Graeme and I went out for a drink tonight to “The Shift”, as one of our favourite common interests is a bit of the retro music.

Unfortunately tonight, the usual Sunday night retro thing gave way to some more modern tunes, as seems to be the long-weekend tradition there. For whatever reason, and maybe they’re right, they assume their regulars go away, and the replacement crowd is young, slightly cooler, and with a much greater interest in the R&B the hippity-hop…

So I’ve needed to get my retro fix “online” and thanks to Youtube.

So in keeping with my previous post about country music, here’s a few of my favourites from my other favourite genre, European disco.

Yes, while the rest of the world was listening to American disco, I was far more interested in what was coming out of Germany and France including….

Boney M’s “Belfast”…

(forget Rivers of Babylon, this was Boney M at their best, singing about the Northern Ireland conflict…

And Silver Convention, featuring Penny McLean whose big hit was Lady Bump. But this is a classic from Silver Convention, too…

Famously I remember a friend’s twenty-first birthday on the Sunshine Coast in 1986 or thereabouts when we ended up at a pub where the DJ booth seemed to include nothing but Silver Convention. What a blast.

This song inspired another lifetime favourite, Crying At The Discotheque, both musicially and in the associated video clip. This original version came from French singer, Sheila, though it was written and produced by Nile Rogers from Chic.

Although not exactly disco, I also enjoyed seeing this clip for Movie Star by Swedish singer-songwriter Harpo.

It was a hit in Australia back in the 1970s, when a lot of Swedish pop was released and charted here, thanks to the ABBA influence. This song, by the way, features Frida from ABBA on backing vocals…

So yeah, I didn’t get my retro fix tonight at my usual venue, but had fun nontheless, thanks to the Youtube.