Recalling Late-Seventies Disco with a Degree of Fondness and a Measure of Respect
Late in 1977, when the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever” hit radio after the cinematic release of Saturday Night Fever, it seemed that a new genre of music — disco — was born in an instant. It wasn’t. Nik Cohn, author of “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” the New York magazine piece that inspired Saturday Night Fever, writes that disco had been around since the early seventies, emanating from New York’s “black gay clubs, then progress[ing] to straight blacks and gay whites and from there to mass consumption” (qtd. in Kashner 280). Film producer Bill Oakes, who in 1977 was president of RSO Records and helped put together the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, says, “Fever is credited with kicking off the whole disco thing [but] it really didn’t. Truth is, it breathed life into a genre that was actually dying” (qtd. in Kashner 292).
Even though “Jive Talkin’,” an early indicator of the Bee Gees resurgence and disco’s entry into the mainstream, was overplayed to the point of distraction during the spring of 1975, I initially liked the music: In the summer of ’77, I purchased Thelma Houston’s Any Way You Like It just to obtain one song, “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” followed by KC & the Sunshine Band’s “I’m Your Boogie Man.” Then Foxy’s “Get Off” came along. At first grooving to the music, I soon began to detest “Get Off.” Disco music did not hold up well after repeated listenings, I concluded. It tired the ears much too quickly. My vehement dislike for “Get Off” turned me against disco, and I enthusiastically appropriated the “Disco Sucks” battle cry that was now heard more and more frequently from the mouths of rockers. Still, I purchased several other disco records before decade’s end — “Le Freak,” “Shake Your Groove Thing,” and “Goodnight Tonight” — all of which I enjoyed at the time and still do. [1] But soon after Blondie’s chart-topping 1981 smash “Rapture,” arguably disco’s last gasp (albeit mixed with rap), the disco phenomenon ended with a crash and backlash, taking the Bee Gees and other disco artists with it.
Disco never truly went away, however, living on in spirit through the hard 4/4 beat of artists like Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and even Janelle Monáe. Disco, somewhat surprisingly, has proven itself an enduring sound that, when used inventively, is still pleasing to the masses in a visceral if not superficial sort of way. I can therefore, with the benefit of hindsight, appreciate late-seventies disco with a degree of fondness and a measure of respect — Foxy’s “Get Off” notwithstanding.
Above piece excerpted from the forthcoming It’s Only Music: A Musical and Historical Memoir.
[1] At the height of disco, hit songs were extended into the seven-to-ten-minute range and called “Disco Singles” — long-playing tracks mixed expressly for dancers boogieing on the dance floor. Diana Ross’s “Love Hangover” clocked in at 7:49 and the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” at 10:51, to cite two examples. After disco declined and died a much-deserved death, Disco Singles vanished, quickly becoming Extended Play or 12-Inch Dance Remixes.
