Bet you didn't know this about the Disco Sucks Era

[Dan Gould]

From the NYT end-of-year "Lives They Lived" series, about Mary Wilson

After the Supremes stopped recording together, Wilson released a self-titled solo debut in August 1979. The album had the misfortune of being released around the same time as a new Diana Ross record that received better promotion; it also came at the outset of a racist and homophobic backlash against disco music.

Says a writer born in ... 1983. Bet his editor was born in 1982, so he could hardly have known otherwise and it fit his presumptions too, so yeah, go with it.  And here I sat, believing that Disco Sucks was a movement about Disco ... Sucking.

The NYT is what truly SUCKS.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/22/magazine/mary-wilson-death.html

 

 

 

 

[JSngry]

There were definitely racist and homophobic elements to the disco backlash. It wasn't the whole of it, just saying that it was part of the mix.

I was born in 1955, so trust me on this. "Red Blooded American Males" could only wear platform shoes and obviously gay-inspired fashion wear for so long. And you know, dancing, REALLY dancing...real men don't do that unless forced to by their wife or such. And then as today, Black Male Sexuality (of any orientation) still flips some switches in certain quarters. So take Sylvester, and...

Urban Cowboy shifted the culture just as much as did Saturday Night Fever. There was a reason for that, it was a type of "calling the culture back home:.

As for Disco....the bad probably outweighs the good, but the good is VERY good, imo.

[Milestones]

I was born in 1960 and I don't recall anything about disco being good as music.

As both music an cultural phenomenon, it seems to be largely forgotten.

 

 

[Dan Gould]

So what happened? Red blooded American Males stopped going to Studio 54, but previously they were wearing platform shoes? They just suddenly discovered that dancing and being fashion-lame was suddenly too close to being gay, too?

And the white folks who loved Motown kept loving it but started hating on disco because it was created by blacks? Sorry that reminds me of the declaration that Trump voters rediscovered their racism - after voting for Obama twice.

This is entirely ludicrous. Maybe Disco Sucks because people who didn't like the music really didn't like the fact that by the late 1970s it completely dominated top 40 radio, and in an era with far fewer choices for what to listen to.

And how exactly did Urban Cowboy shift the culture?  A few hundred mechanical bulls in bars + a few country cross-over hits  is comparable to the dozens and dozens of acts that are still working the oldies circuit today?

Let's just say that everything you perceived about it is totally accurate - does it explain Mary Wilson's album sinking like a stone?  I would say absolutely not, because  the far more likely explanation is that Mary Wilson wasn't much of a name, and she didn't get major promo bucks, and Diana Ross had an album out at the same time. What the writer did was tack on a hyper-woke 2021 perspective, because his audience would enjoy it and nod their heads.

[Rabshakeh]

I think it's just easy / lazy journalism. Helps to raise the drama. Doesn't need to be true because hardly anyone will check.

[JSngry]

6 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Let's just say that everything you perceived about it is totally accurate - does it explain Mary Wilson's album sinking like a stone?  I would say absolutely not, because  the far more likely explanation is that Mary Wilson wasn't much of a name, and she didn't get major promo bucks, and Diana Ross had an album out at the same time. What the writer did was tack on a hyper-woke 2021 perspective, because his audience would enjoy it and nod their heads.

Your explanation of why the album tanked is surely spot on. Having not heard it, I couldn't tell you if it was a real disc record or not.

They're two different questions really, the first one being did Mary Wilson make a disco record or not. If so, the "disco backlash" only tangentially relevant. And if she didn't make a disco record, totally irrelevant.

But the sociology of the disco backlash is a real thing. Needing to include it in this story, though, seems a bit tacked-on.

[felser]

Disco didn't really die, it just got some synths and drum machines tacked on and got relabeled.  Go listen to Madonna's first album for one example.

1 hour ago, Milestones said:

I was born in 1960 and I don't recall anything about disco being good as music.

As both music an cultural phenomenon, it seems to be largely forgotten.

 

 

To remedy that blindness, start with the 12" version of Evelyn Champagne King's "Shame", then move on to Sister Sledge's "Lost in Music", then explore the rest of the Chic Rodgers/Edwards/Thompson universe. then go on to "Bad Girls" era Donna Summer.

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by felser

[Teasing the Korean]

Don't forget Disco Demolition Night, in which records by all kinds of Black artists - disco or otherwise - were brought to the event. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

[JSngry]

House evolved out of Disco, a then evolved further into all kinds of sub-geres.

Club dancing, dance clubs, whatever you call it, it's alive and well, and probably more underground than necessary. And thre will be a sizeable contingent of gay and people of color in the mix as both creators and consumers of this music. But it's always been that way, and always will be.

The best house music swings, swings hard. The best dance music does.

