You’d be forgiven for wondering if Vaughan Mason owned stock in a ball-bearing factory. Back in 1979, a Wall Street Journal report that 300,00 pairs of roller skates were being sold each month caught Mason’s eye, and he soon set about making an anthem for the rinks. The result was Vaughan Mason and Crew’s “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll,” a knock-off of Chic’s “Good Times” that became an epochal slice of roller disco all by itself, fueling innumerable birthday parties and Saturday nights. Beyond the roller rink, “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” continues to boogie through pop culture: You can hear it in Daft Punk’s “Da Funk,” the Avalanches’ “Electricity,” and shouted out by Janet Jackson on “R&B Junkie.”
When Mason teamed up with vocalist Butch Dayo in 1983 to cut Feel My Love, a five song EP, he crafted another roller-disco number in “Rollalong Songs.” Full of rubbery bass, phased snares and handclaps, and a chant urging you to lace up your skates and grab a partner, it seemed like another sure shot for the rink. But that track couldn’t replicate the magic of his first hit. Within a year, the once-mighty disco imprint Salsoul Records would shutter, and the sound of boogie was soon overtaken by hip-hop and house. (Mason turned his attention to the latter under the name Raze.)
Mason had pretty much been a one-trick pony up until that point, good at assessing other artists’ hits and repurposing them (another single, “Jammin Big Guitar,” would lift parts of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”), but on Feel My Love he branches out and tests other sounds. Not always successfully: It was definitely a mistake to open the set with the torpid piano-and-synth ballad “Oh Love” rather than close with it. That said, he was astute enough to let master DJ Shep Pettibone mix “Party on the Corner,” filling the song with go-go bells, roto-toms, starburst synths, and a sinuous percussion breakdown. “You Can Do It” uses a similar template, making for a boogie track with cosmic-disco elements. Both songs were released as singles, but as cagey as Mason was in flipping a few ideas into a music career, he failed to recognize the true hit he actually had on his hands in the title track.
Feel My Love disappeared, but these days it is sought-after, thanks to the earworm of “Feel My Love” itself, which resonates from the old school well into our meme-able present (this reissue comes courtesy of British label Be With Records). You can trace the aesthetic and sonic template of Dâm-Funk and Chromeo back to this song. It’s strange and immediately endearing, its sleekness cut with some cheese, with bits of electro, modern soul, and house embedded in its boogie sound; it’s powered by simplistic drum programming yet still deeply funky, while Dayo’s overly earnest vocal performance lends an almost naive quality. With a bright, incessant synth line that squirts like a spooned grapefruit, “Feel My Love” has been a staple of block parties, low riders, and skate parties ever since, from the Bronx to SoCal. Simple and sharp, it’s proof of Mason’s knack for keeping wheels rolling.
