Posted on 07/13/2019 6:32:43 AM PDT by C19fan
And when the Bee Gees were rejected, they kept writing music for another decade. Lots of hits in the 80s were new Bee Gees songs ..performed by someone else. And nobody had a clue.
Anywhere south of Madison in the city. Outside the city, the north, west, and south suburbs./s
From time to time you see one behind enemy lines. We had two Cub fans on my block on the southwest side of the city, but generally Sox fans were southsiders, and Cub fans northsiders.
I know a couple of people who were there that night...one was even able to identify himself in a news photo. That guy, far from being a racist, is a hardcore blues fan today.
He’s openly said the crowd (including himself) was a bunch of dumb teenagers that got caught up in the moment, and that he was half scared to death once the mob psychology set in and people got rowdy.
Don't forget, some of Earth, Wind and Fire's best songs were basically disco, and as much as I didn't like the genre, I have to say now looking back on it that the Bee Gees were a very good band, very talented musicians.
The first time I ever noticed disco on my car radio (where I mostly listened to pop music) was hearing KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975. Local radio stations (in upstate NY) were playing the song incessantly, and I kept thinking "this can't go on, this has got to be some kind of a fad that won't last." I figured it would last six months or a year, but it in fact lasted four or five years.
There were many A-A bands and musicians who one might say "resisted" disco, doing a minimum of disco songs due to market forces but mostly sticking to their own style and taste. The Commodores were one such; Lady was the only disco-style song I can remember them doing; otherwise, they continued to do great ballads and Lionel Ritchie emerged as the main guy in the band, going on become a solo act. Al Jarreau paid minimal attention to disco, otherwise working hard to keep the jazz aspect of pop music alive, along with Steely Dan and (to some extent) the Doobie Brothers.
Also I thought Donna Summer was a very good singer, although I didn't like her sex-heavy music very much, ditto for Madonna, five or six years later.
I was glad to see disco recede into the background, although its influence has never gone away.
By the way, what ultra-cool band wrote a very popular disco song that contained a prominent cha-cha-cha figure, repeated multiple times, that no one noticed as a throwback to the early 1950s?
“Burn baby burn, disco inferno.
Burn that mother down.”
This was a fun read, until the “racist/homophobe” memes popped up.
How I wish something similar could occur for Rap and Hip Hop!
I can dream...
I stand corrected, also interesting to see my team, the Montreal Expos, lose that day to the Giants, even though they were at the top of the NL standings at that time. However, probably Luciano’s take on the umpires making themselves scarce once things got out of hand and why likely stands up though, lol.
“Disco is NOT dead! Disco is LIFE!”
“John Travolta is responsible for the decline of both disco and country music (Urban Cowboy).”
He may have very well been the cherry on the sundae regarding country’s decline during that time. What happened to country music had a lot to do with ones like Chet Atkins and others in Nashville during the late 1950s developing a more adult oriented pop sound to counter the raw edged country and blues and black influenced music that Elvis personified. Therefore, the “Nashville Sound” with the strings and the horns and the background singers and also featured that less country twangy sound came about for better or for worse for all of those years up to and past 1980.
That’s why Randy Travis or Dwight Yoakam or Keith Whitley (RIP), George Strait or The Judds and others who personified the more rootsy, new traditionalist music of the later 1980s initially got turned down by Nashville music executives as sounding “too country”. I can even recall comments from Buck Owens saying his distinctive Bakersfield sound was meant for the dance clubs in California and Texas as opposed to the marketing people in Nashville. And, IIRC, Hank Williams Jr in his book “Living Proof” did not have a lot of nice things to say about what Atkins and others like him did to country during that time and that his (Bocephus’) own music did not conform to what the Nashville people wanted out of him.
Believe it or not, in 1978 Cab Calloway jumped on the disco bandwagon by releasing a disco version of his 1931 hit "Minnie the Moocher."
“The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is better than most music produced in recent years. Many “disco” songs were actually very good funk or R&B”
I did not see that movie until the early 1990’s due to peer pressure. It was actually a very good film.
SOME disco was very good although the BeeGee’s produced very little of value. And I agree - even with an open mind, virtually every piece of popular music of this century has been garbage. I might hear maybe one or two songs a year that is worth listening to.
I remember seeing Dahl on a late night talk show (Tom Snyder?) where Dahl would pick up one of the many disco records he had brought with him every few minutes and smash it over his head. Eventually, he convinced the host to do the same claiming it was therapeutic. At one point, the host asked Steve what was wrong with wanting to dance to disco music. Dahl replied: “If you can’t dance to rock and roll, disco to hell.”
Why did anybody hate it? Because it SUCKED.
We need a (c)rap Demolition Night. It sucks too.
D.R.E.A.D.
“Detroit Rock City”
Best. Opening. Ever.
Much of the disco music that aired on Top 40 radio was pretty unimpressive compared to what aired on the dance floors or disco stations. There was material out of Europe, and subgenres like “space disco”, that made the Bee Gees or K.C. and the Sunshine Band look positively pathetic.
And yes, hardly anything worth a listen, much less keeping, out of this century’s music. I’ve had to go with “alternative” music (Arcade Fire, The Killers, etc.) or Postmodern Jukebox to find anything good.
Disco died, Reagan got elected. Man, the 80s were great.
I never even heard of that incident until sometime in the ‘90s. I too was 10 at the time, and had a disco queen sister and metalhead brother.
Methinks it is overrated as to import. Disco was going to Peter out but it wasn’t because of this fiasco.
As for the white thing, well, disco was basically black funk modified and hugely pushed and performed by blacks. When they were not afraid to exhibit talent instead of the thug non-talent “rap” that cursed us since the ‘80s.
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