Personally, I think it should be part of any worthwhile jazz curriculum to study and play dance musics, past and present. Learn how to swing in a physical sense. It ain't gonna hurt your jazz playing, I promise. I don't mean playing bullshit wedding band crap, I mean going where real dancers dance, and how that all works.

[mjazzg]

40 minutes ago, felser said:

Disco didn't really die, it just got some synths and drum machines tacked on and got relabeled.  Go listen to Madonna's first album for one example.

To remedy that blindness, start with the 12" version of Evelyn Champagne King's "Shame", then move on to Sister Sledge's "Lost in Music", then explore the rest of the Chic Rodgers/Edwards/Thompson universe. then go on to "Bad Girls" era Donna Summer.

 

Plenty of great Disco tunes and I'might suggest adding Players Association 'Disco Inferno' and The Whispers 'And The Beat Goes On' to that setlist. Music of my teens, loved lots of it.

 

20 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Don't forget Disco Demolition Night, in which records by all kinds of Black artists - disco or otherwise - were brought to the event. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

You beat me to it

13 minutes ago, JSngry said:

House evolved out of Disco, a then evolved further into all kinds of sub-geres.

Club dancing, dance clubs, whatever you call it, it's alive and well, and probably more underground than necessary. And thre will be a sizeable contingent of gay and people of color in the mix as both creators and consumers of this music. But it's always been that way, and always will be.

Detroit, Chicago, Berlin, London...

[felser]

15 minutes ago, JSngry said:

House evolved out of Disco, a then evolved further into all kinds of sub-geres.

Club dancing, dance clubs, whatever you call it, it's alive and well, and probably more underground than necessary. And thre will be a sizeable contingent of gay and people of color in the mix as both creators and consumers of this music. But it's always been that way, and always will be.

The best house music swings, swings hard. The best dance music does.

Personally, I think it should be part of any worthwhile jazz curriculum to study and play dance musics, past and present. Learn how to swing in a physical sense. It ain't gonna hurt your jazz playing, I promise. I don't mean playing bullshit wedding band crap, I mean going where real dancers dance, and how that all works.

Robin S "Show Me Love" is one outstanding example.

[Teasing the Korean]

I really love a lot of the late 70s/early 80s disco/new wave crossover stuff.

A lot of what disco inspired or evolved into was much more interesting than disco's first wave.

Edited December 31, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[John L]

Coming of age in the 70s, we really hated disco.  Why?    James Brown et al had just delivered what we considered to be the greatest dance music ever: heavy funk.  Then somehow the mechanical and repetitive rhythms of disco came and replaced it.  That was a terrible sacrifice.   It wasn't until more than a decade later when the Bomb Squad, Dr. Dre et al finally got to the business of further developing funk.   It was lost decade, in my opinion.   Disco still sucks!

 

[Rabshakeh]

The Wikipedia page for Disco (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco) has a rather different version of events to Wikipedia's Demolition page. It points out that the anti disco movement had a heavy presence on the left wing and in the black community, concentrating on disco's vacuousness, lack of political critique, and corporate-seeped mediocrity. It does also point to the right wing fellow travellers, but does not suggest that they led or characterised the opposition to disco.

Somewhere along the line the left wing critiques of disco have been erased and there's grown up this view that because some right wing people were among those who hated disco, opposition to disco in the late 1970s was therefore a racist thing. The idea that someone would be racist for disliking the Bee Gees in favour of Little Richard is surely wrong, absent some clear statement or action to that effect.

Exhibit 1, after less than 20 seconds' googling: an article by Richard Dyer from 1979 arguing, from a gay socialist perspective, that disco really shouldn't be considered a red line for a socialist.

https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/in-defence-of-disco

Edited December 31, 2021 by Rabshakeh

[Teasing the Korean]

19 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

The Wikipedia page for Disco (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco) has a rather different version of events to Wikipedia's Demolition page. It points out that the anti disco movement had a heavy presence on the left wing and in the black community, concentrating on disco's vacuousness, lack of political critique, and corporate-seeped mediocrity. It does also point to the right wing fellow travellers, but does not suggest that they led or characterised the opposition to disco.

Somewhere along the line the left wing critiques of disco have been erased and there's grown up this view that because some right wing people were among those who hated disco, opposition to disco in the late 1970s was therefore a racist thing. The flip side is that liking corporate pop music with crass movie tie ins is somehow emancipatory? Who knows. The idea that someone would be racist for disliking the Bee Gees in favour of Little Richard is not a serious one, absent some clear statement or action to that effect.

Exhibit 1, after less than 20 seconds' googling: an article by Richard Dyer from 1979 arguing, from a gay socialist perspective, that disco really shouldn't be considered a red line for a socialist.

https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/in-defence-of-disco

I can promise you that in the high school and junior high school that I attended during the disco era, there was a definite racist/homophobic subtext to the whole "Disco Sucks" thing, to the point that the "sub" in "subtext" was disappearing.  I also went to schools in a region with lots of racist, homophobic white kids representing particular demographics.

