Sept. 7, 1979 Gusto cover story: Disco fever

 

On the eve of the first-ever World’s Largest Disco in the Buffalo Convention Center, I tracked down some of the main figures in the scene.

Sept. 7, 1979 

Fever Pitch

It’s the height of the night at Buffalo’s leading disco, the Club 747, and from inside the Plexiglas and steel sound booth it’s an incredible sight. There the whole panorama unfolds on all sides. Lights flash down the fuselage over the bobbing heads of the dancers below, the video screens show a jetliner taxiing for takeoff and the speakers whoosh with the roar of jet engines.

         The illusion is that this is one big partying night flight, soaring high in the heavens, far from earth. Looking out over it all from behind the turntables, the deejay becomes a pilot by proxy. The evening’s destiny is in his hands. As long as he plays his records right, the passengers are airborne.

         The record spinner may get to indulge in rarified fantasies in the Club 747 booth, but no matter where he goes, he’s still the ultimate arbiter of the disco experience. He’s the one who starts the crowd dancing by hitting them with their favorite selections. He’s the one who keeps them on the floor by blending one song into the next, matching them beat for beat. He’s the one who can work the crowd into peaks of excitement. He’s the one who can ease them back to the sidelines.

         The three Buffalo deejays who will be among the seven record spinners at the World’s Largest Disco in the Buffalo Convention Center Saturday night take their roles very seriously. They realize they have to know their music and know their audiences as well. They recognized that what they do has the most influence on how many people come to a club, how long they stay and how much they spend at the bar. A good disco deejay will be worth several times his salary.

         “You mold the room, you create the atmosphere and the energy,” says Charlie Anzalone, who goes by the nickname of Captain Disco. “But first you’ve got to wait till the crowd builds. That’s a good time to introduce new stuff. You don’t want to start them dancing too soon. You want to let the people get in, have a drink and get restless. I used to wait until about 10:30. You could almost hear them saying: ‘I wish he’d play something to dance to.’ Then you hit them with the hits.

         “I drink a couple beers at the beginning,” he adds. “It’s nice to get a little buzz on, get loose. You want to party with the crowd as much as possible. I try to get them to a peak by around midnight. You take them to a racing pace till they can’t go any more. Then you play a slow song and let the room relax. You build things up gradually. Sometimes it’ll take as long as an hour and a half or two hours.”

         In Buffalo, disco deejays usually work from about 10 p.m. to the 4 a.m. closing. For this they get anywhere from $20 to $100, plus free drinks. For piloting the Club 747, for instance, the pay is $50 to $60 a night. The deejay supplies his own records. Anzalone carries his in a plastic milk crate. Sometimes the deejay comes with turntables and sound and lighting equipment also. Charlie Hacic, who acts as a booking agent for 13 disco deejays, can turn practically any occasion into a disco with his two Dance Systems of Buffalo mobile units.

         Anzalone, who’s 26, got his first shot at spinning records 5½ years ago when he went out for rock ‘n roll oldies nights at Brunner’s in Snyder. He started hanging around the sound booth, talking with deejay oldies expert Bud Ralabate.

         “I used to help him carry his records,” Anzalone says. “I thought it was really cool to be his record valet. Then one night he turned to me and said: ‘I’ve got to go to the john. When this ends, you want to put on another record? If you want to say something, say something!’ I went gulp. I used to sit in with him for a while, then Melanie’s out in Amherst needed a deejay and I had a friend who was a bartender there. It was $20 a night and all the O.V. I could drink.

         “Then I discovered Buddy Clark at Fridays and Saturdays in Amherst. He was the first disco deejay in the area. He would play all this funky music. ‘This is what’s happening,’ he said, and he showed me how to do it. At that time, the Bump had started to come in – that was the first real disco dance. I started to listen to the Black radio stations for music. What they played, you bought. Then the Hustle started coming in. I was in a rock club – Melanie’s – and I was playing 60 percent soul and disco. I was playing Stevie Wonder and Ohio Players in with Bowie and the Stones. The whole idea was to make people dance.”

         To obtain their musical material, disco deejays were just like everyone else at first. They went to the record store and bought it. That got expensive, so they banded together in record pools, which sought free promotional copies from the record companies. Since most disco records don’t receive radio airplay, exposure in the clubs was the only way the record companies could reach the audience.

         “That’s what happened at Casablanca,” says Marty Angelo, founder and president of the Buffalo Record Pool. “They didn’t go to the radio stations, they went to the discos. Donna Summer sold 150,000 records without radio airplay. The companies realized if the right person played the right record to the right crowd, it would sell. That’s why the pools became so important.”

         Until the Buffalo Record Pool was formed six months ago, leading local deejays had to go for membership in out-of-town pools. More than half a dozen are in the Pocono Pool, based in Philadelphia. Several more are in New York’s International Disco Record Center pool.

         The Buffalo pool currently has 29 members (28 men, one woman, though there are at least four other women spinners, including the one in the centerfold of the October issue of Gallery magazine) and it operates according to a strict set of rules. To belong and receive records, a deejay must work at least two nights a week and supply letters to verify his employment. He must pay a registration fee of $35 and a monthly membership fee of $45. Before he is given the new records, he must submit reports on the last records he received and on which records are most popular in his clubs. Pool meetings are mandatory, as are monthly record pool parties.

