Disco Sucks!

Alright Jean, you drug it out of me.

I always saw Disco as music you never had to think a lot about. Just dance the night away and have a good time, right? Ask any coc aine dealer who made a ton of money in the 70's if he liked disco. It was good for business.

When you have music you can dance to, it's an escape for some people. Disco isn't for deep thinkers. When I first latched on to music it wasn't disco. It was rock. Back then though, I didn't know if I was a deep thinker or not. I just got into the words of things like "The bitch is back" and "Hand of Fate". The thing about the Stones here is, Mick Jagger was always the one who wanted to keep pace with what the current musical trends were. So in the 70's he wanted to try the disco thing because it was a huge money maker.

Say what you will about Jagger, he always focused on the business aspect of the whole thing. Kieth Richards though, he didn't see it that way. He always wanted to stay true to why they started playing music in the first place. To play blues based rock. That's why, even though the credits don't specify, you can tell who wrote the words to Hand of Fate and who wrote the music. The music was all Mick. Hand of Fate has a beat you can dance to, but listen to the words. How's that for a mental image? Someone on the dance floor shaking it to THAT song.

I think that's why Black and Blue wasn't really a big seller. Consumers didn't get it. Mick came to Kieth with the music and said "Okay here's what I've got. Let's work with this" Kieth would listen to it and say "Fine you wanna be a pansy about it, here's some words that'll go with it. Sorry Mick that's all I've got. Work with it".

And the end result? People still debate whether disco is dead or not while people like The Stones are cutting their new album. Let time be the judge I say.

But really, I never got into the whole "Kill Disco" thing. I was too busy enjoying the music I enjoyed and learning to play pool at the same time.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
Here's one of my favorite Disco songs.

Plus, I'm absolutely mesmerized by the dancing girl they have in this video:

And yet that was an 80's song, proving that Disco did not die in 1979!

Interesting take on Disco . I always thought that the Rock'n'Roll did naturally evolve into Disco janro .

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


maybe too subtle for some

and not subtle enough for others

:-)

S&F

Made such a good sample

Disco Is far from dead. Sure it went to sleep for a minute in the 80's when hair bands and the Euro invasion (Duran Duran, etc) came into play. But in the early 90's there was a resurgence that began and is still heard to this day. Also Techno went to sleep for a bit, but now listen its as big as ever LMAO and tons of other groups all string hypnotic techno beats into their pop songs. Whenever there is a party, wedding, It seems that one thing holds true to most age groups when a Classic disco song comes on(insert title here) all of the sudden we all know them and the dance floor is full.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


My Uncle the Priest - the very same Uncle I write about here - after retiring from the army took a parish in Deming. If you read that story you'll better understand this story when I tell you that it was one night when my Mother and I got into an argument and she wasn't going to let me go to the steakhouse transformed into a disco on weekends, but I in my rebelliousness went anyway. My Uncle was stationed in El Salvador at the time but happened to be visiting and he, acting as a surrogate father, went to that "discoteque" and yanked my butt out of their as we argued in the parking lot of the steakhouse.

I had never seen my Uncle, a Catholic Priest, so angry. I wouldn't relent and in outrage he grabbed me by the lapels of my disco jacket and shook me and finally pushed me away. I went flying into a barbed wire fence. My Uncle was horrified, just then discovering the nasty problems of parenthood they probably don't tell Priests in seminary school. I doubt they spend much time in seminary school discussing the rebellious nature of teenagers, and disco? I have no idea what the Catholic church had to say about disco. By that time in my rebellious life I had long since excommunicated the Pope and stopped hanging out in his house...for a time.

It was right around that time, this time when my Uncle, my replacement Father who was always called by the honorific Father, humiliated me in front to that special someone who only wanted to "just be friends" anyway, and shortly after when I would come to despise The Bee Gees. Not because of their falsetto voices, or their disco dress, but because I never really wanted to shake-shake-shake, shake my booty, I just wanted to win the affections of a girl who wanted to win the affections of someone else, and during this time, while a nation still tried to lick its wounds over a lying President they all called "Tricky Dick" - as if all Presidents before him were Saints, just like Dicks Mother - and Chevy Chase made fun of Gerald Fords bumbling antics, the whole disco thing was this bizarre anomaly.