If leftist intellectuals were also dismissing disco - and they may very well have been - I don't think they were channelling their dislike into organized disco demolitions at baseball games.  

In other words, two very different people can hate the same thing for very different reasons.  

[Rabshakeh]

3 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

If leftist intellectuals were also dismissing disco - and they may very well have been - I don't think they were channelling their dislike into organized disco demolitions at baseball games.  

In other words, two very different people can hate the same thing for very different reasons.  

I think that what you just said has to be the right approach.

I find it frustrating when staff on generally excellent newspapers like the NYT can't be bothered to even Wikipedia the subject that they are writing on.

[mjazzg]

Homophobic attacks on Disco and its adherents absolutely out in broad daylight in my experience too. This was mid-70s Home Counties, homophobia de riguer.

Racism aimed at Disco, I don't remember and this was a very, very white existence where racism was sadly casual.

[JSngry]

Leftist critics were appalled by Disco because it erased social protest, supposedly. And I guess most of it did. The "Starta-East" type of people, yeah, they felt the sting of that BIG time.

But hey - Yuppies, hippies turned stooges, don't blame Disco for them. Blame their own lack of a spine and/or a core. They didn't evolve, they just gave up.

 

 

[sgcim]

The Disco Sucks movement as I remember it was started by all the white hard rock fans, who felt as if their rock faves weren't being played on the air anymore, because everyone was jumping on the disco bandwagon (even Ethel Merman!) to sell records. TTK showed us Jack Jones disco foray.

At least songs like "Last Dance" by Donna Summers had a harmonic structure that you could blow on, and use hip subs and funk hits on their arrangements. I used to look forward to playing tunes like that and Barry Manifold's "Could This Be the Magic". We had a drummer who was into Tony Williams, a Trane tenor player who was on the road with Gerry Mulligan and Lou Rawls, and a hip keyboard player who worked out his own ray Charles-type arrangements on all those disco tunes (he played left hand bass, so I had to follow him) so we turned them into hip jazz-fusion tunes, and the lead vocalist had big ears so he could sing right through all of the stuff we did behind him.

"Hot Stuff" was another hip arr. we did, where we'd sub D13,Db13 C13 for the A chord. Like Holland and Dozier said, "We just put a bow tie on the funk".

As Dan said, "It's the NYT that truly sucks". They revise history every freaking week.

Unfortunately, all those talented songwriters like Dozier and Holland have now been replaced by techno-dweebs that couldn't write a decent song if a gun was pointed at their heads.

[GA Russell]

My recollection is solely of teen boys who were heavy metal fans.

[Bluesnik]

7 hours ago, felser said:

Disco didn't really die, it just got some synths and drum machines tacked on and got relabeled. 

There was a Nu Disco movement in the 90s.

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

The best house music swings, swings hard. The best dance music does.

Completely agree with this.

6 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Detroit, Chicago, Berlin, London...

Yesss, especially the first and last. And all the other ones.

6 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I really love a lot of the late 70s/early 80s disco/new wave crossover stuff.

A lot of what disco inspired or evolved into was much more interesting than disco's first wave.

That's completely true. I have a wonderful compilation called Disco Not Disco about the early 80s clash of disco and punk. Specially in NY.

[soulpope]

On 31.12.2021 at 6:41 PM, felser said:

To remedy that blindness, start with the 12" version of Evelyn Champagne King's "Shame", then move on to Sister Sledge's "Lost in Music", then explore the rest of the Chic Rodgers/Edwards/Thompson universe. then go on to "Bad Girls" era Donna Summer.

Quite some fun guaranteed ....

[gvopedz]

Take a look at the cover of the 1978 album Love Beach by Emerson, Lake and Palmer - why do the three bandmembers look like the Bee Gees?

[Dmitry]

On 12/31/2021 at 3:29 PM, JSngry said:

Leftist critics were appalled by Disco because it erased social protest, supposedly. And I guess most of it did. The "Starta-East" type of people, yeah, they felt the sting of that BIG time.

 

Easy answer: the Disco crowd got laid, the leftist critics and the Strata-East telephone booth didn't. Still doesn't. No wonder they hated it.

On 12/31/2021 at 3:02 PM, Rabshakeh said:

 

I find it frustrating when staff on generally excellent newspapers like the NYT can't be bothered to even Wikipedia the subject that they are writing on.

Not just on social and historical issues. They even mange to fuck up science reporting these days. It's all about the agenda.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Dmitry

[JSngry]

11 minutes ago, Dmitry said:

Easy answer: the Disco crowd got laid, the leftist critics and the Strata-East telephone booth didn't. Still doesn't. No wonder they hated it.

That's pretty ignorant, care to at least try?