As did I.
It was applied to a number of non-white artists and groups Disco efforts. This was the 70s.
(And yes, all types of racist and sexual orientation slurs were used.
)
I guess I was too busy with art school to notice.It was applied to a number of non-white artists and groups Disco efforts. This was the 70s.
(And yes, all types of racist and sexual orientation slurs were used.
I was in high school, and I missed that part of it entirely. I only saw "Disco sucks!" coming from the kids who wanted to be cool and tough. They wanted to be seen as defiant, rebellious rockers, while disco had an upbeat, sincere enthusiasm about it. That's all it was in my home town.It was applied to a number of non-white artists and groups Disco efforts. This was the 70s.
(And yes, all types of racist and sexual orientation slurs were used.
I remember being confused by the Disco Sucks movement, because so many disco songs were inarguably great fun. I didn't get it at the time.
I can and still do. I enjoy 60s and very early 70s Rock. Once the Disco influences start appearing...
I can and still do. I enjoy 60s and very early 70s Rock. Once the Disco influences start appearing...
Below is a list of the albums I've listened to in the last week. I enjoy a lot of music. (Now playing: Sally Shapiro's 2022 album Sad Cities. Moody Italo disco/synthpop.)
Madonna: Confessions on a Dance Floor
Madonna: Confessions II Icon Edition
Nite Jewel: Liquid Cool
Santigold: Master of my Make-Believe
Kelela: Take Me Apart
Joe Ely: Honky Tonk Masquerade
Luke Bell: Luke Bell
Zach Top: Cold Beer & Country Music
Alan Jackson: Here in the Real World
Alan Jackson: Don’t Rock the Jukebox
Alan Jackson: A Lot About Livin’ (And a Little ‘bout Love)
Randy Travis: Storms of Life
Randy Travis: Always & Forever
Ivy: Traces of You
Cyrus (Random Trio): From the Shadows
Boxcutter: Oneiric
Machinedrum: Rooms
Sepalcure: Sepalcure
Logos: Cold Mission
David Sylvian: Secrets of the Beehive
This Mortal Coil: It’ll End in Tears
New Order: Movement
Modern Eon: Fiction Tales
Gambit of Shame: No Bounds (1979-1982 Recordings)
Paul Roland: House of Dark Shadows
Chapterhouse: Whirlpool
Swervedriver: Raise
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Darklands
Let’s Active: Cypress
R.E.M.: Murmur
Siouxsie and the Banshees: A Kiss in the Dreamhouse
Siouxsie and the Banshees: Hyaena
Billie Holiday: Billie Holiday’s Greatest Hits
Kay Starr: I Cry by Night
Julie London: About the Blues
Lola Albright: Dreamland
Morcheeba: Moog Island
Madonna: Confessions II Icon Edition
Nite Jewel: Liquid Cool
Santigold: Master of my Make-Believe
Kelela: Take Me Apart
Joe Ely: Honky Tonk Masquerade
Luke Bell: Luke Bell
Zach Top: Cold Beer & Country Music
Alan Jackson: Here in the Real World
Alan Jackson: Don’t Rock the Jukebox
Alan Jackson: A Lot About Livin’ (And a Little ‘bout Love)
Randy Travis: Storms of Life
Randy Travis: Always & Forever
Ivy: Traces of You
Cyrus (Random Trio): From the Shadows
Boxcutter: Oneiric
Machinedrum: Rooms
Sepalcure: Sepalcure
Logos: Cold Mission
David Sylvian: Secrets of the Beehive
This Mortal Coil: It’ll End in Tears
New Order: Movement
Modern Eon: Fiction Tales
Gambit of Shame: No Bounds (1979-1982 Recordings)
Paul Roland: House of Dark Shadows
Chapterhouse: Whirlpool
Swervedriver: Raise
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Darklands
Let’s Active: Cypress
R.E.M.: Murmur
Siouxsie and the Banshees: A Kiss in the Dreamhouse
Siouxsie and the Banshees: Hyaena
Billie Holiday: Billie Holiday’s Greatest Hits
Kay Starr: I Cry by Night
Julie London: About the Blues
Lola Albright: Dreamland
Morcheeba: Moog Island
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A tangent, but I guess it relates to both being Gen X/an 80s teen and listening to music: Is it weird that I suddenly seem to be getting into synthwave? (I gather this was seen at one point to have been somehow co-opted by the hard right, but at this point what hasn’t been?)
Is that music by Soong-type androids?
It… could be…
I apparently missed it too, not only growing up in the 70s but also in the Navy. It was about what was being produced, not about who was producing it, if the subject moved beyond the "Disco Sucks!" stage.
That experience doesn't invalidate anyone else's experience but it does make me question the extent to how prevalent it was.
Now I'll preface this by reminding everybody that my taste in music runs to classical and to strictly-acoustic forms of jazz.
In the early 1980s, while I was a student at CSU Long Beach, I took a summer music appreciation class (at a local junior college, since it was much, much cheaper, and I had no reason to apply the credits to my degree). The professor teaching the class was a working jazz pianist. He basically nailed punk and new-wave, simply by pointing out that it's all "three-chord music." Very basic, indeed, downright crude. Nothing the least bit "new" about "new-wave; it was old-hat in Bach's era.
I will also point out that classical music is the precise opposite of "elevator music." Elevator music is very static. It has themes, but they don't go anywhere or do anything. Classical music is all about developing themes, the way fiction develops characters. So is good jazz. So is good any-other-kind-of-music. The good stuff has, so to speak, a plot to it. People don't listen to classical music because it's "by dead guys"; people listen to it (and rock musicians are always cribbing off of it) because it has staying power. It continues to speak to us even though it's "by dead guys." And until the 20th century, composers didn't write intentionally unpopular music; if they did that, they wouldn't eat. They only started doing that in the 20th cenury because jaded, pretentious snobs wanted something exclusive, something that would be intentionally off-putting to "the common people." The most relaxing piece of classical music I know, the piece I bring along with me when I'm traveling by sleeping car, is Smetana's Ma Vlast, a suite of short tone poems about his homeland. The most famous of them, The Moldau, that traces the titular river from its source to the point where it empties into the ocean, particularly so. But while they're profoundly relaxing, there's nothing the slightest bit boring about them.
Elevator music is boring by design.
Be all of that as it may, my objection to disco is that, for all intents and purposes, it's "elevator music with a beat." Like elevator music, it's boring by design. You're not expected to pay any attention to it. And when it riffs off earlier material, it rarely shows it much respect. Certainly not the kind of respect that The Hampton String Quartet or John ("Bach on Abbey Road") Bayless showed in their Beatles covers. Nor the kind of respect Wendy Carlos showed in Switched-On Bach. By contrast, Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven takes one theme from the first movement of Beethoven's 5th, and just sits on it, without actually going anywhere with it. Hooked On Classics (or "Hooked On" anything else) just strings together a bunch of unrelated snippets over a drum track.
In the early 1980s, while I was a student at CSU Long Beach, I took a summer music appreciation class (at a local junior college, since it was much, much cheaper, and I had no reason to apply the credits to my degree). The professor teaching the class was a working jazz pianist. He basically nailed punk and new-wave, simply by pointing out that it's all "three-chord music." Very basic, indeed, downright crude. Nothing the least bit "new" about "new-wave; it was old-hat in Bach's era.
I will also point out that classical music is the precise opposite of "elevator music." Elevator music is very static. It has themes, but they don't go anywhere or do anything. Classical music is all about developing themes, the way fiction develops characters. So is good jazz. So is good any-other-kind-of-music. The good stuff has, so to speak, a plot to it. People don't listen to classical music because it's "by dead guys"; people listen to it (and rock musicians are always cribbing off of it) because it has staying power. It continues to speak to us even though it's "by dead guys." And until the 20th century, composers didn't write intentionally unpopular music; if they did that, they wouldn't eat. They only started doing that in the 20th cenury because jaded, pretentious snobs wanted something exclusive, something that would be intentionally off-putting to "the common people." The most relaxing piece of classical music I know, the piece I bring along with me when I'm traveling by sleeping car, is Smetana's Ma Vlast, a suite of short tone poems about his homeland. The most famous of them, The Moldau, that traces the titular river from its source to the point where it empties into the ocean, particularly so. But while they're profoundly relaxing, there's nothing the slightest bit boring about them.
Elevator music is boring by design.
Be all of that as it may, my objection to disco is that, for all intents and purposes, it's "elevator music with a beat." Like elevator music, it's boring by design. You're not expected to pay any attention to it. And when it riffs off earlier material, it rarely shows it much respect. Certainly not the kind of respect that The Hampton String Quartet or John ("Bach on Abbey Road") Bayless showed in their Beatles covers. Nor the kind of respect Wendy Carlos showed in Switched-On Bach. By contrast, Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven takes one theme from the first movement of Beethoven's 5th, and just sits on it, without actually going anywhere with it. Hooked On Classics (or "Hooked On" anything else) just strings together a bunch of unrelated snippets over a drum track.
Thank you for posting this. Looks like this becomes a real aesthetics discussion.
I'd just add a few thoughts, without necessarily disagreeing with you. I'd say simplicity, even crude simplicity, can have an aesthetic value. Like, when it's "new" insofar as it breaks expectations -- on baroque music, with all its embellishments that were expected of music at that time, the "sensitive style" and finally classicism followed, which did away with the "overstuffed" baroque style, which was kind of a revolution. Not comparing classicism with disco here, just generally speaking -- it seems to be an ongoing circle movement in many arts, that on an elaborate style, a simplifying one follows, and vice versa.
And rock music, when it doesn't feature developing themes, it may have other things going for it -- like lyrics. Think of Bob Dylan. His music alone is hardly worth mentioning, it's basically accompaignment for good poetry, and that's where the emphasis lies. Other rock musicians find a unique way of expressing themselves with various degrees of balance between lyrics and music -- some rock works without lyrics, others depend on it. Also, like jazz, this music can impress by artistic virtuosity of playing an instrument in a masterful and/or unconventional way, and if that's just a singing voice. This focus less on content and more on virtuosity is not alien to classical music -- think of Paganini or Liszt. Not even mentioning jazz.
And then, there is the "Gebrauchsmusik" aspect of it -- music may serve a particular purpose, is hardly remarkable without this context, but is nevertheless very good at what it's doing -- music for the purpose of dancing is an obvious example, but even elevator music can be "good" insofar as it keeps you in a good spirit while driving in this elevator ... Eric Satie, who arguably was a classical composer, said his piano pieces were "wallpaper music". It's just there to make the room more comfortable while something else takes place in this room.
So ... that said, I'm not particularly fond of disco. Just felt like adding these thoughts.
Okay, now who will fess up that they actually tried to imitate Travolta’s walking to Stayin’ Alive at some point?
Okay. Yes.
Back when I was delivering medical supplies to retirement and nursing homes, one of the facilities was playing this song as I was entering the building. I strutted down the hallway to the nurses station pushing the handcart.
Even Satie's Gymnopédie No.1 (what Picard was listening to while waiting out the auto-destruct in Where Silence Has Lease), and minimalist pieces like Philip Glass's Mad Rush, have a certain amount of development (and indeed, the Satie has quite a bit of it for a 3 1/2 minute piece, and while the development in the Glass happens at a snail's pace, it does happen).
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