Saturday Night Fever: hero or villain?

[eddieo]

I think many of us here would agree that disco could be viewed as having a pre-Saturday Night Fever period, and a post-Saturday Night Fever period (although many may have come to enjoy disco post-1978 and therefore can only know the pre-SNF period anecdotally). I have always been of the mind that SNF ruined disco, or nearly so, but it seems to me that a majority out there (and in here, I'd guess) more likely thinks SNF saved disco (or had some other positive affect), maybe even defined disco.
I remember the pre-SNF period as a time when dance clubs and dance music were a hip, fresh, emerging trend, The alternative at the time, rock concerts, attracted a crowd of people with dirty hair, dirty jeans, and ratty T-shirts. Discos attracted a crowd of showered, groomed, cologne-wearing hipsters. There were few places one could go to hear and dance to this music, so one had to be open-minded and gregarious to explore them. We could all be different, 'cause the love of the music bound us.
Post-SNF, 'discos' start cropping up in every little strip mall, attracting open collars with hairy chests and gold chains, playing music by rock and pop artists that happily jumped on a bandwagon by adding a synthesizer to their repertoire. I recall that in the film itself, Tony grooves to Tavares, yet the Bee Gees cover of the tune on the soundtrack became the hit.
Where do you stand? Saturday Night Fever: salvation or damnation?

[qdearl]

Just to clarify my vote,

I don't really think SNF, the movie revolutionized the Disco scene,just brought what was already there out to the masses, but I definitely believe the soundtrack was an exceptional example of the many flavors of the Disco sound, and as an introduction to disco, very informative.(to the ears...:icon_smile:)

[Videoskooter]

I definitely believe the soundtrack was an exceptional example of the many flavors of the Disco sound, and as an introduction to disco, very informative.(to the ears...:icon_smile:)

Agree 100%, ok, the Bee Gees were well known but "Salsation", "Calypso Breakdown", "Night on Disco mountain" were not really mainstream.

SNF is still very enjoyable to watch and to listen! I clearly remember people @ the cinema dancing on the seats, singing along. IMO, it gets the thumbs up and more than that! And....it had "Disco Inferno", still THE anthem for me, DiscowiZe!

It was the recordcompanies and the media that killed Disco, not SNF!

[Mixmachine]

I think many of us here would agree that disco could be viewed as having a pre-Saturday Night Fever period, and a post-Saturday Night Fever period (although many may have come to enjoy disco post-1978 and therefore can only know the pre-SNF period anecdotally). I have always been of the mind that SNF ruined disco, or nearly so, but it seems to me that a majority out there (and in here, I'd guess) more likely thinks SNF saved disco (or had some other positive affect), maybe even defined disco.
I remember the pre-SNF period as a time when dance clubs and dance music were a hip, fresh, emerging trend, The alternative at the time, rock concerts, attracted a crowd of people with dirty hair, dirty jeans, and ratty T-shirts. Discos attracted a crowd of showered, groomed, cologne-wearing hipsters. There were few places one could go to hear and dance to this music, so one had to be open-minded and gregarious to explore them. We could all be different, 'cause the love of the music bound us.
Post-SNF, 'discos' start cropping up in every little strip mall, attracting open collars with hairy chests and gold chains, playing music by rock and pop artists that happily jumped on a bandwagon by adding a synthesizer to their repertoire. I recall that in the film itself, Tony grooves to Tavares, yet the Bee Gees cover of the tune on the soundtrack became the hit.
Where do you stand? Saturday Night Fever: salvation or damnation?

Eddieo, we had this SNF discussions around here before, and I made the same point you are making here.

Unfortunately, people from the early disco days long ago moved on and their memories are not very prevalent on the Net in comparison with the after SNF crowds.

Another factor is that the Pre-SNF number of club goers was far less and many are no longer with us.

The After SNF crowds will never know the difference, as they can't compare the "scene" before and after, but you are right, I was lucky to catch the last few years of the pre-SNF days and the difference was striking, although I'd admit that at the time it was all good for me, and only in retrospect one can see how, and understand why it all began to go down hill after SNF.

Yes, the over-commercialization of Disco killed the golden goose, but it was SNF who finally exposed the "Disco scene" to the masses and therefore brought upon the obscene levels of commercial hype that we all saw and detested in the late 70's.