This was the time when several of my friends and I, wanting to rebel against the girls who placed what we thought too much sacredness on prom, all wrote letters to pop stars and celebrities asking them to the prom. It was just a goof. Tom wrote Linda Ronstadt, Christ wrote Farrah Fawcet, Craig wrote I don't remember and I wrote Donna Summer. Donna Summer was hot, hot, hot, and that moaning on Love to Love You Baby only made her hotter, and of all the letters sent, Donna Summer was the only one to reply. It was a rejection letter, but it was the coolest, sweetest rejection letter anyone could ask for. She explained she was on tour at that time and even sent a copy of itinerary to prove it, but thanked me for asking and told me she wished she could be there with me at my prom. It was cool and while none of the others bothered to reply, all my friends took the same amount of giddy pleasure that I did that Donna Summer turned me down for the prom.

I didn't pick Donna Summer because she was the "Disco Queen", I was just really enamored by her looks and that voice, and I never really saw her as disco and interestingly neither did she.

Donna Summer's early records were concept-heavy and experimental, but she wanted more – she aspired to be a pop grande dame on the level of Diana Ross. "I do not consider myself a disco artist," she told Time magazine. "I consider myself a singer who does disco songs." She elaborated in her 1978 Rolling Stone cover story, telling Mikal Gilmore her voice was too big to be confined in any genre. "I've sung gospel and Broadway musicals all my life and you have to have a belting voice for that. And because my skin is black they categorize me as a black act, which is not the truth. I'm not even a soul singer. I'm more a pop singer."

Disco, for me, was a brief three or four month period where I would comb my hair back like John Travolta and pout petulantly as I danced. For whatever reasons, for me, disco could never be as cool as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Eric Burden, Led Zep, or even Willie, Waylon, and The Man in Black. It took me years to come to appreciate the prescience of Gaynor's anthem, and I only now am coming to give poor, poor, pitiful K.C. a break for his infectious music.

P.S. It was NMSU's radio station in the SUB that turned me onto REM when they were still singing songs that no one had any idea what the hell the lyrics were. I used to hang in the lobby of that student union building studying, and here is where I discovered REM, Camper van Beethoven, and The Replacements.

reply to post by 12m8keall2c

... and what, exactly, would that backlash be, perchance?

Disco Backlash:

Gloria Gaynor: Well, what they call the "disco backlash" did catch me by surprise because I just couldn't understand. If you don't like a certain kind of music, then don't listen! You know, nobody's making anybody listen to it.

Gee, I wonder what the hell Gloria Gaynor means by "disco backlash". In fairness to you:

Giorgio Moroder: Actually I didn't see the disco backlash coming because I felt everybody was happy, people were dancing, it was a great feel, it created a new kind of lifestyle. The problem obviously was that it became a little too repetitive, so like one song was very close to the next one, and the next one very similar. The drum were kind of the same. So it started to become a little boring.

But let's be honest here; unless you were living under a rock during these times, there was certainly a backlash, which is why it is discussed so much:

Kevin McCormick: I think Saturday Night Fever may have contributed to the disco backlash. I think, you know, with anything there's a moment in time where you look around and you can't get away from something. And it was really wall-to-wall; it was everywhere.

And discussed:

Nile Rodgers: The whole "Disco Sucks" movement really broke my heart. Even though with Chic, we didn't really think of ourselves as a disco band. We didn't think that they were talking about us!

And discussed:

Joyce Bogart Trabulus: It's uh, kind of an interesting phenomena for me, because I managed Kiss, and I also managed Donna Summer. And the people who loved Kiss are the people who killed disco. You know, it came out of the Midwest roaring, kind of, you know, "disco sucks!", you know, kind of thing. And I always wonder if this is going to happen to rap today—everything was disco all of a sudden.

And discussed:

Janice-Marie Johnson: Well, being called disco had a huge effect on the band, because disco was dying, which meant we were getting ready to lose our record deal. You know, if disco is dying than you're not going to have too many disco artists signed to major labels. We changed with the times.

Lessons in music history; how does the backlash against disco compare against the backlash against pop music?

Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco

Oh, I don't know, perchance that backlash?

This is a great documentary on The Disco movement. I have to admit I'm a huge fan of disco, I wasn't around at the time, but I have always loved the Music, not the cheesy stuff, the more soulful, Salsoul Orchestra kind of thing.

I love the 4/4 beat and high hat patterns.

Anyway this covers a lot of what JPZ has covered in his OP.

