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Editorial Reviews

Anyone who thinks that all disco sounds alike is uninformed -- very uninformed. In the 1970s and early '80s, disco had a European side (Cerrone, the Munich Machine, Love & Kisses, the Silver Convention) and a soul side. Martha Wash and Izora Armstead, the two female singers who performed together as Two Tons o' Fun and the Weather Girls, were clearly an example of disco-soul rather than Euro-disco. They belted, they screamed, they wailed, and they made disco seem like a very logical extension of Northern soul. Fantasy paints an attractive picture of the vocal duo on Get the Feeling, a best-of that was assembled in 1993. Most of the songs on this 65-minute CD appeared on Two Tons o' Fun or Backatcha, the 1980 LPs that Wash and Armstead recorded for producer Harvey Fuqua's Fantasy-distributed Honey label; the exception is the 1982 hit "It's Raining Men," which came out on Columbia. Whatever the label, Get the Feeling shows how rich disco-soul can be -- the duo spares no passion on exuberant gems like "Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven," "Just Us," and "It's Raining Men." The latter was not only a huge hit in the gay community; it became a gay anthem (especially among African-American gays). In fact, "It's Raining Men" was, in the early '90s, the theme song for In Living Color's hilarious Men on Film sketches. One of the few tracks that isn't aimed at the dancefloor is the single "Taking Away Your Space," a glorious Philadelphia-style soul ballad that would have been perfectly at home on one of the albums that the O'Jays or Teddy Pendergrass provided for Philadelphia International in the 1970s or early '80s. Get the Feeling is well-worth obtaining if you like your disco with a major dose of soul. Alex Henderson, All Music Guide

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