An Album A Day #11: The Brothers Johnson LIGHT UP THE NIGHT [1980]

Mild-mannered junior high student HERC attended exactly two parties in 1980. The first one was a birthday party at the local roller-skating rink and the other was a basement party that provided HERC's introduction to what would become two of his favorite songs: "Rapper's Delight" and "Stomp!"

That night at the party, HERC must have heard "Stomp!" three or maybe four times because whoever was standing near the record player when a song ended got to choose the next song to play from a stack of singles that were spread out on the console that housed the record player.

"Rapper's Delight" stood out because it was a 12" single whereas all the other singles were the standard 7" variety. (Plus it lasted almost 15 freakin' minutes.) As it was a junior high boy-girl party relatively unsupervised with parents upstairs, not many kids were interested in standing by the record player so there were gaps and pauses between songs sometimes lasting as long as the songs themselves. And some songs were repeated. It was the second or third time that "Stomp!" played that HERC made his way to the console to ID the track as it was new to his ears and he really, really liked it. REALLY.

Later that Summer around the same time he began conditioning and high school football practice, HERC picked up Light Up The Night, the parent album of "Stomp!" The album version of the song was a full 2 minutes longer than the single version and that was a good thing. Co-written by Johnson brothers Louis (bass) and George (guitar) along with Louis's wife, Valerie, and Rod Temperton, the songwriter and former keyboardist from the group Heatwave, "Stomp!" was a monster on the charts topping both the R&B and Disco charts and reaching #7 on the Hot 100. Produced by Quincy Jones, the song is vocally smooth and musically funky, especially when Louis ("Thunder-thumbs") launches into his slappin' bass solo.

The album's titular second track was released as the second single and although it was #16 on the R&B chart it failed to crossover as "Stomp!" had done. It is a brighter and less funky track but danceable nonetheless. HERC rarely listened past those first two songs yet he treasures this album and the memories associated with it.