When Exactly Did Disco Die and When Was the Beginning of the End?

[hotmixbk]

I couldn't agree more with Jim Colyer. I believe several posters have pointed the envy of Disco. The inability or the fear of "Metal Heads" and "Rockers" to dance. The "Melting Pot" effect of the clubs and music. People of all races, genders, ages and sexualities partying together. It's down right scary to some. But it was a beautiful thing. I recall a sign at a Disco in Metro Detroit that read, "Everyone Welcome Except Narrow Minded People!" No statement describes the "Disco Era" better!

[garrybcoston]

I agree; actually disco was way before its time, that is bringing all races, cultures, sexualities together; and it was unheard of at the time and scared a lot of people who were used to the old way of segregating things.

In addition, the music may have been repetitious (which is true) as they used to say, and technologically old school for its time (violins, violas, cellos, congas, brass section, etc.), but it was happy, fun, danceable, and truly heavenly, and most of all, you scored when you went to the clubs, if you could dance, with NO problem!

Garry

[mrkick20000]

Originally Posted by garrybcoston

Sour grapes, bitter cherries, poor Dahl; what goes around comes around. It seems he became somewhat famous because of his contributing to kill disco and disco's ultimate so called death. Dahl is still popular but not famous. He is overweight, and is old looking (click on URL) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Steve_Dahl.jpg
and still is living on disco's so called demise (which we all know is not true).



Garry

Well said. I am sorry for poor Dahl....

As I checked out the lyrics of his 'Do You Think I'm Disco?,' they are just funny---they go like this:

''I'll tell you something! I have never been happier, now that I'm into this rock and roll thing! I sold my white 3-piece suit at a garage sale last weekend; made $25.00! Got rid of my 280-Z; picked myself up a beat-up old '69 Dart! Melted down all my gold jewelry into a Led Zeppelin belt buckle! ''

A Led Zeppelin belt buckle!----seems as uncool as disco (for him).

[dancinBoy]

so many ways to answer this question. Truly by the time they burned those records in the park...Disco had been long gone. I think as the 8:00 showing
of Saturday Night Fever on december 14 1977. I know as club goers sat in their seats and watched Allan Carrs vision come to life on screen many knew that their special weekend rituals were coming to an end. I think the true feeling of disco was 74- 75 the peak and 76 after that it was...different. It wasn't about the name disco it was about the dancing, hanging with friends getting high and shaking off all the stress. Those idiot disco haters were listening to what disco became, they didn't hate KC and The Sunshine Band when they were out. The disco im talking about is non pretension, 5 dollar admissions, inexpensive drinks, basically a night out when it became "DISCO" it became more then just " the music we dance to " all that spandex and even studio 54. Before it was something to do to escape.
By the time Enough is Enough was released it was the " business of Disco" In LA making money, not a small mob run joint in brooklyn with a dance floor that made a decent profit on the weekends.
As the movie goers were throwing out unfinished popcorn and unfinished drinks that only cost 75 cents exiting that theatre into the pre christmas air of 1977 Disco was just coming down with a cold that would start the slow and undeserved hated decline. Thankfully the dance never ended and music to dance too has remained but disco? That was the 70s man :)
Disco truly in its day was never trying to be anything...unlike its predesessors

[garrybcoston]

Here is a recent post someone put on Steve Dahl's website. It is deep but true:

"My favorite moment, or moments if you will with Steve Dahl is watching this pathetic, small minded, little pee wee man grow old. You still have no idea what you did in 1979. But guess what? You only were 50% successful. Yes you changed radio station formats, closed discoteques, changed the fashion trend, but the music continued though it changed it's name and basically went underground. The music was 50% of the whole era (disco era mind you). The older you get, the more puny, pathetic, and wussy you look Mr. Steve Dahl. Very unhappy man you are. You are also arrogant always dissing gays, or anything that you are phobic about; what are you afraid of? What bullys beat you up in school? What really hurts you Steve Dahl and what is your real pain? Let's talk about it like you talk bad about people on your talk show. I'm so sorry for your misery; that being said, stay in your closet!"

How true, so true. But anyway, we've all moved on including Steve Dahl. He will just get more and more unhappy as time goes on. Who wants to bet that by the time Steve Dahl gets real old and ready for exit, he will be wearing platform shoes, big collar shirts, bell bottoms, and listening to the disco top 100 from 1978 and 1979 over and over; boy would that be hell for him!

Garry

[mr.t likes indie]

Hello, forum heads!

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for interesting replies to the topic, as I've taken many information from it for myself.

