Year of the Elevator

I'm making a mix for my friends' birthday party. Yes, plural friends...singular party. Half my department is turning 30, just turned 30, or will be turning 30 tomorrow. My friend "Sharon" told me last year I was required to plan a "big fucking party" for her. I think at the time my response was "Um...yeah." But I had been planning stuff for my ex's 30th and rather than see that energy go bad and rot me from the inside out, I decided to put it into Sharon's birthday. Sharon and our lab mate, to be precise. So it's a rainbows and unicorns themed party for the two of them. Meaning we bought unicorn crap and crepe and you can't walk down the hall of my department without catching little glitter winks off the carpet, evidence of the glitter explosions my invitations caused. Oops.

And so I've been slowly working on a mix. Slowly because so much of the music from 1976 is like toxic waste. I can only be exposed to it a little at a time before I have to go listen to stuff like this to scour it from my ears. We're talking serious bad.

Here's a small sample, in the color palette that it deserves:
After the Lovin' - Engelbert Humperdinck
All By Myself - Eric Carmen
I Write the Songs - Barry Manilow
If You Know What I Mean - Neil Diamond
She's Gone - Daryl Hall & John Oates
That'll Be the Day - Linda Ronstadt
John Denver, Olivia Newton John, The Osmonds (together and separately) - the list goes on like a who's who of shit music. Fuck. No magical 70s unicorns and rainbows for that type of music. CheeeRIST, that was the shit that made me pull the holly hobby bedspread over my head and wish I could sleep until I was 30.

I tried very hard to find music that makes me think of that decade without leaving the bad taste of olive leisure suits and baloney colored lee press on nails in my mind. So what's in my mix? I guess it's mostly disco and funk. It's what was playing in the background of my 6 year old barbie doll based fantasies of me as a "grown up". It's songs that remind me of the delight of seeing discoing rollerskaters on the beach, that make me think of promises hinted in city lights hovering over the south east expressway. KC and the Sunshine Band, Commodores, Chic, The Temptations, Prince, Parliament, Rose Royce.... There's a wee bit of "Freedom rock" and pop-shit thrown in because what 70s rainbow and unicorn birthday party would be complete without Starlight Express, Bay City Rollers, and Foghat?

I will of course be burning a copy for cjblue, as she is my mix muse and requires homage.