apart from what was to come seven years later on the east coast we'll say now I don't even want to focus that much on Sylvester for this podcast because Sylvester is a legend Sylvesterester is, sadly, died of AIDS, was one of the first really public, proper campaigners raising awareness for HIV before people even fucking knew what it was. When Sylvester died, left all future royalties towards HIV charities

that were in San Francisco. left all future royalties towards HIV charities that were in San Francisco. But Sylvester can definitely be seen as, Sylvester's music in the late 70s is definitely the origins of this high energy brand of disco that I want to speak about. But it's down to Sylvester's partnership with a collaborator by the name of Patrick Cowley. And Patrick Cowley is who I want to focus on for this podcast. Because, like I said, everyone knows who Sylvester is.

Sylvester has been celebrated. Patrick Cowley has not been celebrated. And Patrick Cowley is the mem been celebrated. And Patrick Cowley. Is the memetic mutation. In all of this. Who was doing the really. Weird shit. Far far.

Years years years. Ahead of his time. So. To give. An example of the type of sound. I'm talking about. I'm going to play a little sample. Of. One of Sylvester's songs. That would have had, it wasn't produced by Patrick Cowley but Patrick Cowley was his work with Sylvester and I'm guessing that Sylvester's

openness to something like a synthesizer on a disco track was due to Sylvester's involvement with the psychedelic cockettes just the the climate of absolutely fucking anything goes and embrace all types of creativity and madness and psychedelia within your music so because synthesizers in the 70s lads were not cool they were nerdy instruments and to use one in a pop song risked the music being called novelty music risked it not being taken seriously so i'm going to play a sample here of a song called dance disco heat by sylvester from 1977 which would have which had the electronic instrumentation on it from patrick cowley and what makes this high energy disco as opposed to other forms of disco is the tempo is much faster than traditional disco and the use of electronic

synthesizers where a bass line should be Come on and dance Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance So that would have been Dance to the Disco Heat by Sylvester with the synthesizer arpeggio by Patrick Cowley, which in 1977, not a lot of people were doing.

You would have had... Might have been happening in Italy, the likes of Giorgio Moroder. Ironically, at the same time, Giorgio Moroder released a song with Donna Summer called I Feel Love, which also used electronic music with a disco thing. But what makes that so special is it's much, much faster tempo and you have that lovely, very much the gospel background.

You have the gospel background from sylvester's background himself in starting off in a gospel choir so it's quite unique it's uniquely san francisco and that track it was a bit of a breakout because there was another there was another song on that album because called uh you make me feel mighty real and i think that got into the charts so that was a breakout album but prior to it breaking out that music would have been played exclusively to a gay audience in san francisco and there's a few theories as to you know why was disco faster in san francisco the main kind of theory was is what people say it's that you know you look at what drugs are being taken what what drugs are being taken for people to dance to

a certain type of music and then you measure what's going on with that music in response the drugs of choice in mid to late 70s San francisco in the gay clubs would have been angel dust and poppers poppers in particular gives give people a very strong head rush and make them want to dance and make you quite hyper so that's one theory as to why high energy was so fast i don't know high energy was so fast i don't know i think when i listen to that excerpt there i hear the gospel choir if you listen to gospel music as sung in african-american churches and especially the kind of middle eight bit and when the clapping goes it's that fast so i don't think i i think it's the gospel element that's making it go that fast i think sylvester is telling the band what to do sylvester it's his heart is rooting in gospel

choir singing and that's what's making it go that fast but the electronic element to it that makes it really interesting that's all patrick cowley so i'm gonna have a little ocarina pause now before I start getting into Patrick Cowley and why Patrick Cowley is so important and the reason I'm focusing on Patrick Cowley is Sylvester's widely celebrated you don't need a podcast on Sylvester you can find documentaries on Sylvester but Patrick Cowleyley, very, very much not recognised, you won't find a Patrick Cowley documentary, Patrick Cowley's only really starting to be recognised right now, so, hold on, where's my ocarina, okay, here's my ocarina? Okay, here's the ocarina pause,

which means there's an advert going to be thrown in somewhere. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you, no doubt. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Thanks for watching. The First Omen, only in theaters April 5th. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series.

