Righeira — Vamos a la playa

from Righeira (1983)

An epic Italo-disco track from 1983, from the Turin-based duo Righeira. Sounds totally carefree, but the lyrics are actually about the fallout of a nuclear bomb:

Vamos a la playa / Let’s go to the beach
todos con sombrero. / everyone with a hat.
El viento radiactivo / the radioactive wind
despeina los cabellos. / messes up your hair.

Vamos a la playa, / Let’s go to the beach
al fin el mar es limpio. / finally the sea is clean.
No más peces hediondos, / No more stinking fish,
sino agua fluorescente. / but fluorescent waters.

An odd choice for the discoteca… and this, three years before actual radioactive winds blew to Italy from Chernobyl. (The video is also worth a look, if you have a high tolerance for neon.)

Massara — Margherita (1979)

Today we’ve got a special double feature — one song, two ways. The first (and original) track is the Italian dancefloor hit ‘Margherita,’ aka ‘Daisy’… which repackages the “he loves me, he loves me not” children’s rhyme into an orgiastic italo-disco blow-out.

The genius behind this anthem was Pino Massara, an Italian composer and producer who wrote songs for some of the leading men and ladies of Italian music—Mina, Adriano Celentano and Nicola Arigliano among them. (This track actually samples Celentano’s 1968 hit ‘Azzurro,’ which Pino did not write.)

What I would give to be in a Milanese disco circa 1979, knowing Italians’ love for sing-alongs… pazzesco.

(Stay tuned for part two…)

Guido & Maurizio De Angelis — Speed Fever

from Formula uno, febbre della velocità (Speed Fever) (1979)

More robotic De Angelis beat magic from the soundtrack to Speed Fever, a Formula 1 documentary.

Guido & Maurizio De Angelis — Black Inferno

from Atlantis Interceptors soundtrack (1983)

What do you get when you combine Rambo-style macho men with machine guns, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, radioactivity, and Italo disco? Why this message in a bottle from 1983, of course! The remarkably prolific De Angelis brothers composed this track for the Italian sci-fi film I Predatori di Atlantide aka Atlantis Interceptors. And it is a doozy. As you listen, imagine this:

Two Vietnam-vets and several scientists face an extraordinary battle for survival against descendants of Atlantis’ original race, when the Lost Continent emerges in the Caribbean following radioactive leakage from a sunken Russian nuclear submarine. Calling themselves “Interceptors”, the murderous Atlanteans set about reclaiming the world by killing everyone and destroying everything in sight. It is up to Mike, Washington and Dr. Cathy Rollins to uncover the secret behind their existence and use it against them in order to stop the interceptors’ apocalyptic rampage.

This post courtesy of a tip the other day from follower Captain Entropy, who says “My favorite Italo disco track from the soundtrack of one of my favorite films.”

Get it at Egg City Radio.

Elégance — Vacances j’oublie tout (1982)

Here’s the video for the original.

Rete 105 — Vacanze (Instrumental) (1983)

This is Italy at its funky best—when the ol’ boot starts tapping on the disco floor. These are the DJs of Milan’s Radio Studio 105 aka Rete 105 singing a cover of the 1982hit ‘Vacances j’oublie tout,’ by French group Elegance. Doesn’t this kinda make you wish you were chilling with Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer in the VIP room… doing what VIPs do? Too cool.

I’m posting this track also to showcase the TERRIFIC blog YING/YANGS, where you should head tout de suite. It’s home to so many alluring posts you’re sure to waste lots of time there discovering tracks like this. Also check out his sexy Japanese comps…what led me there in the first place. Thank you YING/YANGS!

Cube — Two Heads are Better Than One (1982)

Ready, set, dance. Very catchy synth-driven Italo-disco from Bologna in the early 80s. The trio is Englishman Paul Griffiths on guitar and vocals, backed by his Italian buddies Rudy Trevisi and Serse Mai, who play everything else, mostly stuff requiring a plug.

Capuano — Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Disco Version) (1978)

Production duo Mario and Giosy Capuano give an Italo-disco rubdown to John Williams’ Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme.

The original music fits quite spectacularly with a freshly landed flying saucer’s blinking lights. But these close encounters of the disco kind blow the original out of the galaxy. This is strutting music for polyester-clad, Moroder-mustachioed martians.

via Vinyl Museum