Peter Brown - Back to Front (Expanded Edition) (1983/2014)

To hear some disco haters tell it, disco died with the 1970s. But that's hardly true, disco was alive and well throughout the 1980s and 1990s, only it was being called dance music and dance-pop instead of disco. Released in 1983, Back to the Front demonstrated that there was still a market for the type of disco-funk that put Peter Brown on the map in 1977 with the dancefloor classic "Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me?" This vinyl LP, which contains the dance hits "Overnight Sensation" and "Baby Gets High," isn't much different from Brown's late-'70s recordings; he was still providing plenty of disco-funk in 1983, although the term disco was no longer in vogue. Like Fantasy Love Affair and Stargazer in the late '70s, Back to the Front is uneven. It contains a few gems, "Overnight Sensation" and "Baby Gets High" are excellent, but most of the material is merely adequate. Brown never recorded an album that was superb from start to finish, and like his other LPs, Back to the Front is usually competent but is only great on occasion.