09/09/2026
WHAT’S IN MY BOX? – DISCO SPECIAL 🪩
Good morning. It’s John here at HI-FI & 45s. I’ve been buying records since the 1970s and DJing since the 1980s.
One of the things I try to do with this page at times is look beyond the obvious hits. When we think about disco, records such as Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive immediately spring to mind, and rightly so. But a DJ set was never made up entirely of No. 1s and Top 10 records.
There were hundreds of records that became big with DJs and on dance floors without ever having the same success in the national charts. Some have simply been forgotten over the years.
So today I’ve pulled two of them out of the box.
GENE FARROW & THE G.F. BAND – DON’T STOP NOW
1978 – Magnet Records
London-based Gene Farrow’s Don’t Stop Now reached No. 71 in the UK charts, but amazingly, it went all the way to No. 1 on the Record Mirror UK Disco Chart.
For me, this is a brilliant piece of disco and a great example of just how powerful DJ support could be. Gene Farrow himself seems to have almost disappeared from music history. If anybody knows more about Gene, or what happened to him after his recording career, please let me know. I’d genuinely love to know more.
ANTONIA RODRIGUEZ – LA BAMBA
1979 – Magnet Records – 12 MAG 149
La Bamba tells a similar story. It made no UK national chart entry, yet British disco DJs were playing it and it appeared in James Hamilton’s Record Mirror disco chart during 1979.
There’s a nice little collector’s story with this one too. Four years later, in 1983, it appeared again in the UK on Calibre Records, this time simply credited to Antonia. The Calibre 12-inch was a newly extended re-edit, and James Hamilton noted at the time that the record was still very much in demand.
And what is truly amazing is that these two records were made for each other in the mix. The timing fluctuates slightly, but if you’ve got a sharp hand, it’s just a magical mix.
And that really is the point of today’s Disco Special. Sometimes you have to look beyond the national charts to understand what was actually happening on the dance floor.
These records were part of that history, but you rarely hear either of them today.
Today’s reel will be Gene Farrow – Don’t Stop Now, and tomorrow we’ll have Antonia Rodriguez – La Bamba.
