Joined for help

[Taisean]

I am doing this huge english project on disco music, and I need tons of help. :oops: I have to write a huge written project about what disco is all about, when it started, who was important to the genre, some funny facts, and the like. Does anyone have any suggestions? And is there one big theme for disco that I could write about?
I have a few favorite songs already, but I have to make a CD of songs that were important to disco too, so if you have an opinion on that it would be appreciated.
Does anyone have any other GOOD sources where I can find some information?
Thank you in advance for anything you can offer.

[paul]

Hey Taisean, welcome.
Firstly, I recommend that you read some of the threads, particularly those in the Disco Music Link. People like myself, Nicky, Markydefad, Efunk, our host Bernie, and others are old heads that lived it. Pay particular notes to many of our comments.
Let me also recommend the original top 500 available here, http://www.discomusic.com/charts-more/1675_0_8_0_M/
This give in my opinion the best and broadest flavor of the music which was the core of the disco culture.
Also check out the "Night Clubs" link for commentary on the clubs. I did one about "Cache" in Boston and promised to do more :oops:
Feel free to ask questions along the way and good luck.
PS, stay away from Quinny. He's a bad man...a very bad man. :lol:

[MixMasterMax]

Sounds like a great project. maybe you will post when it's done. Consider some of these points;

The Hustle started it all.
Started in 1972 in the USA but did not make it across the pond until 1975.
Contrary to comments made here, Disco was not a means of rebelling against ones parents.
Stay away from using Studio 54 as a representation of the Disco scene.


You should not have any lack of material to use at this site.

[markydefad]

How come I didn't get school assignments like this???? We had to read f'ing Silas Marner!!!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I could have written a wonderful treatise/dissertation on the gowns of The Supremes. YES, THE GAY is BAAAAACK. :P :P :P

[paul]

Nooooooooo, not the gay :lol:
Hey, I agree with Mixmachine. We weren't rebelling against our parents. Quite the contrary in fact. Some of our parents were either trying to get with it or we (my case) were encouraging our folks to get into the music.

[QUINNY]

PS, stay away from Quinny. He's a bad man...a very bad man. :lol:

Ah, but he's one of the few who talks any sense. :roll:

I too was there at the time and I DJ'd in clubs from '72 - 87 AS MY LIVING!!!! Not many around here can say that!!

A bad man maybe, but also one with plenty of first hand experience.

[DiscoMan]

Hi,

It was all about the "Good Times" had nothing to do with rebellion. Those of us who lived in the States were "rebelled out" with the Vietnam War.

Good place to start: Watch "Saturday Night Fever" it gives you a good feel for the Northeast U.S. urban working class nightclubs where it all began. Go with the groove of the music in the film and watch the dancing; the Hustle, the Bus Stop and the Bump. The Hustle WAS THE DANCE OF DISCO. If you were a guy and good at the Hustle you were the God of the dance floor! Watch the energy of the club clientele and how much effort they all put into going out and dancing. The film was made in March of '77 and the nightclub was a real mid '70s NYC nightclub - totally authentic. Then write us back with your initial impressions and any and all questions you'll have. One thing all of us who lived Disco will agree on is that the period was one hell of a great time to be young.

And feel free to submit any material you've written for factual review. We lived it we know what happend what the attitudes were and what was bullshit.
Unless your teacher is an ex Disco Queen or Disco God they just won't know the facts.

[Taisean]

Wow! Thanks for all the tips guys! This project might not be so hard as it first seemed (a 5 page assignment including a 1500 word write up, a CD of 10-20 good songs, along with a presentation due in 3 weeks sounds pretty intimidating at first :-? ). I'll definitely have to rent Saturday night fever (I've never seen it before, even though I like most kinds of disco music :oops: ). Disco is some of the most fun music I know, and was definitely full of good times. Thanks for the site, It'll be useful for picking what should go on my CD.
I'll try to get some of the stuff I write on here, and I'll expect lots of criticism.
PS Thanks for the advice about Quinny although he doesn't seem like a bad man...

[paul]

Hey Taison. I'm happy to toss in my 2 cents.
I am one of those members that has mixed feelings about Saturday Night Fever. Musically, I have nothing to complain about. I just didn't like the negative undercurrent that runs throughout the movie. It's still good to see because it was contemporaneous with the period. I actually liked 54 better even though it was made 20 years later. It also had a little bit of the negative undercurrent as well but not as much as SNL. A third movie that captured the feel though it was not really a disco movie was Summer Lovers. That captured the free spirit attitudes around that time.
As for Quinny, I often joke with him so don't take it too seriously. Let's just say Quinny's views are, a little different.

