Subtract the strings, the horns, the divas, the falsettos, the whoots, the sex, the fizz, even the kick drums and what have you? Propulsion. None of the tracks here are typically disco, and I suspect that few if any moved actual dance floors. Yet all off these tracks feed off of disco’s energy or share some of the less obvious aspects of the genre.

We kick off with a cottage industry that sprang up early: translating disco hits of the day for dance fans from an earlier era. RCA seemed to specialize in this, with a host of swing and big band disco knock-offs. Big Band Sounds delivered Glen Miller-ized versions of the Bee Gees and K.C. and the Sunshine Band, as well as this oddity: an easy listening adaptation of ABBA (welcome back!) that anticipates chill wave.

More than a few of the day’s prog rock heroes dipped their toes in disco’s waters: Keith Emerson’s weirdly effective version of I’m a Man from the soundtrack to Sylvester Stallone’s Nighthawks; the Resident’s (!) dancefloor arctic anthropology effort, Diskomo; Neu! (whose use of the motorik beat helped invent Euro disco anyway); and Leda, which was Tangerine Dream’s Peter Baumann attempting his best Moroder to ape I Feel Love with an unidentified singer who is no Donna Summer. Speaking of, San Francisco wunderkind Patrick Cowley mastered I Feel Love when he remixed the actual track into infinity. Before he went there, however, he attempted to recreate it in his own bedroom—along with other songs of the day that he dubbed funkettes—that have just been released. In this, his second take, he almost (but not quite) gets it right. It builds to a great release, however.

Fatback’s King Tim III made it on to wax about a month before Rapper’s Delight, lending to its general recognition as the first commercially released rap record. Many of the early rap tracks lifted their backing from instrumental/dub disco discs. The Disco Four (oddly enough, a five man crew) mined the Gap Band’s Let It Whip for their Whip Rap. Blackberri was one of San Francisco’s ambassadors of the emerging gay men’s music movement, which—drawing inspiration from the womyn’s music movement—dealt primarily in overly earnest folk tropes. Blackberri showed he could bring the funk, however, with Wise Up. It’s a shame this didn’t get better production values.

Sub-standard sonics mar the crude bootleg recording of Velvet Underground’s Follow the Leader (taped by VU acolyte Robert Quine), but Lou Reed & Co.’s downtown scene disco propulsion shines through. It’s a pity that this one never got officially recorded/released.

The Name of the Game—Big Band Sounds ’78 // I Feel Love—Patrick Cowley ’77 // Future—Leda ’78 // Physical—Victor Willis ’83 // Whip Rap—Disco Four ’82 // King Tim III—Fatback ’79 // I’m a Man—Keith Emerson ’81 // Wise Up—Blackberri ’81 // La Casa Del Sol—Fausto Papetti ’78 // Summer Love—Blonde on Blonde ’77 // Hollywood 7—Alides Hidding ’84 // Walk the Night—Phenomenal Handclap Band w/ Peaches ’12 // Disco Reggae—Kalyan ’77 // 500 W—Max Berlin’s ’80 // Isi—Neu! ’75 // Diskomo—the Residents ’90 // Follow the Leader—Velvet Underground ’69