na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na-na-na now (10. 056)

Probably better known for “(That’s the Way) I Like It” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty”—but this is a fun one too—the band hailing from Hialeah, Florida—the Sunshine State registered at the top of UK singles charts, the band’s first and only number one in Britain (where it became a popular sporting chant) a decade after the group formed, with “Give It Up” this day in 1983, the lead track from their ninth studio album All in a Night’s Work. Released internationally just earlier in the month and facing quite a cultural backlash against disco at the beginning of the decade, the song was regarded as a comeback hit for KC and the Sunshine Band and one of the last first-wave reverberations of the genre.

you think that i could muster up a little soft shoe gentle sway

Written and composed by Scott Hoffman, Jason Sellards and Elton John (on piano) and released as a single from their second studio album Ta-Dah in July of that year, this week in 2006 saw the Scissor Sisters’ signature track “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” top the charts in the UK, later reaching the same heights in Germany, Norway, Switzerland and Croatia. The Nu-disco song performed by Jakes Shears and Ana Matronic crosses elements of The Four Seasons’ “December, 1963” and Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing—Want to Dance the Night Away.”

a fifth of beethoven

The music-royalties clearinghouse of Germany has managed a hearty and hale business since 1902, monopolizing the regulation of performance-rights and artists’ entitlements for music played to German audience. Of course, GEMA (die Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte—the Society for Musical Performance and Mechanical Reproduction) has evolved with the entertainment industry and is a take-down force to be reckoned with. Since the apparent failure of ACTA and similar treaties that the group championed, it has however turned to more traditional staples of the listening tax and now has expanded its reach over discotheques, having made arrangements to levy anywhere from a ten to six-hundred percent fee for music played on the dance floor, with a non-negotiable tithe of ten percent on the door-charge.

Without question, musicians deserve credit and acknow-ledgement for their work, but following strict no smoking regulations that has hurt the business of bars, restaurants, clubs and cafes, these new demands of the studio-system seem like an all-out assault on the institution of the public-house. GEMA’s poor-mouthing probably does not translate directly to more income for performers, though they argue that discos and disc-jockeys are making an absolute killing, nightly, at the expense of starving-artists. In order to make up for the new, higher royalty payments (unless venues choose to skirt the payments by having DJs mix clip-length sampler medleys only), clubs will have to charge higher entrance prices and more for drinks. These developments suggest a scavenging, shadow economy—no rewards for talent but rather for baited membership. Such cost and bother might be enough to bring back live-music and reinvention.