SIDEBAR - CASABLANCA RECORDS

Even in the bacchanal of 1970s Los Angeles, the drug and promotional excesses of Casablanca Records stood out. In a period when cocaine use was probably at its peak in the music business, Casablanca set the pace. Its offices on Sunset Boulevard were decorated like Rick's Caf in the motion picture from which the label took its name, and it was run by Neil Bogart (who had changed his name from Bogatz). The son of a Brooklyn postal worker, he reinvented himself via New York's School of the Performing Arts, had a minor recording hit as Neil Scott, and served an apprenticeship in payola as a record label promotion man. Eventually he found success with Buddah Records as the king of late 1960s bubblegum pop. In many ways Casablanca was the epitome of music business cynicism, typified by the costumed heavy-metal theatrics of Kiss. Yet the label was also the centre of some of the most significant dance music of the era. It issued the Village People's YMCA (1978), a huge hit by a French-produced American group that set its double-entendre message against the updated grooves of Philadelphia soul; popularized electro-disco with Donna Summer's I Feel Love (1977); and supported George Clinton's experiments with Parliament-Funkadelic. Fiscal irresponsibility ensured Casablanca's demise in the 1980s. Peter Silverton