Disco: Trash or Treasure?

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Baptiste XIX RoseOfSharyn

Baptiste XIX RoseOfSharyn

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Aug 20, 2020
Seeing the Italo-Disco thread here started to make me think back on Disco as whole
Disco has had a rather divided reception since it’s inception.
Some call it a shallow corporatized overly-produced fad that was a disappointing follow-up to the Soul, Funk & RnB scene.
Some call it a amusing & catchy scene of well made music that brought some fun to the world of music.

I personally find myself enjoying Disco, as I already enjoy Soul, RnB & Funk.
But I can understand the aversion people had to it by the late 70s, as people would tell you that it became an overplayed & oversaturated market, Disco playing everywhere you went, in the car, in a car dealership, in a barbershop, in the supermarket, at school, almost anywhere that had a radio.
& there was a massive influx of non-music media centered around Disco such as in movies, Disco themed novelty items, Disco aesthetic outfits, etc.
& it all eventually culminated into an infamous moment in music & sports history, known as Disco Demolition Night on July 12th 1979 at , creating the slogan “Disco Sucks.”
A plan created by radio personality Steve Dahl, also known as a “Shock Jock” who presents himself in a controversial demeanor to his audience.
This stunt in a nutshell had a bunch of boxes of Disco records (witness testimony pointed out that most of the records weren’t even Disco, & were actually just regular Funk or R&B records) out in MLB Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois.
These boxes were blown up while Steve shouts Disco Sucks along with the crowd.
However this was a retarded idea as the explosives damaged the lawn, & the crowd of excited drunk Chicago trash ran out into the field, stomping on the records, resulting in a riot with them only getting out of control in starting a fire on the field.
What do they do to calm this situation down?
Sing “Take me out to the ball game” on the speakers of course!
Cause yeah, that will definitely calm down a crowd of drunk Chicagoians.
This night regardless of the mixed reception did ultimately reach the goal, they wanted to shock audiences & kill Disco.

As ever since this movement, Disco went on a slow downfall into obscurity, Disco tried to reignite it’s popularity by hopping on the Electronic Music boom of the 80s with Electro-Disco, but it failed, meanwhile Hard Rock & New Wave rose to top the charts.

Many have debated over whether Disco Demolition Night was good or not, some even debating if it was racially motivated or not, accusing the whole event of being insecure drunk white trash being afraid of “gay black dance club music” taking over their precious Hard Rock & Country music.
Personally I don’t think it was racially motivated, I do think it was very stupid from a business perspective to destroy your own baseball field & excite an audience of drunk Chicagoians into a riot.

But soon the heat of Disco cooled down enough for people to look at Disco as either a outdated fad not worth revisiting or a nostalgic timeless oldschool piece of music history worth coming back to.

Some people even participate in a new genre known as Nu-Disco which has seen some moderate to great success, most famously Dua Lipa, PROUX, Todd Terje & more.

Which all comes down to here, do you hate or enjoy Disco?
Do you think it’s “obnoxious gay black dance club music”?
Or do you think it’s a fun trip worth revisiting?

& on a side question, what do you of Disco Demolition Night?
 
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I think the reason a lot of people have residual hate for disco is that there was a time where it was stiflingly ubiquitous, and completely lacked any self-awareness.
 
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yeah I wasn't there for it, but the backlash against disco seemed from what I've seen to be more about disco getting pushed down everybody's throats as the next big thing than disco being inherently bad
sometimes I get a bug up my butt for gay dance shit, and I'm not picky between eurobeat, house, old disco, parapara, less old ita disco, or whatever
 
There's a bit of both. The stuff people hold in high regards (Salsoul, Philly Soul, Donna Summer) is the stuff that gets remember. No one remembers the rubish that came out when everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Disco was a fad and everyone wanted to make money off of it.
 
I'm picky about disco. There was some great stuff, but the overwhelming majority of it was hot garbage.

TBH I prefer what happened shortly after disco fizzled out in the early '80s with the ashes spreading far and wide. OP already mentioned Italo Disco, but I was thinking more along the lines of the creation of house in Chicago and techno in Detroit; both of which were obviously influenced by disco.

Ted_Breakfast said:
I think the reason a lot of people have residual hate for disco is that was a time where it was stiflingly ubiquitous, and completely lacked any self-awareness.
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True, a lot of disco music was trite. I can also understand why some folks who were trying to get away from disco music didn't appreciate it when disco sensibilities started creeping into rock music, given how ubiquitous disco music was at the time.

