DAMAGED Reading: AND PARTY EVERY DAY: THE INSIDE STORY OF CASABLANCA RECORDS: Love to love them baby!

AND PARTY EVERY DAY: THE INSIDE STORY OF CASABLANCA RECORDS
By Larry Harris
Backbeat Books
Review by Louis Fowler

I love cocaine.

Well, let me rephrase that: I love the idea of cocaine. If said pop-culture has taught me anything about Sweet Lady Nose-Toot, it's that it is always a great way to get any party started; a couple of quick lines off the floor of a rest area toilet-lid and in no time at all you'll be spinning an endless number of Giorgio Moroder 12-inch white label promos in ass-less leather chaps while a 12-year-old Thai lady-boy wearing only angel-wings gets a nosebleed and passes out under Truman Capote's ball-sack.

And, even more tempting, don't forget all that unwashed disco-trim you'll be soaking in! Hedonistic honeys in humid hot-pants will do the most unspeakable of sexual acts for just a little snort off of your flaccid shaft. Talk about a “blow” job!

This all still happens, right? Like, in New York? Please don't let me be the only jerk-off standing around in ass-less leather chaps here...

OK. So even if it doesn't happen too much these days, I can at least take it for granted that the 70s were a guaranteed winter wonderland! Please, don't take that from me too, because if a time machine ever gets invented, I'm bringing a stack of twenties, a jar of penicillin and, as my own personal tour-guide, AND PARTY EVERY DAY, written by Larry Harris, one of the founders of the notorious Casablanca Records.

For those that don't know, Casablanca Records was greatest record label of all-time, releasing music from such era-defining acts as the aforementioned Moroder, as well as Donna Summer, Village People, Parliament, Angel, KISS and Meadowlark Lemon. They were the ultimate pop-music hit-making factory, fueled completely by a neverending supply of pussy 'n' blow, usually in that order. Of course, the fact that Harris and partner Neil Bogart had a mystical sixth-sense for upcoming pop-culture fads and catchy pop-hooks, well, maybe that had a little bit more to do with it...but I'm sure the coke did it's job.

Even though Harris does a good job of protecting his completely honest, nice Jewish boy persona, he's also shockingly cavalier about his entire run at Casablanca, from pants-throb-inducing nights at Studio 54 to bribing disc jockeys with a little China White, all the way down to the ego-driven collapse of the disco empire that Casablanca so painstakingly built, seized brick by seized brick. Harris lays it all down on the line as he does another line; that's why this is one of the best music industry books I've read in quite a while—everything you thought that went on behind the doors of Casablanca is finally confirmed and it's a satisfying realization of all your beats-per-minute dance-fever daydreams.

So you can see why I need to take this book with me. I've got my plan all worked out: travel back to 1976 L.A., make friends with Larry, work my way into the inner circle, write a song called “Stonewallin'” for the Village People, overdose on the Sunset Strip while face-down in Bianca Jagger, be forced into a scream-therapy psychiatric rehab clinic by my employers, become a follower of Baba Ram Dass, sell out and go to work producing whatever Don Henley is excreting and, finally, write an autobiography of my debaucherous life and times called JUS' A TASTE OF THE KID: THE DOWN 'N' DIRTY WORLD OF LOUIS FOWLER, MUSIC BIZ SURVIVOR.

Sorry, alternate time-line Larry Harris...looks like you'll just have to find something else to write about.