         “With each record, you get a sheet,” Angelo reports. “You send it back to the record companies and tell them what you think. We’re like a sounding board. I get a lot of test pressings myself. I’m in a different situation than the other guys. I’m considered one of the top 50 in the country.”

         Angelo got into music in the ‘60s as manager of a rock band, the Raven, which he says could play songs “better than the records.” When the band split up in 1970, he took a concept he’d seen in New York and used his own equipment to set up Buffalo’s first club sound system. It was in Mulligan’s Brick Bar on Allen Street.

         “I used a couple of speakers from the Raven’s sound system,” he recalls. “They had me working out of the kitchen. My turntables were set up on an old door laid over a couple boxes. The mixers I made myself.”

         Angelo went on to be Buffalo’s disco pioneer. He was the first to blend one record into the next. He started the “Step by Step” disco TV show. Now he does four nights a week in J. P. Morgan’s in Niagara Falls, having converted the place from live entertainment to disco. Now there’s only bands on weekends, playing in between Angelo’s sets.

         “They built me a booth and put the band up on the second floor,” Angelo says. “The band was an hour and a half late one night and I convinced them the booth would look better than an empty stage. Now I’m down right next to the dancers. We have a ball.”

         John Ceglia is the spinner chosen by the Buffalo Record Pool to represent them at the World’s Largest Disco and he’ll be the first one on the turntables Saturday night. He’s only 18, one of the new generation of disco deejays. Formerly a dance instructor for Debonair Dance Studios, he’s seen disco steps evolve from the Hustle to the current freestyle. He went from the dance floor to the sound booth a year ago at the teen discos in Sgt. Pepper’s on Hertel Avenue.

         “I wanted to turn the kids on to stuff they didn’t hear on the radio,” Ceglia says. “Then I went out to listen to the guys that are good, guys like Tony Spencer and Dr. John (John Bisci) at the Club 747. I started doing Sunday nights at Pepper’s, then after a couple months Spencer got married and Friday and Saturday nights were open at the 747. I applied and got the job there.”

         Ceglia now plays at Fast Annie’s in Hamburg and Mulligan’s on Hertel Avenue. Like Anzalone, he’s into progressive disco – the new sounds and new trends. He’s traveled to New York several times in the past year to pick up ideas.

“In Buffalo, you have to work new music in,” he says. “In New York, you can hear everything I play on the radio.”

He now favors “less talking and more building energy with the music.” In the best New York clubs, the deejay doesn’t talk at all. Or take requests.

“You have to know what songs will excite people and what speed range is best,” says Ceglia, “so you can keep them moving. To start them off, you hit them with three or four songs in a row that they love, then start working from there. I do beats-per-minute – not every deejay does – and I blend the records into each other. I never mix more than four beats-per-minute apart. I try to keep it all flowing and familiar. I think of what would excite me if I was out there dancing.”

Blending records takes concentration, but the technique is hardly a mystery anymore.

“If you can count to eight, you can blend records,” Angelo says. “All you’ve got to do is be able to pick up the one-beat. You’ve got to count. That means you can’t be talking to all the women.”

The leading disco deejays now are beginning to find themselves acting as consultants – either to clubs or to record companies. Tony Spencer is advising the people who are building a disco in the old Rapids Theater in Niagara Falls. When they’re done, he will be chief deejay there. Angelo tells record companies whether their new test pressings will hit or miss. New York’s Bobby (Bobby DJ) Guttadaro is a consultant for Salsoul Records and has the final say on all their releases. Other deejays have become specialists at remixing recordings especially for disco. One, Ray Caviano, was so successful at it that he now heads his own record label.

“I’d like to open up my own club,” suggests Anzalone, who currently plays at MacArthur’s Park on Elmwood Avenue and the Grand Island Holiday Inn, in addition to working mornings for Allegheny Airlines. “I’d like to do something exciting for this town. As far as disco goes, Buffalo’s way behind. There’s only a handful of guys playing the new stuff.

“People in Buffalo think it’s a fad,” Anzalone continues, “but disco’s going through the same kind of thing now that rock went through in the ‘50s. Remember the old record hops? That’s all it was – people dancing to records. Then it went on to be the pop music of the ‘60s. Now you’re seeing rock artists like Rod Stewart and the Doobie Brothers making disco records and having the biggest sellers of their careers. There may be more rock in it in the future, but it’s still going to be called disco. I think disco is going to be the pop music of the ‘80s.”

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IN THE PHOTOS: The way they were in 1979 – from top, Marty Angelo, John Ceglia and Charlie Anzalone.

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FOOTNOTE: With the exception of Brunner’s and Mulligan’s Brick Bar, all of the nightclubs mentioned in this article are long gone. Still with us, happily, are all of the principal figures I talked to.

Charlie Anzalone, a/k/a "Captain Disco," is in Las Vegas and posts a lot on Facebook.

John Ceglia moved up to the big time in New York City in 1980. A freelance recording engineer and sound designer, he continues to spin in the city and on Fire Island.

Marty Angelo has a Wikipedia page that confirms things we already knew – that he got busted for cocaine in 1980, found God during two years in the federal slammer and started a prison ministry that branched out into helping people recover from drug abuse. The page also tells us something that we didn't know – that he's written 29 books. Sixteen of them are available on Amazon.