I actually liked --and still do-- SNF, and even though in later years I blamed this flick for "ruining" Disco, I'm not sure Disco wouldn't have fallen to a similar fate without SNF's push anyways, but I do believe old fashion Disco would have lasted much longer, way into the 80's at least.

[QUINNY]

I can still remember the feeling of total alienation that I felt watching SNF at the movies. Probably, I was ultra critical at the time, because I was heavily involved in discos and DJing, but I have to tell you guys that the story certainly rang true. However, the scenes in the disco and the dancing just left me with a feeling of mild incredulity and panic......if this was what discos were gonna be ('cos rightly or wrongly, the USA was always considered to be ahead of the UK trend-wise), I didn't want to be there. this was never more true than when considering the soundtrack. I, along with my DJ friends and acquaintances felt the soundtrack was soooo lame and sucked BIG time. A chance wasted, so far as we were concerned, with too many fillers and not enough killers.

For about a year after SNF, the dancing fools had their way, then normal service was resumed. Luckily, in that year there were plenty of other great tracks released, so that the SNF influence, although hugely significant to Disco, actually ended up aiding and abetting dance music's rise too.

So, for Disco and discos it was a hero to some extent, but personally I considered it a villain, especially the soundtrack. 30 years on and I still baulk at the disco/dancing scenes and most of the music leaves me stone cold.

[eddieo]

I found this interesting tidbit on Wikipedia:
"The story is based upon a 1976 New York magazine article by British writer Nik Cohn, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night." In the late-1990s, Cohn acknowledged that the article had been fabricated. A newcomer to the United States and a stranger to the disco lifestyle, Cohn was unable to make any sense of the subculture he had been assigned to write about. The characters who were to become Tony Manero and his friends sprang almost completely from his imagination."

I think what has bugged more than anything else was the use of The Bee Gees for the soundtrack. To me, that was tantamount to making a movie in the 90s about rave culture and using Huey Lewis and the News!
Oddly, a little research I was doing for the "70% of Discos are Gay per Billboard Magazine 1975" thread led me to see the review of The Bee Gees' 1975 LP Main Course, which stated:
After several rather disappointing albums, the Gibbs Brothers have come up with perhaps their most versatile and most contemporary effort in years....this album touches base with so many different styles of music and commercial sounds, that it could be a smash on all fronts. For the first time, they could score in the soul market with several dance-oriented songs (sometimes a la Average White Band).
So, I guess that's what justified annointing them as the kings of Disco just a year or so later. As for Disco Inferno, I was happy to see that record - and The Trammps - get their due in the film. Again, in the film, Tony never listens to The Bee Gees (that I recall); he has excellent taste in tunes, and, though I might have selected a couple of cuts off their other album from 1976, Where the Happy People Go, Inferno was, and is, a killer!
BTW, I'm disappointed that there's not a back-story about Disco Inferno, like there is for "The Night the Lights Went Out". I always thought it was based at an actual fire in a club.

[Videoskooter]

Question: would Disco Inferno have been so BIG if it wouldn't have been used on the SNF soundtrack?

IMO, SNF did not kill Disco! In the 3-5 years that followed there were a whole lot of great records.

And no, Tony doesn't listen to the Bee Gees tracks but he's freaking out on "You should be dancing" and for me that is still a Killertrack! I can't sit still when that one explodes from the speakers.

The dance scenes? Hey, that's showing off Italian style. Maybe I get some of the stuff (and the family scenes) a little better then some of you :icon_lol: Everytime we see SNF with the family we're rolling over the floor, especially the "hair scene" where everybody hits everybody, we can all remember that and we still do that even without SNF in our minds!

Am I a big fan of the dance scenes? No, not really, except for the couple dancing on "Salsation" but certainly not the line dance and the hip shaking-pointing stuff.

And now the big 1: if I had to choose between the SNF and the TGIF soundtrack? TGIF, definitely!

[eddieo]

Skooter, you'd make a great politician! Even if we disgree on little specific ?'s, it's impossible not to respect your positivity!

Agreed, Inferno was way-boosted by its inclusion on the soundtrack, simply because that release, more than any other, represents the crossover of dance music to pop. I'd bet the other old-timers here would agree that, pre-SNF, clubgoers heard new music first in the club, then almost never heard those songs on the radio (of course there are exceptions); post-SNF, new club-goers would come to DJ booth requesting things they heard on the radio (often inappropriate selections, then they'd be miffed when I wouldn't play them). I think we all agree that SNF (film & soundtrack) brought new bodies into the clubs (and ultimately new clubs into the neighborhood); whether that was a good or bad thing might be where we differ.

