As you may notice, the OP of that thread lives in the UK and is inquiring about discos. Now, I am a non-clubbing US-ian, and it’s been my impression that the disco is pretty well dead in America. However, I have read several European books placed long past the heady era of extreme disco popularity in which the characters do, indeed, go out to the disco.
So is it true that disco is dead in America but at least moderately alive in Europe? Or am I misconstruing? Is it possible that the word “disco” in Europe has very little to do with ridiculous John Travolta movies and is just the word Europeans use for “club” or “dance club”? What, in short, is the straight dope about the modern disco?
It seems strange to have to explain this – but time passes, I suppose, and people forget, or perhaps it’s just that discos were never as popular in America – whatever.
In the Sixties, the once-popular dance halls, where people danced to live bands, fell out of favour with the young people of the day, to be replaced with venues where the dancing was done to records. People had been doing this on an ad hoc basis for decades, but in a professionally organised way it first became fashionable in Paris, and so an event or venue of this type came to be known by the french word discotheque – soon shortened to disco.
Discos were everywhere – clubs, pubs, youth clubs, church halls, school dances, wedding receptions – they became the standard form of musical entertainment, cheaper and easier to set up than a live performance, and you could dance to your favourite tunes, played by your favourite bands.
In the Seventies, a style of music arose, which became known as “Disco” because of its popularity at these venues. Eventually (and it seemed to take forever) it died out – but the discos themselves carried on just as before.
There’s more of a “club” culture in Europe.
It’s sort of waning as the E-freaks from the 90s start get married and settling down, but basically it’s about getting off your tits and bouncing up and down in a glorified warehouse with 20,000 people.
The UK especially has a big Drum n’ Bass scene (less speed, more weed), which as far as I know isn’t as big a thing anywhere else except Brazil.
