It’s possible to like disco AND new wave. I did.
I do, too (well, subject to Sturgeon’s Law, of course). I was joking that the thesis “one of the reasons for the anti-disco backlash was that disco was much worse than the rock music of the early 70s” should logically be false, because the mainstream rock music of the 70s was just as bad as disco. New Wave didn’t hit the mainstream till the 80s, and at any rate would not have been appreciated by the people pining for the rock of the early 70s.
Of course, just because something is logically false doesn’t make it false in the court of public opinion, as people are not always logical. Many people probably did blame disco for the perceived lack of good rock music in the late 70s.
I was in my early teens by the late 1970s, so the Disco wars didn’t much affect me - I did perfer rock, but wouldn’t freak when my friend’s older sisters would play Disco. Besides, I had lots of cassettes w/ classic rock (then called rock - Beatles/Stones/Who/Zep…classic rock was '50s stuff back then, boys & girls). Then I moved seemlessly into Punk & New Wave by the early 1980s, Disco was ‘dead’(heh), and the rest is history…
…and history repeats - in the early/mid 1990s ‘Grunge/Alternative/Progressive’ which I loved (yes, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, STP and the rest - heck even Pearl Jam was considered Alternative/Grunge back then) was everywhere, on all stations - even on urban radio stations like WKTU (heh) - hell, we had 4, maybe 5 alternative stations in NY for a brief period of time, and I was loving it…and knew that it couldn’t last. Of course it didn’t, and for a time we went down to 0 alternative/progressive stations (including WLIR/WDRE - gone!). Now, I think we are back to .5 of a station - not sure what the college stations play now-adays, recently heard from some 20-somethings it’s 70s rock).
BTW, Disco has served me well in the past decade, went to many dances and parties during that time (this was before all the 30/40-something single ladies disappeared from Long Island) - the ladies wanted to dance, they liked all kinds of Dance music (including Disco as well as 90s club music and 21st century contemporary R&B), and you didn’t have to be capable of the full SNF repertoire of dance moves, just needed some rhythm and a little bit of style.
Debating what year was better in terms of popular music is the subject of another thread but I picked 1971 for the number of especially notable albums albums put out that year like The Who’s “Who’s Next”, the Stone’s “Sticky Fingers”, Lennon’s “Imagine”, Led Zeppelin IV, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”, and many others I don’t have time and space to mention here.
Also, apparently we both discovered pop music around the same time. However, my perspective was completely the opposite of yours. During the years of my adolescence, I was convinced that I was living the Dark Ages (or–more fittingly-- Dork Ages) of Popular Music. It seemed like the stuff put out from the years 1964 to about 1972 was so much better but I had missed it because I was born too late.
Getting back to the thread topic, there’s one reason why disco declined so rapidly that hasn’t been addressed: the economy. The years 1976 to 1979 were boom years for the recording industry with just about any album that made the Top 20 going at least platinum (one million sales) and any single that hit the Top 10 going gold. Then, the Iranian Revolution resulted in the price of oil spiking thereby driving up the cost of albums which were made with petroleum-derivatives. At the same time, the price of oil caused the price of gas and other items to increase causing people to cut back on other less-necessary items–like albums. It suddenly wasn’t worth it to buy an entire album only because you liked one single on it (especially if that one single was likely being played to death on the radio anyway). Thus, the recording industry went into a recession that didn’t really end until late 1982 with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
Thinking back to those years, my real musical secret was that I liked classical music. It was what my parents played all the time, what I listened to at home from the time I was a baby. They took me to classical concerts regularly. But in high school I could never admit it, because classical music was totally uncool.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I met people my own age who also listened to classical.
Well I think that it was a big joke that some people took to the extreme.
Soft Rock(sometimes now called “Yacht Rock”) came along about the same time as Disco. As antipathetic as Disco was held at the time, at worst it’s now largely remembered as a silly annoyance (and I’m speaking as one who keenly remembers often having to drive cross-country alone all night with nothing available over the car radio besides Disco). Still, a third-century later, Soft Rock is seen as the greater sin against the spirit of Rock.
Who bears more scorn after all this time: Donna Summer or Michael Bolton?
I was totally a “Disco Sucks” guy back in the day. I outgrew that silly attitude.
I know what you mean here but it almost sounds like you’re saying he cleared up his sexual ambiguity and reestablished his macho image by singing showtunes. Which would be a new one.
Ooo, thanks for pointing that out. Definitely did not want to convey that he cleared up any sexual ambiguity. (Maybe marrying Rachel Hunter helped him there a bit, but his musical stylings… eehhhh not so much.)
It stank. And it went on a loooong time.
Or how about Barry Manilow, who was HUGE in the late 70s?
Please! Not even close: Donna Summer innovated in a music style that folks may not like (hence this thread) but was hugely popular and endures to this day. She’s already been revisited and offered respect-in-hindsight a number of times.
Bolton is just a douchebag.
Huh. I thought he was a no-talent assclown.
Crap - I can’t believe I let that reference go untapped :smack::smack:
I absolutely agree. I have a few songs from Donna Summer on my iPod right now.
As other Dopers have said, the radio stations played disco songs until Hell wouldn’t have them.
Disco was all right on the dance floor, but most songs, aside from a few gems like “The Last Dance” and “The Hustle” weren’t that good either.
I must also say that while I didn’t like most of her music in the '70’s, Donna Summer has one helluva voice. To compare her to a no-talent asshat like Michael Bolton is an insult to the lady.
Hopefully after dark, by something with a pale complexion and extra-long incisors.
I believe I had my first inkling that civilization was doomed when the Hues Corporation’s “Rock The Boat” became a hit.
- rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby
rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over
rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby
rock the boat-t-t-t-t
Our love is like a ship on the o-cean
spawning loathing and derision and re-vulsion*
I suppose if you were heavily into the dance scene some disco might have been bearable*, but - listening to it on the radio???
*Buried deep, deep within the recesses of my Ipod are a couple of songs by K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Uh-huh Uh-huh.
I specifically exclude Donna Summer from my general distaste for disco. But the list of great singers that came out of (as opposed to simply passed through) disco pretty much starts and ends with her.