Turn The Beat Around--The Book

[nrgbeat]

Today at Barnes and Noble I happened to come across a new book called "Turn The Beat Around".

I skimmed through it and it mentions a lot of the well known NYC clubs Studio 54, The Saint, Le Jardin, Crisco Disco, has pictures, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0571211941/qid=1123899417/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4613473-2677720?v=glance

[thommy2458]

Hi nrgbeat-I'm reading it right now-about 1/4th through.It's
good until in chapter three he becomes a music critic.Eurodisco
is "soul-less,"love to love you baby" is bloodless('the fact is...Summer ain't a good singer")he goes on to call Summer
"disco's ultimate blank canvas,
Simon Soussan's production of Shalamar's "Uptown festival" is
"horrific",The bass line to the Bee Gee's "you should be dancing"
is the result of listening to too many polka records.The book flap begins by saying "disco may be the most universally derided genre of music" but that 'critic and journalist Peter Shapiro gives disco it's due"
Hey,I know disco has alot of clunkers,but this to me ,is biting the hand that feeds you.I will continue reading,because he has
some good insights but when I
read the above chapter,I almost threw the damn thing across the room.

Thom

[markydefad]

Hey thommy,

I picked this book up on Saturday at Borders and I've skimmed through it--it is quite accurate with names & places--couldn't find many typos--but I didn't read his critiques yet!!! :evil: :x :roll:

He does give Bobby Viteritti & Trocadero Transfer some mentions--basically crediting BV as a pioneer of the "sleaze"/ (we called it "morning music"--I was there!!! :P ) phenomenon.

[markydefad]

I don't have the book with me..but a coupla things caught my eye. :D

Some big NYC DJ contends that "the week after" The Knack's "My Sharona" hit #1 on the Billboard Pop chart in July of 1979--disco died. The week after. This is something I've mentioned here in the past and have been roundly poo-poohed as "so wrong, so wrong." :P

Also, mad props are given by someone to Giorgio Moroder's electronic masterpiece "Evolution" which I've championed here--- to the sound of crickets chirping. :P

I'll get the exact quotes for tomorrow.

[Mixmachine]

I'm still digesting this review of this book :roll:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...691958,00.html

[markydefad]

I don't have the book with me..but a coupla things caught my eye. :D

Some big NYC DJ contends that "the week after" The Knack's "My Sharona" hit #1 on the Billboard Pop chart in July of 1979--disco died. The week after. This is something I've mentioned here in the past and have been roundly poo-poohed as "so wrong, so wrong." :P

OK, on page 230-231:

"From the time Chic's "Le Freak" replaced Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" at the top of the American pop charts in December 1978, every American #1 (with the possible exception of the Doobie Brothers' one-week reign with "What A Fool Believes") was a disco record until the Knack's "My Sharona" replaced Chic's "Good Times" on August 25, 1979. Then, as DJ Danny Krivit jokes, "Disco died in a week. One week." He was barely exaggerating. After the Knack reintroduced rock to the American charts, there were only a handful of disco records that topped the charts- ("Rise"/ No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)/Upside Down")--and these were all by well-established artists, not by musicians who made their names during the disco craze, Seemingly as suddenly as it emerged, disco vanished from the landscape of American popular culture."

(Well Lipps Inc. did get to #1 in early 1980--but that was about it.)

Also, mad props are given by someone to Giorgio Moroder's electronic masterpiece "Evolution" which I've championed here--- to the sound of crickets chirping. :P

On page 284, "Daniel Wang, a current dance music producer, whose work directly references disco" talks about his influences...

"Then there was hearing Danny Krivit [him again!!!] & Tee Scott play "Evolution" by Giorgio Moroder, which is probably the most sonically evolved record ever made--it's a virtual catalog of what one can do with synth effects with a great sort of orchestral composition on top..."

This was a Bobby Viteritti staple also. LOVED THIS RECORD!!!

[discotom73]

I'm wondering: is "Turn The Beat Around" a better book than "Hot Stuff: A Brief History In Disco"? I have "Hot Stuff" and I thought it was good and informative. Any opinions?

[Mario]

:cry: I hate to admit it, but I am one of those who agrees that the Waterloo of the 70s disco era was indeed The Knack's "My Sharona"...I won't go as far as to say that disco "died" about this time...But you'll have to agree that the "height" of the 70s disco era had passed at this time. I realize that 70s disco music "evolved" into a different disco/dance music, but in my opinion it's heyday was over at the arrival of The Knack... :oops: I remember that around the time of fall 1979, here in the southwest, discos were closing down and shortly thereafter many discos were converted into "Urban Cowboy" style bars!!! :evil: I am aware that in the larger metropolitan areas of the states (and various countries), discos went on and on in the similar fashion of the 1970s...) Today, when one mentions the word "disco", immediately visions of K.C. & The Sunshine Band, Chic, The Bee Gees, & Donna Summer immediately come to mind...It seems that the apex of disco was indeed the middle/late 70s...Take Care...Mario 8)

