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Various Artists
TRAX RECORDS: 20th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION
(Trax)
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House-music fans will welcome this three-volume compilation — two of them DJ-remixed — of Trax Records’ 12-inch singles from the genre’s founding years back in the mid 1980s. Trax was only the most prolific of several Chicago-based early house labels; included are many, though not all, of the anthems that established house’s sound (gospel in tone, rhythmically funky, disco-electronic in their instrumentation) and purpose. Marshall Jefferson’s soulful "Move Your Body," Ralphie Rosario & Xaviera Gold’s "You Used To Hold Me," Farley "Jackmaster" Funk’s "Jack the Bass," Screamin’ Rachael’s "Fun with Bad Boys," Mr. Fingers featuring Robert Owens’s "Can You Feel It," Mr. Lee’s "I Can’t Forget," and Frankie Knuckles with Jaime Principle’s "You Got the Love" and "Baby Wants To Ride" are all here as well as a Spanish-language version of "Can’t Get Enough," the first of many Liz Torres house hits. Several of these tracks appear in each of the set’s two DJ remixes; some also occur on the third disc, which is not continuously remixed but also features Adonis’s "No Way Back" as well as "Fantasy," a new song by Screamin’ Rachael. All are welcome, and surprising even for a long-time fan to hear again. The prevalence today of complex melodic trance and full-bore hard house prompts fans to think that house’s early years were dominated by diva vocals and fully orchestrated soul music, but these songs speak the cool electronic language of Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer/Cerrone, and their vocals owe more to Sylvester’s disco classics than to Candi Staton or Loleatta Holloway. Still, there’s very little in classic disco (or in any other music) to compare with these songs’ paradoxical sexuality. Knuckles, Adonis, Jefferson, and the other house pioneers found a groove and a texture — soft and transparent, thumpy and tipsy at the same time — that translated straight sex just as convincingly as it conveyed the homo-eroticism that served house’s core audience. House is the most overtly gay-male music that black American pop has ever come up with, and it built, and kept, a dedicated fan base of gay black men. But these tracks were never just that, and in them one hears, and feels, a universal horniness that invites people of all sexual persuasions to do as the gay guys do. Here was a queer eye for the straight guy (and for the gay guy too) long before the phrase came into being.
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