Posted on 05/17/2012 10:21:14 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
To brighten up your day, a guest on MSNBC just said (indirect quote) "I have never seen a movement in America to quiet a musical genre as the anti-disco fever which was a slap to Donna Summer. It is similar to today's marriage equality: get back in the closet."
He said this while an image of Donna Summer was on the screen. Liberals have absolutely no shame.
After, it was during a “breaking news” segment.
Disco music AIN'T classical music. Classical music is still listened to because it is tried and tested, that is, still being listened to and played all over the planet.
Side-note: the Chinese are big into opera these days, thanks to the Great One, Luciano Pavarotti, who introduced opera to the Chinese. The crowds applauded LOUDLY whenever Pavarotti hit The High Note. Also, there are now Chinese tenors who appear in world-wide opera. Talk about WEIRD to look at...the famous operas are in Italian and German (with some in French and other languages). WEIRD, weird, weird.
And then “Get The Knack” came out, and killed disco for good.
what sleezeballs.
The funny thing that I’ve observed is, going to a lot of parties with people in their mid-40s is that once they put on some 70s disco, everybody immediately starts dancing....and I would suspect most of those people are the people who hated it back then. Like it or not, it was the soundtrack of our lives back then.
Hahaha, so true, so true.
Even more amusing is how many established rock bands delved into disco at its peak...even KISS put out “I Was Made For Loving You” in 1979.
“Disco was the total antithesis of the rock movement”
Rockers certainly thought so, but they forgot themselves. Rock and roll was originally dance music, and never lost that essence, no in its least danceable offshoots. You didn’t see very many people dancing to, say, Black Sabbath or The Ramones, unless you count headbanging and pogoing, which you shouldn’t. But consider one of the biggest surviving rock acts of the disco era, Van Halen, and you have a perfect model for danceable hard rock. You could look back to Led Zeppelin, as well, or sideways to Aerosmith. They weren’t made exclusively for dancing, but they do in a pinch. Heck, you can even dance to AC/DC if you want.
That’s what rock is made for, is what I’m saying, even when it isn’t readily apparent.
“you had to dress up (no T-shirt and jeans rock uniform), you had to actually *learn* how to dance, you had to spend money and have all the *right* things, it was exclusive/exclusionary (the doorman and the velvet rope”
Ah, here we get to the nub of the issue. I don’t believe you needed to learn how to dance, at least not as intensively as before rock. Disco is infinitely easier to pick up than swing, big band, or more advanced line/square dancing. There was the Hustle, and you could salsa, samba, lambada, etc. all you wanted. But they weren’t necessary to get on the floor. They weren’t all Travoltas out there. Most of what they did was as free-form as hip-hop is today.
Anyway, that’s beside the point. What do all the things you mention have in common? Think about it: clothes, structured dancing, club exclusivity...women, that’s what! Women like it when you dress up, show them off on the dance floor, and not have to hang around huddled masses of sweaty guys. Disco was chick music, before it was anything else. It was also gay music, naturally, since gays as you may have noticed are basically women. You, if you were a rocker, had to play along to get you know what. Which undoubtedly frustrated a lot of rockers, having to loitter around music they hated for the sake of something else.
That, more than race, class, or anything else is what seperated disco from the rock of the day. That is, the rock that wasn’t glam, which by the way came back in a big way shortly afterwards under the name hair metal, itself meeting a backlash similar to disco in the following decade.
“And yes, it became very, very overplayed by the time of Disco Demolition in July of 1979.”
Look no further for the cause of the backlash than right here, in my opinion. Disco had limited appeal and for whatever reason, call it popular delusion and the madness of crowds, outgrew its natural fanbase. It would survive under different names: new wave, pop, r&b, hip-hop, etc., to be enjoyed by its female, gay, black, and hispanic devotees as well as the mainstream. But it wouldn’t, couldn’t dominate the mainstream forever, just as heavy metal and punk couldn’t. Because they get old too fast for those who don’t love them exclusively.
“Don’t forget the drug culture that went with it.”
Oh, sure, no one did drugs in the 80s.
Very true, although I lumped the drug issue under “cost”, because rock of course had its own drug culture. Difference being, drugs with young rock fans mainly meant passing around some weed. Drugs in disco meant pills or cocaine, quite a bit more expensive.
It also popularized polyester as a valid clothing material, and also reintroduce the mixed drink instead of previous generation's wine and beer preference.
It restyled dirty-uncombed-hair to something more acceptable. In tern- this led to the zenith of hair styles we saw in the 80s!!
Disco has basically morphed into Techno.
Don’t apologize. The brothers Gibb are/were some of the best pop song writers of all time. There’s entirely too much guilt wrapped around memories of disco. Surely children of the 70s overdid it, but remember, it never actually died.
What they called “new wave,” with bands like Blondie and Duran Duran, is basically indistinguishable from disco. Michael Jackson and Madonna, whose music they dubbed, for lack of a more precise term, “pop” undeniably did disco. Ever listen, really listen, to “PYT” or “Into the Groove”? Rap and hip-hop endlessly recycle, literally, disco tracks.
I can hardly think of any popular music of the rock era that will be listened to as long as the classics. And I mean the real classics, now, the Mozarts, Beethovens, Bachs. At best Sinatra (yes, I realize he’s anchored in a previous era), Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson. But this is an unfair comparison. It’s like setting DaVinci beside doddles in a magazine ad. Classical music is high art, though often with great popular appeal. Rock and roll is all popular appeal.
“Heck, you can even dance to AC/DC if you want.”
I’ve been to a lot of parties where I’ve seen (and been among) people dancing to “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
“Disco reintroduced dancing & clubbing to the dating scene. It also rejected the scuzzy & dirty, and too much hair dress look of the previous generation to a more dressy look.”
Yes, that’s eminently believable as it was, like I said, chick music. We tend to look back at the entire era as one giant fashion travesty, but just think how sick and tired women must have been of hippies. If it took earth tones, pea green, platform shoes, liesure suits, and so forth to get away from body hair and dirt, so be it.
“also reintroduce the mixed drink instead of previous generation’s wine and beer preference”
I never thought of it, but I suppose you didn’t see many hippies with martinis and old-fashioneds.
“I’ve been to a lot of parties where I’ve seen (and been among) people dancing to ‘You Shook Me All Night Long.’”
Have you ever been to a strip club? It’s basically their national anthem.
Thanks. Now I have “Disco Duck” running through my head and I can’t make it stop.
I have never, I repeat, NEVER been in a strip club. :)
Okay, maybe once or twice. But not in a long while.
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