I LOVED those shirts! 
seriously, I think those are super cool
A lot of what I wanted to say about why disco was so loathed has already been stated by many of the posters here. Speaking as someone who was just getting into popular music in the late 70’s, it wasn’t just because the music was 100% pure processed Velveeta (after all, the charts in the 70’s were filled with plenty of crappy songs that were both disco and non-disco). What was the most galling and irritating aspect of disco was the incredible arrogance, superficiality, and fanatical devotion to trendiness that seemed inherent in the culture surrounding the music. A good demonstration of this was Studio 54 with its club doorman choosing who was hip enough to go in and who wasn’t. It was like some horribly cliquey junior high school where the “cool” kids despotically controlled everything. Thus, when it was announced in the media that disco had “taken over” (as the cover of Newseek declared with a headline that ranks just below the Chicago Tribune’s “Dewey Beats Truman” in terms of major journalistic mistakes by major publications), there was the fear among fans of rock that there was some sort of great shift taking place in popular music similar to what happened in the 50’s with the rise of rock-and-roll. Those who were around then certainly remembered how the likes of Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Bill Haley swept the “older” singers and bands who had their roots in the Swing-era into the dust bin of cultural irrelevance and, suddenly, there was realization that the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, the Village People, et al., were about to do the same to rock. Of course, this never happened and, by the end of 1979, disco was all but dead; the mortal blow having been delivered that summer by The Knack’s “My Sharona” (which was the only good thing that band ever did).
As for disco’s revival, I think a lot of it is ironic appreciation. The music (and culture that went with it) is so cheesy that nobody takes it seriously at face value.
It’s whole gestalt was fascist, man. Seriously.
Nothing personal to you, Otto, but that theory is hogwash. The “Disco Sucks” movement was rockers who were repulsed by how utterly vapid Disco music was. To say it was borne out of hatred of homosexuals is beyond absurd. The OP says that Disco was just “dance music”, and that’s the whole point. The objection was that there was no meaningful content to the music; it was just designed to be background for dancing.
Actually, the whole issue was summed up quite well on the TV show “WKRP in Cincinnati”, where rock & roll D.J. Johnny Fever sells his soul to an evil music promoter, and becomes the host of a disco dance show.
And The Village People not withstanding, John Travolta became an icon of masculinity, and tons of straight guys were emulating him by wearing the tight pants, silk shirts, and gold chains. Don’t believe me? Check out my high school yearbook. 
Just for the record, it’s Bernie Taupin.
Because everybody who adopted the disco lifestyle reminds me of The Festrunk Brothers – “two wild and crazy guys!”
(PS - great Zappa quote, Playboy.)
Nothing was horrible about it. Like John Carter, I was there, I came of age in the 70s and as was evidenced by the packed to the rafters night clubs (with “can you???” or “can you NOT??” get in lines around the block. Most people during that era liked Disco and liked to dance.
It’s not that Disco was so horrible, it’s that, as another poster said, we had just left behind a decade of social consciousness, protests, IMPORTANT s#*T man!!! So next to that, Disco was lighthearted, fun, good beat and danceable. With absolutely NO meaning or statement to make.
It was for one thing and one thing only, to dance and have fun to. It had no deep message, no angst, no “cool”. Therefore those that couldn’t dance decided that they’d regain their “coolness” by declaring that “Disco Sucks”.
Those of us that COULD dance just laughed at them, told them to “LIGHTEN UP”, and enjoyed the last era of true innocence and fun in America.
That’s funny, because back in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate '70s, we thought the last true era of innocence and fun in America was the 1950s, hence the nostalgia of Grease and Happy Days.
Which was my experience as well, as a kid in a Bobby-Brady striped t-shirt watching the 60’s, when anybody could walk into Andy Warhol’s original Factory, or Woodstock, where they cheerfully flattened the fence.
Of course, this is the standard “Tweener’s” complaint; although Cinderella had until midnight, our coach turned into a pumpkin just as we were getting out of the shower and ready to leave the house.
People in this thread have made some very eloquent and valid points about disco.
blowero The “Disco Sucks” movement was rockers who were repulsed by how utterly vapid Disco music was.
NDP What was the most galling and irritating aspect of disco was the incredible arrogance, superficiality, and fanatical devotion to trendiness that seemed inherent in the culture surrounding the music. A good demonstration of this was Studio 54 with its club doorman choosing who was hip enough to go in and who wasn’t. It was like some horribly cliquey junior high school where the “cool” kids despotically controlled everything.
The whole disco mentality was shallow and pretentious. Think of any disco song - “Fly Robin Fly” “The Hustle”, etc. Disco songs were mindless, insubstantial and repetitive. To me, the music said nothing and as another SDMB member said, outside of its “club scene” context, it was useless.
