Heatwave Speaks for an Entire Decade

Can’t stop delivering on the 70s, but this one is not something worth apologizing for. In fact, you all should be thanking me for what you’re about to see.

Video Analysis of Boogie Nights by Heatwave

How many disco songs have you heard of that begin with a miniature Jazz Odyssey?

Seeing videos like this makes me wish I had been alive and more than 4 or 5 years old during this decade. Multi-racial, multi-styled, multi-genre, multi-country musical explosion happening on stage. Heatwave is billed as “an international funk/disco band,” made up of equal parts American(Johnnie Wilder, Jr. and Keith Wilder); English(Rod Temperton); Spanish (Mario Mantese); Czechoslovakian (Ernest “Bilbo” Berger); Jamaican (Eric Johns); and Briton (Roy Carter). Unbelievable. I guess what brought them all together was the two Americans’ tours of service expiring, and their subsequent decision to stay over in West Germany to play music.

Let’s deal with the video. The pink and gold stripes in the background signify the best in Euro seventies disco style. That’s not an American color combination from this decade. The silhouetted dancing frontmen, timing their movements both to each other and to the rhythm of the harp (that’s right), let us know that not since the development of tooth paste has everything been so right with the world. Notice the light behind the drummer. It’s like he’s an angel of the sun. He probably is. That halo of light most likely is still following him around, making it virtually impossible for him to sleep at night.

There’s more? Of course. Then the lights come on. The space between the real and the simulacra is where everything in disco happened, so obviously, the lights coming on also equal the simultaneous projection of live video playing behind the band. You knew that, though.

Then we get a close up of front man right. I’m still having trouble with heart palpitations just based on the hair wrap. The golden yellow sparkly starburst collar only serves to highlight the faces of these holymen. With a quick, meaningful turn-around, the dance and the disco portion of the song begins. Now it’s on. Oooh! Look how much the keyboard player means it.

The dancing will grow on you so stick with it. At first, I was like – No! You’re just pushing it away, batting it back behind you. I thought of a giant bubble machine – volumes and volumes of bubbles coming out of like the dishwasher after they put the wrong kind of soap in there, and they’re pushing the bubbles back. I was like – that’s just weird. After 120 seconds, though, I was down. I had at least two people in the office doing it together. “Ain’t no doubt that we are here to party.” Just paying attention, that’s all.

Oh no they did not. The first cutaway to the crowd watching the band with the gigantic alternating projection of Wilder brothers staring them down with glee really pulled me in. The constellation of three enormous gold triangles to the right of the screen highlighted the set design. The popup video components will tell you that the keyboard player wrote Thriller for Michael Jackson, so there.

By the time it went dark again at the end, I had admittedly grown fond of the band, and what might be the disco world’s squishiest drummer.

Let me know your thoughts on this in case I missed anything. Leave a comment.