The demolition of disco records at Kaminzky Park was the best thing that could have happened to dance music. The "Disco Sucks" movement had won a shallow victory. The movement's supporters had not only publicly displayed their racism and homophobia, but they had also finished the cruddy disco careers of Alicia Bridges, Rod Stewart, and those arch bandwagoners, the Rolling Stones. Disco went underground, back into the gay clubs and, before you know it, house music was born. Yeh!

Philadelphia's King Britt (aka Sylk 130) remembers the days before "Saturday Night Fever" and the disco feeding frenzy, and his full- length debut, When the Funk Hits the Fan; he not only remembers the soul, the funk, the sensuality of 1970s dancefloor, he recreates it. When the Funk Hits the Fan is more than a stylish pastiche of the Sound of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, some of the album's remixers fail to take Britt's authentic seventies vibe into account.

Dego of po- faced jazzbos, 4 Hero, erases all traces of "Getting Into It” apart from the vocal hook, which he periodically drops into a tech- disco swirl. Victer Duplaix's take on "The Reason" is basically Timbaland- lite, and it smacks of being one of those remixes that courts more attention from record executives than the listener. It's not until the record's fifth track that this disc gets meaty. Roger Sanchez, The S-Man, one of house music's most consistently deep and underground producers, wants you to get all fired up (and a little horn-y) during his spin on Sylk 130's cover of Indeep's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life."

Philip Charles appreciates the jaw- dropping beauty of King Britt's finest song, "Season's Change," so much that he merely adds a softly beating kickdrum, just so any serious soul- lovin' garage DJ can drop the song into the set without upsetting the BPMs. For his remix of "Getting Into It," fellow Philadelphian Quest Love spent an hour in the studio and handed over a very lazy mix of vinyl pops, James Brown’s grunts from "Get It Up, Get Into It, Get Involved," and a drum loop that had probably been gathering dust since 1987.

Mood II Swing make two attempts at recrafting the title track and, like all their other mixes (for Ultra Nate and Kim English alike), they had me questioning why all the dance magazines don't share my opinion that Mood II Swing are oafish plodders who've got all the appeal of a tractor pull and corn dog jamboree.

Finally, Francois Kervorkian partially redeems this collection. Kervokian apprenticed under Larry Levan-- the stupendously acid- soaked wizard of New York's Paradise Garage-- in the late '70s and early '80s. He's remixed Yaz, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, and the Smiths (among others), and he's renowned for his six- to- eight hour live sets. But it's his FK dubs that garner him the most glowing praise. Trained as a percussionist, Kervokian will use every element in a track as a funky ingredient in a huge rhythmic gumbo-- the FK dub of Sylk 130's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" reconnects this remix album to its pre- Kaminzky, pre- commercialized, joyously uplifting roots. It's a pity that the others didn't take the time to prove the bigots wrong, but sometimes disco really does suck.

-Paul Cooper