As an authentic Italian-American greaseball, I too enjoyed the family scenes (almost as much as the bedroom mirror primping "Al Pa-CHEE-NO" scene). Also disliked the dance scenes. Partner dancing was certainly a big deal around here, pre-SNF, but I never dug it. Practicing steps at home with your sweetie so you could go out and rock the floor, dance contest or not? Puh-leeze! Of course, if I had better footwork, or a GF who was 18 at the time, I might have felt differently about the hustle. That's probably what led me to the DJ booth: THAT I can do alone.

Now, TGIF....from the very beginning of that film - and I mean the VERY beginning, when THIS chick:

starts to bust a move to the title track - I knew that THIS was a movie about the CLUB! (SNF was more about the dance studio, the neighborhood, the shoe store, the back seat, etc.)
Of course, there was plenty about TGIF that I have to squint my eyes and ignore (like the way the DJ uses the cueing lever to drop a needle on a record live....OUCH!), but I prefer to see the film as allegorical, not to be taken literally...y'know, like the bible. Casablanca Records certainly more closely mirrored my playlist, but TGIF was a niche film, for me and others like me, that already knew we liked the kool-aid; SNF was evangelical, and brought the masses to my little exclusive enclave (that I had only recently gained entry to myself! Now here come the infidels!)
Never did like "You Should Be Dancing" either, though I was clearly in the minority. People would freak (and not in a good way) when I would play it, using two copies to mix out most of the nasal falsetto vocal. Good thing there was a door on the DJ booth!

[Rugger57]

Thought I'd get in on the party here....

I remember back in the 70's I used to pick up a lot of disco lps at a mall record store in Indianapolis for a mere pittance...like 99 cents....after these lps made their chart run. I suppose the store thought these were just throwaways and not likely to sell any other copies after they fell from the charts. I had previously bought "That's Where The Happy People Go" at a used record store in Bloomington months prior and fell in love with the title track. When I discovered the "Disco Inferno" lp in the Indy store for 99 cents - along with Donna Summer's "Love To Love You" and "Try Me" - I picked them both up. I enjoyed them and gave them many plays. Then both fell behind in rotation as I bought newer stuff. I even remember "Disco Inferno" being played several times in the clubs I was going to, but not abundantly. Then all of a sudden, about a year later, the SNF soundtrack was released and the song was EVERYWHERE! I always thought the song was OK...but nothing to go ga-ga about. I was worn out on the song as a result and I can hardly listen to the song today without feeling a little queezy.

[Mixmachine]

Question: would Disco Inferno have been so BIG if it wouldn't have been used on the SNF soundtrack?

you are right about that, I can't even recall memories of "Disco Inferno " before SNF now.

Am I a big fan of the dance scenes? No, not really, except for the couple dancing on "Salsation" but certainly not the line dance and the hip shaking-pointing stuff.

At the the time (1978) the 'hip shaking pointing stuff" was already history, they are doing the 'bus stop' in a '78 film, this dance was out of fashion already by this time. (i'm sure with some exceptions)

Many local dancers could not believe all the fuzz about Travolta's dancing in the press.

But for most of America this was the first time ever they saw any of this 'moves', and so the masses invaded the Disco clubs doing Travolta's moves, encouraged by 'Disco Dancing Schools' that began to pop up in every shopping Plaza.

Now, the Puerto Rican couple, that was the kind of dancing that was going on in '78, and they were doing this to many Euro-Disco hits of the day.

Of course, there was plenty about TGIF that I have to squint my eyes and ignore (like the way the DJ uses the cueing lever to drop a needle on a record live....OUCH!)

:icon_lol::icon_lol: yeap, check out the scene when the Commodores are in the booth, in his excitement the Dj bumps the Turn Table with his back and the needle flies off and bounces all the way across the vinyl, and the music just keeps on going, well, maybe he was playing a tape?? :icon_lol:

[markydefad]

Originally Posted by Videoskooter
Question: would Disco Inferno have been so BIG if it wouldn't have been used on the SNF soundtrack?

