Disco sucks...or does it?
I was reading Chuck's blog (Would you like a policeman with your chalupa, sir?: February 22, 2005, 10:41) and it forced me to do something that I never like to do: consider that disco might not really suck. Intellectually, I know that all of Chuck's points are valid, that disco is really influential and that disco as I know it isn't real disco, but I just don't like to deal with it. So, I decided I'd listen to Larry Levan's Classic West End to give the real disco another shot. The result is that I'm still just going to have to stick with knowing that this stuff is important and that it really moves some people. It still just doesn't move me. Maybe I came along too late and I'm just jaded. Some of it is good enough if I struggle to put it into context, but a lot of it still sounds like Saturday Night Fever and even the context of time can't completely overcome that for me.
posted by bob_vinyl at 10:47 AM
3 Comments:
Saturday Night Fever is a total guilty pleasure. There's some valid moments of the movement, even if it forced so many bands to sell out to stay current...can anyone sing "I Was Made for Loving You, Baby...and you were made for loving me..." Ouch.
KC and the Sunshine Band...now THAT'S disco, baby, and it's superfunkacalafragalisticexpialodocious...
I think there is a distinction to be made between influential and not sucking. Disco is more influential as something needing to escape than something that was the maternal force behind new music. Disco sucks. The reason disco sucked isn’t solely inherent in it’s composition, but also in it’s creation. Just as popular and “influential” as today’s Ashlee Simpson, disco was a product of market models and pie charts. Sure, generation of a good tune or two can produce from this methodology, but then again that’s all the producers’ want. Disco was a throw away genre. X dollars put into Band Y to make Album Z. If Z produces one hit song, A, that makes more than X it was worth it. “Real” music (read music that doesn’t suck) isn’t made by throwing crap at a wall and seeing what sticks. Disco’s only real contribution to music was the punk, new wave, and metal that was created to fill the void disco left us. I find it interesting that the last time the music industry was suffering a financial loss was in the 70’s with disco, now as it was then, we are only being sold crap. I wonder why sales are down?
Dave,
I think you're missing the point. Disco was not “created” as a “product of market models and pie charts.” That's like saying punk was created by Good Charlotte and Sum 41. Those half-assed soul-sucking bands have as much to do with punk as the Village People and K.C. and the Sunshine Band have to do with disco.
My original post stated that disco was good, before the soul-sucking crap killed it. Most people don't know that there was a legitimate musical form before the Big Record Labels stepped in. And just like your average person today doesn't know Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys, your average person doesn't know Frankie Knuckles or Larry Levan.
Much of today's music -- be it house, hip-hop, or industrial -- owes a debt to its redheaded step-grandaddy Disco. You may not like the music, but it was once a legitimate musical form that was all about rebellion, independence and freedom, not money and coke and John Travolta. If you’re going to dismiss disco based on the sell-out Johnny-come-latelys, you might as well dismiss punk too.
Chuck
www.taotechuck.com
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