what are your memories of disco?
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!!!deleted!!! (49761343) — 11 years ago(March 13, 2015 01:14 PM)
I was also four like some of the posters here, yet I remember disco so well. It was EVERYWHERE. If you weren't hearing disco on the radio nonstop, it was Barry White. "Shake Shake Shake" was my favorite song and I would sing it all the time like a crazy person. One thing I especially remember was how huge the disco Star Wars medley was. It was like it was played 24/7.
My fondest memory of this era was when my father would take me on a visit to a friend's house. In the 70s, it seemed as if every single person in the world had a disco ball hanging from their ceiling. I remember sitting in the living room of my father's best friend's living room staring up at this ball while he was blasting "Last Dance."
Emojis=
Emoticons= -
dioro — 10 years ago(May 23, 2015 09:04 PM)
Disco music had its fans, but many people despised it. In fact it was so hated that it caused a riot during a 1979 baseball match when fans stormed the field after a local DJ blew up a box of disco records in between a scheduled double header. The second game was called off due to the damage to the field caused by the fans setting a fire in center field to burn disco records in protest.
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Clyburn — 10 years ago(August 23, 2015 06:58 AM)
I was in my teens in high school when disco was big. There were many cliques and mine was the stoners. Our music was mainly (what is now considered) classic rock - plus some alternative.
Disco music was scorned in the nastiest possible terms, and the idea of actually going to a disco was beyond absurd. Watching this movie was out of the question.
In fact I am now 52 and have just watched it for the first time. It's good. 7.4 out of 10. -
KobiyashiMauru — 10 years ago(August 24, 2015 07:54 PM)
I was in college in 1977 when I first saw the film. Went to a few discos but few were like the film. Oh, and for the guy who grew up in the 80's instead of the 70's, the 80's was slightly better. I grew up during both.
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Jinx-to-Ennien — 10 years ago(December 30, 2015 11:38 AM)
I was 18 when this movie was released. I lived in south Texas so disco was not a big deal. I agree that the clothes and hair styles were tacky, but then most of the clothes from that era were pretty tacky.
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JackSparrow92 — 9 years ago(April 25, 2016 11:29 AM)
I was five in 1977. While my awareness of disco was a distant second place to my awareness of Star Wars (which basically consumed me), I was cognizant of the existence of SOMETHING musical called "disco", probably because it was occasionally referenced on Sesame Street.
I remember kids in my first grade class bringing the occasional disco records to school for show-and-tell, in particular Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees' "Spirits Having Flown". In the second grade, in late 1979, we were doing some kind of team-based game in music class, and we were divided into two teams: the Bee Gees and the Village People.
And then, just as suddenly, the following year it was dead, and I remember seeing and hearing the phrase "Disco Sucks". And my admittedly limited perception of what was musically current at the time shifted to early 80s heavy metal.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Klingon proverb -
HijodelCid — 9 years ago(April 25, 2016 04:05 PM)
The logical inevitable question: why was disco so enthusiastically greeted at first, and then so harshly rejected and reduced to the status of a very lame joke?
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein) -
!!!deleted!!! (49761343) — 9 years ago(August 24, 2016 05:31 PM)
The logical inevitable question: why was disco so enthusiastically greeted at first, and then so harshly rejected and reduced to the status of a very lame joke?
I can give a few theories. First of all, it became way too overexposed. I was just a tot when disco peaked but to this day I can still remember how it seemed to be everywhere. If you weren't hearing it on the radio, it was being used in TV and movies, even TV ads. I remember how we even went through this whole novelty disco phase where everything got a disco version released eventually (Star Wars theme, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, etc.)
Another theory is that disco became so decadent that it began turning a lot of people off, either because they found it too "freakish" with the large number of gays, androgynous people and transexuals who were part of the scene or because the sex and drugs lifestyle it promoted clashed with their more traditional values.
I think these pics of Studio 54 kind of say it all about what disco eventually became: (warning:NSFW):
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/14/studio-54-heady-daze-of-disco-decadence-in-pictures
One last theory is that it probably became seen as snooty and superficial, that only people with the coolest hair and duds could participate. Notice how in SNF the leisure suit that Tony picks out is so important to winning the contest. Because with disco, it started becoming more about impressing everyone with flashy clothing than it was about being just being yourself and enjoying the music.
IMDB, flagging ppl for bull
since 1995. -
omalley-10 — 9 years ago(July 31, 2016 05:30 PM)
Sorry, 1977 meant punk rock for me. When SNF came out I was a junior in high school. The holy grail for this working class kid from New Jersey was in Manhattan same as it was for Tony and his friends but for me it was CBGB's, not a disco.
