Thursday, September 24, 2026

various - Zetrospective

This is a late post. I blame the missus, who distracted me with her feminine wiles while I was in the middle of writing this up. Mea culpa: I am quite susceptible to feminine wiles.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might think that I came to ZE Records via no wave. I've written about James Chance multiple times over the years, and the tag has a number of entries associated with it (I should probably remove it from the Screamers' live set). And that's not a terrible assumption. However, it was David & Don Was's Was (Not Was) that poisoned my brain with their mutant disco and led me to the venerable downtown label. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but every time I heard the Waitresses during the holidays, or the DJ spinning "Mr. Softee" as part of a Friday, 5pm closing shift, I was getting introduced to the downtown sounds of ZE.

And this is why I like both types of music: hardcore and disco.

This two-CD set came out back in 1989, an early digital collection of ZE's five-year heyday. I'm not entirely certain where I found it, but I'm sure I plotzed when I found it on the shelf. The combined set was only available in Europe; each disc got its own release here in the States. The artwork on said 2CD set is a horrible merge of the American releases' covers; I've subbed in the vinyl cover below.

All this is to say, I got a good deal when I turned this up for a few bucks.

Click here to download.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aw thank you so much for this set!

MAD4MUSIC said...

White People Can't Dance... Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Only ever had the first (Dancing ...), which is a great collection. Looking forward to adding Hope Springs Eternal to my mix. Gracias

Eric S. said...

What a treat! Thank you!

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