Disco Friday: EUROPEAN CONNECTION [2010]

All aboard!  The Disco Friday Party Train keeps on choogling down the groove line rain shine don't mind with the sixth volume in the Disco Discharge series, European Connection. The double wide with twenty-one tracks is both a continuation and deeper exploration of the sub-genre first introduced on Euro Disco, the third volume in the series. European Connection goes a step further, with each of the two discs devoted to a subset of the sound - disc one is ten tracks of straight up Seventies Euro Disco while disc two is eleven tracks of catchy Eighties Italo Disco.  Going into this album, your boy HERC was familiar with just three of the songs but found some new-to-me grooves to love, while also picking up some dance moves from this video:

Half of songs on the Euro Disco disc made the Top 5 on Billboard's Disco chart yet I was only familiar with two of them.  The Gibson Brothers track really stood out for me and I was surprised it barely made the Top 50 on the Disco chart - its a positive song, driven by an irresistible groove.  The average song on the first disc of European Connection was released in 1978 and clocks in around 7:42.  The second disc of the set, Italo Disco, features catchy tunes like the New Wave-ish "Special Agent Man", the drum machine attack of "I Love My Radio" and the "I Feel Love" like rhythm of "Droids", all disco survivors who made it to the Eighties with their danceability intact while using state of the art electronic music production.  The average song runs a little more than a minute shorter than the songs on disco one at 6:34 while the average release date is pushed up to 1986!  If I had to make a choice, I prefer the music on disc two, the collection of Italo Disco over the Euro Disco heard on disc one.

Only eleven of European Connection's twenty-one songs are currently on Spotify and appear in the playlist above.  They break down like this: six of the the first disc's ten songs are MIA and four of the second disc's eleven songs can be found elsewhere.

year	title	artist		Billboard Disco Chart
1977	Carry On, Turn Me On	Space	7:14	5
1977	From East To West	Voyage	7:04	1
1979	Love Spell	Caress	8:20	-
1979	Ooh! What A Life	The Gibson Brothers	5:39	48
1978	Midnight Madness	Don Ray	5:44	4
1979	If You Weren't Afraid	Giorgio Moroder	5:42	4
1979	Instant Dub	Sylvia Love	4:29	-
1979	Don't Ever	Les Models	6:17	-
1978	Sandstorm	La Bionda	10:17	-
1979	The Hills Of Katmandu	Tantra	16:22	2
1983	Special Agent Man	Gaz Nevadaa	7:20	-
1987	You And Me	Funny Twins	5:45	-
1986	I Can Hear Your Voice	Hot Cold	5:33	-
1985	I Love My Radio	Taffy	7:07	6
1985	Americano	Vivien Vee	5:43	-
1987	Droid	Hypnosis	5:47	-
1982	Remember	Gino Soccio	6:33	-
1985	Walking In The Neon	Peter Richard	8:59	-
1991	In Spriti	Dilemma	6:18	-
1985	Only Music Survives	Alba	7:28	-
1989	Amour Suave	Isama & Compania	5:45	-