AH Challenge: Disco Lives

A rather simple one. How can disco not die at the tail end of the 70's/early 80's and suffer the backlash it did? And what effect would the causes of a living disco and a living disco in and of itself have on culture and musical culture?
 
Disco

This is a darn good question. For one, I think that a different nightclub that defined the disco era, which was bigger in size and had more people-friendly owners, would have helped. I think that part of the Disco backlash was because of Studio 54 and it's exclusivity and how they behaved and how Steve Rubell and the doormen treated people that they didn't deem worthy of being in the club.

Secondly, this has to do with Saturday Night Fever, which I think helped make the Disco era too big and oversaturated, which leads to backlash. Maybe have that movie not be quite as big, or have it come out at a different time instead of Dec. 1977 may have made a difference.

Finally, the Disco Sucks mantra somehow doesn't exist, and Disco Demolition Night doesn't happen somehow. Maybe there are rainouts at Comiskey Park that weekend, and they re-schedule it, and there is more rain, and DJ Steve Dahl gives up and they don't have it.
 
Introduce Ecstacy earlier, then instead of raves, everyone is enjoying the pretty colors of the disco clubs and dancing themselves into sweaty unconsciousness. Best of all, they're too high to realize how stupid the entire disco environment is.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Actually...I think Jab and Infernus did pretty good. I'll go with those two. Then you'd have Disco just naturally sort of turning into techno in the mid to late '80s.

I know I didn't issue the challenge, but as an innocent bystander, I'm handing you both the win.
 
Actually...I think Jab and Infernus did pretty good. I'll go with those two. Then you'd have Disco just naturally sort of turning into techno in the mid to late '80s.

I know I didn't issue the challenge, but as an innocent bystander, I'm handing you both the win.

Trust me, I've seen the clubs in Europe. I wouldn't call it a win.
 
The problem is that Robert Stigwood created a second disco fad with Saturday Night Fever in late 1977/early 1978. Had he not done so, the style would have crept down into the bulk of popular music and perhaps lived on. Instead, the public was burned out on disco in early 1979.
 

hammo1j

Donor
I think it was synthi beat that killed off Disco. Cheap synths meant any one could program a beat and the record companies may have thought the synth duo was a cheaper bet than the EWF style band that was the size of a small nation.

But the beat was never as good as the fantastic rhythm sections in Chic, EWF, etc. Only today with the introduction of sampling is it being fully appreciated the skill with which the Disco musicians put their songs together.

Playing dance music is a difficult skill and 1976 to 1981 ish will be remembered as the time of the great masters. Today only Jamoroquai comes close.
 
Another thing that killed disco was the presence of the AIDS/HIV virus. First, it killed many of the artists of the genre (e.g. Freddie Mercury, Queen). Second, it made it highly inappropriate for songs about free love and drug use to be taken seriously. Third, it made the religious right sound semi-rational in its ideas of "family values", especially after so many LGBT people started dying of the disease.
 
One side effect is there is no Golden Age of stand-up comedy in the United States in 1979-1985 which came about partly because there were so many bust disco owners who just turned them into comedy clubs on the cheap, the underground comics the likes of Kinison and Hicks will have a tougher time getting known in a world of extended Disco.
 
Comics

One side effect is there is no Golden Age of stand-up comedy in the United States in 1979-1985 which came about partly because there were so many bust disco owners who just turned them into comedy clubs on the cheap, the underground comics the likes of Kinison and Hicks will have a tougher time getting known in a world of extended Disco.

I wonder what other comics that would have affected. Maybe Tim Allen is one. Without that comic golden age, there may have been no Home Improvement. Andrew Dice Clay may have been another one that would have been affected by that, but I am not sure.
 
Actually, even without the "disco sucks" movement, there still may be a backlash, especially if we see more rock bands putting out disco-tinged songs (like kiss, the stones, and rod stewart did). However, it WOULD be interesting to see how disco would be presented in the age of MTV. Would New Wave have been less popular?
 
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