"They were--and surprisingly still are--the Village People, that celebration of '70s hedonism now making another go of it in the '9Os," music critic Charles Passy said.

"Forget the KISS revival that has been thundering its way across the musical landscape," Sandra Grace said in Boston's In Weekly. "The Village People, the prodigal sons of '70s disco, remain the ultimate purveyors of musical kitsch. Though the similarities remain - both bands sold millions of records, they are pop drag pioneers, both bands were hatched in the disposable '70s - The Village People only took a short vacation from the public consciousness, and have remained a viable musical act throughout its career. The band's biggest hits, 'Macho Man,' 'YMCA,' and 'In the Navy,' are radio and dance floor chestnuts of the first order, reminders of a time when music didn 't take itself so seriously.

"Currently consisting of The Military Rep (Alexander Briley), The Construction Worker (David Hodo), The Biker (Glenn Hughes), The Cowboy (Jeff Olson), The Native American (Felipe Rose), and The Cop (Kaymond Simpson), the band has been performing with KC & The Sunshine Band, Vicki Sue Robinson, and others.

"We're now a cultural thing," said Rose, one of four of the six original members still in the group. "If it was just a disco revival, you wouldn't have the producers of 'Married...with Children' inviting us to be on the show and then rewriting an entire episode around us. You wouldn't have 'The Tonight Show' flying us out to Los Angeles with our band. We're legitimate entertainers now. If you go up to the Concord Hotel in New York and you look at the roster, you'll see Joan Rivers, Buddy Hackett, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, the Beach Boys, the Village People."

And that's only the beginning. Passy said, "The group is in high demand at college campuses and festivals throughout North America and Europe. Village People songs are on the soundtracks to such films as 'Addams Family Values' and 'Serial Mom.' The Pet Shop Boys have recorded one of the group's lesser-known hits, "Go West.' And there's that hilarious send-up of the group in "Wayne's World 2," when the lead characters stumble into a gay bar.

Now it's "Disco is Back!" As gay music critic Will Grega said, "And it's back with a vengeance with 'Best of Village People' and 'The Casablanca Records Story,' a 4-CD box set featuring some of the biggest, most outrageous and influential tracks in dance music history. The box set covers the label's early beginnings (including Donna Summer's 17-minute version of 'Love To Love You, Baby'), and runs up to its later successes (Irene Cara's 'Flashdance' and Michael Sembello's 'Maniac'both #1 hits), and contains over 5 hours of digitally remastered music that recreates an era in musical history once laughed at, but now only beginning to gain the respect it deserves."

Richard Smith in Seduced and Abandoned says, "This time round Village People are being repackaged as pure camp, something Susan Sontag once defined as 'a seriousness that fails...when the theme is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance. Thus things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt.'

"Jacques Morali's dream of creating a 'top star gay group' may have failed. But as a metaphor for gay men's position in society they remain without equal. In the Village People's world the best of times weren't here, they were always just around the corner, the rainbow just out of reach."

Amazing for what is essentially a gay act. But, according to Rose, they didn't think about it. And Passy says that is the point: "There was nothing manipulative or self-conscious about the Village People. Jacques Morali conceived the idea of the Village People after having seen the half-Native American Rose perform at various gay nightspots in New York's Greenwich Village. On one occasion, Rose happened to be near a man in cowboy garb and another wearing a hard hat."

"And after that I say to myself, 'You know, this is fantastic' to see the cowboy, the Indian, the construction worker with other men around," Morali said in an interview at the height of the group's late-'70s popularity. "And also, I think to myself that the gay people have no group, nobody to personalize the gay people." So, Morali created the group, pulling from New York's rich talent pool. "Most of the guys when they came into it, they came into it to work. They were hired as professionals," Rose says. "Jacques told them, 'You're going to be a construction worker, you're going to be a biker."'

Somewhere along the way, the Village People went mainstream. "Macho Man" hit AM radio. "The next thing we know we started doing TV appearances,'' says Rose. A camp sensation was born. The more the group was lauded for its ridiculousness, the more ridiculous it became.

"It didn't take long for the bubble to burst, however," Passy said. "Always vilified by pop critics, disco died an early death, with the Village People held as all that was insipid about the genre."

Grega says, "The original Village People EP was produced for the gay club circuit with no thought that this non-existent act would ever cross-over into the mainstream. When the record went on to sell over 100,000 copies by virtue of club play alone, the producers realized they had to cast their characters with real men and record a full album.

