I'll be the first to admit it: I've said, 'disco sucks.' The music is cheesy, the outfits tacky, and, before last week, when you'd say 'disco,' my mind immediately leapt to the lovable joke that is Disco Stu, a Simpsons character perpetually living in 1976.
But that's what I thought before researching today's Colin McEnroe Show. For starters, disco's influence on music was huge. Groups like Chic, Kool & The Gang, and MFSB employed sweeping orchestral instrumentation, protest lyrics, and heavy bass grooves - things that would all later carry over to rap, funk, and modern electronic dance music.
There wouldn't be modern dance clubs without disco. Before it was a multi-billion dollar industry, disco lived in the small clubs of New York City. DJs spun records and couples - often gay couples - danced. These were low-budget clubs who couldn't afford in-house bands, but as the genre grew - bigger clubs like Paradise Garage and Studio 54 realized there was an appetitie for this record-spun dance music.
As Brendan Sullivan put it on today's show, disco was kind of like a religion. If you were an alien visiting from another planet you wouldn't get what was going on. You'd see all these people dancing while one person stands on a platform, ablaze in light, spinning records. One needn't look further than wildly popular artists like Deadmau5 to see how this scene persists among today's kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YoZp2JMMxY
Disco provided a staging ground for the gay liberation and African American rights. According to scholar Alice Echols, author of "Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture," disco helped to raise the consciousness of the gay rights movement. Groups like The Village People, Echols says, were revolutionary in their ability to enjoy the widespread embrace of Americans while still producing songs with blatantly gay subtexts.
I couldn't say it any better than Andrew Kokind, writing for the Village Voice in 1979:
History hardly stops. Disco in the '70s is in revolt against rock in the '60s. It is the anti-thesis of the "natural" look, the real feelings, the seriousness, the confessions, the struggles, the sincerity, pretensions, and pain of the last generation. Disco is "unreal," artificial, and exaggerated. It affirms the fantasies, fashions, gossip, frivolity, and fun of an evasive era. The '60s were braless, lumpy, heavy, rough, and romantic; disco is stylish, sleek, smooth, contrived, and controlled. Disco places surface over substance, mood over meaning, action over thought. The '60s were a mind trip (marijuana, acid): Disco is a body trip (Quaaludes, cocaine). The '60s were cheap; disco is expensive. On a '60s trip, you saw God in a grain of sand; on a disco trip, you see Jackie O. at Studio 54."
So, yeah. Saturday Night Fever suits and platform shoes were bad. And there were some shockingly awful disco songs. But you can't say 'disco sucks' without recognizing how the genre managed to transform popular music, give birth to modern club scenes, and provide a staging ground for gay liberation and African American rights.
Patrick Skahill produces The Colin McEnroe Show. Contact: pskahill@wnpr.org or @ptskahill.