This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece Symphony Exploder April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall For tickets, visit TSO.ca That was the ocarina pause He got an advert there.

Don't know what it was for. Also, this podcast is supported by you, the listener. This is a free podcast. The podcast takes a couple of days to make in terms of researching it, deciding what the podcast is going to be about

and then recording it. So, quite a lot of work goes into the podcast and I put it out for free. But what pays for the podcast? The fucking Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Please, if you're enjoying the podcast and you're liking it, consider becoming a patron. Give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month and if you can't afford it you don't have to but

if you can afford it please consider it quick plug for some live podcasts that i'm going to be doing just really quickly um i won't go into specifics i'm just going to say they're all happening in the first half of 2020. So Google these if you're interested. Blind by UK tour. Right. London and Glasgow are sold out I believe. There's still tickets left for Liverpool and Birmingham. In February I'm in Chiang Mai in Thailand doing a live podcast. Australia and New Zealand Blind Boy

live podcast tour 2020 there's some tickets left for that I'm going to be in Vicar Street for three nights in April in Dublin I've got a date in Galway with some tickets left for it I've got the Cork Opera House and

Belfast Ulster Hall that's all I can think of off the top of my head so if you live near any of them and you want to come to a gig throw it into Google you'll be grand alright God bless recommend the podcast to a friend as well

so I'm going to move my attention towards Patrick Cowley Patrick Cowley it's I don't think I've ever I don't think I've ever I don't think I've ever heard anyone as so far ahead of their time musically as Patrick Cowley

how did I find Patrick Cowley as you know look I fucking adore music I don't give a shit what music it is I just fucking love music so much. Every genre. So a huge part of my day is spent just listening to music. And specifically trying to find new music.

Whether it be music that's happening today or music that happened ages ago. And what I'm always looking for is stuff that went underneath the radar when it came out at the time i'm continually searching for that usually how i do it is it's because of youtube one of the great benefits of youtube is if you wanted to find rare stuff before you had to find it on fucking vinyl. You know, a lot of this music really obscures stuff. It never made it beyond vinyl. It never got made onto CDs or cassettes. It got one pressing on vinyl and then it disappeared

and it only existed in whatever limited vinyls were available. But with YouTube, all these people who are obsessive collectors of vinyl, most of them are now uploading their vinyl to YouTube, which means that if you fancy it, if you're someone like me who's willing to spend hours and hours and hours just going through records on YouTube, 99% of it is shite, to be be honest but that's the fun of it I go through people's old record collections of stuff they've uploaded on YouTube and what I do is I listen and

I listen and I listen and I fast forward I don't listen to the full tracks I'll go to bits of them and I'll just keep digging and digging but it used to be known as digging in the crates like literally getting a crate of vinyl records playing them all and the reason I do it actually yeah it's it's it's because I'm a fucking hip-hop producer you know when I started producing hip-hop I wanted to find samples I wanted to find very rare music that I could sample and put into tracks, I don't do it anymore, because you just can't be sampling anymore, copyright and shit, but from that, I always had this desire to search and search and search for the rarest possible music, which meant hours and hours and hours of just listening to obscure stuff online.

And I listen and listen every so often, one in every 1,000 tracks that I come across. Every so often, something pops up. And, like, I'd be in a playlist of, we'll say, 70s disco. So I know that everything I'm listening to is going to be 70s fucking disco, every so often something will come up and I have to double take, usually what the feeling is, it's a feeling of a track comes on and I say to myself, no that's wrong, there's no fucking way that this track is 70s disco it sounds too weird

it sounds like something that was made in the 90s or the 80s this has to be wrong so Patrick Cowley was that for me I was going through disco and Patrick Cowley came on and I had to triple take quadruple take because a came on, and I just refused to believe that this had been made in the fucking early 70s, because to me, it sounded like a 90s artist called Aphex Twin, who's a really avant-garde electronic musician, and this Patrick Cowley track came on about five years ago,

and I couldn't believe it was him. And then when I went googling him. I could only find about another six tracks. And there was very little information. So this character called Patrick Cowley existed in my head as just. Who the fuck is this? But now for the past five years. more and more of his work is emerging and each time new work emerges it just blows the fucking head off me Patrick Cowley is a memetic mutation

