Village People: Macho Man : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On Love in a Sleeper, which supports the theory that disco is mostly the fast food of popular music, Silver Convention functions as Chatty Cathy dolls who make noises whenever producer Michael Kunze pulls the strings. Without any attractive lead vocals or creative vocal interplay (when Penny McLean departed, she apparently took the group's personality with her), these three women are embarrassingly upstaged by the Munich-Philadelphia production. Which isn't so hot itself: the orchestral swoops and mechanically thumping rhythms, efficient though they are, don't match the sound of Convention's early hits–"Fly, Robin, Fly" and "Get Up and Boogie," two good examples of minimalist disco–for sheer force and power.

As with many disco records, Love in a Sleeper instructs us to give ourselves over to absolute pleasure. But Silver Convention's singers, who would probably make wonderful stewardesses for Pan Am, lack the charisma of such seductresses as Donna Summer, Thelma Houston or Chaka Khan. So the songs, weak in themselves, never build up a head of steam. Listening to the group's endless oohs and ahs, especially on "Breakfast in Bed," I felt as if I had mistakenly wandered into somebody's dull fantasy.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Love in a Sleeper is that almost everything sounds the same. You're guaranteed to feel right at home here just like you do in any given Burger King.

Far more successful, but only intermittently effective, is the Village People's second album, Macho Man. Fronted by lyricist Victor Willis, whose voice bears a strong resemblance to that of Teddy Pendergrass, these six singers impressively rival the Trammps, at least on side one. Over gusts of orchestration and feverish percussion, exuberant harmonies weave in and out of sandy, tense lead vocals. Most of side two, however, substitutes rhythmic punch and melodic zing for a lightweight disco sound that unwisely tips its hat to Las Vegas.

Without a doubt, Macho Man's best song is "I Am What I Am," a human-rights anthem on which Willis, his voice full of anger and delight, deliriously hollers, "I did not choose the way I am/I said I am what I am." Because the song seems so committed, it makes the rest of the material sound downright pointless.

Only if Willis continues to write songs as strong as "I Am What I Am," and if producer/composer Jacques Morali strictly emphasizes a forceful approach, can the Village People become what some of their admirers think they already are: the great hope of disco.