Firstly, we all know what the greatest disco track ever recorded was, don’t we?

A clue. It wasn’t Chic and Good Times. That was the third greatest disco track ever recorded. It wasn’t Le Freak either, although that’s right up there too. And it definitely wasn’t Disco Duck, was it? No, Donna Summer’s I Feel Love was the highpoint of disco, the Mona Lisa of the disco movement, the Citizen Kane of the synthesiser.

Hearing I Feel Love boom out for the first time was like being transported into the future and not just the near future. This is how music will sound in decades from now I must have thought, completely hypnotized by the electronic pulse of the track.

How deflating it would have been later that night to have actually time travelled forward into today, only to discover that music was being dominated by backwards looking bores like Ed Sheeran and Gerry Cinnamon sounding like 1970s buskers.

Second greatest ever disco track? Just edging it over Good Times is Sylvester and You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real). More on which later.

Sylvester - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

If you’re wondering about the devil’s filth witch dancing to it, then that’ll be Cosey Fanni Tutti, whose book Art Sex Music was one of my favourite reads of 2017. In it, she mentions that ‘The Devil’s Filth Witch’ is what the mother of one of her fans branded her upon discovering that her daughter had been in touch via the internet.

I imagine this woman resembling the psychotic mother in Carrie, punishing her daughter’s perceived transgressions by locking her in cupboards, convinced that her own twisted take on Christianity was morally brave and to be applauded.

If I’m being entirely honest, reading about some of the 1970s art performances by COUM Transmissions (of which Cosey was a member) do make me feel distinctly queasy – and I’ve managed to sit through all 120 days of Sodom in Salò and even reviewed one of those Human Centipede films for another site. But if something makes me experience a strong reaction like this, then I find it best to investigate it further. Why shut myself off in some personal safe space of the mind?

‘Cosey’s book,’ as I wrote in that Best of 2017 post,’ is by far the most engaging new autobiography I’ve read this year and it’s safe to say it’s also the best book I’ve ever came across by an author equally comfortable in her career as a leading avant-garde provocateur, industrial music pioneer, stripper and porno mag model.

‘One minute she’s exhibiting with the COUM Transmissions art collective and being dubbed a ‘Wrecker of Civilisation’ by Tory MP Nicolas Fairbairn, the next she’s nipping off to do a photo shoot for Fiesta.’

It was through her stripping that Cosey discovered that some background dancers were required for the video of the Sylvester single. Her agency phoned, asking if she would be interested in heading along to the shoot at the Embassy Club in the heart of London’s posho West End, a location used repeatedly in British films like Scandal, and where, like New York’s Studio 54 at the time, the waiters were made to wear tight satin athletics shorts.

The idea that in the 1970s, video makers would phone a stripping agency for dancers to appear alongside a fast rising American chart star and then hire them does tickle my fancy. Would never happen nowadays.

Despite seeing the video a good number of times as Sylvester climbed his way into the top ten of the British singles chart, I never recognised Cosey as being one of the dancers. She is the girl with the long brown hair, shimmying her ass as the video opens alongside the girl with black hair.

Released in Britain during the height of the summer of 1978 and produced by Sylvester and Motown legend Harvey Fuqua, here is the second best disco track ever recorded. And don’t try this falsetto at home, folks. Not unless you have some helium handy.

Bizarrely enough, Cosey often later danced to the song during her stripping days in and around London. And not only that but she would sometimes wear the very same shorts you see in the promo as she did so. As she told The Quietus in 2015: ‘They were really good for stripping in.’

This should’ve been an anecdote in Art Sex Music surely but somehow wasn’t. Maybe it’ll feature in the biopic that Cosey announced a few months ago. The film will largely draw from her autobiography and Andrew Hulme has been attached to direct. I wonder who’ll play the devil’s filth witch?

Oh, and if you’re wondering, Cosey found that particular insult amusing. She and her partner Chris even adopted it as an occasional nickname for her. Wonder what the woman who called her that is up to at the moment?

And now for a little disco (of sorts) from Cosey’s days in Throbbing Gristle. There’s a big I Feel Love influence going down here with those pulsing Moog Modular synthlines and breathy, Je T’aime style vocals. This is Hot on the Heels of Love, which might even make it into my top ten disco tracks.

For more on Cosey: http://www.coseyfannitutti.com/