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The movie has lots of music, not all of it disco or inside the disco, the unifying thread a strong Rhythm & Blues influence - with the emphasis on rhythm. The jukebox repertoire at the bar Rex’s, where Des takes the group, are the musical roots for much of the music played in the club and later in the film.
The club backstory is that Des’s role was not just to bring in the postcollege crowd and run the backstage area, he also controls the deejay’s playlist -- at one point he tells Victor, one of the club flunkeys, “No, I don’t want to play that:” later, in the deejay booth with Alice, he asks him to put on “Good Times” (Chic).
There are 27 disco cues in the film; 22 songs -- plus, during clean-up time, Dean Martin (“Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”).
The music on Des’s playlist is a range of dance music, extending back from the early 80s period of the film - hits like “I’m Coming Out” (Diana Ross), the eurodisco “Dolce Vita” (Ryan Paris), “Heart of Glass” and “The Tide is High” (both by Blondie), back to the up-tempo R&B hits out of which disco evolved, “The Love I Lost” (Harold Melvyn & the Blue Notes), “Love Train” (The O’Jays) - both written by Gamble & Huff and released by Philadelphia International Records - and Carol Douglas singing “Doctor’s Orders,” the front title music.
At the core of the disco playlist are five great songs written and produced by Nile Rodgers and the late Bernard Edwards of the Chic Organization, three recorded by Chic: “Good Times,” “Le Freak” (the all-time no. 1 single, written by them in a fury-turned-to-joy after they were excluded from a Studio 54 party partly in their honor; the original lyric was “Fuck Studio 54”) and Norma Jean’s sweet vocal, “Everybody Dance,” which serves as a sort of disco anthem in the film. It plays through the long first night sequence during which Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) first dance, then later in the night during the “Lady and the Tramp” argument.
Also written and produced by Chic (Edwards & Rodgers) were Diana Ross’s period hit “I’m Coming Out” which plays when Departmental Dan makes his first foray onto the dance floor and Sister Sledge’s “He’s the Greatest Dancer” with the classic “Gucci, Fiorucci” lyric.
Although in the film Des and Josh are antagonists, they come from the same place musically - 60s R&B through Gamble & Huff’s “first up-tempo Philadelphia International hits” to disco.
The front credits begin with the Motownesque start of Carol Douglas’ “Doctor’s Orders” merging as Alice and Charlotte appear to bridging score by Mark Suozzo - using many of the same top New York studio musicians who recorded Douglas’s and other period hits (“We’re much better now,” they commented) - and returning exultantly to the original record as the girls get in.
Evelyn “Champagne” King is represented by “Shame” and “I Don’t Know if it’s Right.” The very rhythmic “Let’s All Chant” (Michael Zager Band) and Don Ray’s “Got to Have Loving” -- not often collected since -- were very big on the dance floor. Alice is harassed by the Oz characters to the sound of Amii Stewart’s disco version of the R&B classic “Knock on Wood.” And when Des & Co. are kicked out of the club, Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real” plays.
During the raid -- which, although played for comedy, closely follows the real events -- a eurodisco hit generally unheard here, “Dolce Vita,” is used.
At Rex’s bar the mellow jukebox plays “Opportunity” (The Jewels), “Queen Majesty” (Jamaica’s The Techniques’ version of a Curtis Mayfield song), Brenton Wood’s very danceable 1968 “The Oogum Boogum Song” and finally the Chi-Lites mid-70s ballad “Here I am.”
For the film’s characters it was more Jamaican music that threatened to take over from disco, so for the “et tu Brute” cab ride at the end Justin Hines and the Dominoes’ “Carry Go Bring Home” plays, bringing us full circle from Blondie’s version of the ska standard “The Tide is High” which ends the first night in the club.
“There was a lot of music we liked that we thought we had best still avoid,” Stillman says, “anything from the great but very overexposed SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER soundtrack (though “Disco Inferno” was a big temptation); the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, the current ‘all-time top five (and hence overexposed) disco songs such as “I Will Survive;” and music used in BARCELONA, such as Silver Convention and “Boogie Oogie Oogie”.
Composer Mark Suozzo, who wrote the music for BARCELONA and (with Tom Judson) METROPOLITAN, again contributed both source music and score for THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. Inside the club former chic vocalist Norma Jean sings “Heart of Stone,” co-written by Mark and Lou “Lightning Strikes” Christie, as Tom breaks up with Alice. A gospel-influenced Impressions-style Suozzo composition plays as they talk about VD in a cocktail bar later. His bridging music between “Doctor’s Orders” cues dominates the film’s opening scene. And the Suozzo score for the “Disco Sucks” montage would have done Harold Melvyn proud. The hymns “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” and “Amazing Grace” are underscored or continued orchestrally.
“For us most brilliant was the music Mark wrote for the publishing house sequences. It had been very hard coming out of the all-music club environment to these quiet daytime scenes which also had bad sound,” Stillman says. “Mark came up with this cheerfully ironic plucked violin strings young-career-women-in-Manhattan-in-a-50s movie music that for us lifted up the scenes as comedy, particularly those with Dan.”
