Discomania

[mrkick20000]

Hi there,

I am a Japanese disco fan and CD&Vinyl collector, at age of 38, writing from Tokyo. In Japan, disco has been being reevaluated by the young and midleage alike. Until recently, there was a popular TV program which feartured oldies disco tunes such as Donna Summer and EW&F that were sung by Japanese pop singers.

Especially in Tokyo, disco is said to start to revive from place to place and many dance classic parties are held in clubs. What is more, many record companies have been burning various disco compilation CDs, i.e. soul, funk, eurodisco, new wave and even rock-disco like Kiss!

Some friends of mine kind of mock me because I am a ''obsolete'' disco aficionado, but if I explain to them about its history and real influence on the current dance music like house and techno, they at last agree to that! Disco is still alive, I believe. How is disco doing in your country? Is it still having steam?

mrkick20000

[discosavvy]

It depends on your definition of "alive". You mentioned that disco "oldies" are popular in Japan, well the same is true here in the U.S.A. - but the problem is that new disco songs are usually overlooked, sometimes intentionally. New disco songs that became hits in most other countries were hardly played on American radio because of the anti-disco bias of many radio programmers and perhaps also a lack of promotion and payola (Examples are "Ready or Not" by the boyband A1 -- it was released when boybands were huge, but A1 had violin backing, which people think sounds "old", and "Murder on the Dancefloor" by British diva Sophie Ellis Bextor, which as far as I know only became a top 20 hit in the city of Boston). New disco songs, even those released as singles, struggled compared to non-disco songs from the same artists (Examples are "Strong Enough" by Cher and "They Dance!" by Barry Manilow, and all disco songs by Jamiroquai - on the other hand "Believe", "Turn the Radio Up", and "Virtual Insanity" by the same three artists got lots of play but they were not disco. George Michael went top 10 with "Jesus to a Child" and "Fastlove" in 1996; guess what happened to his disco "Outside" two years later. The Spice Girls were popular in America in the 1990s with songs like "Wannabe" and "Too Much" but their disco "Never Give Up On the Good Times" wasn't given a chance; a reviewer said "it could have been a hit in 1979". Guess what happened to Lionel Richie's disco "Don't Stop the Music" compared to his more techno hit "Angel". So many missed opportunities! "Don't Stop Movin'" by S Club 7, a boring disco song which actually deserved its lack of airtime in the U.S., somehow got approved by Radio Disney, so many American kids know that one.

Then we have a problem where most American people deny that new disco is really disco; even when they hear it, they can't allow themselves to believe it - they fall into two camps, those who believe disco died in 1979 (the "1980s had no disco" myth) and those who believe it died in 1983/1984 (the "1990s had no disco" myth). Anything after those arbitrary dates they dismiss as "house" or something else even if it's 100% disco styled. Some of them are obviously psychologically scarred by the "Disco is Dead" crowd who persecuted them because they allowed the ideology of enemies to become their own. Others think they can't today effectively recreate the ambience of '70s discos/nightclubs and complain that the hustle is "dead"...even though there are places they can go where the hustle is still danced and the disco music still plays all night long.

But at least old disco did remain popular, as evidenced by some facts I gathered:
* The American TV game show "Family Feud" aired "Disco Fever Week" matches February 10-14, 2003.
* The American TV game show "Pyramid" aired "Disco Week" shows April 28-May 2, 2003.
* ABC aired a two-hour prime-time television show called "The Disco Ball...A 30-Year Celebration" on January 16, 2003.
* The "Get Up 'N Dance" disco tour came to many American locations during 2003, including Philadelphia and Baltimore.
* K-BIG 104.3 FM's "Disco Fever II" music festival came to Hollywood, California on June 28, 2003.
* The talent-search TV show "American Idol" aired disco-themed shows on April 1 and 2, 2003.
* Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, hosted "Disco Night" on August 27, 2003.
* Anita Ward sang "Ring My Bell" at Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve December 31, 2002.
* Disco songs by Barry White and Gloria Gaynor were on recent American TV sitcoms, etc.
* The movie "Saturday Night Fever" was revived as a musical.
* Buffalo, New York holds a "World's Largest Disco" every year for thousands of people.
* Richard Simmons tuned people on to his "Disco Sweat" exercise video tape.
* In the late 1990s there were some American disco-oriented radio formats like "Dancin' Oldies" and "Jammin' Oldies" that had a lot of listeners for about a year but dropped off soon after that (I think it's because they allowed their playlists to go stale by not ever adding new songs. People got tired of hearing the same 40 songs each day, and the ratings went down.)

There were also some new American toys and video games with disco themes - like "Bratz Formal Funk Super-Stylin' Runway Disco" by MGA Entertainment and "Disco Stars" on the Sony EyeToy.

I think the words "alive" and "oldies" contradict each other. The facts objectively support the case for "alive" rather than "old", if we look at this in an academic way. But it's not alive to the extent it could be.

[babyluv]

Disco is unfortunatly not in a very good state right now in Norway.But I think it is just a passing trend.I think people are beginning to starv for some good disco because it hasnt been played much on tv and the radio lately.MTV Nordic dont play it at all,exept one track by Scissor sisters which is a cover of a Pink Floyd song and sounds like electro Bee Gees.
It is the "hip" thing to dig though, not by force but you can kind of see it in the people who is into it. Almost music-snobs, if you understand.It is the cool style.And of course there is all the people who like both pop,rock and disco,but they cant buy something they dont know about,because it isnt played.And I think most kids and maybe adults are like that, so the media and record companys decide what is on the charts.

