when i wake up (2026)

Today's compilation:

Dance Traxx • Volume Two 1987 Freestyle / Hi-NRG / Dance-Pop

Really been digging these dancy trips back to the 80s as of late, with all this stuff that came out during that somewhat overlooked and wide-open, anything-goes period between disco's demolition and the rise of house from disco's own ashes. Synthpop was king in the States because it was so versatile and MTV made it huge, but harder and more specific genres like freestyle and hi-NRG contributed greatly in defining the sound of 80s dance music further. And this second contemporaneous installment in Atlantic Records' own Dance Traxx series from 1987 is loaded up on 'em, with all those extended and rarer 12-inch club mixes for you to savor. Ultimately, for dance compilation assemblers, they're often left with difficult quality/quantity choices to make: do they limit the number of songs on the album and go with the lengthier versions of each of them, or do they go with the widely available radio/video edits instead and include as many songs as possible to max out on variety? For this one, they chose the quality, and the result is terrific, because if you ask me, when a song's dope, usually a good way of enhancing it even more is to simply make it longer 😊.

So, top of the heap here is the opener: one of those songs that so totally defines the 1980s as a whole, in all of its new wave-post-disco-freestyling-and-funky glory—Portland, Oregon group Nu Shooz's "I Can't Wait," which built itself on the groundwork that'd been laid by something like Tom Tom Club's dreamy "Genius of Love" from about a half-decade prior. This song opens with a highly recognizable bassline that, when it's played at the party, everyone knows that the absolute jam of jams is about to ensue; and then it further epitomizes that tried and true 80s technique of taking a snippet of a sampled vocal and pitching it up and making it choppy too. Altogether iconic stuff that makes me visualize a hustling-and-bustling 1980s scene of a VHS-recorded city streetcorner in the summertime, when work lets out on a Friday evening and the sidewalks are so packed with people on their way to the weekend while someone's blasting this thing out of their boxy sedan with the windows down as they drive on by. So idyllic. And this is the "Extended Dutch Mix" too, which packs things like a sample of Madonna's "Into the Groove" into its middle. Original version of this song didn't have either the famed bassline or the pitched-up vocal sample stab—it took the mind of a Dutch guy by the name of Peter Slaghuis aka Hithouse to add its most memorable elements, and his version ended up surpassing the original and made it onto Nu Shooz's big, third breakout album, Poolside.

But then there's another Nu Shooz banger on here as well: their follow-up to "I Can't Wait," "Point of No Return," which I think serves as a major reminder that nobody really makes dance jams for mass consumption that are this happy anymore. And someone should probably do something about that, because, I mean, *gestures wildly at everything.*

Also, we really can't forget about what a hell of a drug cocaine was. Years ago I wrote about a fitness record on here that was filled with hi-NRG tracks and I said those albums were also good for doing copious amounts of blow to, and I'm about to make that same observation again with the "European Mix" of Stacey Q's extremely sexually suggestive "We Connect." I can't tell if I wanna put on some fluorescent-colored spandex, leg warmers and a sweat-headband or if I wanna pull out a pocket-sized mirror to not admire and inspect my own visage in. Pumping bass synth rhythmically undergirds this one and then a guy who'd go on to become Paul McCartney's touring guitarist in 2001 gets to unleash two squealy electric guitar solos. And it really doesn't get much more coca than that, folks; such a vestige.

And I can't think of a better place to play "We Connect" than over the sound system in this specific room at the Holiday Spa Health Club that's believed to have been in the Moorestown Mall in Moorestown, New Jersey. Look at this venue!

Source: Interior Design Forum 2 (1990)

So, disco's great, and house is swell too, but you really ignore all this fun stuff that chronologically bridged the two together at your own peril. Seriously—what an absolute time to have been alive.

Highlights: