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Disco.
This one word can stir a whole range of emotions among people.
It's virtually sheer hate or great joy. This music was truly unique.
It is the base for today's dance music, except today computers
have taken over. Disco gave people a chance to just relax and
have a good time, and to Dance! This music helped people to relax.
The drum beats in disco were pure, not to mention extremely dancable.
Disco music
ruled the world for a good 6-8 years. It did not start with Saturday
Night Fever, and it did not necessarily end in the summer of 1979
(although it may have symbolically ended then). It not only dominated
the radio waves, but it also had a big place in the movies as
well as television. Many of the disco hits were performed by 1
hit wonders. However, if you take a gander at the writing and
production credits on the songs you will come across many of the
same names. There were several talented acts who still may stand
out in people's minds, even today. The best all around act of
the genre may be cause for argument, but my choice is the group
Chic. Unfortunately the song that they are most remembered for
is "Le Freak". You remember it "ahhh Freak Out!!".
This is a great dance tune (maybe THE greatest), however this
did not help them gain any critical insight. The Bee Gees, namely
Barry Gibb, have to be considered the best songwriters of the
Disco era. They penned numerous hits of their own, as well as
several for other acts. There were only two divas of the Disco
era that deserve that title. They are Gloria Gaynor and Donna
Summer. Donna Summer was the most successful female artist of
the entire decade of the 70's. There were two extremely flamboyant
groups that called Disco home during their peak of success, KC
& The Sunshine band and Village People. Many other artists
gave us more than one hit tune; Kool & The Gang, Sister Sledge,
Diana Ross, Earth, Wind,&Fire, and a few others. However,
most of the biggest hits actually came from "one hit wonders".
It was the year 1975, and the song was called "The Hustle".
Van McCoy performed the first bonafide #1 Disco song, although
George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby" was a year earlier,
it did not create the stir of "The Hustle". It was basically
an instrumental song, and it created a dance craze that took the
nation, and eventually the planet by storm. This was the final
confirmation that Disco was ready for mainstream America after
a fluctuating rise. Nobody could have predicted such a swift rise
of Disco into the mainstream and nobody in 1978 could have predicted
it's almost as swift fall back into the underground from which
it emerged.
Disco was
not a pre-fab genre created in a short period of time. It was
music that took little elements from other types of music. It
was almost immediately stereotyped as the music of choice for
African-Americans and Homosexuals, and these views kept Disco
underground. With this outlook it seems that it may have never
taken off. It didn't take off, but instead it blasted off. The
city of Boston claimed to have opened the first Disco all the
way back in 1971 (Billboard 5/79 p.36). When this club opened,
there was no way they could have realized what they had started.
Slowly the clubs started opening, then the radio stations started
to pick it up, then eventually Disco was found on the big screen,
as well as television.
In the latter
portion of the 70's, all Disco radio was thriving. According to
Arbitron ratings, Disco radio peaked in January 1979, and quickly
fell thereafter. By the end of 1979 Disco radio was on life support.
Within a year Disco radio was no longer in existence. We can look
at the emergence of pop-Disco as the main reason why Disco was
embraced by radio programmers. When classic pop icons such as
The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart entered the Disco fray, they
inevitably brought their fans from the early 70's.
A major reason why Disco was seen as Chic by Americans was the
opening of Studio 54 in April 1977, and in December of that year
Saturday Night Fever opened across the nation. In 1978 Disco was
an $8 Billion a year industry and 137 Million danced to Disco
at least once. Also in 1978, in the October radio ratings a Disco
station won every major market in the U.S. The first Disco radio
station that existed is up for debate(and I'm sure nobody would
claim it now). Back in 1979 WBOS-FM Boston claimed that they were
the first radio station in the country to play non-stop segments
of Disco, claiming to have done it back in the early 70's. Competition
for ratings between Disco ratings was immense. WBOS also became
the first station to have live segments from area Discoteques,
and they also broadcast live from area department stores. In New
York, WABC was the country's top adult contemporary station. In
early 1979 it changed its format to Disco and in it's first month
it got its highest rating ever.
However,
as we all know Disco radio is dead, except for the weekly shows.
How could something that was so big fall so fast? Well, you know
how the old saying goes: "The bigger they are, the harder
they fall". That is exactly what happened in this case. It
was so big that the backlash was inevitable. In this time period,
people who ran the media were brought up on Rock&Roll. They
had their mind set that Rock was it, that there was nothing else.
They felt that their music, for the first time, being threatened
by another form of music.