[remicks]

*****

Sorry Marky but:

Now I've heard everything ..... a one hit wonder like The Knack killed disco ?? Even if you mean symbolically ..I don't agree. I will agree with this: a lot of the rock 'n rollers ( they weren't even that ... it was more the Jackson Brown , James Taylor crowd ...what label to give them?? ) --were totally freaked out by this sudden domination by disco. It was a complete threat to their mundane docile lifestyle . And the embracing of "MY SHARONA " was just a desperate attempt at grasping at straws ... anything new would do .... anything other than disco. (can anyone even sit thru a listen of "MY SHARONA" these days? ) But ... one hit and poof you're gone ... does not a trend make . I take big exception to the notion that disco fizzled out right after that ... ..
In the first place this disco domination period this book describes between DEC 28, 1978- AUG 25, 1979.there
was not a continous string of Disco #1s -unless The Bee Gees
"TOO MUCH HEAVEN " and Peaches and Herb's "REUNITED " are somehow disco.....(disco ballads? )
Secondly, trends are not defined by what makes it to #1 alone . For example there were no punk songs to go #1 ever (US) ...so apparently not only did PUNK die ....but by this criteria ....it never even existed.
And disco continued to hold its share of much of the TOP 40. .... before , during and after "MY SHARONA".
----- BUT ..even if we do use this convoluted reference.... let's look at certain songs that did hit #1 after "MY SHARONA" .....

first of all ..the rest of
1979

"DON"T STOP 'TIL YOU GET ENOUGH" --Michael Jackson
"RISE" -- Herb Alpert
"POP MUSIK" --M
"NO MORE TEARS ( ENOUGH IS ENOUGH )" -- Streisand & Summer

1980

"ROCK WITH YOU" -- Michael Jackson
"ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL " -- Pink Floyd
"CALL ME " --Blondie
"FUNKYTOWN" Lipps Inc.
"MAGIC" -- Olivia Newton John
"UPSIDE DOWN " -- Diana Ross
"ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST " -- Queen

1981

"THE TIDE IS HIGH " --Blondie
"CELEBRATION" -- Kool & The Gang
"BETTE DAVIS EYES" --Kim Carnes
"STARS ON 45" -- Stars On 45
"PHYSICAL" -- Olivia Newton John

1982

"I Can't Go FOR THAT ( NO CAN DO )" -- Hall & Oates
"DON'T YOU WANT ME" --Human League
"ABRACADABRA" --Steve Miller Band
"MICKEY " -- Toni Basil
"MANEATER " --Hall & Oates

1983

"AFRICA" --TOTO
"BILLIE JEAN" ---Michael Jackson
"BEAT IT "-- Michael Jackson
"LET"S DANCE" --David Bowie
"FLASHDANCE" -- Irene Cara
"SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS " -- Eurythmics
"MANIAC" -- Michael Sambello
"ALL NIGHT LONG " -- Lionel Richie

1984

"KARMA CHAMELEON" -- Culture Club
"JUMP" -- Van Halen
"LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY " -- Denise Williams
"THE REFLEX" -- Duran Duran
"GHOSTBUSTERS" -- Ray Parker JR
"CARIBBEAN QUEEN" --Billy Ocean
"WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO " --Wham
"LIKE A VIRGIN" -- Madonna

and so forth ..... speaks for itself...."MY SHARONA " may have knocked disco off the #1 position during it's six week run.. but then it and "The Knack" disappeared forever ..........while disco came back again and again and ... ....


that book is crap .....

:evil: :evil: remicks

*****

[nrgbeat]

While I agree that "Sharona" didn't single handedly kill disco. I disagree that "Mickey", "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" and "Jump" (Van Halen) are disco records. They are danceable but certainly not disco.

I think the 70's disco sound died here in the U.S. and evolved into other forms of dance music (Hi-NRG, New Wave, Funk, etc).

[remicks]

*****

I know nrgbeat ....and discos suddenly became dance clubs :roll: ...... but guess what?..... the building was the same , the DJ was the same , the lighting still the same, the reason the people were there was the same ... dance music ... disco.... what's the diff?? Disco was dancable music played in clubs/bars . All those songs I listed were dancable songs that were played in clubs and bars. Once rock oriented media (like Rolling Stone magazine ) was successful in their campaign to make "disco" a dirty word .... disco music then started getting called anything but .....and all that would've continued to be called disco ...suddenly had to be labeled something else ...even though it was still music being created to do everything that disco had ( i.e. get people on the dancefloor). I agree disco evolved and was even distilled into these more specific styles ....but they all come under this larger umbrella we call ...."dance music"....i.e. another word for .................disco.

