Raydio - More Than One Way to Love A Woman

When I first moved to New York I got a job spinning on Thursday nights at Il Bagato, a little Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side that a bunch of good folks DJed at - Bobbito, DJ Eli, Lord Sear, Queen Majesty, Nick Chacona and more. Club bangers weren't appropriate at all, and it was fun playing all the old records we'd bought throughout the week: soul, latin, house, reggae, etc. Nick put me up on this one, and it became an Il Bagato staple. Raydio was Ray Parker, Jr's project before he blew up off of Ghostbusters, and "More Than One Way to Love A Woman" is a disco R&B gem that encourages lovers to try out all the positions of the Zodiac signs. I'm with that!


The Jones Girls - Nights Over Egypt

My first residency in Manhattan was at this dive bar a few blocks south of Il Bagato, called Ludlow Bar. Shout out to John B from Rocafella for hooking that up! I had Fridays or Saturdays, I can't remember, and DJ Qool Marv spun on I think Mondays or Tuesdays there for years. If you ever get a chance to see Marv play, don't pass it up, he's sick! He would play "Nights Over Egypt" a lot, and that's how I knew to look for it. Dexter Wansel of MFSB (more on them below) produced this one and it has that smooth Philly sound. Last year there was a great Faith Evans record with this beat, called "I Don't Need It."


Change - The Glow of Love

Damn I'm kind of stuck on late seventies / early eighties disco right now. I think I first heard Darshan Jesrani play this one at a house party we were doing sometime just after college, and I came across the album at a flea market pretty soon after that. It's a pretty common record. Luther Vandross was the lead singer of Change before he went solo, and he just murders it on "Glow of Love." Janet Jackson sampled this one on "All For You."


Rufus and Chaka - Any Love

Wow, this one is such a staple for me. I'm not sure where I first heard it, but I definitely remember Brendan Bring'Em playing it at Soul Travellers in Philly and being inspired to pull it back out. Produced by Quincy around the same time as "Off The Wall," it's just a rock solid hands-in-the-air disco classic. AND it has a good break on it. There's a reissue of the 12" with "I Love You, I Live You" on the B-Side, another great dance tune.



Machine - There But for the Grace of God Go I

I used to hear this all the time in old school house sets and on Kiss FM but I didn't know what it was until Benny B (ABB) put it on a classics mix CD. Discogs says, "Machine was a studio disco group formed by August Darnell, previously of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and, later in the 1980's, Kid Creole And The Coconuts." The lyrics on "The But For the Grace of God Go I" (get up on your 15th century religous martyrs) give a cautionary tale about a rebellious kid in a strict family.


MFSB - Love is the Message (Tee Scott mix)

Back to MFSB (Mother Father Sister Brother), this is my absolute favorite disco record of all time. Written by Gamble and Huff, this one has been sampled on a million and one house records but the original still outshines them all. I like this edit, it gets into the most familiar section of the record quicker and stays there longer. In Brooklyn, "Love is the Message" is a thug record, and you hear it bumping out of old heads' trucks all day long in Fort Greene and Bed Stuy.

The Underground Solution - Luv Dancin

Sampling Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face," "Luv Dancin" was an early hit for Roger Sanchez on Strictly Rhythm. So smooth! I don't remember where I found a test pressing but I had to floss it on my record check.


Vin Zee - Funky Bebop

I stumbled across "Funky Bebop" at the Chelsea flea market and it caught my eye because it is on the same label as Kano's "I'm Ready." I don't know a lot about the record but it sounds like a west coast joint, with its vocoders and huge bassline. Since Serato took over, I sold the bulk of my collection, but I saved probably around one or two thousand records, some because they weren't valuable in the condition they were in, and some because I couldn't bear to let certain things go. This falls in the latter category. When I'm in the storage space I sometimes daydream about a doomsday scenario that totally wipes out Serato and only the DJs with records are able to continue on. When that happens I'll be prepared!


Sugar Bear - Don't Scandalise Mine

A fast-rap classic, "Don't Scandalise Mine" is built off of a loop from Talking Heads "Once in A Lifetime" and a James Brown breakbeat - how could you go wrong? I didn't live in New York when this came out but heads who did will bug out when they hear it in a club. This pressing is a 45 from England with a picture cover - I can't resist rap records on 45. Cosmo and I put this on Hip-House 1, and I still run it at parties from time to time.


The Black Dog - Age of Slack

When I lived in Williamsburg there was a record dealer upstairs in my building who would open up the front room of his apartment on the weekends and sell records. He was playing this old techno record one day and I had to have it. It's a bootleg with no information on it so it took me a while to find out that the "Black Dog" is the artist, not the name of the song. They did a handful of stuff on WARP records and Clear (hi Claire!) and two of them also went on to form Plaid. I put this one on Hip-House 1 and on The Rave, it's a perennial favorite.

OK that's it, don't forget to download the mix and as always check out djayres.com for tour dates and releases.