Patrick Cowley was making music by himself that was unlike anything else being made anywhere else in the world he's a memetic mutation Patrick Cowley has tracks that predates techno music and house and kind of down-tempo hip-hop predates him by 15 years sometimes 20 years just a really bizarrely unique person cowley as well can also be credited as the inventor of high energy disco pretty much but there's there's two separate kind of sides to patrick cowley's music separate kind of sides to Patrick Cowley's music so that little excerpt there of Sylvester that I played before the Ocarina pause that's Cowley's work as you know he did a lot of stuff with Sylvester Cowley founded a little small San Francisco based record label that Sylvester then joined so there was Cowley who produced and added electronic

instrumentation to we'll say artists like sylvester to create disco that had an electronic vibe in it and that'd be his work that would have been well known but like no one would have really the people that would have known it was Patrick Cowley it was a very small community so there's that side of his work where he added instrumentation to disco productions but then there's the other side of his work which is only really being found and released in I'd say the past five years and it's the other side of his work that makes me realise that he might be one of the most fucking important

electronic music producers ever like in the early 70s like okay you had Kraftwerk from Germany Kraftwerk were mid 70s they were making music exclusively electronic Kraftwerk were big enough at the time they get a lot of credit I'm not taking it away from the very fucking deserved Kraftwerk were pioneers of electronic music then you had Giorgio Moroder theian fella you know he did that donna summer thing like i said but patrick cowley independently was doing much more fucking interesting shit i think but it

was never it wasn't getting released it's only being found now and it's flabbergasting the vision of it he was born in New York around 1950 in a Catholic home, I'm gonna guess right Patrick Cowley is a very Irish sounding name Cowley is an Irish second name

his parents chose to call him Patrick which is a very fucking Irish name and he was Catholic so I'm guessing I'm claiming him for us he was most likely a Irish American Patrick Cowley from New York right so I'm claiming him for the paddies he was gay can't imagine that went down too well in his fucking Irish Catholic catholic household in new york so he fucked off to san francisco when he was about 20 he appeared to have been completely unapologetically gay he was openly gay in san francisco and immediately got involved in the

gay scene there the gay club scene the music scene and he was working in i think it was called the city nightclub in downtown san francisco which was a gay nightclub and he was uh he used to work the lights he moved to san francisco actually directly as a result of the 1969 stonewall riots in New York, which, as I mentioned on the first episode of the History of Disco podcast, the Stonewall represents the start of disco music proper and the gay scene in New York. Patrick Cowley decides to fuck off to San Francisco in either 1969 or 1970 he was involved in bands in New York, in rock bands but what really sets Patrick Cowley apart and what makes him so unique and strange for the time is when he gets to San Francisco

at I think 2021 he when he gets to San Francisco right he goes to a place called City College. And he was one of the first ever students. They had a new program in City College for electronic music. There was an electronic music lab in 69, 1970. And Patrick Cowley was one of the first ever students now that's a crazy move

for the time electronic music wasn't a thing in 1970 electronic music in 1970 it how would I fucking it would have been seen as as somewhere on the avant-garde fringes of classical music, or a thing called musique concrète, which is like experimental noise, it would have been seen as really avant-garde art it wasn't electronic music in 1970 wasn't necessarily seen as something

that would graduate into popular music when it kind of anytime it did in the 70s it was a novelty and again there's such an interesting queer history to electronic music

as well like a real pioneer of electronic music I think they're still alive, Wendy Carlos who's a trans woman who was again an electronic musical composer she wendy carlos recorded the music for the film a clockwork orange but in 1968 wendy carlos would have released an album called switched on back which was the music of joh Bach, so classical music, but performed on a Moog synthesizer.

