Last edited by Joker; 09-29-2019 at 09:06 AM.
What about Disco sucked? If you listen to music by Chic, Barry White, Donna Summer - what makes it objectively bad for you?
It mostly had great vocalists. Lush productions that combined orchestral arrangement with new electronic sounds. And it wasn't afraid to give the spotlight to people that did not appeal to Nixon voters.
And it wasn't black or queer people who destroyed the records of black and queer musicians during Disco Demolition, so I'll stand by the book burning comparison.#
Yasss Queen!
"How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective
Hillary was right!
"How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective
Hillary was right!
From the Guardian newspaper:
Disco Demolition: the night they tried to crush black music
When a DJ called on listeners to destroy disco records in a Chicago stadium, things turned nasty – and 40 years on, the ugly attitudes behind the event ring out loud and clear
...
People weren’t just turning up with disco records, but anything made by a black artist. “I said to my boss: ‘Hey, a lot of these records they’re bringing in aren’t disco – they’re R&B, they’re funk. Should I make them go home and get a real disco record?’ He said no: if they brought a record, take it, they get a ticket.” He laughs. “I want to say maybe the person bringing the record just made a mistake. But given the amount of mistakes I witnessed, why weren’t there any Air Supply or Cheap Trick records in the bins? No Carpenters records – they weren’t rock’n’roll, right? It was just disco records and black records in the dumpster.”
...
Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone suggested that there was something distinctly ugly about the vast crowd of white men publicly destroying music predominantly made by black artists, dominated by female stars and with a core audience that was, at least initially, largely gay. “White males, 18 to 34, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins, and … to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security.”
Nichols says that disco’s dominance was, for some of the haters, inseparable from issues such as busing and affirmative action, initiatives designed to reduce racial segregation in US schools and colleges. Fear of disco, she says, was partly “the fear that American identity was no longer synonymous with whiteness. DJs in Detroit formed a disco vigilante group called the Disco Dux Klan. Originally, their efforts were going to involve wearing white sheets and robes – they got rid of that part of it. And then there were people like Steve Dahl, for whom disco represented a sort of emasculation: you couldn’t wear a scruffy T-shirt and jeans, you had to get dressed up and, worst of all, your girlfriend or wife expected you to humiliate yourself by fucking dancing. Some of the push back against disco also had to do with feminism.”
...
"How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective
Hillary was right!
Pretty much all the existing African American owned and operated record labels got on the Disco train. Diana Ross had a huge hit with "Love Hangover" on Motown for example. Aretha Franklin flopped with her disco effort on Atlantic, though.
The label that most easily slipped into the disco mode was TSOP though - The Sound of Philadelphia.
Jean Carne came from jazz, had recorded timeless soul masterpieces like "Don't Let It Go To Your Head" and got people on the dance floor with this song about one night affairs:
"How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective
Hillary was right!
And let's not forget that the very first hip hop song that crossed over and found a large audience did so by rapping over the instrumental track of Chic's disco anthem "Good Times!"
So, no disco, no Eminem.
"How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective
Hillary was right!
Just to point this out...
If you are even remotely serious when you inquire about why no one showed up with a Cheap Trick record to destroy?
No one should be taking any conclusions you have arrived at seriously.
Never mind that the person seems to actually believe that The Carpenters was a rock band(or that someone would bring one of their records to destroy).
Edit: In addition, someone wondering why no one who was likely from Illinois turned up with a Cheap Trick record to destroy.
The degree to which it has not been thought through is stunning.
Last edited by numberthirty; 09-29-2019 at 03:54 PM.
Show anyone a picture of Marc Bolan and they will immediately know what era he made music in.
One other thing about the line of reasoning here...
It seems to be "Thing A Has Inherent Merit Because It Played A Role In The Creation Of Thing B".
If that is how you are judging things, Nile Rodgers has been pretty open about how Roxy Music(and, to a lesser degree, KISS) put some of the ideas for what would wind up being Chic in his head.
That would seem to put Roxy Music(or, maybe KISS) in a better position than Chic.
The 1960s were Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, and the Who. The 1970s were Tony Orlando and Dawn.
OK, that's kind of harsh. However, it was when the rock music that had been as turbulent as society in the 1960s faded in favor of pop that was as trite as society was settling into being, post-Vietnam. Maybe I would settle on someone representing a transition between the two, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Or how about Elton John?
My original thought was to post about Donna Summer or the Village People, but they were successful only in the last 70s, when disco was huge, so they don't fully represent the 70s.
After giving it some thought, I would have to go with The Jackson Five. They got their first hit in 1970 ("I Want You Back") and they typified the early 70s bubblegum pop sound that was so successful. Then, in the late 70s they left Motown for Epic Records, and became The Jacksons. By that point they embraced the emerging disco sound, and managed to score more Top 100 hits with "Enjoy Yourself", "Blame It On The Boogie" and "Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)"