Posted by Mixmachine
you are right about that, I can't even recall memories of "Disco Inferno " before SNF now.

ain't it funny...how time clouds the memory... :icon_rolleyes::icon_idea:

"DISCO INFERNO" reaches #1 on the Billboard disco chart in early 1977 [first week @ #1 on Feb. 5, 1977 for a 6 week run at the top], after Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me this Way" drops from the top slot...the "SNL" soundtrack doesn't appear on the chart until January of 1978...so it was BIG before SNL...a whole year before the soundtrack LP was even released....maybe it got a "second wind" from the LP and crossed over to the radio the second time around....I think that's what happened....

[eddieo]

ain't it funny...how time clouds the memory...
"DISCO INFERNO" reaches #1 on the Billboard disco chart in early 1977 [first week @ #1 on Feb. 5, 1977 for a 6 week run at the top], after Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me this Way" drops from the top slot...the "SNL" soundtrack doesn't appear on the chart until January of 1978...so it was BIG before SNL...a whole year before the soundtrack LP was even released....maybe it got a "second wind" from the LP and crossed over to the radio the second time around....I think that's what happened....

That's how I remember it. Hearing it in the movie was like hearing a "classic", though my personal fave was Soul Searchin' Time. It's such fun to see the dates and think back on those times..... I first discovered disco and clubs in the spring of my senior year of high school, 1976. Over that summer, I went to whatever clubs would let me in with my fake ID. September 1976, at 17, I start college and they have a radio station, where I'm the only noobie that would like a disco show (all rockers and folkies). An upperclassman on the staff pulls me aside and gives me MWF noon to one, which was like hitting the lottery. Next time in the club (Jacob's Ladder, Revere, MA), I brag to the DJ that I have a radio show (I don't think I had even been on-air yet) and he's impressed! wants to know if I'd have him in for an interview! SCHHWIINNGG!!! Anyway, long story short, he brings in some brand new records, fresh from the pool and proceeds to claim that one will be #1 very soon: Thelma Houston's Don't Leave Me This Way. That was September, maybe October, 1976. He knew his stuff!

[Disco Funk]

Now, the Puerto Rican couple, that was the kind of dancing that was going on in '78, and they were doing this to many Euro-Disco hits of the day.

I actually thought the black couple danced the best, even though we only see their part mid-way. Were they dancing 'au current'? I guess to find out what styles were the rage for that year, one just has to dig out the Soul Train clips.

Disco Funk

[QUINNY]

ain't it funny...how time clouds the memory... :icon_rolleyes::icon_idea:

"DISCO INFERNO" reaches #1 on the Billboard disco chart in early 1977 [first week @ #1 on Feb. 5, 1977 for a 6 week run at the top], after Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me this Way" drops from the top slot...the "SNL" soundtrack doesn't appear on the chart until January of 1978...so it was BIG before SNL...a whole year before the soundtrack LP was even released....maybe it got a "second wind" from the LP and crossed over to the radio the second time around....I think that's what happened....

Absolutely right Markey and I doubt if the likes of Tina Turner would have made a version of it in the '90s, had it not gained the extra exposure via SNF.

[Cdnbob]

Maybe it was me, or the friends I hung around with, or perhaps SNL was bigger in the States than in Canada, but I don't remember there being a really big buzz about this movie at the time. I admit I did go out and purchase the album at the time, I was 18 then, but I didn't purchase the album because of the movie, I purchased it because of the music. At the time I loved it, but now I can't stand the majority of the stuff on the soundtrack. To me a lot of it represends the down side of disco - crap music - (About the only tracks I still like on this album is the Yvonne Elliman and Tavares cuts.) - the falsetto Bee Gee voices are the albums biggest offenders.

I found the movie to be far removed from what was going on in the clubs I went to. No one in their right mind would have been caught dead dressing like Travolta and neither would they have danced like him. If they had, they would have been laughed out of the club and labelled a goof.

I agree with many previous posters that I think what SNL did do was bring disco to the mainstream audience, but I don't think it was representative of what was really going on. I think it was a generic/sanatized view of what disco was about. I don't think it adversely affected disco music as a whole. Just exposed it to an audience that didn't know about it in the first place. Though mind you, I think a lot of that audience that came to disco because of the movie had their eyes opened when they went to an actual disco as it was nothing like they had seen in the movie.

Viewing SNL today I find it extremely embarrassing, cheaply made, and very dated.