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

[garrybcoston]

Conspiracy? Against Disco? Come on. Are we saying that disco died because of a governmental conspiracy due to disco's gay themes, sexual perversionist activities, drugs, excessive alcohol, etc.? Then what about Rap? Why would one, only one administration seek to do this? It would seem that there would be a parallel or consistency in other republican administrations seeking to do the same, especially against a music genre such as rap, being that rap is even more "thuggy" and "non-moralistic" than disco ever was.

I disagree with the conspiracy concept by the Reagan Administration. I believe that greed, jealousy, hate, Mr. Dahl and his cohorts, and prejuidice toward the disco crowd, and possibly other factors I can't think of at this moment are what mostly killed disco.

Garry:icon_neutral:

[paul]

Easy, easy. I never said anything about a conspiracy. What I'm saying is that their was an underlying current in this country against the sort of thing disco represented or came to represent.
The Anita Bryants of the world were bashing the gay lifestyle. There was the Jerry Falwells and the moral majority running around opposed to open sexuality, drugs and the women's roles. There was gay bashing associated with disco, and sex and drugs were prevalent in the culture. Add to the mix those who simply hated disco and you can see how this would end what we all knew as disco. I think most would agree that traditional disco ended around '81 to '82.
Reagan was inaugurated January '81. A conservative bent took hold. The head shops I knew in Boston were closing and there was less tolerance for drugs. The drinking age was also being raised. Then of course there was AIDS.
As for more sex in the 80s than in the 70s, I don't know about that. I remember a lot of women becoming more fearful of herpes and yes, AIDS.

Mix, I also remember the air was thick with sulfur once Reagan got in :D

[stevieboy32808]

Disco died in the early 80's.

Althought, it evolved into House music. At first it was just dj's sampling old disco records and bringing them back to life. A great example of this is Candi Staton's track You Got The Love. The vocals from that track were mixed on top of a house beat/rhythm from a track by Frankie Knuckles & Jaime Principle called Your Love. But then the djs thought they could go further and make their own music. This movement fueled what today is known as EDM or electronic dance music. It's called EDM because the music was being produced with hardware instead of live instruments like disco music was. House music gave birth to many genres of EDM, most famously techno and trance. Trance music is a derivative between house and techno combined.

I guess you could say disco still lives on, but not in the sense you would expect.

[all*that*glitters*]

Originally Posted by garrybcoston

So what do you think? When do you think the beginning of the end came for disco? When do you think disco died? Let's get this thread fired up and let us know your thoughts!

Garry

to blame Steve Dahl for the so-called 'death of disco' is to give the man more credit than the man deserves.

Disco NEVER died! It just went UNDERGROUND, back to where it started from.

Steve Dahl may have picked the right moment to start his witch-hunting campaign on Disco with a strong anti-gay element, especially at that moment when Disco was at it's commercial peak. Disco had taken over almost any rock radio format all over the USA and commercially Disco was everywhere...

Worse things came not only from the gay-bashing, Disco-hating rockfans but also from within the Disco industry itself. The overkill that most major record companies were releasing and the creative void that started to show clearly with every Disco 12" released was evident that Disco was losing it's power. Andy Williams doing a disco version of 'love story' or after Cookie Monster, Oscar and Big Bird cut their disco album all commercial disco had turned into a joke. The mirror started to crack....


Personally, I do not believe that there is an exact time or specific historic moment that pinpoints the 'death of Disco'. For many people it must be that moment when Studio 54 closed it's doors, for others it will be the charting of a certain record, for me it was the fact that Disco simply started losing its momentum, its creativity, its soul...

The day when Steve Dahl rioted in Chicago, that day Disco became Dance Music!! To be reborn as Hi Energy, Hip Hop, Electro, Freestyle....later on as Chicago House and Techno, or Euro Disco...

While the anti-Disco, anti-gay movement spreaded across the US the hardcore dancers and dj's went underground to clubs like The Paradise Garage. The Saint may have been empty but the queues in front of The Garage were still growing every saturday night.

The homophobic "disco sucks" campaign only served to unite the community. And for that, I think Steve Dahl deserves all the credit he can get...

[stevieboy32808]

Originally Posted by all*that*glitters*

The day when Steve Dahl rioted in Chicago, that day Disco became Dance Music!! To be reborn as Hi Energy, Hip Hop, Electro, Freestyle....later on as Chicago House and Techno, or Euro Disco...

This is highly inaccurate. Disco is dance music even before Steve Dahl rioted in Chicago.

Disco gave rise to rap (Sugarhill Gang anyone?), not hip-hop. Hip hop & freestyle and to a certain extent breakbeats are offshoots of electro. Electro's forefront pioneer was Kraftwerk.

You are right about one thing though and that is that disco gave rise to house music. Again hi-energy, formerly hard house, is a subgenre of house.

While the anti-Disco, anti-gay movement spreaded across the US the hardcore dancers and dj's went underground to clubs like The Paradise Garage. The Saint may have been empty but the queues in front of The Garage were still growing every saturday night.

Yes Paradise Garage gave a renewed sense of disco hope by the likes of Larry Levan.

[all*that*glitters*]

Originally Posted by stevieboy32808

This is highly inaccurate. Disco is dance music even before Steve Dahl rioted in Chicago.

Disco gave rise to rap (Sugarhill Gang anyone?), not hip-hop. Hip hop & freestyle and to a certain extent breakbeats are offshoots of electro. Electro's forefront pioneer was Kraftwerk.

You are right about one thing though and that is that disco gave rise to house music. Again hi-energy, formerly hard house, is a subgenre of house.

