What are you doing when you’re dancing–calculating pi? 
I can speak only for myself, as a hard rock fan and disco hater of Seventies-era New York.
I disliked 95% of all disco music, but wouldn’t have joined in the “disco sucks” chants based on the music alone. I mean, I hated jaz and country music too, but no rock fans were chanting anti-country or anti-jazz epithets. That’s because, in 1979, if you didn’t like jazz or country, it was very easy to avoid them. Only a few radio stations played such music, and if you avoided those stations, you never had to hear Willie Nelson or John Coltrane. So, there was never any need to get worked up about those genres.
Disco was different. It was all but impossible to get away from the freaking Bee Gees. The pop and Top 40 stations (like 99X) played the Bee Gees around the clock… but so did the album rock stations like WPLJ and WNEW FM! And when former rock favorites like Rod Stewart and the Stones started recording disco songs, well, that was just too much.
Rock fans would have liked to say, “Fine, you like this wussy dance music, listen to it on YOUR radio stations, but leave OUR stations alone.” But that wasn’t possible. Rock stations were tainted by that crud, too.
I will say this: while I’m glad the anti-disco backlash got the rock stations to purge their playlists of the Bee Gees and similar mindless dance groups, it’s a shame the backlash went so far. I mean, in the early Seventies, album rock stations regularly played great music by Stevie Wonder, the Temptations and Earth, Wind & Fire. After the disco backlash, practically ALL black artists were removed from album rock radio playlists.
The baby went out with the bathwater, unfortunately.
Disco was dance music. Most straight white males don’t like to dance. (I didn’t say all.)
Oddly enough, that’s pretty much how I felt (although I didn’t mind jazz and actually now like Willie Nelson). As an early adolescent who was just starting to get into rock in 1979, I felt under siege by disco. It wasn’t so much the music (which, by itself, was merely annoying and mildly nauseating) that was so bothersome as the whole glitzy, shallow, superficial, narcissistic, celebrity-worshiping, coked-up, arrogant, trendier-than-thou, Studio 54 culture that went with it. For me, the breaker was when Newsweek proclaimed “Disco Takes Over!” on its cover and, in the accompanying article, declared rock all but dead as a mode of popular music. Disco was the future. It was what we were all supposed to be listening to for the next 20 years–like it or not! People who still listened to rock were soon to become as passe` as people who listened to Lawrence Welk.
Of course, a funny thing happened before disco’s conquest was complete. It died. Suddenly. By the end of 1979, disco songs (with a few exceptions) had fallen off the charts like overripe apples.
Disco sucked becuase it was dance music for people who can’t dance. (Note I didn’t say dance music for straight white guy. If I was thinking that, you can’t prove it!). Disco came out of (and so some exent went back to once the insanity was over) a lot of interesting dance influences like funk and Latin. But when it was popular it tended to stick to a basic “whomp- WHOMP- whomp- WHOMP” rhythm that wouldn’t confuse too many people. It was the aural equivalent of the little painted footprints on the floor.
Essentialy disco gave dance music a bad name.
Why, yes. What do you do when you dance? (Extra points awarded if you’re working out that four-color map problem.)
Seriously, though: Even as as grade-schooler at the time, I recall thinking that some disco songs were pretty okay, but so were some country songs of the time, and some rock songs, and some punk songs. It might have been confusing to a genre purist, but for me, the disco era produced an appreciation of good music, regardless of genre. “I Will Survive” = Campy, but good; “Babe” (Styx) = sux; “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” = kick ass; “My Sharona” = pretty good, for a catchy, campy song; “Sultans of Swing” = wow - who knew that sort of guitar work existed in the disco era? In retrospect, it amazes me that so many different styles of music co-existed on the pop charts during the “disco sux” era.
Actually, it’s generational. There are many, many younger “straight white males” who do enjoy dancing.
**RunAmok Quote:
Originally Posted by Carnac the Magnificent!
What are you doing when you’re dancing–calculating pi?
Why, yes. What do you do when you dance? (Extra points awarded if you’re working out that four-color map problem.)
[/QUOTE=RunAmok]
I generally start with complex differential equations or Fourier transforms and then work my way up to the more arcane aspects of String Theory. Until recently, I was working on Fermat’s Last Theorem during the waltzes, but when officials announced it had been solved–errantly, perhaps–my dancing really suffered.
Why did disco suck in 1979? Are you implying it didn’t suck the rest of the time? Can’t stand disco.
Disco does NOT get to claim Blondie. They were punk rock’s bizzaro disco, and if anything helped kill disco. Although, I put in another vote for Steve Dahl and Disco Demolition. Wish I could find me some Teenage Radation records.
Jack
In the Village Voice, 1979
[small aside]42fish! Haven’t seen you around in a while[/small aside]
Punk died in 1979. Following the release of their 2nd album, Blondie’s music can only be labelled as new wave. If you think about it, New Wave is nothing more than glorified white disco - with a miniscule anti-social edge to it.
?
?
I didn’t know punk was dead.
Next you’ll tell me you killed and ate the Easter Bunny.
I think part of it was disco’s style. The rockers only had to worry about trimming their mullets amd occassionally washing their concert ts. But here comes a musical genre that got people caring a bit more about visual and sartorial style and the rockers felt threatened.
I see a bit of that today but not related to a style of music. Most guys just want to wear flannel and jeans and ball caps and those of us into looking sharp have been labeled “metrosexual.” Hmm, maybe then as now, the chicks kinda like style more.
Frank Zappa’s Disco Boy was one that didn’t suck, partly because it razored up the whole disco scene, and partly because it was played by real musicians.
The best non-sucking disco song ever: “Fame” by David Bowie. Speaking of John Lennon, he sang on it too. Think of it: Bowie+Lennon. It just does not get any better than that.
Zombie.
Johanna, feel free to start a new thread in Cafe Society if you like.
Thread closed.