Reflecting back in 2014 at the full Moogfest I attended, the one thing that seemed fascinating to me was that there were a lot of
powerful disco experiences there. I saw a panel by Giorgio Moroder and when they played “I Feel Love” I was reduced to tears at its beauty. I saw a great Chic concert even though the original band is gone with only Nile Rodgers remaining to anchor it. Finally, the absolutely devastating Escort gig was disco at its most potent; a transcendent experience. One of the most powerful concerts I've ever seen and an experience like lightning striking repeatedly in a small club. You might think that I was a big fan of disco in its heyday, but you’d be wrong. Here’s my background.
I was a kid in the 70s who grew up on nothing but Top 40 radio from day one until about 1978. I had no older siblings or anyone else to point me in any particular musical directions. I gulped down the hits as if there were literally nothing else to listen to, which, in my case, was the truth. I had a record player and a few dozen 45s like any kid had [at least I hope so] but only a handful of albums, and even those were comps of hits. My main drip feed came from the transistor radio that was my close companion. I had likes and dislikes, but I pretty much listened to anything that became reasonably successful on US radio in the 70s. I didn't know otherwise.
Over my life, I’ve seen many pop culture scholars point to “Rock The Boat” by the Hues Corporation as the first “disco” hit. It was a good pop song. You could have heard a lot worse in 1974! It had a certain beat and was arranged to make dancing as smooth and easy as possible; the raison d’être of disco music. I didn’t dance as a kid, so this was not one of my concerns. I just liked pop music, and this was a good enough pop song.
Over the next few years, the trend line of disco began to creep upward. This caused me little concern as I was still chugging down the Top 40 brew fairly indiscriminately. Some things
really piqued my interest more than others [Lou Reed, Roxy Music, Bowie, Kraftwerk] but they remained fringe phenomena on the US charts. Not so for disco, which had a watershed moment in 1977 with the release of “Saturday Night Fever,” a movie that I still have never seen. The soundtrack as dominated by the Bee Gees, who’d changed their stripes from pop rock to a more R&B styled output in the mid 70s, became the prototype monster soundtrack album with multiple hits peeled off of it for what seemed like years at the time. Either the Bee Gees or some of the other artists from that album were never off the charts for at least 18 months.
“Fever” seemed to spark a Disco Event Horizon, where the entire pop cultural environment tilted in the direction of disco by 1978. I can remember that disco went from being one flavor of many on the pop charts, to being the dominant style of music that charted in that period. There were established rock bands trying on disco garb in the pursuit of hits [Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart] but also performers who were way older than your parents, cashing in on the new sound. “The Ethel Merman Disco Album” in 1979, was probably the public nadir of that trend! But it didn’t stop with music.
What was probably the deal-stopper for me, was that disco engulfed our
entire popular culture in the ’78-’79 period. There were more disco movies, quickly made to cash in on “Saturday Night Fever’s” success [“Thank God It’s Friday,” “Can’t Stop the Music,” “Roller Boogie,” “Xanadu”]. There were even disco comic books! Marvel Comics released "Dazzler" a disco
superhero, but the killing stroke, for me, anyway, were the disco episodes of TV shows! It seemed like every TV series extant had to have a “disco episode” in this period be they comedies or drama series! The amount of disco material on the radio was getting oppressive, but turning on the tube was just another vector of disco infection, and by the end of 1977, I had enough! And I wasn’t the only one.
When I saw Nile Rodgers speak on a panel at Moogfest, he took particular pains to refer to the anti-disco backlash and how it meant the end of CHIC in the marketplace. Their last smash single, “Good Times,” was released just a month prior to Disco Demolition Night, a strange baseball promotion done by the Chicago White Sox on July 12, 1979. Baseball fans could bring a disco record and get $0.98 admission to the baseball game and see WLUP-FM DJ Steve Dahl blow up the collected records on the field. The White Sox expected 20,000 attendees.