[QUINNY]

I don't know where you're based, but in the UK disco was slightly more underground and certainly was music of rebellion to a certain extent. Try to acknowledge that the experience wasn't the same for everybody (only in the U.S. was it fuelled big time by drugs and the Gay scene and only in the U.S. did it become totally over exposed) and that it didn't die in 1979 in most parts of the world, especially the U.K.

This site is one hell of a resource, BUT the information is heavily slanted in favour of the U.S. experience and hence not absolutely accurate.

Re: Saturday Night Fever. Overall IMO this did capture much of the feel of the era, but it was quite a strange film too.
Look at the DJ scenes and (a) he has more 7" records in the booth than 12" or albums (supposedly 12" were the only records played in New York by then) and (b) the guy talks (supposedly every DJ was mixing in NY by then). I laughed my ass off at the scenes of people doing the Bus Stop en masse in the opening scenes. Don't know about anywhere else, but that type of group dancing didn't really happen around here. It typifies the difference between the U.S. and possibly anywhere else. For some reason, in the U.S., it was supposedly cool to dance like everyone else, whereas for my contemporaries in the U.K. those scenes were the height of uncool behaviour.

Many of the Gay members here have taken offence at the Gay bashing references in the film, but I would have thought that American Italians/Puerto Ricans/Africans and all of White America would have been homophobic at that time, as were most of the world. True Gay liberation and Gay rights had yet to fully emerge in 1977. The disco era was the incubation period.

The sex scenes and general sexual undercurrent are fairly accurate. From my own experience, I'd say that the one thing on every straight guy's mind was to find a woman and get laid. The booze (not in many U.S. clubs though), the heady music, dancing and that sexual tension made for good times indeed. Just like they have for aeons.

[JussiK]

In a nutshell, disco is instant and constant gratification, high gloss fashion conscious catwalk boogie thru various ethnic moods and styles bound together with a 4/4 snare drum beat, deep bass and more often than not fabulously played orchestration by ace musicans. A streetwise library of sounds, an ongoing celebration of good times, that's disco.

[Taisean]

I'm based in Canada, and out of the era ( 1988 ) so I don't have all that much first hand experience. OK I have a bunch of ideas, now I have to find a theme to write about, kind of like a title to base the project around. I have no clue where to start. How can you pick one part of a topic so huge to base an article on?
I did find this great site that has the history of disco on it, so I'd like to start with a timeline or something.

[markydefad]

Trace the rise and fall of the disco era. Why did it become a dominant force in pop music in the mid-to late Seventies and then suffer a severe backlash circa the summer of 1979 (the Disco Sucks!!! record burning at Comiskey Park in Chicago)...and go underground to big city clubs where it began in the early 1970s? That's the story.

Why the backlash? What was the threat? Why did white hetero males rebel against the disco sound? The answers are in various posts here...

[Taisean]

Ha Ha make me search :roll: ! I guess I'd have ended up looking sooner or later, but at least now I have an acurate neverending source!

[markydefad]

I'm not trying to be evasive....just do some Google searches on this subject and a whole array of articles will come up. We've discussed this stuff many times here...but it's more in the opinion realm than fact. See what you can find and we'll steer you to where you can find more.

Bottom line, you need to read the articles or books and come up with your own point of view about what happened and why.

I don't wanna feed you my opinions, although if you search the archives here, you'll find there was a lotta discussion about the record burnings in Chicago in July 1979..and why people thought they happened.

[Jeff H]

THE GAY is BAAAAACK. :P :P :P

THE gay??! That reminds me of Margaret Cho's routine about one of her (many) gay friends calling the house, and her mother asking, in her inimitable Korean accent, "Is he the gaaaay??!" Margaret replies that he's not THE gay, and what a lot of responsibility it would be to be the only one. He'd have to march in the parade all by himself!

Now don't let me get started on Assmaster!!!

[DiscoMan]

Taisean,

I speak of the U.S. experience only.

To begin to understand what Disco was and why it occurred when and how it did, you must do some research on and try to understand the period immediately following the end of ground combat operations in the Vietnam War
(1972), and how it just so happened to be contemporary with the change in music that occurred.