But it would have been released as a curiosity or a novelty. You know, it wouldn't have been seen as proper music. as this kind of academic, classical, experimental composer who had released a curiosity novelty record with this new machine, the synthesizer, in 68. So there's an interesting kind of queer trans history across all electronic music, to be honest. But Patrick Cowley enrolls in the City College in San Francisco in 1969 or 1970 to be part of the electronic music department where he is learning how to use drum machines and synthesizers. as art you know not as popular music but as a way to compose avant-garde classical compositions so in the day times Patrick Cowley is a young fella in college

learning how to use synthesizers learning the emerging field of electronic music technology learning about avant-garde compositions learning about music concrete your man stockhausen all of this shit but at night time he was going to the gay sex clubs he was going to the bath houses he was going to the gay discos so he's hearing early disco early funk um philadelphia soul all this type of crack and it's in this scene then that he meets sylvester and becomes palsy with sylvester and in the mid to late 70s starts and in the mid to late 70s starts adding electronic instrumentation to Sylvester's compositions but the most interesting stuff that Cowley was doing was he was seen as kind of a just someone who was always working all the time he would have had a home studio which in the 70s would have been quite rare he would have had a tape deck to record

and then two or three different synthesizers on a drum machine and was making compositions by himself for himself really to be honest just what he would have considered very strange unique music but i hear it now and I just go what the fuck this is years ahead of its time so I'll give you a little sample to put into context the type of music that Patrick Cowley was making on his own in his studio that wasn't really getting released and this is the track that as I said, when I was going through all 70s music, when this one came on, I had to do the quadruple take. I had to go, no fucking way was this made in the early 70s.

No fucking way. I gotta double check because this sounds too far ahead of its time. The track is called Somebody to Love Tonight. The track is called Somebody to Love Tonight. And what makes it so unique is, first off, it's all electronic musicians, or all electronic instruments. The synthesizer for the bass, for the keys, and a drum machine.

But what sets it apart from anything being done at the time is, we'll say this track is probably 71, 72, if not 70, when he's in college. Kraftwerk would have been doing stuff at the sames it was very 4-4 um mechanical robotic it didn't have soul to it it didn't have this thing i'm gonna play for you is it's almost fucking electronic hip-hop years before electronic hip-hop and the audio fidelity is fucking incredible the drum machine is incredible nobody nobody was doing this in the early 70s so it's somebody to love tonight by patrick cowley i don't even think it was released Thank you. so what like what makes that so unique for me and so special is like you have to remember that's the fucking early 70s. That's. He's making. That.

Around this. Like. When. David Bowie's releasing his first albums. That's. A good five or six years before Prince. That. That right there is.

It's a memetic mutation. That's someone. On their own. Makingetic mutation. That's someone on their own making music that no one else is making because they're at the forefront of electronic music. They're studying it in college and then listening to different types of music at night time. And that's simply what happens that's the result visionary unique carry on and what strikes me about it is it's it's not robotic it's not like electronic music in the 70s it's electronic music is like the stuff with house and techno it can lack feeling that has tons of feeling it has it feels like live music even though it's

electronic and from what i can understand from reading about him his process was quite unique so what cowley used to do in the early 70s with tracks like that, which he was just making for himself really, or maybe just for college or fucking around with a synth, he used to get a live band. So like a live drummer, live guitar player, live bass player, and he would record a live performance of real musicians. They'd fuck off.

a live performance of real musicians they'd fuck off and then he would steadily replace every single element of that live recording the drums the bass whatever he would painstakingly recreate and replace it with an electronic instrument with a synthesizer and with a drum machine and because he's copying real instruments that's how you end up with the the swing and the feeling and the touch in that electronic track which i mean that sound it sounds like something from the fucking 90s it doesn't even sound like anything that happened in the 80s it sounds like something from the 90s it sounds like trip-hop um so what's happening now is like it's only now that a lot of Patrick Cowley's work is being found because that shit was too far ahead of its time, he was recording it for himself, and what he also started doing, and the people that are archiving his work now, and trying to find everything he made, what he ended up doing in the mid-70s, as a way to make money, was Patrick Cowley made a load of

made a load of down tempo electronic music for gay porn films so there was a bunch of 80s vhs gay porn that actually had patrick cowley's music on it so the people in san francisco that are now trying to archive his stuff what they're doing is they're not going to music studios. They're having to contact defunct film studios and defunct directors or whoever was involved in making gay porn in the mid-70s to try and find the original reel-to-reel tapes that Patrick Cowley made. So there were mid-70s porn directors, gay porn porn directors who were making feature-length gay porn making it silently and then patrick cowley was scoring the gay porn films but like if you've ever seen 70s porn you'll know that the music is like kind of cheesy funky funk type stuff Patrick Cowley was

doing his own weird electronic shit over gay porn for some money so that's what's happening at the moment um I found him in like I said about five years ago since then about four or five collections of his music have been released they're all on Spotify now thank fuck but it's like even last month a new album was released by him and there's a lot of material because he recorded a lot that they're going into

attics of people who knew him in San Francisco and trying to find all his stuff because he's finally been recognised as an incredibly important visionary. Now, like I said, that's the two sides to his music. To an extent, he did have a certain level of success. If you include the...