Good riddance to Disco.
Useless? Who bloody well says that music (or any other form of entertainment) has to be “useful”? If the standard for acceptability is “usefulness” then 95% of all popular entertainment would fail the test. Including most of the music that’s been offered up here as a counter to disco.
I like disco. Well, I like a lot of it. I wouldn’t choose to listen to it for extended periods where I was prevented from dancing, but other than that, it’s good.
But disco never went away, and now it’s back again. I hate to use Justin Timberlake as a good example of anything, but so be it. And has anyone heard Outkast? I’m a white chick, but I dig it.
I wonder if there’s some sort of repeating cycle here of seriousness/vapidity with popular music. Fifties vapid. Sixties serious. Seventies and most of eighties vapid. Early 90s (grunge) serious. Now- maybe we’re back to vapid.
Just a thought off the top of my head.
Hennadancer
Heh. Another tweener here. I was 13 in 1977 and too young and poor to do much besides read the new New York magazine and watch the cool kids do disco at our parties. We had one kid, Mike Geromino, who was particularly good, and nobody thought that male peacocks were ‘acting gay’ or anything of the sort (frankly, most of us hardly understood what being gay meant).
I realized that most disco sucked, and I turned against it myself when I reached the sophisticated age of 15-16, but now that I think about it maybe it’s the ugly duckling I was that I turned against, not the music itself.
And I was actually IN Studio 54 this very Sunday–ASSASSINS is playing there, in the erstwhile Gallo Opera House, now the Roundabout Theater at 54. I highly recommend it, the musical and the old, artfully messed-up theater itself.
I’m glad to see one person hit on it before I had to jump in and post. The “disco sucks” backlash was almost entirely about homosexuality/homophobia, and straight, white, alpha male america’s near-hysterical fear and hatred of it. It wasn’t the suburbanites who were freaking out and leading the anti-disco charge, it was the “rockers.”
There was also a certain degree of racism going on - disco was very much a black thing at heart (being homogenized, commodified funk), and if there’s one thing that’s worse than homosexuality to our aforementioned aryan alpha males, it’s blacks!
I like the phrase “tweener” for those of us born in the early-to-mid-60s–it’s a good way to describe my generation, 10 years too young for Woodstock, 10 years too old for grunge.
As I recall, I hated disco, not because of its gay associations (obviously), but because I thought it was bland, mindless dance music for morons who had blowdried their brains along with their feathered bangs.
Nowadays, of course, I own 70s disco compilations and can listen to the Andrea True Connection asking for “More, more more,” and smile at the almost innocent days when that was the most lewdly shocking music on the radio, long before Kelis and her milkshake brought the boys to the yard.
Oh please.
Disco doesn’t suck because it’s gay (or, more coherently, since a musical form would not normally be described as having a sexual orientation, because many of its performers and some of its audience consists of gay folks). Disco sucks because it consists of repetitious and annoying tinks and chuds with bad singing of vapid lyrics superimposed.
Rock has tended to be the province of
a) hetero and
b) male
people and has tended to
c) celebrate sexuality
so there’s been a lot of association of rock with arrogant guys weiling their guitars like big extended pricks, no doubt about it; but rockin’ women (Heart) and gay guys (Queen) and the confluence of the two factors, lesbian rockers (Melissa Etheridge) haven’t been shunned as inappropriate contributors to rock, as far as I can tell, at least among the audience (how radio stations and record companies and etc have treated them might be another story, I don’t know).
We had no problem with Queen and we sure as hell knew that Freddy was gay. At the very same parties where people had “disco sucks” bumper stickers and T shirts, they’d put on A Night at the Opera to crank up “Bohemian Rhapsody”. (Or, if I could get to the turntable, the far better track “The Prophet’s Song”, but I digress).
And, in the post-Depression, post-WWII 1950’s, they seemed to think the same about the 1920’s.
That’s very feeble to associate the anti-disco movement with anti-gay and anti-black attitiudes. Since it’s pointless to try and justify the alleged “music”, I guess the way to defend it is to attack the anti-disco crowd personally.
The music sucked - plain and simple.
Those who blame rockers’ anti-disco sentiment on homophobia ignore the whole glitter-rock movement. By the time disco emerged, around 1974, being gay/bi–or at least posing as gay/bi–had been all the rage in rock circles for at least two years. In the wake of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, T-Rex, Roxy Music and, yes, Queen–whose very name really laid it on the line–even resolutely hetero rockers were slathering themselves in mascara and rouge and camping it up shamelessly.
Wow, twin degrees in sociology and musicology! Your parents must be so proud.