Listen to some late '60's and very early '70s rock 'n roll and Motown. Then listen to some early '70s Soul : The Stylistics, Chi-Lites, for example. Then some early '70s TSOP (the sound of Philadelphia): MFSB, SalSoul Orchestra.

You'll hear the difference immediately. Now at the same time music was changing the baby boom generation was entering it's young adult years and looking for places to go for nightlife. Virtually over night nightclubs opened across the land. At first they offered live rock 'n rol show bands which were expensive. However the new music that was getting more airplay as time went was much more danceable than the rock of the day.

Then along came the Hustle out of NYC and....! :D

[Taisean]

OK I thought about a theme for the assignment; "Why the need for disco music?" So how about it? I think there definately was a need for it, so why was it important to everyone? And one of the things I can do is an interview, so would anyone like to volenteer?

[DiscoMan]

You can't dance to rock 'n roll. That's the answer. Pretty simple isn't it.

Uptempo R&B, Soul and the Hustle all magically appeared at the same time in the early '70s ('71 - '72), by the summer of '74 the music had been morphed, modified and changed to better suit the Hustle. Small record labels began producing this new Hustle music and "Disco Music" was
born.

I'd be happy to be interviewed for the period into early summer of '78. My bride and I were married in September of '78 and I pretty much dropped out of the scene at that time.

[judydoggie]

Taisean:

You got a whole lot of great information from these guys; I worked in the biz; I won't bore the guys with a reprise of what I've told other folks asking "what was it like?" but invite you to click on the orange "number of posts" underneath my nickname (should be about 70-something). This way you can refer to posts I've made in the past about what it was like back then, from an insider's position.

Best of luck! Knowledge is wealth!
I would love to see your final product: paul@asianfusion.net

Warmly,

Paul a.k.a. JudyDoggie

[Taisean]

Is not overdue for another 2 weeks. Thanks everyone, I have lots of info now, so all I have to do is put it all together (except the interview, I'll have to find a time when both me and DiscoMan are on so we can talk (I also have to find some questions to ask you :D ) I'll put up as much of the project as I can when It's done.

[DiscoMan]

Taisean, you tell me when you're available and I'll do my best to accomodate.

I'm Hustling tomorrow night (Friday EDT) from 7:00 'till at least 10:30, Saturday evening my wife and I are having friends over for dinner and a movie (looks like "Saturday Night Fever").

Sunday afternoon or Monday evening post 7:00 PM EDT.

I still Hustle! There is a new woman at my dance who just started cuming (my age give or take a few); Saturday afternoon she show's up at a lesson BLASTING Tavares' "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" on her car sterio. "You like Tavares." says I: "I love their music!" says she! As you can see Disco lives on!!!!!!!!!


Listen to some good Tavares!

[judydoggie]

Okay, Taisean.

Taisean, your "handle" sounds Asian. I own an Asian-Fusion and a Japanese restaurant and speak fluent Mandarin. My wife's Taiwanese. Are you?

All the Best,

Paul, a.k.a. Judydoggie

[Taisean]

OK, so I thought you could just answer some of my questions when you see them (the interview doesn't have to be live...)
So here are a few questions I came up with;

1) Did the lyrics of the songs played have any real meaning to most people? Did they have any meaning to you 8) ? why?

2)What kind of affect did different songs (songs with different beats/ words/ from different artists etc.) have on the crowd?

3) What kind of music was more popular with the people (did they request certain bands, songs...)? Which songs were most popular/requested?

4) What does disco mean to you? ( :roll: general question I know)

5) Why do you think the meaning of disco music changed according to location? (Like when QUINNY said it was about rebellion and others say it was the nightlife, others an escape, others the girls, and the list goes on)

6) How did disco affect politics (gay rights black people (doesn't mean to insult anyone here) and how other people looked at them)?

7)Why do you think so many people turned against disco (disco demolition for example)?

8 ) How do you think disco affected future genres?

Thanks for the help, If I think of any other questions I'll post them later.

P.S. My "handle" is not Asian, It's just what I go by on the internet. About 2 years back I joined a RP site, and had to have a first and last name, so I called myself Taisean Salrean. I use it for almost everything, so don't be surprised if you see it in other places as well, such as my e-mail adress, which is taiseansalrean@hotmail.com for those who would like to give me info that way.

[Taisean]

bump?