What a Bathhouse Would Have Sounded Like in S.F. Circa 1979

Anybody remember Fox Studio? The defunct gay porn studio once gave some money to San Francisco-based electronic musician Patrick Cowley to do a soundtrack for their flick School Daze (1980), starring Rob Schott and Tom LeDuc, before Cowley died at age 32 in the early days of AIDS.

Anyway, with underground disco tracks like this now en vogue with kids like SF-based DJ troupe Honey Soundsystem, it stands to reason that someone like them would have dug this stuff out of a box and remastered it for all to hear. In fact, NPR’s All Songs Considered is even giving a first listen stream to the new album, titled “School Daze,” which features the track below, “Mockingbird Dream,” now set to a video with some soft-core footage taken from the porn of the same name. Buy the full record here.

It’s sexy stuff, even if the video is pretty tame. Rumor has it that in S.F. in the early 80s, a counter-culture of bath houses started springing up on Polk Street in reaction to the proliferation of places that only played disco, or dark-and-dirty electro like this, and those newer spots started playing punk and rock-and-roll instead. That is until the city shut them all down as the AIDS crisis unfolded.

Break out the poppers, have a listen, and dream of a simpler time where moustached men in towels wandered dark halls, groped in corners, and fucked in the sauna for all to see. Also, if anyone knows who that is in the photo above, from “The Surfer,” please let us know.

[NPR via Gay Porn Blog]