Before there was Saturday Night Fever there was underground disco. DJs across America went out and found the music to play; dancers went out and found the clubs. At this point, in the early seventies, the disco was the venue and not a genre of music. • By the time Nik Cohn’s short story Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night was published by New York magazine in June 1976, disco was the biggest genre of music on the charts and was about to get bigger still, becoming an all-enveloping cultural phenomenon. Cohn sold the film rights to Robert Stigwood, and his classic club yarn became Saturday Night Fever.

Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night is the soundtrack to Cohn’s story, where disco began; a 1975 score for the underground clubs of Brooklyn and Queens that played R&B, soul and Latin beats to people who lived for the weekend.

Bob Stanley has put this collection together, sourcing what was actually played in Brooklyn discos in 1974 and 1975. Only a few specific records were mentioned in Cohn’s feature, but two of them – Ben E King’s ‘Supernatural Thing Part 1’ and Harold Melvin’s ‘Wake Up Everybody’ - were cosmically great and both are included here, alongside underground favourites like Moment Of Truth’s Four Tops-like ‘Helplessly’ and Gloria Scott’s Barry White-produced modern soul classic ‘Just As Long As We’re Together’. Ivano Fossati’s incredible ‘Night Of The Wolf’ has fans in northern soul, disco and prog circles.

Without Cohn’s original story, it’s quite possible that disco would have remained an underground phenomenon – Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night paints a scene in full flower. Saturday Night Fever would eventually, if unintentionally, wreck the underground nature of this scene, and clubs like Studio 54 would destroy the democracy of the party, but for two or three years the scene was largely undocumented and magical. This album is the sound of disco before it was captured.

1. HELPLESSLY - Moment Of Truth

2. AFTER YOU'VE HAD YOUR FLING - The Intrepids

3. WELCOME TO THE CLUB - Blue Magic

4. I CAN'T MOVE NO MOUNTAINS - Margie Joseph

5. SUPERNATURAL THING PART 1 - Ben E King

6. MELLOW ME - Faith, Hope & Charity

7. GEORGIA'S AFTER HOURS - Richard "Popcorn" Wylie

8. DATE WITH THE RAIN - Eddie Kendricks

9. JUST AS LONG AS WE'RE TOGETHER - Gloria Scott

10. WENDY IS GONE - Ronnie McNeir

11. GOT TO GET YOU BACK - Sons Of Robin Stone

12. NIGHT OF THE WOLF (TEMA DEL LUPO) - Ivano Fossati

13. GOOD THINGS DON'T LAST FOREVER –Ecstasy, Passion & Pain

14. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT - Jimmy Ruffin

15. KEEP IT UP - Betty Everett

16. FREE & EASY - Satyr

17. EACH MORNING I WAKE UP - Major Harris

18. IT'S THE SAME OLD STORY - Act I

19. YOU CAN'T HIDE LOVE - Creative Source

20. THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD IS GOING CRAZY – John Gary Williams

21. IF THAT'S THE WAY YOU FEEL - White Heat

22. WAKE UP EVERYBODY - Harold Melvin And The Bluenotes