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TOASTnJAM — 9 years ago(September 17, 2016 02:21 PM)
I was 26 in 1977 and a rocker but didn't mind disco. I liked all kinds of music and about that time I was getting into punk rock (just the music not the clothing, hair or the attitude). I went to some discos on L.A. mostly because that's where all the girls were and in 1978 a disco I was at the floor was packed and then DJ played a track from the Rolling Stones Some Girls album which just came out (which I really liked) and the floor emptied. I thought to myself 'OMG disco is going to kill rock'roll'. I always knew that rock would eventually die out but to actually see it shocked me but by 1979 disco was dying.
I thought
P.E.T.A.
meant
People Eating Tasty Animals -
shango7200 — 9 years ago(October 17, 2016 05:16 AM)
The malls of America were ALL DISCOED OUT! There was a chain called Just Shirtsthat sold- just shirts but almost all of them were those shiny polyester disco ones (I had a bright RED one) I remember one major company called Queana (pronounced KEY-ANNA) made a lot of disco shirts!
In high school - it was a different thing for teens. If you were a "disco-guy" you were probably thought of as a douche-bag UNLESS you were a tough "Guido" type and you could beat the beep out of anyone that would make fun of your hair / clothes.
But a MAJORITY of teens especially BOYS 16-17-18 years old were into rock (remember Led Zeppelin was the biggest band on the planet back then- with Queen, Kiss, Boston, Kansas, ELO, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, etc. There was also compitition with "stoners" and the Grateful Dead crowd who also listened to "older" music like Bob Dylan, Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The Doors and The Who were also huge back then.
(Weird- I remember ABBA not being popular at all with ANYONE)
Disco was mainly for kids and older people well the ones that would
ADMIT to liking it. The gay lifestyle / gay bars part was still "underground" and something only whispered or snickered abouteven though Disco music FUELED the "lifestyle".
There was a Sesame Street disco record and a Mickey Mouse disco record - just to show you how young the Disco audience got.
I was too young to go to a disco- and by the time I was old enough (1980 and up) Punk & New Wave was all I listened to so the idea of a Disco was vile to me and dying out before turning into "dance / club" music.
STILL (and y'all will agree with me) THE 1970s was a GREAT TIME TO BE A KID (be it the early 1970s or the later 1970s). The mid-1970s pre-disco was a little weird (1974/1975/early 76) like the 70s did not know what it wanted to be. LOL.
"In every dimension , there's another YOU!" -
PrometheusTree64 — 9 years ago(October 17, 2016 08:38 AM)
The term "disco" meant a discoteque dance club until 1977, and people weren't really using the word much as an adjective for a specific kind of music until then (even though disco music had been around for years).
After the movie came out in Summer 1977, the true disco craze lasted about 18 months thru 1978 and then fizzled quickly, the term "disco" and music reviled before the decade had even ended.
Not that that's either fair or unfair. It's just what happened.
Anybody remember the 18 month stetson craze from Summer 1980 thru 1981? Feather-drenched stetsons were ubiquitous throughout America after URBAN COWBOY was released, and then they disappeared overnight. That was one fad I actually loved, although I didn't participate.
So Travolta has affected style profoundly, if briefly, on more than one occasion!
LBJ's mistress on JFK: -
daverindone — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 04:29 AM)
I was about 11-13 and sometimes hung with this kid whose Mother was a dance instructor. He knew all the current moves, so we'd go to these "Disco Days" things at a local hall on late Saturday afternoons and just hang out. I have to admit, it was really fun for a kid just getting into the idea of girls without getting too close to them (other than slow dances). I knew of the movie, but never saw the whole thing in one sitting. It was best when everything was all loose and fun, just jiving around the floor, chewing gum, flirting and shooting the breeze. The one thing the film caught was when you were all dancing together - friends, strangers and enemies alike - it was one big scene.
And like a carnival in the night, poof, all gone. Punk, Nu Wave, Heavy Metal, etc too over. -
krispykremekiller — 9 years ago(January 06, 2017 09:03 AM)
I was a kid at the time. People my sister's age went to discos. It was the same as going to a club is today. People hung out, singles in groups, couples too went on dates to dance and drink. Basically the same as today but the music and clothes were different. There were and still are rock clubs as well where a band played.
Discos came out of economics really. Just like clubs today have DJs instead of bands. It's cheaper. You're paying one person to leverage their music collection rather than a band. Sure being a DJ then was just gauging the crowd and getting a party going with playing a single track at a time, but basically it's the same thing.