I didn't hear a lot of disco music, so didn't I hear a lot of funk.

I'm sorry for the next question, but don't you think disco music was largely replaced by "in-scene" developement of the other black music type - funk?

I have listened to some funk albums from the late 60s to the early 70s, and, maybe, funk was a a type of dance music, but its usual rhythms (non-straight 4/4) were definitely more "difficult" to dance to than were those of disco or danceable soul (straight 4/4 predominantly). And what I've checked in some funk albums from the middle 70s, funk "lost" much of it's complex nature (intense african/latin percussion, maybe, relations to psychedelic rock and its overall concerns on its own "instrumentality") and became something than sounded like "lightweight" disco - no orchestration, straight 4/4 rhythms, and the kicking bassline (with the heavy use of slap bass). I guess, it happened because funk got affected by the "dancing" nature of disco. And that was the way it became s.c. "discofunk". It's needed to say, that funky vocals usually seem more "diletant" to me as lots of chanting, singing-to-talking appear during the vocal parts, and the vocal melody is usually simplier than that in disco. So funk became a sort of "disco", but a cheaper one - no orchestration was needed and, therefore, less money were needed to record a discofunk record.

From the other point, the was a movement much more underground than disco - the emerging hip hop music (according to Kool Herc, he introduced a break into his set as early as in the 1972 for the first time, so "formally", hip hop can be thought to have started from that time). The bloc parties were more reachable for latinos and blacks and some whites. And hip hop, I suppose, was considered "an alien" in music, due to its lack of musical structure but a loop and a lack of singing (rapping was used instead). And, that's for sure, by 1977 hip hop soundsystems had been playing live in cities and hip hop attracted some more people. Note, the base of hip hop is funk (typically, older funk than discofunk) as well.


Third side were Kraftwerk and electronic funk experimentators (I don't know anything about those, so won't make ground statements about hteir music). Kraftwerk were particularly famous for fusing robotic electronic music with funky syncopation. I guess, it first hit USA in the early 80s, but it did and funk attracted more attention in this direction too.

Fourth side is hip hop becoming commercial. While first commercial hip hop records are dubbed "disco rap", I'd like to rephrase that into "discofunk rap", as, I guess, most of the early disco rap singles, including "Rapper's Delight" were some typical discofunk instrumental (or, more certainly, looped discofunk break) + rapping.

Fifth side is the rise of discofunk. Afaik, the most black dance music I've heard from the early 80s has that typical discofunk pattern (straight 4/4, bass/slap bass, wah guitars, simple vocals, sometimes - remnants strings/electronic strings). Discofunk, that is also labelled "post-disco" (that's my guess too) has gone as into mainstream, where it influenced american pop music of the 80s, so it's gone into clubs, replacing disco and forming the basis of so called "garage music".

I'd like to connect the rise of discofunk to the Italo disco birth, as both rely on the heavy funky bass, that is especially underlined during intros, bass breakdowns. Everybody knows how heavily Italo disco influenced the emergence of house music.

And, the final piece is the popularity of Kraftwerk in the USA in the early 80s, which directly led to the creation of electro (electro funk, which fused with disco rap and replaced it) and techno.

So, the point is, one sounds evolutionally replaced other sounds, but funk was the sound that flourished into numerous and the most new types of music that replaced disco or fused with it, dropping the original sound of disco. The was also a disco/soul derivate in the early 80s, that started hitting charts from its very beginning - that's so called Contemporary R&B, but I still think funk is "the baddest murderer" of disco.

What concerns outside (non-musical) reasons. There is currently so called indie music, which kinda resembles disco in its message to "dance" and further tries to draw parallels to disco. My impression on what I've heard about it from others - no one listens to it, and everybody thinks it "sucks" and it's "gay". But at the same time indie fashion is booming (check how many young people in tight jeans are there where you live), indie and other related to it dance music, variously dubbed as, electro pop, dance rock, electronic rock, electro trash etc. was taking over crunk and Contemporary R&B in sales and charts in the previous year and continues to hit charts this year and even started influencing those R&B and crunk.

If anyone wants to criticise this reply or finds huge/any mistakes in it, please correct it and I will gladly read what you write.

Thank you!

[garrybcoston]

Great post Mr. "T" and you opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had never considered. Having lived that era (Disco), I will say this:

1) Before Disco there were 5 distinct music genres outside of classical; Funk, R&B, Rock, Soul, and Jazz.

2) When the Disco era began it produced a shake-up of at least 4 of these genres due to its rising popularity; all of a sudden everyone wanted to dance to Disco music.

