I’m sure us “disco sucks-ers” be accused of being mousephobic.
My favorite album as a kid! One of the few vinyls I’ve owned.
Exactly. People were upset when rock stars from ‘their’ culture were performing music from those other peoples culture, because it meant cultural hegemony was cracking.
From the article:
Because, in the end, the chance to yell “disco sucks” meant more than simply a musical style choice. It was a chance to push back on a whole set of social dynamics that lied just beneath the surface of a minor battle between a DJ and a radio station that decided to change formats.
More importantly, it was a chance for a whole lot of people to say they didn’t like the way the world was changing around them, or who they saw as the potential victors in a cultural and demographic war.
What do you think rock music is?
Was there a significant anti gay backlash in the disco era? How much knowledge would the average person have of gay discotheques? Even today, straight people loudly sing YMCA at sporting events, completely ignorant of the lyrics about anonymous gay sex at bathhouses.
Gays were comparatively accepted by rock: Bowie and Queen and the Glam Rockers had a pretty overt vibe. But the anti-gay forces were with the uncool people like Anita Bryant. You, as a working-class hard rock guy, would be offended if an actual gay guy made a pass at you, but the same people who were against gays in general were also against your thing: (straight) sex and drugs and rock and roll. I don’t recall any anti-gay aspect to disco sucks, more about “our” girls would dance to music we’d look stupid doing. Now how were we going to get laid?
Society didn’t ramp back to homophobia until AIDS.
My bad: I meant Bread and America.
As I said before, by the 70s, rock music had been completely coopted by white America. It was aggressively white.
That’s definitely true. In the eighties, a black rock band like Living Color was a total outlier and a kind of sensation.
Yeah, rock had become every bit as establishment as Lawrence Welk by the late 70s. It’s why punk was born.
Speaking of which…I’m pretty sure his quote (which if I wasn’t a lazy SOB I’d find a video link) sums up why Disco (as a fad) died a horrible death:
“No kid wants to be dancing with his girl in a club, look over to his left, and see his mom and dad dancing right there.”
When wasn’t rock music in America completely white?
We talk today about Chuck Berry and the others in the 50s, but they weren’t played on white radio stations or seen very often on television. If kids ever heard their music it came out of the mouth of Pat Boone.
Rock groups were always white in the 60s. Hendrix was then the great outlier. Today, again, we talk about the great session bands at Motown and Stax, but they were never thought about as rock groups. Same with all the groups that followed. Earth, Wind, and Fire, P-Funk, Chic, none of them were thought as “rock,” no matter how many guitars they had.
Preaching to the choir. As soon as a dime could be made, they found Elvis, crowned him King and kicked Chuck Berry to the curb.
Not always. I offer Sly & The Family Stone as an example. (They’re in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so they count, no matter how funkified they were.)
And by the late 70s, when there was a backlash against disco, it had become just as white. It was the land of Rod Stewart and Walter Murphy by then. I mean, I absolutely love “Funkytown” by Lipps, Inc. but it’s as stiff and white as anything until it gets to the chorus, and goes back to being stiff as soon as it’s over.
Resolved: White people ruin everything.
Awww, I don’t know about that. I had a friend who’s dad had seen just about everyone from his day, including Hendrix and Floyd at their peaks. His opinion on the best music ever? English hippies on drugs, playing the blues (Fleetwood Mac).
I don’t agree, I think it’s Canadians playing avant-garde hardcore. We can all blame society, in the end.
So are Earth, Wind, and Fire, P-Funk, and Chic.
Compared to the poetic mastery of rock classics like “Surfing Bird” or “Tequila”? Do you remember “A wop bop a looma a lop bam boom”?
ETA: just saw it, the video @Yookeroo posted makes my point even better.