Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

This is one of those records I discovered when I was doing my Cabin Fever show last year – I pulled the record off the shelf, saw the cover, thought, wow, ‘Lonely Disco Dancer’, I haven’t played that record from when I first had it 30 odd years ago, I haven’t heard it, nobody’s talked about Dee Dee Bridgewater, nothing about her or that track at all, haven’t seen it in any movies, nothing. So I got it out, the album’s clean as a whistle, inner sleeve no tears, outside pristine – I’d obviously preserved it for this moment. Took it out, put it on, and I was almost in tears when I heard that tune. It’s just the most perfect disco music ever made, perfect songstress vocals, silky smooth all the way through it, even that chorus "lonely disco dancer-dancer, ooh-ooh-oo-oo-ooh…" I was just like: is anyone else hearing what I’m hearing? Because this is a perfect, literally a perfect record, it’ll bring you to tears because it’s so good. I mean, it did. At that moment, I just thought, I have to play this again, to remind me of reasons of why I am here, why I exist on this planet – for this moment, putting the needle on this record, playing it to you and getting you to understand how great life is because of these tunes in your life. That, for me, is the most perfect record ever made, and nobody’s ever heard of it. It’s not rare, it’s a single b-side, but it was just ignored and nobody heard it – so here I am, handing it to you on a sliver platter!

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