Bob-a-rela – Spend The Night

Bob-a-rela – Stop

Bob-a-Rela – Why Does It Rain?

For this week’s FCD we’ve brought in a special guest.  Mr. James Lindsay, co-founder of the wonderful Pleasance Records, regular contributor to Weird Canada and courageous protector and preserver of all that is right and true in the Toronto music scene.    

When they write the book about the Montreal disco scene of the 70s/80s, there will surely be a chapter dedicated to the dynamic duo of George Lagios and Pat DeSerio. Lagios is primarily know for his work with CanRock all stars April Wine, while Deserio was a prolific disco producer and had worked with synth-pop originals Rational Youth. Together, they were an intriguing ying-yang of disco-rock, working together on several projects for other artists, and a few of their own, most notably The Bombers, Top Secret, and Bob-a-Rela.

Firstly, let’s talk about the record sleeve, since that is what hit me right away. Sometimes, just by looking at a record, without knowing anything else, you know it will be good, and the cover of this LP promised nothing less than hot sex on wax. As I soiled my hands while flipping through filthy, dead people’s records at an Etobicoke Good Will, I was suddenly taken by one of the greatest behinds to ever grace a sleeve. I take a lot of chances when buying thrift store records, but I knew this was a good thing; the purple electricity shooting out of this topless woman guaranteed it.

Sure enough, the a-side is perfection. “Spend the Night” starts off sounding like a lost Dinosaur L track, with a woozy siren and heavy cowbell, before patiently building the beat—accentuated by a prominent, scratchy guitar —that meets up with a playful, bouncy bass. Bold soul vocals (unknown in name, as is typical in disco) go head to head with deep, cosmic electronics. Indeed, many of Bob-a-Rela’s strongest moments tend to nod towards Italo’s influence. Not surprising, considering Montreal’s, and DeSerio’s, Italian roots.

Closing up the first half is “Stop”, a sinister slow-jam and a great example of early modern soul rubbing shoulders with disco. Minimal and sad, the song burns on the backs of a crystalline electric piano, striped down back beat, a guitar solo that wouldn’t be out of place on the rock radio of the time, and a wild stallion of sax, the “Careless Whisper” kind that can’t be contained.

Side B opens with the albums strongest track, “Why Does it Rain,” a lost dance floor anthem with some seriously spacey flirtations. What starts as an unhurried stomper, introduces a melancholy mood before taking the beat up a notch, to somewhere funkier, as if to say everything will be OK. “I gotta feeling/something inside is just not right/I gotta feeling/you wont be home with me tonight” mourns the singer in this song of loss and confusion. But by the chorus, we’ve gone somewhere else, to a place of acceptance, where there are no answers, but that doesn’t matter because by this point the music has swelled to the heavens on wings of a lamenting guitar whine and an unrelenting, pulsing beat that drives the song up past our problems, ultimately emancipating us from the hurt of the past, not by pandering to tell us that there are other fish in the sea, but fully losing itself in the post-love chaos and reveling in it.

I’m not going to lie and say that there aren’t any weaker moments on this disc, because there are, though they are not with out their own merit. The second and third cuts of the b-side are acknowledgements of Lagios’ rock influences done up with disco theatrics. “Tobacco Road” has never been a favorite tune of mine. Often covered, rarely interestingly, I never paid much attention to it, but the more I listen to Bob-a-Rela’s version, the more it makes sense to me. Their electric-Northern-Soul spin makes it sound like something Roxy Music might have done in their early career, complete with a snaky sax that does its best not to be over powered by the plucky bass. On the other hand, their take on Pink Floyd’s “Money” has more intelligence to it. Keeping much of the originals odd time, the vocals scream Betty Davis style, re-envisioning it as hard funk, all itchy with groove and yelling at you about it.

Canadian disco has a lush and diverse history that is well worth digging into, and, as is typical of too much of our musical heritage, relatively unknown outside of a dedicated few. The records can still be found in dollar bins around the country, dusty and ignored, but more and more of the world is beginning to take notice and appreciate this illustrious part of our past. The last few years have seen the critical books “Treat Me Like Dirt” and “Perfect Youth” shining a celebratory light on the extensive history of Canadian Punk, hopefully, in the near future we will be seeing similar works dedicated to the wealth of electronic and dance music that this country has produced.