Yes Paradise Garage gave a renewed sense of disco hope by the likes of Larry Levan.

Stevieboy, I only refer to the terms Disco and Dance Music as those terms that the industry uses when categorising music. Or when you log into a site like this where you will find exactly the same categorisation.
Of course; dance music has been around ever since men started beating on drums but in terms of marketeers talk; the term Disco came before Dance Music when a multitude of styles took over after Disco.

[/quote]Disco gave rise to rap (Sugarhill Gang anyone?), not hip-hop. Hip hop & freestyle and to a certain extent breakbeats are offshoots of electro. Electro's forefront pioneer was Kraftwerk[/quote]

Where were you in the early Eighties?? Do you really think that all these styles were soooo strictly divived on the dancefloors?? In reality most disco's in those days were experimenting with new styles of dance music when the crowds got tired of the Disco formula. Especially a cultural icon like Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage who was experimenting with new sounds well before the jocks in Chicago burned disco. Larry's sets at the Garage were always eclectic, not 100% pure Disco and they became more so in the eighties as he incorporated punk, hard rock, new wave, reggae and other world beats into the mix.

Latin Hip Hop or Freestyle was played mainly at the Funhouse in NYC by ao John Jellybean Benitez, Madonna was a regular there. Producers and DJ's like Masters at Work and Todd Terry own a lot to the legacy of Latin Hip Hop. Rap and Hip Hop do have the same roots, as they were born into the same neighbourhoods. But Disco gave not rise to Rap as they were two opposite styles of music and of different cultural backgrounds that could never emerge as one. The people that created rap and Hip Hop wouldn't be found dead near a Disco!!

[/quote]You are right about one thing though and that is that disco gave rise to house music. Again hi-energy, formerly hard house, is a subgenre of house[/quote]

Your quote proves that you know about the evolution of hi-energy into hard house but it shows that you don't realise where hi-energy is originally coming from. So here's a little story on the origin and evolution of hi-energy....read on....

Hi-Energy was popular in the early 80's and was born waaaaaay before the House movement took over.

If the funky black and latino facets of Disco evolved into House music, the whiter Eurodisco sound of Moroder, Bellotte and Cerrone lived on in a genre that would eventually be known as Hi-Energy. Hi-Energy was epitomised in the high camp of artists like Sylvester, Divine and Miguel Brown. And its influence was huge. Hi-energy became the lingua franca of white gay dancefloors worldwide, and then crossed over into the mainstream. This is the music which was appropriated by UK producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, who sold this unashamedley gay sound as teen-pop with bubblegum acts like Bananarama, Dead or Alive and Mel & Kim.
When combined with the force of the nineties European techno, in shirts-off homo-hedonistic clubs like London's Trade, Hi-energy evolved into various forms of hard dance -nu-energy, trancecore, hard house....

Another British producer and DJ Ian Levine, made Hi-energy his own by producing an endless stream of speedy tunes that were tailored especially for dancefloors of Club Heaven and The Saint. These clubs were operative in the early 80's, when most House artists were still in their pampers! These records were largely extensions of the Eurodisco sound, but Levine exaggerated the style, bringing to it the aesthetic he'd developed in his Northern Soul career. The result was fast, stompy music filled with swirling melodies and featuring a series of female vocalists -Eartha Kitt, Hazell Dean, Evelyn Thomas, singing lyrics with which every gay man could identify. One song 'High Energy' by Evelyn Thomas, would clarify the style's name (it was also known as 'boystown' or simply 'gay disco')

from the book 'last night a dj saved my life' by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton (Headline Books 2006)

I definitely recommend you this book, it is accurate and very well written and if you are interested in one percent of Dance Music you will get 100% knowledge of the matter after reading this.

And besides, having lived and DJ-ed in those days when Disco and Dance Music were originating is even better than reading all about it....I can tell as I have lived the story sofar and witnessed the facts from within....

[markydefad]

I agree that if you went to clubs--it didn't seem at the time (end of 1979) that disco had died--but the music changed radically from 1979 to 1980--the whole R&B Solar sound (And The Beat Goes On, Take your Time (Do it Right), etc.) and Prelude/ West End sound took over along with the Euro stuff (Lime) and the New Wavish rock stuff...there was a genuine dearth of records that sounded like classic 1979 (Take Me Home, Ain't That Enough For you, A Little Lovin' Keeps The Doctor Away) disco...only in retrospect do you hear the way it changed. So maybe No More Tears (Enough is Enough) was the ultimate last hurrah for the traditional disco record....times were a-changin', the old style was taboo---keep the production funkier bassline-oriented, dump the swirling strings, the girly-girl vocals--bring back some grit with the smoove Quincy Jones style of production. By 1982 0r 1983...any vestiges of old disco seemed gone...It's Raining Men or Sharon Redd's In The Name Of Love...being about the only things I can think of that had the appeal to the "old days." ;-)

[SandraDee]

Originally Posted by markydefad

It's Raining Men or Sharon Redd's In The Name Of Love...being about the only things I can think of that had the appeal to the "old days." ;-)

The Boystown Gang's stuff had a very 'trad/retro' sound in '82 also. There were still many boogie/funky disco tracks in '82 that still had strings in them too like Esther Williams and Stephanie Mills.

[markydefad]

yeah Boystown Gang was made by and for GAYS in San Francisco...Bill Motley (producer) loved to remake oldies form the Sixties & early Seventies from his record collection as comtemporary dance music.....seems like the "stings" were actually "synthesizers"...they didn't have the budget for violins!!! that went for cocaine and speed.

[SandraDee]

Wow I'm shocked! I would've put money on them being real strings on 'Cant Take My Eyes Off You'.:o