Can’t Stop . . . the Village People? : Yes, 17 Years Later, the Disco Troupe Is Working Hard to Keep the Party Going

You’re at a cocktail party, you’re introduced to a man, you ask him what he does for a living . . . and he answers, “I’m the construction worker in the Village People.”

How do you react?

David Hodo is the hard-hatted character in the camp disco troupe, known--and often scorned--for such ‘70s bubble-gum dance hits as “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.”

For 17 years now he’s watched and listened to people’s response upon hearing his profession. Not infrequently the result would be stifled snickers, but lately, Hodo says, it’s a different story.

“Now they usually go, ‘Oh my God! I’ve been in love with you since I was 8!’ ” Hodo says. “But then they remind you of how old you are.”

Hodo wouldn’t tell us how old he is, but he’s thrilled to have a new young following. Today the Village People have a higher profile than at any time since the late-’70s. “Y.M.C.A.” is used prominently as part of a gag in the new “Wayne’s World 2”; “Macho Man” is similarly employed in “Addams Family Values,” while the group’s lesser-known “Go West” was recently recorded by the Pet Shop Boys for their new album, “Very.”

“Who’d-a thunk it?” says Hodo, laughing.

And demand for concert appearances--which he says never waned--is on a rise, with the likes of a spot opening for Duran Duran on New Year’s Eve at the Forum.

“We’re constantly busy,” says Hodo. “We just got back from a tour in Germany and now we’re playing a week in Texas. We’ve played every kind of place, from little smoky discos to stadiums.”

The Village People were founded by French producer Jacques Morali, capitalizing on the gay subculture of the disco world. Morali recruited the performers around New York City and wrote a series of dance-floor anthems that celebrated male bonding in a way that could be taken either as gay in-jokes or just silly fun.

“From the beginning it was taken as a joke, a sort of novelty act,” Hodo says. “And not that we’re saying it isn’t a joke. We’re the first ones to laugh.”

Whatever was the case, it found an audience. For a brief period, the Village People ranked among the top-selling pop artists in the world, with “Macho Man” cracking the U.S. Top 40 in 1978, followed that year by “Y.M.C.A.” rising all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart and “In the Navy” going to No. 3 in early ’79. In the same short time, three Village People albums sold more than a million copies each.

Interest was high enough that the group was even able to star in its own movie, “Can’t Stop the Music,” though by the time it was released in 1980, the disco era had stopped and the group’s fame evaporated, leaving it merely a laughed-at memory. The movie flopped.

Even so, the group was able to continue performing steadily, and the current lineup is the same one that appeared in the film, with Hodo joined by Felipe Rose (the Native American), Glen Hughes (the biker), Alex Briley (the GI), Jeff Olsen (the cowboy) and lead singer Ray Simpson (the cop).

And now the passing of time and cultural developments have added a certain patina to the act.

“Now people are saying, ‘My God, they’re still around!’ And it gives us some legitimacy,” Hodo says.

Today--even as the group remains the subject of derisive satire--it’s not uncommon to hear the Village People lauded as one of the first instances of gay culture reaching mainstream America. The group is oft-cited as a relic from a time of pre-AIDS sexual liberation. Adding to that is the fact that Morali died of AIDS in 1991, and the group itself has participated in many AIDS-awareness benefit events.

But Hodo cautions against making too much of what the group stands for now or stood for in the ‘70s.

“You hear people come up with all these deep translations of our stuff, and we’ve always said that it just ain’t that deep,” he says. “People have come up with all these double-entendres that are supposedly in our songs, but the people who wrote them were French and had no concepts of American double-entendres. People have always read stuff into our music and that’s fine, but it just isn’t there, other than what you see in the lyrics.

“Our message has always been from the beginning that this show and this act is a party,” he says. “It’s not a political party, it’s simply about forgetting your problems and having the time of your life.”