The Art of the Medley

Last night's show is up on the archives, so as always you can listen to it here. For our fourth show, we got a little indulgent, playing some of the best (and longest) medleys disco has to offer. Medleys usually incorporated a number of different songs by the same artist into one long play that often took one side of an entire album to complete. Closely related to the medley is the gapless album (poineered by Gloria Gaynor, one of disco's most famous divas), but whereas the songs on gapless albums are completely distinct, divisions of songs within medleys are much more fluid. Sometimes songs pass into and out of each other, and most often a shared repetitive rhythm keeps it all together. The first song in a medley is usually (though not always) brought back at the end, where it is then called the reprise.

Here was last night's playlist:

Grace Jones- Saved- Muse
Arpeggio- Let the Music Play (Medley)- Let the Music Play
Donna Summer-Try Me, I Know We Can Make It- A Love Trilogy
Lipstique- At the Discotheque (Medley)- At the Discotheque
Love and Kisses- I've Found Love (Now that I've Found You)- Love and Kisses
Roni Hill- You Keep Me Hangin' On/Stop in the Name of Love- Get up and Move Your Body
Patti Smith- Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/La Mer (de)- Horses

As I mentioned before, Grace Jones is supposedly working on a new album due sometime this year. The ever-active machine Donna Summer is working on a new album as well (as teased by her website, linked above). It's surprising to me that for all the continued success and popularity that Ms. Summer enjoys, she hasn't recorded an album of original songs since Mistaken Identity in 1991. According to Wikipedia the new album is called Crayons, curiously enough, and will release in may. You can listen to one of the first singles "I'm a Fire" on youtube here. It's also embedded below.



As for Patti Smith, well she is pretty far from disco, but I included her medley as a good point of comparison. She just released a covers album called Twelve last year and is no doubt writing for a new album as we speak, though nothing's been confirmed yet.

Keep it tuned next week to Heaven is a Disco on BSR!

Take care,

Brice