It didn't help that the overwhelming majority of disco was pretty shallow from a musical and lyrical standpoint. That said, there are a handful of exceptions. "Supernature" by Cerrone is a case in point; sure, Cerrone sounded a bit like a poor man's Giorgio Moroder, but Lene Lovich's lyrics telling the story of a Day Of The Triffids style hellscape brought about through too much Monsanto-style meddling were unusually dark and deep for a disco track.

 
tehpope said:
There's a bit of both. The stuff people hold in high regards (Salsoul, Philly Soul, Donna Summer) is the stuff that gets remember. No one remembers the rubish that came out when everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Disco was a fad and everyone wanted to make money off of it.
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You do bring up a good point with that, I view Disco in a less reductive way & judge the bands/musicians on their own, there were some well talented Disco groups, but there is the shit no one wants to remember for good reason, as there were non-Disco bands jumping on the Disco Soul-Train & failing, & a bunch of low-budget bands reaching for the fad to make money off it.
But when I think of it, almost every musical trend has been like this throughout music, even with the so called Counter Cultural Alt Rock movement, some bands hastily jumped on the Grunge & Alternative train in a shallow demeanor, look no further than Swine Generation by Mötley Crüe.
 
Disco won in the end IMO, the only people who still hate disco in 2021 are literal boomers. The funny thing about disco is that although people like to talk about it as a "dead genre", it ultimately still prevailed over rock. These days ACDC and Led Zeppelin feel far more dated and irrelevant than Boney M. or the Bee Gees, both in their sound and their overall aesthetic. The type of glam/hair metal rock music that positioned itself in opposition to disco is now not only not in the charts anymore, but is genuinely uncool (and has been since Nirvana replaced it with grunge in the early 90s). And if you subscribe to the theory that EDM is the natural evolution of Disco, then it's not even close.

Also, there's tons of great disco music that's been forgotten about and waiting to be rediscovered.

 
Disco all day. I DJ a lot of Chicago/French House and plus I get to explain that Rapper's Delight is clearly a disco song to people who don't like disco.

And who the fuck doesn't love danceable shit?

ETA: And Giovanni Giorgio Moroder ffs.
 
I love disco, but that probably is because it was the music of my childhood. The 60's music, to me, was socially conscious and designed to make you want to change the world. Disco was a rejection of that. It was party all night and forget your troubles kind of music. I appreciate music that makes you think, but sometimes we just need music that makes us forget the world for a while. Disco does that for me.
 
I unironically love disco, even the more obscure or kitschy stuff and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but not only do I like disco and the more "dad rock" classic rock stuff, but I also strongly dislike punk and most later forms of alternative rock (with a few very noteworthy exceptions)

In my personal opinion, if any music genre from the 1970's embodied the worst traits of the pop culture at the time and was a forerunner for some of the worst traits of today's culture, it'd be punk and not disco.

To end this post on a lighter note, here's a disco song back in the day you probably haven't heard on oldies radio...

 
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I find it kinda funny that Disco is characterized as "gay black dance music" by OP, since for the longest time I was under the impression that Disco was a whiter-than-white fad forced by Saturday Night Fever. Anyway, despite (supposedly) having influence on pretty much all dance music made after it, I really don't give a damn about Disco. Always came across to me as rather one note, whereas everything that came after it is much more versatile musically (especially in the 90s, 90s EDM from House to Techno, Techno to Jungle, and Jungle to IDM won't be matched for a very long time).

When it comes to EDM progenitors I'm far more of a Dub guy than a Disco guy anyway. Sue me, mon.
 
These days it mostly exists as a political battleground of critical revision in the head of LGBTQWERTY poptimists between them and imagined "homophobes" and "rockists." (Who don't even think about disco anymore, but faggots are still SEETHING about them burning some disco records as a joke 40 years later).

The music is... okay? I guess? It's catchy enough. It's not something I ever even think about until some effete scarf-wearing muso brings it up as a lame culture war point.
 
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I prefer disco over the majority of tunes that get played on a daily basis on radios and in stores. I'm unsure whether this is because Disco created such a high bar for me or if current music set the bar so low that anyone with platform boots and disco pants could step over it with ease.

Though I wouldn't go back to the Disco era because chances are it'll oversaturate with every label company pumping out generic disco beats before the horse is sent to the glue factory a second time.
 
Deus Ex Macarena said:
I prefer disco over the majority of tunes that get played on a daily basis on radios and in stores. I'm unsure whether this is because Disco created such a high bar for me or if current music set the bar so low that anyone with platform boots and disco pants could step over it with ease.

Though I wouldn't go back to the Disco era because chances are it'll oversaturate with every label company pumping out generic disco beats before the horse is sent to the glue factory a second time.
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literally fucking anything is better than modern radio/store shit lol, no surprises there
 
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