Customer Reviews

Happy Hour

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This is a great album from early 1982, when Deodato was still producing for Kool & the Gang.
Some Kool influences here, which seem to work very well.

It's just too bad this is not available in the States.

A very enjoyable album , indeed!!

The disco era of the late 70's seemed to be a place where musician/arranger/producer Eumir Deodato could function quite well. His previous two albums,including his 1980 release Night Cruiser were excellent Brazilian dance-funk releases that were ideal for the four on the floor crowd. One of the qualities that defined that album were that members of Kool & The Gang,whom he was producing even up to the point of this release,played on that album so there was a strong compositional flavor to the music as well,with very defined hooks and choruses to the grooves. This album didn't have any assistance from those musicians. And even though a mildly digital sound was arriving in a small way as a musical element,he was stuck in a holding pattern.

Released during the much discussed post disco freeze out this album consists of one four on the floor song after another. And a disco album would've worked wonderfully if the songs were well composed. They aren't. Most of these are strong grooves with a lot of female vocalists and instrumental twists. But the songs here don't possess much strength of composition and tend to just rely strictly on that groove. In short they're basically tuneless. So if you want a lot of grooving disco dance type songs in the backround of a party or some event this will do just fine. As casual listening it isn't very exciting aside from an almost polka sounding rendition of "Tears Of A Clown".

From what I've heard from Deodato,this probably qualifies as his weakest album. Which is interesting because this is an artist very conscious of respecting quality. And that actually doesn't diminish with this. The production,arrangements and instrumentation is actually every bit as strong and well performed as anything Deodato ever did. The trouble again comes not from performance but from songwriting. Except for the cover the craft of these songs is definitely lacking. And while funk,the music this album is based in is a genre based on repetition,even solid DISCO grooves do their best when there's strong writing to accompany them. And that includes even melodies as well. That may have been the very quality he was going for here. But it just didn't quite do the job for him.