SYLVESTER The Original Hits (2009 issue UK 11-track CD album - Now that it's been tamed into 'dance-oriented pop', it's hard to remember that disco in the Seventies, like rap in the early Eighties, was the music of a community. That community waspredominantly blacks and gay whites, both upwardly mobile and dreaming of dance-floor transcendence of gritty reality. As long as the slinky Eurorhythms kept pumping, the night would never get tired of Donna Summer, Grace Jones and Sylvester.It's the late Eighties now, and the naive party fever of disco's height can never return, and Sylvester himself has fallen prey to the scourge. All the more reason, then, for this compilation of what made him the beacon of an era, with his boas and stilettos and outrageous stage shows and Little Richard-style falsetto poised between the church and sin. Signed to Fantasy in 1977, Sylvester came out of the closet with the advanced, snaky synthesizer parts that kicked 'You Make Me Feel [Mighty Real]' and 'Dance [Disco Heat]' into the Top 40.)