Before there was Saturday Night Fever there was underground disco. DJs across America went out and found the music to play; dancers went out and found the clubs. At this point, in the early seventies, the disco was the venue and not a genre of music.
Three Day Week is the fourth compilation album curated by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. This time they’re concentrating their efforts on 1972-1975 when Britain was a bloody miserable place to be (Apparently, I was a carefree baby). There were some lovely sounds though, and this eclectic mix exists to show you just that. Features tracks from Mungo Jerry, The Kinks, Hawkwind, The Strawbs, Adam Faith, David Essex, The Troggs and more.
By mid-1968 there was a growing consensus that something had gone horribly wrong with the American dream. The nation's youth had loudly made their feelings clear, but now the older, pre-Beatles generations began to look at the country with urban riots, Vietnam, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and wondered what the hell was happening. This album includes rare classics (The Beach Boys 4th Of July), lost masterpieces (Roy Orbison's seven-minute Southbound Jericho Parkway), and forgotten gems by some of the biggest names in the business (Elvis Presley's Clean Up Your Own Back Yard). Reactions to America's existential crisis ranged in subject matter from divorce (Frank Sinatra's The Train) and the break-up of the nuclear family (The Four Seasons Saturday's Father), to eulogies for fallen heroes (Dion's Abraham Martin and John), sympathy for Vietnam vets (Johnny Tillotson's Welfare Hero), the church's institutional racism (Eartha Kitt's intense Paint Me Black Angels), and even questioning the ethics of the space programme (Bing Crosby's terrific What Do We Do With The World).
1989 had been a long hot summer, but 1990 felt longer and hotter. Since the house music explosion of 1987, Britain had had a whistle in its mouth, and it needed a lie down. February 1990 brought two records that were made to accompany the sunrise and would shape the immediate future: The KLF’s Chill Out was a continuous journey, a woozy, reverb-laden mix; and Andrew Weatherall’s drastic remix of a Primal Scream album track – ‘Loaded’ – slowed down the pace on the dancefloor itself, right down to 98 beats per minute.
The Summer of 1976 has remained a benchmark for long, hot summers – there may have been scorchers since, but none have seemed quite as relentless. Too hot to move, the country melted into a collective puddle. This album evokes the feel of that summer, the sweet heat and almost narcotic lethargy, the haze above melting tarmac.
This is England, the day after the 60s. It’s a time of flux. On the cusp of progressive rock but without a rule book, many groups hold fast to psychedelia’s adventurousness and melodic delights, while they are also happy to venture deep into the jazz and folk scenes. The result is some wonderful, atmospheric, rain-flecked music.