"Surprisingly evasive about their sexuality in interviews (reportedly at orders from producer Morali), they were Christopher Street's fantasies come to life, and they managed to inject a small element of gay sensibility into the mainstream. ...Village People were quintessential American stereotypes, cartoons come to life, live action figures. The group took a risk unprecedented in music history of short-circuiting their careers by being unabashedly gay, masculine and sexual. Even though the songs were not blatantly gay, they were certainly open to interpretation.

"The remarkable thing about Village People is that they managed to exploit gay images without offending their straight audience. After finding mainstream success the group was criticized by the gay community for not embracing gay issues as flag-waving homosexuals, and for neglecting to hold themselves up as role models, representatives, and crusaders for social justice. Randy Jones, the original cowboy explains, 'Well, you can't please all of the people all of the time. Also remember, in only four short years of flash fame during which we were on tour world-wide non-stop, there was hardly enough time to try to forge and foist a progressive political philosophy, especially on fans who only wanted to dance!"

Felipe Rose's greatest memory of the Village People is this (during the filming of "Can't Stop the Music"): One day on the set, he dropped acid and danced, stoned. Someone said, "Lights, camera, action,'' and Felipe, tripping, realized that he - in that moment - was actually living out the song "In Hollywood (Everybody Is a Star)." He was in pure heaven.

"But the truth was," according to William Shaw, writing for Details, "the Village People were exhausted. The filming, rehearsing, performing, plus the constant round of promotion the producers were pushing them to do were all too much. The merry-go-round hadn't stopped for two years. Morali's perfectionist tantrums were wearing the band down, too. His sense of his own superiority made him aloof and arrogant. ...(And) Morali's sense of genius was to receive a major blow. If timing is everything, then the Village People movie stands as a perfect 'how not to.' By the time filming was completed, America had suddenly and abruptly turned its back on disco. In Nashville, they were burning dance records on TV. Disco sucked. Hastily changing the movie's title to 'Can't Stop the Music' would not be enough; the film went down as one of the great follies of the time. The old Broadway formula that worked for 'Grease' looked tired. A tidal wave of pop-punk swamped the charts, and boys sang songs about girls with names like Sharona. The knives came out; the reviewers didn't even attempt kindness."

But for five more years, Jacques and the six members of the band chased on. (Randy Jones had left, replaced by model Jeff Olsen.) "With the Renaissance album in 1981," Shaw said, "the group attempted to hitch its wagon to Britain's New Romantic movement. Dutifully, they made up, crimped their hair, and watched the album die. The last, disastrous gasp was 1984's Sex Over the Phone. It was a worthy attempt to return to the risque territory they knew best, aiming to ape the European success of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. But by then, no one cared."

Morali returned to his native Paris, furious with the music business, and furious about what was happening to his body he had discovered he was HIV-positive. "He never felt people loved him," Jose Eber said. "He always felt that people wanted something from him. And he didn't trust a lot of people. Even when he didn't have so much money, he always felt that he had to buy people."

"For Jacques, ultimately," Shaw said, "intimacy was just a transaction. There was a reason. The saddest thing about Jacques Morali is that he knew the cause of his unhappiness but was never able to do anything about it. Only a few close friends knew. Once he revealed his secret: Living in the south of France, Jacques had earned his money as a male prostitute. The utter lack of self-worth he felt during that time explains much about his motivations. In Paris, Jacques lived with his new lover, a sweet, gentle German boy named Harald. Friends say that Harald was different, that Jacques never felt exploited by him. But the one who loved him for who he was turned out to be HIV-positive as well. As their illnesses progressed, Jacques became convinced that all his friends were dropping him. Jacques's paranoia wore out friendships fast. He felt deserted." "We were the victims of an industry that changed its format and of the hate-mongers who still believed that rock 'n' roll was the best music in the world,' Rose says now.

"This time around, it's much sweeter," Rose concludes. "We're still around. Most of the people aren't."

Excerpted from The Best of the Superstars 1997: The Year in Sex, Edited by John Patrick, one of a series from STARbooks Press, a foremost publisher of high quality erotic tales. Information about STARbooks offerings can be found at your local book store or by mail from STARbooks Press, P.O. box 2737-E, Sarasota, Florida 34230.