No, he didn't have success. He had influence. He invented high energy. The late 70s stuff he did with Sylvester and then some of the... Unfortunately, Patrick Cowley was one of the first people to contract AIDS. He was one of the first people to...

They didn't even know what it was. He died in 1982 at the age of 32. And I don't even think he... hiv was discovered in 1984 so patrick cowley was one of the first uh people to contract it and to die from it he was very prolific in the last two years of his life 1980 and 1982 that's when he started doing more exclusively electronic stuff with fucking Sylvester and that's when high energy music starts to emerge but it was only it was being played really only in San Francisco and like I said high energy is the only music scene I can think of where a disease killed it everyone Sylvester died of AIDS

fucking Patrick Cowley died of AIDS a load of people died of AIDS who were involved in high energy including the clientele so it as a genre it died but it moved it went on, it transformed beyond the originators

Cowley also I'll give you a little excerpt of another track just to show you how so this is another track he did which this is about 1973 I don't know is this one of the ones that was in the gay porn

but this is just like like a techno track that'll be released today this is called like like a techno track that'll be released today this is called Jungle Orchids សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� So so that's Jungle Orchids Patrick Cowley made sometime in the early 70s

and that predates predates techno by a good maybe 12, 13 years maybe 20 years like I said a memetic mutation by a good maybe 12, 13 years, maybe 20 years. Like I said, a memetic mutation. Someone doing something that's so fucking vastly different,

but at the same time perfectly predicts what was to go ahead. And even though that side of his music music the stuff that he was doing by himself the only release it got was on gay porn films he also took the energy that you'd have heard there where that's more 4-4 straightforward dance music

clearly influenced by disco early disco that he was hearing just all electronic it's when he starts bringing that energy to the work he's doing with sylvester and he had a very very prolific year in the last year of his life in 1981 where he released quite a few tracks with sylvester and this is when it became known as high energy music it was being played pretty much exclusively in san francisco to a community of a couple of thousand people in gay discos but also in the early 80s that's when you start seeing

a lot of people dying from a mystery illness that they didn't know what it was in in they did not know what what it was in 1981 1984 the aids virus was discovered by science, even still, you know, names in the press for the time people were caught in it, the quote unquote, the gay plague, they were caught in a gay cancer. People thought that it was just this horrible disease that only affects gay men and Cowley was one of the first people to get it and that whole scene disappeared but the tracks that did kind of go on is the high energy disco the electronic disco music that Patrick Cowley was making with Sylvester

the vinyl started to travel and it became particularly big in the UK and bands like New Order, like New Order opened up the Hacienda in Manchester. New Order were very much influenced by Patrick Cowley's high energy stuff, who else would have been massively influenced, Bronski Beat, who were a queer UK act, they had that song Small Town Boy in 1983, and one act that were fucking huge, that because they themselves were gay and had been in, like High Energy, like I said, it got really big in the gay scene in the UK, the Pet Shop Boys, Pet Shop Boys knew who Patrick Cowley was, and in early interviews, I think they were saying that Cowley was a big influence on their sound. And you can hear it because the...

If I had a critique of Patrick Cowley is he was a producer, right? There's a difference between a producer and a songwriter. Patrick Cowley was an utter visionary in the sense that he was using only electronic instruments. He was creating his own sound, he was putting it all together, but they're not songs. A song is the musical equivalent of a story. Production and songwriting are two separate things.