What they got instead was 50,000 people ready to see some disco records blow up reeeeeal good. The explosion damaged the field and a riot ensued afterward. The White Sox had to forfeit the game to the Detroit Tigers. Following that event, CHIC never had another chart hit, and they had three years of precious metal chart hits prior. “Le Freak” sold seven million copies. For his part, Rodgers took the anti-disco backlash very personally, and it certainly hit him in the wallet. It precipitated the end of CHIC but fostered his move into the even more lucrative production field, so it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to him.
But obviously, public sentiment had turned on disco, seemingly overnight. But by the summer of 1979, I had already gotten off of the disco bus for a year and a half. It was early 1978 when late on a Sunday night I chanced upon something on the radio dial that caught me ear. It was a radio show that only played comedy and novelty records, the Dr. Demento show. I enjoyed the show but was amazed to discover
FM Rock at the same time.
I had been an unadventurous radio listener throughout my childhood. Top 40, first on AM but then on FM from around 1975 or so. I listened to the FM affiliated station of my favorite AM channel as I got older. Better reception. The notion of album rock had not previously occurred to me, but here it was. In my face and wha…? No disco of any kind, so was I ever ripe for that change. They played all sorts of bands who may have had a single top 40 hit [or two] that I had known growing up [Yes, Bowie, Pink Floyd] but here were what seemed like lots of other songs by these people getting airplay. In reality, maybe eight or ten songs from Bowie got played [day-in, day-out] but it was still more than "Space Oddity," "Fame,"
At the same time, the school tribes were split into distinct Rock/Disco camps. Truth be told, I didn’t really fit into either, though having been suffocated by disco during the last two years for what it was worth, I stuck in the anti-disco camp, even though I was not an abuser of quaaludes and in fact, I really
liked getting an education! And I preferred more erudite art rock to The Nuge, or Molly Hatchet. Central Florida had two FM Rock stations, and I soon discerned that WDIZ-FM [where I had heard Dr. Demento] was the more “blue-collar” of the two, with WORJ-FM being more my cup of tea. But that’s not to say that it was all skittles and beer in my disco-free world.
I quickly realized that no matter which FM Rock station I listened to, I was going to get really tired of a force-fed diet of the latest [weak] albums by The Stones and The Who, not to mention the elephant in the room, Led Zeppelin! Oh my goodness, I might have not had to contend with disco every other song on the radio, but “Stairway To Heaven” was just as bad. It was after about another year and a half of this that I came to the conclusion that what I really hated wasn’t disco, but a lack of variety! WDIZ-FM must have been trouncing WORJ-FM in the ratings, because the latter ended up closely following the lead of the dumber station, to my dismay. If I thought I was weary of disco, then brother, Southern Rock got just as insufferable and onerous in record time! Gaaah! The unholy alliance of heavy metal and country music was just about the worst thing I could have imagined! And even at this stage of the game, I still managed to hold a torch for Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” as the “one great disco song.”
Fortunately, in the summer of 1978, I begged my parents for my first stereo, and at that point could begin building my nascent Record Cell in earnest. By the time I had several dozen albums the time came, some time in early ’80 to cut free from the radio, since I realized that it was not going to give me what I wanted. In the meantime, the scant crumbs of commercially acceptable New Wave that had filtered into FM Rock illuminated a path that I wholeheartedly explored to my unceasing delight. And then in 1981 I chanced to pick up a college radio station and then the rehabilitation of disco began in earnest as New Wave cross-pollinated with disco to create new and exciting hybrids. Ze Records plowed fearlessly into new realms they called “Mutant Disco.”
40 years later, disco is just another color in pop’s palette. I can enjoy music of any stripe now because I have been disengaged entirely from pop culture for almost two generations. I have no idea what was in the charts for the last 30 years. No matter what they’re overplaying, I have not heard it, so that keeps me pure and naive in my listening. Because I’d probably dislike whatever I’m overexposed to.
Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]
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