[mrkick20000]

Hi,

Thank you discosavvy for the amazingly incisive information on the current situation of Disco in America, and thank you babyluv for the interesting and little disappointing state
of Disco in Norway which is new to me.

Well, the definition of disco is rather complicated to me when I consider the 90s and 00s dance music tunes that I am not farmiliar with. But for me pure original old disco songs from 70s and 80s are the best because I, at age of 38, can be reminded of my good old days by listening to them. Am I just nostalgic? Hahaha...

And then, I also would like to be informed of the relationship between disco and gay. I know it is close when think about the famous gay musians like Sylvester and Village Peole, and legendary discotheque like Studio 54. But
,as I read the disco-related books like Hot Stuff and Saturday Night Forever, I noticed kind of prejudiced ''homophobic'' situation sometimes has been going on especially in the US disco scene.

In Japan, though I don't know all about that, it seldom is heard that there was and is such a discrimination. I think that's is partly because almost all the crowds in discos didn't understand the English words of disco songs very well, and just happy with dancing to the melody. And there was no dico noted for a ''gay palce'' in Japan. Even such an orientation didn't come to consciousness of discogoers then. I am straight, but off course love disco music including Hi-NRG which is famous as a gay-related jenre. But I have never been regarded as a gay.

[Nano]

Don't worry Mr. Kick... the "gay prejudice" happens everywhere and with most dance genres, maybe because of that thing Norman Mailer said: "tough guys don't dance" (well... I never liked Mailer's books so...) I just turned 39 and in Argentina the same thing happened: when I was a schoolboy, the cool thing was to listen to prog rock bands or highschool r'n'r like AC/DC, but males didn't admit we liked disco music. The interesting thing is that the ones doing it also liked Pink Floyd or Bad Company, just as you can like a beer or orange juice, depending of your mood. 8)
Anyway, in the 90s there was something of a renaissance, but it was centered more on soul and specially funk than on disco. So, the "cool" stations played Parliament or Curtis Mayfield, but they still have some "thing" with disco, it has not been really legitimated here. So, you can listen to the old classics in some "oldies" station... or cope with the nervous laughs of the radio DJ when hearing "Funkytown" or "Staying alive".

[originalbigm]

Here is an article regarding Gay Music and Disco

http://www.brumm.com/gaylib/disco/index.html

[mrkick20000]

Thanks Nano. I understood your explanation which is really persuasive.... yeah especially young guys have a tendency to bluff and try to look more ''manly'' than the oher guys if they are straight. I also did indeed as a school boy. Maybe disco music can be categolized as that particularly for gays, women and the minority of straight guys. Of course it is a matter of each indivisual's taste for music, but... It is the way it is, isn't it? :-?

[efunk_adelic]

Out in california USA, it is very difficult to get American guys to dance period :roll: of course I spin CD's for a living and just to get them out on the dance floor takes a lot of patience and understanding.

Of the events that I do get a chance to be a part of... it takes certain males to have the balls to get up there and do something that they might do only once in 5 years or so.

It's just like anything else, you get a little alcoholic involved and you find yourself doing stuff that you would not normally do. :lol:

let's compare generation gaps here. For those of you who are around 35-45... did you dance to Little Richard, Elvis or Chubby Checker back when you were young?

So how can we expect this generation to embrace 70's disco now? Regardless of today's sampling of older hits.

[QUINNY]

You guys should have lived in Europe, where disco, funk et al was enjoyed by everyone. All this racial tension and gay/straight tension makes the U.S.A. sound worse than Spain, which when I was there DJing ('74 - '77), was still a facist state with secret police and everything.
In Europe at least, Disco was most emphatically not Gay.

[mrkick20000]

Hi,

Well, I can understand some kind of generation gap that may cause misunderstanding about music tastes, but cannot understand the nonsense ''discrimination'' based especially on sexual orientation that makes happy music terribly unhappy.

Is it in Europe that we can all enjoy disco/dance music together without hassle? All right! I would like to move to Europe that gave birth to many supurb 70&80 electro disco/dance music such as New Order, Giorgio Moroder, Human League, Trans-X and so on.

[Sami M]

In this capital city of Finland the disco era is somehow banned. There are, at the moment even several, more or less hip clubs that play soul-funk-garage etc. from the 70's. They tend to play the more obscure tracks and it can get too static or even boring if one isn't a huge fan.

We have one radiostation named groove FM, but is it a happy groove channel? No. It used to be a jazz station and is now a bit more poppish.

That's why I was very much suprised and overwhelmed, when I found a disco radio station E-Fm 107 does exist in Stockholm Sweden! It's not that far... :lol:

During the past few years I have only very occasionally heard some classics in downtown mainstream clubs here; Stayin' alive, love to love you baby, Catch me on the rebound, You're my 1st my last my everything, Stayin alive, Keep on jumpin. But that's about it! :evil:

[mrkick20000]

Unfortunately, Japan has no disco-related radio sitation now. Radio air wave regulation by the government is very severe here, so even Tokyo has around 5 stations....
Deregulation is needed first, I believe. :cry: