Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Disco's deeper meaning

I’ve biked a half dozen times to work in the new year not because it’s cold, but because it’s WET and cold. We’ve had absolutely terrible rain so when it’s pitch black at 7:30am and the rain is banging off the roof I’ve opted to jump on the bus. But it’s now light at 7:15 and I’m officially calling a start to the cycling year. I rode through a touch of snow this morning, but otherwise it’s great cycling weather and I heard a great show on disco. Let me bore you with a bit of nostalgia that I’d like to get recorded, then I’ll get to the show.

Our house growing up was not a “musical” house in the sense that our parents didn’t play instruments (my mother played flute in high school) and listened to mainstream radio stations, but didn’t having a Rolling Stone subscription or an extensive record collection. We had a record player and even to this day I remember dropping the needle and listening to incredibly good quality recordings that I don’t seem to pick up now on CDs. I remember every LP at our house in Canada: Elton John (Greatest Hits, Captain Fantastic, and Rock Of The Westies,) Gordon Lightfoot Gord’s Gold, Beach Boys Endless Summer, Neil Diamond Hot August Night, Captain and Tennille Love Will Keep Us Together, Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life, Nana Mouskouri, Judy Collins Judith, Olivia Newton John Greatest Hits, and Elvis Presley’s Greatest Hits. Then after the move to Wisconsin we picked up more: The Beatles Greatest Hits 1967-70, Eagles Greatest Hits 71-75, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Saturday Night Fever, Doobie Brothers Minute By Minute, Marshall Tucker Band Carolina Dreams, Frampton Comes Alive, and Bruce Springsteen Born To Run. I’m assuming my dad bought all these, and for the life of me I can’t tell how we was influenced because I never heard him listen to any of these except for Judy Collins and Nana Mouskouri. He claimed to enjoy classical music and definitely didn’t participate in the whole 60s music scene. My mom listened to popular radio like most people and would definitely know everything from the 60s and 70s.

I was a child of the 70s in Wisconsin (“yes” That 70s Show got it right for the most part) and we were 100% about rock and roll. I distinctly remember being in the small variety store near our house (fellow Racinites, the one next to the Windpoint Pump, and not the big Woolworths) and musing over my first album purchase: Rolling Stones Miss You or Bee Gees Spirits Having Flown (what can I say, the whole Saturday Night Fever thing was still huge.) To this day I’m glad I bought Miss You, and if Scotty Miller happens to read this, I think you’ll distinctly recall seeing me with it in the store that day. I would be embarrassed to this day had I been holding a Bee Gees album when you came by and asked me what I was buying.

On to the disco show! The guest Alice Eschols is a professor of American Studies at Rutgers who was a deejay back in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 70s. She’s written several popular books on feminism and has one out now on the influence and origins of disco, the first chapter of which is available online via the link to the show. I personally wasn’t a big dancer and truthfully only participated so that I could hang with the ladies, so I only liked disco as far as I liked the songs. SNF was and is a great album and the whole John Travolta thing with his good looks, moves and clothes was a huge influence for guys like me. The content of the show expanded on what we 13-year olds were oblivious to at the time, namely that disco helped usher in the current age of sexual and racial liberty and openness. When Donna Summer crooned “I love to love you baby” for seventeen minutes it was all about a woman’s right to get it on, which had previously been largely restricted to male performers. Gay men and women were closeted because society and law enforcement didn’t let them come out, and disco gave them the chance to publicly express themselves in ways they couldn’t before. And blacks were not part of the rock and roll scene (not completely--Jimi Hendrix for example) but mainstream disco brought black performers into the average white home far more strongly than Motown had.

An interesting comment is her belief that the anti-disco movement (“Disco sucks”, “Death to Disco” and the 1979 Chicago Disco Demolition rally by Steve Dahl) was because the bar was being set too high for traditional guys who now had to dance and groove in a non-masculine way to get the girl. I can see how an early 70s rocker in his mid twenties would be uncomfortable doing The Hustle with a smile in public.

I also didn’t realize that soul and R&B greats like James Brown thought the disco movement was awful because it replaced the spontaneity of R&B with repetitive, sugary music. Barry White in particular was criticized for his purring amidst the violin backing tracks on his 1973 solo album “I’ve Got So Much To Give.” Remember JB`s “Get Up Offa That Thing” with the “Barry who?” comment.

Disco morphed into contemporary dance music, but the name itself seems to be in resurgence now because kids don’t know disco and haven’t been exposed to the stigmas attached to the name. And while there may be a technical difference with the beat and sampling, dance music is dance music is dance music. Lady Gaga’s music production quality must be better than older music because of technology, but the music itself is not terribly different from Donna Summer’s. Speaking of Donna Summer, she spent about fifteen minutes on the show and it was great to hear about what was going on with her back in the 70s. She was asked if she knew she was liberating women sexually when recording “Love To Love You Baby” and she replied that all she was thinking about was what her father was going to say. Of course it’s impossible to categorize and put anything you do in the present into a larger framework until time has passed. So while Donna Summer can today discuss the big picture, back in the 70s it was all about making music that appealed to the young scene at the time.

I have only fond memories of disco in my high school years, learning The Hustle in gym class and then practicing it to SNF at home. Imagine my surprise when my 16-year old told me they are doing the exact same thing in gym class. I guess disco indeed is timeless (at least until the present time.)

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