3) When Disco began to be extremely successful, the other genres were hurt tremendously and began to falter and fade out. You can even say that Disco ate up or even consumed all of these genres. Back in the day, there was a formula out that stated: rock + soul + jazz = Disco.

4) The only genres that "hung on" so to speak, but barely hung on was Jazz and rock and roll. Out of these two, rock and roll suffered moreso and suffered tremendously which angered its fans.

5) At the height and peak of Disco's popularity (about 1976 - 1978) 4 of the 5 genres had either disappeared or suffered so much that they "gave in" to Disco with many of their Artists "jumping ship" and getting on the Disco bandwagon. Jazz was the only genre that really hung on during that period.

6) When Disco began it's decline (about 1978) 4 of the 5 distinct genres did not recover; disco still reigned but new music, such as new wave, Rap/Hip Hop, punk, etc., began to enter into the scene and gave Disco a new challenge and a run for its money.

7) When the Steve Dahl debacle began (June 1979) this was the knife in the throat of disco, and for the next year into 1980, disco, the music, the scene, the fashion, etc. (what have you), would die a slow death.

8) In 1980 it was apparent that Disco was dying or dead. It was a shame to either mention the word "Disco." Funk music slowly came back into the scene but only for a while. Soul music was all but dead but R&B, in a new form was also slowly returning. Rap and Hip Hop was still evolving and no one knew whether it would last, but was surviving and becoming successful in the industry. However, with disco dying and its death imminent, there was definitely a void in the music scene and industry. If you listen to the music of 1980 and 1981, you can hear that void in the music produced during that time. Of particular note, gone were the lusch orchestrations associated with Disco music; those orchestrations were still around, but were becoming a rarity in the industry. As successful as Rap/Hip Hop is nowadays, no one had a clue that Rap/Hip Hop would be the next big thing. In 1980 and 1981 the music industry had no idea what was next after the disco party had ended. They were kind of experimenting trying to produce the next big thing or force something out that the music fans worldwide would like. Lastly, many Disco producers, artists, and record labels had shut down and no longer existed.

9) By 1982 it was apparent that the disco era was dead and over. The experimentation of 1980 and 1981 produced nothing much that would take over from disco.

10) In 1982 the new music emerged which was initially called "The British Invasion." There were new groups and a new sound out of the United Kingdom that began to take notice around the world. The music in the United States would also take on this British Pop flavor and this would last throughout the 1980's up until about 1989. Gone were the lush, plush orchestrations of disco, that is, real instruments such as string ensembles (violins, violas, cellos), horn sections (trumpets, trombones, tubas, saxophones, french horns), percussions, xylophones, bells, timpani, etc. They would forever, in the Disco form of that era, be put to rest.

So this is how Disco affected other music genres during that era up through Disco's end. Hope this helps. No one truly knows the hurt, pain, and anger of Disco fans during that time when the music supposedly died for the exception of the people that actually lived the entire era from beginning to end. But Disco, being killed simply went underground and resurrected itself into Dance, techno, trance, house, etc. The music is still there but just in another contemporary form and different names.

Garry

[mr.t likes indie]

Thank you for your response, Garry. It was a pleasure to read your post and I fully agree with it.

The only thing I still prefer over your idea of the changing faces of some genres of music is the idea that some types of music give birth to some other types of music, and when one type of it radically changes its "face" I would more likely be saying about the birth of a derivative sound. But, from the other point, I also agree to your idea, at least because the "feeling" of disco was successfully transfered to other genres that formed that big "EDM" continuum and because the perception of sound/musical techniques can change after some time and some genre wouldn't be thought to be itself no more.

[mr.t likes indie]

I have also noticed no one had pointed to the boom of cheap professional synths from, most notably, Yamaha, Roland, Korg that happened in the late 70s - early 80s as to one of the possible reasons of decline of disco. Around that time, Kraftwerk and UK new wave/synthpop movement have successfully proved music can still be hugely danceable when it's produced solely on synths.

And, there was also tape boom around that time, hitting from the other side, which simplified and reduced the price of all recording needs. Yes, recording to a tape is generally thought to be less quality, but is still enjoyed by the majority.

With these factors combined, disco music, which was based on a real orchestra, musicians, vocalists, looks expensive.

[clive27]

Dispite what Steve Dahl has said or done people of today still love disco music, discomania influence a lot of people including me I just could not get enough of the stuff and now I am continue playing the music which I love in the clubs and now on the radio , checkout out Boogie wonderland on www.hayesfm .org coming soon. along side myself CliveG and Kingsley

on 91.8 Hayesfm and on the website above.

thanks.