I starred for David Bowie alone.

I remember a class re-union I went to where they kept playing disco. I said to a friend, "What's with all the crappy disco music?" She said, "That's what we listened to back then." I said, "That might be what YOU listened to back then, it's not what I listened to!"

I remember the rock vs. disco mini culture war. Clearly the OP had a better seat, being apparently two years older and within shouting distance of a major instigator. But I contributed to the "Death Before Disco" artwork that was circulating, made bootleg copies of "Heaven and Hell" to spread the gospel. I didn't realize it was unusual, I just saw it as part of the cliquosity of high school.

Time went by. I heard that Rob Halford of Judas Priest was gay. I went, "Well...that figures." I'd always known that David Bowie and Elton John were freinds of Dorothy. It never mattered. What started to percolate through my skull is that all these classifications of music (rock hard rock metal heavy metal speedmetalthrashmetaldeathmetal techno emo ska reggaecalipso disco funk folk acid acidbassacidjazz...) are the most meaningless mental masturbation I've ever been exposed to. One could argue that it has it's uses, but I could argue right back that the OP called David Bowie's "Heroes" disco. See?

Also, Taupin, that Dr. Who The Bitch is Back video. Awesome find. Danke shoen.

I must send Steve Dahl a thank you letter

No, music is music and i love to listen to anything! Dance, rock, Classical, Celtic! Frank Sinatra, Soul! Music is wonderful because it can move you in so many ways.

Though im not sad to see disco dead

reply to post by Vitruvius

One could argue that it has it's uses, but I could argue right back that the OP called David Bowie's "Heroes" disco. See?

I get that I was less than clear about this in the O.P., and Youtube doesn't feature the "disco remix" so I wound up posting a standard live version of the song, but Bowie's "disco remix" was certainly getting plenty of play in the discoteque's. Disco's influence on Bowie and Eno's collaborative effort is undeniable.

Originally posted by sonnny1
One more thing...

I have to sit through a Bieber concert, in October.

I would rather see "Car Wash" on DVD, then do that. I think before me and my daughters go, I will pop in that soundtrack. Funny, I would play Miles Davis, in the A.M, and I hope my children would understand, their is real music out there. No request, for dads music, thats for sure......

For being a good and patient parent. My daughter insisted on wearing her JB loves me Tshirt yesterday.

This to shall pass. ( I keep telling myself) When I was young all of the girls were smitten for Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett.

I must say that this thread has been quite the journey. Lucky for me I was quite young when the Disco craze peaked. Yes, I had a Village People record because as a silly young kid I thought they looked cool. That record became my first target when I got a new pellet rifle several years later.

Aside from that, my most vivid memories of the Disco Sucks and The Death Before Disco movement are rooted in old episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. Johnny "Dr. Fever" was known to wear his Disco Sucks T Shirt on a regular basis. Quite the contrast between Johnny and the Funky Venus Fly Trap

Watch Dr. Fever get his Funk on at about 25 minute mark

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Yes, I was unaware of a disco remix of "Heroes". I retract my friendly jibe, good sir. I would also like to say I've enjoyed this retrospective. The overt hostility directed against disco is something I've often puzzled about over the years. Your observations have provided me an important piece of the puzzle I've always been missing.

Maybe I should also pull back from my dislike of categorizing music? MMmmm...nah. That stems from my disgust with the music industry. That's not going away any time soon

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
You want to know the real reason it died?

Many of those performers were gay.

But not all of it is bad, there is some good sounds out there.

If it weren't for Disco, we wouldn't have The Jackson Five, which later on gave us Michael and Janet Jackson.

What a gift to humanity. Molesting little boys and injecting sleeping pills. What would we do without em?

Oh BTW, just saying.

New Disco Conspiracy. It is all mind control.

Huh?
Music was not real again until the late nineties?

What, nobody like Phil Collins or Michael Jackson ever made an influence on pop?

Eh, I just don't get it. Sorry.

But music is music. I guess it goes in waves.

As for me, I will listen to the music I like, not just because it's hip and trendy. If it has a good ebat, a good sound, a good melody, then regardless of if it's rock, pop, bluegrass or country I'll listen to the songs I like.

I just don't get the "We have to be hip and trendy" crowd. I really don't.

I guess "real" music, whatever that means, is in the eye of the beholder.

For that matter, what the heck do people mean by "real" music anyway?