****

[discotom73]

I agree with nrgbeat: the disco sound of the 70's changed as the eighties started. Some may disagree with me but I always felt that the Michael Jackson album "Thriller" was THE bridge between 1970's disco and 1980's club dance (or any other terminology you can think of). Even early Madonna hits like "Lucky Star" and "Borderline" sound VERY disco, but was it disco? Songs like these were once called the "Shannon" sound which featured her notable hit "Let The Music Play" (and it did!)

[Spellbound]

who really cares about number #1's anyway?????

certainly not the truly dedicated nonbandwagon jumping people in all of the dance clubs

disco record labels such as WEST END, SALSOUL, PRELUDE, SAM, EMERGENCY etc... continued on until the mid 1980's

many, many, many, many, many newer dance labels formed after them including the monster dance label STRICTLY RHYTHM

obvioulsy the sound changed to an extent but by the early 90's many DISCO classics were being sampled into newer songs

the original SOUND FACTORY (around 88 or 89) in new york city was very gay and very DISCO including their DJ

by the mid to late 1990's (in true every 20 years fashion) another attempt was made by the major labels to profit off of the current DANCE/DISCO scene but this time with mixed results

dance acts such as PRODIGY, CHEMICAL BROTHERS, DAFT PUNK, BASEMENT JAXX, EIFFEL 65, REAL McCOY, LA BOUCHE, ATC, ALICE DEEJAY, FAITHLESS, JAMIROQUAI, LE CLICK, VENGABOYS etc... were signed and heavily marketed and promoted by the major labels

certainly not as profitable for them (major labels) as their attempts 20+ years earlier and the popularity was not nearly as massive either but the presence was definitely felt

who can forget the AQUA song BARBIE GIRL?

certainly we would all like to but most of us cant

I still hear people singing that song all of the time

[Spellbound]

thank god the majority of the truly dedicated undereground dance scene people did not fall for most of the mid/late 1990's major label pop mainstream electronica dance crap

is it because most of them were wise enough to see right through the major labels and their ******* agendas?

^ unlike many of their disco era counterparts who were unable to see right through and were thus absored right into the major label mainstream pop bullshit

to each artist his or her own i guess

but in my opinion dance/house/disco is best kept underground

major labels they can all go to hell I hope they are all downloaded right out of business

[thommy2458]

Excellent Spellbound! I cheered when I read your
observations.I think everyone
has made great points-disco/dance has evolved through the years and has
survived them all.I always felt
the whole end of disco was
steeped in racism and homophobia(the "disco sucks" burnings)but what has been said before is still true.Disco was started by the
underground "fringe" and it is
most successful and most influential thriving in the underground.Whatever bleeds over to the masses is
nice,but the whole culture was never comfortable with
being labeled a "fad"-it never was a fad for us.And influential DJ's
will continue to pay respects
to the "classics" and educate
the underground of today that wasn't there.
Thom

[markydefad]

[quote] ....until the Knack's "My Sharona" replaced Chic's "Good Times" on August 25, 1979. Then, as DJ Danny Krivit jokes, "Disco died in a week. One week." He was barely exaggerating. After the Knack reintroduced rock to the American charts, there were only a handful of disco records that topped the charts- ("Rise"/ No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)/Upside Down")--and these were all by well-established artists, not by musicians who made their names during the disco craze, Seemingly as suddenly as it emerged, disco vanished from the landscape of American popular culture." [/unquote]

OK, of course it's an exaggeration to say Disco died the first week of September, 1979. However, it was the first harbinger of what was about to happen. I moved to SF in January of 1975, when disco was exploding unto the national consciousness. In the ensuing 4 years, thoughout 1975-76-77-78--disco just got more popular and more mainstream until by 1979 it was at it's peak. Radio stations were converting their formats to disco 24 hours a day--disco was everywhere. Then the foreboding summer of 1979 happened with the "disco sucks" record burning in Chicago, the ascendance of the punky power pop of The Knack's "My Sharona" to #1 for 6 straight weeks (the ultimate #1 Billboard Pop record of 1979), the cover stories in the likes of Time & Newsweek proclaiming the "death of disco" caused me for the first time to realize that an era was about to end--something that I truly had not seen coming. :oops: The music changed, we kept on dancing...but the new music was not the same as the old music. An era was in decline....there would be precious few records released with that "Old Disco sound" after the beginning of 1980. It became more electronic/ more rock-beat oriented.... the classic lush disco sound of Cher's 1979 "Take Me Home" morphed into the heavy electronic drone of Human League's "Don't You Want Me Baby." I must admit, at the time, I didn't really care. I liked the new stuff. I didn't wanna hear the likes of "Souvenirs" anymore....but now in retrospect it makes me sorta sad for the end of the disco era. :cry: It was rapidly going away and never really coming back. Disco was in decline and dying a quite rapid death. Frankie Valli's "Soul/Heaven above Me" was released in 1980--this seems one of the last records truly in the old style....then the Hi-NRG stuff sorta usurped the disco production....

