Real Gone Music to Issue Retrospective by Seventies Disco Singer Sylvester, Pool-Pah featuring Rupert Holmes' 'Flasher' Soundtrack in June

Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records will celebrate late trailblazer Sylvester with the release of the first comprehensive anthology of his seminal recordings for Fantasy Records. Disco Heat: The Fantasy Years 1977-1981, due June 2, features 25 tracks on two CDs drawn from all six of his albums for the label, as well as rare 12-inch disco versions.

In addition to versions of every hit Sylvester scored for Fantasy featuring crossover smashes like “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat),” the collection offers some covers including his live version of Patti LaBelle’s “You Are My Friend,” a medley of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” and Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” Leiber and Stoller’s “I (Who Have Nothing),” Ashford and Simpson’s “Over and Over,” the Peggy Lee standard “Fever,” and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Took My Strength from You.”

Featuring the vocals of Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash, later known as The Weather Girls, Disco Heat traces Sylvester’s Fantasy career and underscores the significance of black and gay artists to the creation of disco.

Joe Marchese of The Second Disc provides new liner notes placing Sylvester’s music into the context of the era, while the audio has been newly remastered by Mike Milchner at SonicVision.

Disco Heat, released in time for Pride Month 2023, is a tribute to the enduring and ahead-of-his-time diva. “Sometimes folks make us feel strange,” Sylvester told a New York audience in 1978, “but we’re not strange. And those folks – they’ll just have to catch up.” The world has finally caught up with the fabulous Sylvester.

Track Listing:

1. Over and Over (12” Disco Version)
2. Down Down Down (12” Disco Version)
3. I Been Down
4. Tipsong
5. Loving Grows Up Slow
6. Never Too Late
7. Dance (Disco Heat) (12” Disco Version)
8. You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (12” Disco Version)
9. Was It Something That I Said
10. I Took My Strength From You
11. I Who Have Nothing (12” Short Disco Version)
12. Body Strong (12” Disco Version)
13. I Need Somebody To Love Tonight
14. Stars (12” Disco Version)
15. Can’t Stop Dancing(12” Disco Version)
16. In My Fantasy (I Want You, I Need You) (12” Disco Version)
17. You Are My Friend (Single Version)
18. Medley: Could it Be Magic/A Song For You
19. I Need You
20. Sell My Soul (12” Disco Version)
21. Fever
22. Change Up
23. Here Is My Love
24. Give It Up (Don’t Make Me Wait) (12” Disco Version)
25. Thinking Right
26. I Can’t Believe I’m In Love

Also scheduled for release from the label on LP the same day...

In 1973, New York band Pool-Pah teamed up with up-and-coming singer-songwriter, musician, and arranger Rupert Holmes to write and record a soundtrack blending rock, psychedelia, jazz, prog, pop, and electronica. Few heard it.

The soundtrack was to an X-rated film initially called Forbidden Under Censorship of the King, retitled The Flasher. The movie even inspired a first-of-its-kind theatrical concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre, but when the brass at Paramount Pictures affiliate Greene Bottle Records got wind of the fact that Pool-Pah’s debut album was, in fact, the soundtrack to a porno, promotion stopped and the album disappeared. 

Rupert Holmes, of course, went on to score the final No. 1 hit of the 1970s and one of the first of the 1980s with his timeless “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and forge careers as a best-selling mystery novelist and Tony Award-winning playwright and songwriter.

Over time, the cult reputation of Pool-Pah’s The Flasher grew. Grammy winner Beck famously featured The Flasher in a 2001 Vanity Fair feature (“A Superfly version of electronic music for plants”) while the Holmes-penned groove “Sour Soul” became a favorite sample of hip-hop artists including Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y, and Big Sean on “O.T.T.R.” in 2011. 

Now, in time for its 50th anniversary, The Flasher is being issued on black with white swirl “night sky” vinyl as sourced from the pristine original tapes housed in the Universal vault.

The LP features a four-page insert with rare photos and brand-new liner notes by The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese drawing on interviews with Pool-Pah–lead singer Lenie Colacino, bassist/ trumpeter Bruce Handelman, guitarist/saxophonist Seth Handelman, guitarist Billye Arrington–and Rupert Holmes. 

Track Listing:

1. Flight
2. Winter in April’s Eyes
3. Kahmura
4. Sour Soul
5. Laughter and Pain
6. Two Way Road
7. April Witch
8. Flasher Theme