Day 418: Shalamar – Big Fun
If you can believe it, it’s another Disco Friday. My workplace decided to surprise us with mass layoffs this week, so it’s been more of a slog to get here – I survived the layoffs for now, but still. I need to forget my troubles with disco today even more than usual, so let’s listen to a bit of Shalamar at their peak.
Shalamar was originally created by Dick Griffey, the booking agent of Soul Train, along with the show’s creator and producer Don Cornelius. They took a group of session musicians and made a song together under the moniker Shalamar, and after the song became a hit, they decided to actually start a band with that name. They hired singer Gary Mumford and two Soul Train dancers, Jeffrey Daniel and Jody Watley, to form the group. The line-up changed over the years, and they’re still touring today, albeit with one original member.
Big Fun was released in 1979 as the group’s third studio album, and the first album to feature what became known as Shalamar’s classic line up, with Jeffrey Daniel, Howard Hewett and Jody Watley. It was a success, peaking at number 4 on the R&B chart and number 23 on the Billboard 200,
I enjoyed this album, but not so much that they’d land on any of my lists of disco favourites. Big Fun is an album of perfectly inoffensive if not unremarkable disco hits, it sounds like something you’d jam out to at the roller rink and think “this is good”, but not so good that you’d bother to Shazam it. At no point was I bored or not enjoying the tunes, frankly I did have a very nice time, but I can already tell that this was a one-and-done. High point of the album was the slow jam “Let’s Find the Time for Love”, which is a welcome change of pace, I hope they leaned into that sound a bit more when they started moving further away from disco.
I like their grooves and they’re very danceable, but that’s as far as that goes. Shalamar’s Big Fun gets a 7.5/10 for their tunes, but if I gave bonus points for goofy album covers, they’d score a little bit higher.
Also, as much as I’ve been loving Disco Fridays, I’m considering changing it up and doing New Music Fridays instead, I think that could be fun for both me and the readers. I’m thinking maybe I could do a Funk Sunday in addition to that, but I’m not sure yet. I’m workshopping, any feedback on what you want to read is always appreciated.