The club backstory is that Des’s role was not just to bring in the postcollege crowd and run the backstage area, he also controls the deejay’s playlist -- at one point he tells Victor, one of the club flunkeys, “No, I don’t want to play that:” later, in the deejay booth with Alice, he asks him to put on “Good Times” (Chic).There are 27 disco cues in the film; 22 songs -- plus, during clean-up time, Dean Martin (“Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”).
The music on Des’s playlist is a range of dance music, extending back from the early 80s period of the film - hits like “I’m Coming Out” (Diana Ross), the eurodisco “Dolce Vita” (Ryan Paris), “Heart of Glass” and “The Tide is High” (both by Blondie), back to the up-tempo R&B hits out of which disco evolved, “The Love I Lost” (Harold Melvyn & the Blue Notes), “Love Train” (The O’Jays) - both written by Gamble & Huff and released by Philadelphia International Records - and Carol Douglas singing “Doctor’s Orders,” the front title music.
At the core of the disco playlist are five great songs written and produced by Nile Rodgers and the late Bernard Edwards of the Chic Organization, three recorded by Chic: “Good Times,” “Le Freak” (the all-time no. 1 single, written by them in a fury-turned-to-joy after they were excluded from a Studio 54 party partly in their honor; the original lyric was “Fuck Studio 54”) and Norma Jean’s sweet vocal, “Everybody Dance,” which serves as a sort of disco anthem in the film. It plays through the long first night sequence during which Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) first dance, then later in the night during the “Lady and the Tramp” argument.
Also written and produced by Chic (Edwards & Rodgers) were Diana Ross’s period hit “I’m Coming Out” which plays when Departmental Dan makes his first foray onto the dance floor and Sister Sledge’s “He’s the Greatest Dancer” with the classic “Gucci, Fiorucci” lyric. Although in the film Des and Josh are antagonists, they come from the same place musically - 60s R&B through Gamble & Huff’s “first up-tempo Philadelphia International hits” to disco.
The front credits begin with the Motownesque start of Carol Douglas’ “Doctor’s Orders” merging as Alice and Charlotte appear to bridging score by Mark Suozzo - using many of the same top New York studio musicians who recorded Douglas’s and other period hits (“We’re much better now,” they commented) - and returning exultantly to the original record as the girls get in.
Evelyn “Champagne” King is represented by “Shame” and “I Don’t Know if it’s Right.” The very rhythmic “Let’s All Chant” (Michael Zager Band) and Don Ray’s “Got to Have Loving” -- not often collected since -- were very big on the dance floor. Alice is harassed by the Oz characters to the sound of Amii Stewart’s disco version of the R&B classic “Knock on Wood.” And when Des & Co. are kicked out of the club, Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real” plays.
During the raid -- which, although played for comedy, closely follows the real events -- a eurodisco hit generally unheard here, “Dolce Vita,” is used.At Rex’s bar the mellow jukebox plays “Opportunity” (The Jewels), “Queen Majesty” (Jamaica’s The Techniques’ version of a Curtis Mayfield song), Brenton Wood’s very danceable 1968 “The Oogum Boogum Song” and finally the Chi-Lites mid-70s ballad “Here I am.”
For the film’s characters it was more Jamaican music that threatened to take over from disco, so for the “et tu Brute” cab ride at the end Justin Hines and the Dominoes’ “Carry Go Bring Home” plays, bringing us full circle from Blondie’s version of the ska standard “The Tide is High” which ends the first night in the club.
“There was a lot of music we liked that we thought we had best still avoid,” Stillman says, “anything from the great but very overexposed SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER soundtrack (though “Disco Inferno” was a big temptation); the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, the current ‘all-time top five (and hence overexposed) disco songs such as “I Will Survive;” and music used in BARCELONA, such as Silver Convention and “Boogie Oogie Oogie”.
Composer Mark Suozzo, who wrote the music for BARCELONA and (with Tom Judson) METROPOLITAN, again contributed both source music and score for THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. Inside the club former chic vocalist Norma Jean sings “Heart of Stone,” co-written by Mark and Lou “Lightning Strikes” Christie, as Tom breaks up with Alice. A gospel-influenced Impressions-style Suozzo composition plays as they talk about VD in a cocktail bar later. His bridging music between “Doctor’s Orders” cues dominates the film’s opening scene. And the Suozzo score for the “Disco Sucks” montage would have done Harold Melvyn proud. The hymns “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” and “Amazing Grace” are underscored or continued orchestrally.
“For us most brilliant was the music Mark wrote for the publishing house sequences. It had been very hard coming out of the all-music club environment to these quiet daytime scenes which also had bad sound,” Stillman says. “Mark came up with this cheerfully ironic plucked violin strings young-career-women-in-Manhattan-in-a-50s movie music that for us lifted up the scenes as comedy, particularly those with Dan.”
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