Off the Wall
Michael Jackson
1979: CBS/Epic EK 35745
I’ve spent enough hours on the dance floor at ReBar sweating a river to “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” that you’d think I’d be sick of the track or would be able to sit out a chance to dance to it again, but no WAY would I sit still while it played even now. Only “Working Day and Night” comes near matching that brilliance and wicked groove here, although “Burn This Disco Out” has great potential in actual dance club use.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) many of the other tracks here suffer from disco-remnant excess. The best of this album is a natural continuation/improvement from Quincy Jones’s (and Jackson’s) work on the soundtrack to The Wiz, rich with a kind of funk that was not only accessible to the uninitiated but also irresistable to those of us who revel in a mighty groove.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.