When you mix the two together, that's when you've got a fucking hit. But Patrick Cowley's stuff, the songs don't really go anywhere there's often with his solo stuff there's no lyrics in it they're all instrumental

and it's more an exploration of sounds and feelings but it doesn't when I listen to Patrick Cowley I'll have it on in the background as a curiosity and I'm very interested in the sounds and all of that but I'm not really going to walk away from much of it

kind of humming or whistling any of the melodies but what the Pet Shop Boys did because the Pet Shop Boys are fucking amazing songwriters Neil Tennant incredible songwriter incredible singer Neil Tennant, incredible songwriter, incredible singer. Pet Shop Boys would have taken Patrick Cowley's sound and then they would have mixed that with their songwriting ability to create incredible fucking pop music, which is rooted in the gay scene, the gay club scene, where they would have been hearing Patrick Cowley's high energy stuff that he was doing with Sylvester,

and also Patrick Cowley remixed, he remixed I Feel Love by Donna Summer and did a much better version than Georgia Marauder, a much faster, harder, high energy version of it. I'll play you a tiny bit of the Pet Shop Boys here. A song called Love Comes Quickly, so you can get an idea of how they took Patrick Cowley's sound,

but mixed fucking songwriting with it. Decent fucking songwriting. So what you have is the beautiful, electronic Patrick Cowley sound, but a song that'll stick in your head. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here.

I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here.

I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here.

I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of Pet Shop Boys here. I'll play you a tiny bit of stick in your head. Love comes quickly, whatever you do, you can't stop falling Love comes quickly, whatever you do, you can't stop falling You can live a life of luxury If that's what Comes Quickly by The Pet Shop Boys. Probably one of my favourite pop songs ever.

Just fucking amazing you've got that high energy Patrick Cowley influenced electronic production but with a songwriting that's quite close to Motown and falsetto melodies kind of like Martha Reeves and the Vendellas or a bit of Diana Ross.

Fantastic stuff. So. That's the legacy of Patrick Cowley's. I don't want to say mainstream. Like I said there's two sides to Patrick Cowley. There's the stuff. That got released for the dance floor. The high energy stuff.

That was definitely underground as fuck. But did travel. And influenced the likes of the pet shop boys new order bransky beat the communards right and then there's the mad underground shit which i don't think saw much release at the time outside of the gay porn films that they were in and i think i think of the gay porn films that they were in and I think I think I think that early stuff that will go on to influence

people now as it's coming out now because it didn't really get anyone hearing it at the time and the latest release like I said was a month ago so there's more to come and there's about five four or five albums been released in the past five years of his stuff he was just recording for himself what became of high energy music So you had the early 80s.

Mainly it went on to influence artists who were gay in the UK. Dead or Alive is another example. Dead or Alive, they have that song You Spin Me Right Round. Then there was Fade to Grey by Visage and a band called The Human League who were massive in the 80s, a UK band. Now The Human League would have started off kind of avant-garde. The Human League would have started off influenced by Kraftwerk and Gary Newman, but by the mid mid 80's had appropriated kind of a high energy sound with that song what is it working as a waitress

in a cocktail bar but where high energy ended up is it moved away from being made by the gay scene to Stock Aitken and Waterman who were a huge production team in the late 80s

and they would have produced never gonna give you up by rick astley a load of fucking kylie minogue's early stuff real real early 90s stuff and then jason donovan all that kind of, to be honest, music I'm not too fond of, late 80s UK radio pop, which, that's where the high energy sound ended up, it ended up, I mean, you could argue, no, it went fully mainstream, like, I know Kylie Minogue now is huge with the gay community now, but no, high energy left its LGBTQ roots and ended up being co-opted and appropriated by Stock Aitken and Waterman to become mainstream pop in the late 80s, early 90s. So that's kind of where high energy ended up

so um look if you like that that that again that was my fucking another one of my disco podcasts electronic music history podcast which is something i'm really passionate about if i'm passionate about something i'm going to do a podcast on it, if you want to hear, more of that type of music, for my entire, disco podcast series, I also have a playlist on Spotify, just go to Rubber Bandits, on Spotify,

and there's a playlist called, Post Disco Slash Roots of House Music, and I've got about six hours there, of every fucking disco, you can imagine, Patrick Cowley's in there, I've got about six hours there of every fucking disco you can imagine Patrick Cowley's in there I've got European space disco there's a Talo disco the lot it's all there in that playlist if you want to listen to that um do go and listen to Patrick Cowley he's class so that's it anyway lads I'll talk to you next week. I hope you enjoyed that. I absolutely love doing music podcasts.

All right. God bless. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.