I don't care much one way or another about baseball, but I'm amused that Chicago game announcer Harry Caray in 1978 disco'fied his ritual of singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch. Also funny, in a darker way, is that Caray's name sounds ilke a Japanese term for ritual suicide by disembowelment (hari-kari or harikari, also called seppuku). Which do you find funnier?

Comedian Bill Saluga is known for other items in his c.v., but he worked one character in his hunmor arsenal for probably all that it was worth. That chracter? That was Raymond Jay Johnson, Jr. who told all who would interact with him all the names he'd like to be called "but you doesn't have to call me Johnson!" One of the ways he plied that shtick was to record what basically amounts to a disco-backed run through his routine abetted by female background singers: "Dancin' Johnson" (1978). I recall first encountering Saluga/Johnson on the variety show Redd Foxx hosted after he left his hit sitcom, Sanford And Son; I also remember him from at least one beer commercial (for Miller Lite if memory serves). Have you any recollection of Johnson/Saluga?

RCA Records' Red Seal imprint for classical music releases got a one-time makeover as Red Seal Disco to accomodate "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," a 1979 retelling of the Stephen Sondheim musical about a murderous barber that was then playing on Broadway. The song, issued on a red (blood red?!)vinyl 12-inch single, is credited to His Master's Fish featuring Gordon Grody. If the record was meant to publicize the musical, it didn't do the job very well, as it wasn't really a hit. But, are you among the people who'd fit the Venn diaigram intersection of those who have danced in a discotheque a n d attedned a Broadway show (even a touring production of one)?

Whatever humor resides in Carole King;'s "Disco Tech" (1978), to my mind, is not in its lyrical conceit of there being a school where one can learn to boogie--or whateve she's on about here--but that a woman who secured her place in U.S. popular music history by both co-authoring a slew of other people's hits in the 1960's and spearheading the singer/songwriter vogue in the '70's with her Tapestry album would jump on the disco bandwagon with such a risible ditty as this. I wonder whether she looks back on this recording with the embarrassment I believe it deseves. You as well?

Like it or not, we live in a world where The Ethel Merman Disco Album (1979) exists. I would contend that the bodaciously-voiced Broadway diva adapting a passel of her show tunes to the the 4/4 club thump of the late '70's represents a certain simultaneous zenith and nadir of popular culture. That she would accept a booking to sing one of her disco-augmented ditties on a children's TV show, as seen in the clip accompanying this question, might be the cherry of weirdness topping the sundae of stragneness repesented by the music featured with these questions. Yet, in the utter culture clash and obliviousness of her Disco Album, Merman comes off as charming in her trend-hopping, certainly far more more than Carole King. Agreed?