I rest my case.

[nrgbeat]

I remember when Donna Summer came out with "The Wanderer" album and it had more of a rock/new-wave sound, I truly felt the disco era was over.

[Spellbound]

In terms of the sound and the overall popularity then I guess you are right

I guess that is why my favorite decade for collecting is the 1970's and not the 1980's

Honestly though the early 1980's dance music (both indie and major label) was not all that bad

There was also a fair amount of tolerable underground dance music released in the late 1980's and 1990's

even today there are some decent underground dance records still being released

nothing can compare to the records of the 1970's though

the 1970's was a SUPERIOR time period

^ this has nothing to do with nostalgia because I was not even born yet

[discotom73]

nrgbeat: Thanks for bringing up "the Wanderer" album by Donna Summer (1980, Geffen). That album shock virtually all her fans, but remember: her "Bad Girls" album (1979) really wasn't "pure" disco. That album was more like "disco rock" along with "Hot Stuff". Plus, she was with a ROCK band named Crow when she lived in Germany years earlier!

[thommy2458]

I always thought the last truely great "traditional" disco record
was "vertigo/relight my fire"
Thom

[markydefad]

I always thought the last truely great "traditional" disco record
was "vertigo/relight my fire"
Thom

Yeah, Thom...that was #1 as 1979 became 1980. One of the peaks of disco production, IMHO. Then everything started sounding like the "Solar Sound" of "Second Time Around"/ "And The Beat Goes On"...but Frankie Valli's last gasp attempt at "disco" seemed more a 1979 record than a 1980 record to me, at least. Maybe it was "in the can" for awhile before it got released? :-?

Ooohhh, an I see that Mr. Bob "Hollywood Hot" Crewe was a writer on that "last gasp." How appropos.

[thommy2458]

[quote="markydefad"]

I always thought the last truely great "traditional" disco record
was "vertigo/relight my fire"
Thom

Then everything started sounding like the "Solar Sound" of "Second Time Around"/ "And The Beat Goes On"...

Absolutely-not that there was anything wrong with this "sound"
but I remember being at a club
In LA one night in 1980,and the
poor DJ did not have alot of choices.The usual variety had been
dried up because of the backlash,
so I heard alot of Solar,Italian
NRG imports or club-ish R&B.
When "soul" came on through the
speakers,it made my whole night.
It's still a favorite of mine today.
Isn't it ironic that Frankie and Bob were there at the beginning with
"swearin'to god" and at the end
with"soul/heaven above me"?
Thom

[discoadam]

I find it amusing when pundits - whether pro disco or con disco - attempt to target the date of the "death" of disco. It is 2005 and we're here in cyberspace discussing a genre of music that grew, evolved and continues to exist in many guises - including the classical disco of the seventies and early eighties that many of us still listen to and enjoy. To paraphrase Mark Twain the reports of disco's death are greatly premature.

[remicks]

*****

Yes , Discoadam... & even the Billboard Chart was headed as DISCO/DANCE MUSIC well into the mid eighties......

It keeps geting mentioned that disco evolved ...well in order for something to evolve ..something has to be alive ..... if it's dead ... it simply becomes extinct.

I do agree with others that the disco of the 70's came to an end in '79 ( it then became the disco of the 80's )... but I'm not even sure what disco of the seventies means .... there was never one sound that was disco . Let's put up "CAR WASH " and "IF MY FRIENDS COULD SEE ME NOW " and "MAGIC FLY " against each other and decide which one is the most " 70's disco" sounding ............

Disco had an array of sounds and disco was evolving as these sound(s) changed from day one . (whenever day one was !!!! ??? :roll: ) ........ It is part of the glory of the music , the way disco just kept building off itself .... .... songs got old fast and DJ's were constantly seeking the new .... & if a release sounded like last years disco ( make that last week's! ) it was not going to get played . So , OF COURSE in this environment disco kept changing right up until the end of the seventies and then on through into the eighties... just as it did all thru the seventies . The clubs , the DJ's , the crowds ... demanded / expected this of the music ...

Also a major factor in this sound evolution was the progressive capabilities of electronics ...and the exciting new sounds it delivered were welcomed as part of this quest for the new .... The embracing of synths and newer recording methods just happened to coincide with the seventies becoming the eighties ..,, and once that technology took hold , for better or worse..... it dominated the way this desired "NEW" sounding music could thereafter be delivered ......

****


Thommy:
I am thinking about this idea that "RELIGHT MY FIRE" was the last truly great "traditional " disco record . I find this possibility interesting ...Does "tradtional" mean the last " highly produced / orchestrated " disco song ??

[Spellbound]

I think too many people are worried and concerned about the charts