I felt like that for a long time about clubbing, then by the very early 90's, my musical tastes veered towards a more synthetic type of music (Ministry, Young Gods, that kind of stuff) at the same time as proper banging techno and trance came to the fore and everything clicked together for me, my friday and saturdays were spent till 5am dancing.

That sounds appealing but the opportunity has never coincided with a time in my life when I'd want to do that. I don't even know where there are any clubs like that in the DC area and when I was living in Boston in graduate school I was too broke and too busy with school and table-waiting.

Reed,
Were this the last time I lived in DC ('97-'98), I'd suggest The Buzz at the Capitol Ballroom down at Half Street, SE, which sounds like exactly what Croute (sorry, referring to you as a number seems odd) was writing about. It wasn't at all a velvet rope/beautiful people scene. It had it's downsides (very sketchy neighborhood and no cabs; my friend got arrested there once and the police beat on him), but was excellent. Now, I'm not so sure. Since I returned to DC, I've quite happily fallen completely out of that scene as the DC-journo/politico hipster-types took over.

I think that's the same place as Nation which got bulldozed two years ago.

The prospect of hanging out in a loud, dark, probably-filthy club in a remote part of town just doesn't appeal. It might have in 1997, but if cover was more than $5, I'd have avoided it. I was profoundly broke.

Yeah, it turned into Nation sometime after I left DC. It was definitely loud and dark, though not so filthy.

I count cigarette smoke as filth.

Reed: The thing about the Comisky Park fiasco was that it was supposed to be a rally where they burned disco records but it ended up being an excuse for people to burn albums by Marvin Gaye and James Brown. Of course it was racist.

Talking of which - there's a really good piece by Swells on the whole Jay-Z playing Glasto 'outrage' up now.

QUOTE:
The thing about the Comisky Park fiasco was that it was supposed to be a rally where they burned disco records but it ended up being an excuse for people to burn albums by Marvin Gaye and James Brown. Of course it was racist.

I always thought that the argument that Disco Demolition Night was racist and homophobic came from the fact that disco itself was perceived to be multicultural and gay-friendly, and that straight, white, nativist-types hated it for precisely that reason. Therefore, any attack on disco by the "macho", white sports fan was per se an attack fueled by racism/homophobia. I didn't think/know that it was perceived as racist because the actual records burned were of black, non-disco artists. Of course, I was 4 at the time, and so I wouldn't be surprised if a "white-washed" narrative was the one I received.

Carcass, do you happen to know of any articles or anything that discusses what actual records were burned that night?

QUOTE:
With or without the excesses of Studio 54 - although mostly with since that is the dominant imagery of the genre in my mind - I still can't help but associate disco with dance clubs in general and I can't help but associate dance clubs with the popular kids and the beautiful people who have always looked down their noses at people like me. They can all fuck off.

Well, Studio 54 wouldn't let Bernie Edwards and Nile Rogers in. Their line "Aaaah, freak out" wasn't always "Aaaah, freak out".

The trouble with saying "I don't like disco" is the same as the trouble with saying "I don't like rock music". Disco wasn't just one sound. And disco wasn't, as Simon so rightly points out, about white suits doing that Travolta thing or about Afros. Disco was about fun, yes, but it was also dead fucking serious about production.

The Disco Sucks movement was not necessarily consciously racist or homophobic (in as far as it was at all; Simon's case that there were these undercurrents is persuasive). I think that the anti-disco sentiment was fed by disco's ubiquity, starting with Saturday Night Fever. I think that the Disco Sucks movement was more a reaction to SNF and Travolta's suit, and to Ethel Merman and Sesame Street recording "disco" albums, the hedonism of Studio 54, and perhaps the occasional disco music horror.

Gyuri - if you look on You Tube, there are certainly eye-witness accounts from people who were there going: "WTF? Bill Withers isn't disco!" It was part of some documentary I watched a few years ago.

Also the book that Simon namechecks and Daryl Easlea's awesome 'Chic and the Politics of Dancing' are good reference guides to this kind of thing.

Thanks, Carcass. This whole discussion makes me feel a little guilty about my dislike of disco (there was a renaissance of it at my university when I was there), though for me it was not so much racism/homophobia, as the fact that I looked terrible in tight bell-bottoms and have a dancing style (ok, skill) better suited for bouncing up and down or running into people than actually coordinating my various limbs to move in rhythm with the music.

I didn't/don't like disco because everytime I hear a tune all I can see in my minds' eye is my dad and various other oldies dancing in an embarrassing fashion while me and the rest of the kids had to pretend we weren't having the worst time ever.

It's also worth noting that many of the early hip-hoppers hated disco for the same reasons as Reed - the elitism, the notion that some people weren't good enough to go out and listen to their music and that it was in their eyes for uptown upper middle class bourgeois people and not for them. So I think the accusations of racism in people who think that Disco does in fact suck a bit aren't entirely accurate.

You know that you can still hear disco when you don't wear cliché trousers, right?

So, disco-haters, which disco do you not like then?

Ottawan's "Hand's Up"? I'm your corner. But nit if you also don't like Amii Stewart's "Knock On Wood". Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel"? Each to their own, I suppose. Positive Force's "We Got The Funk"? Cheryl Lynn's "Got To Be Real"? Odyssey's "Going Back To My Roots"? Skyy's "Here's To You"? If you don't like that, you might as well be dead.

QUOTE:
So I think the accusations of racism in people who think that Disco does in fact suck a bit aren't entirely accurate.

Whoa there, Liq. Nobody said that. In any way. You don't have to be racist or a homophobe to hate disco.

As for the exclusivism, I think you're confusing the music with the places where the music was played. As I said, the dudes from Chic -- fucking Chic! -- were not let into Studio 54. You gonna hate the real King of Disco for exclusivism?

QUOTE:
Reed: The thing about the Comisky Park fiasco was that it was supposed to be a rally where they burned disco records but it ended up being an excuse for people to burn albums by Marvin Gaye and James Brown. Of course it was racist.

I was not aware of that. My impression of that fiasco was that people got into it because it was an excuse to burn and throw things. The actual content of the records didn't matter.

QUOTE:
The Disco Sucks movement was not necessarily consciously racist or homophobic (in as far as it was at all; Simon's case that there were these undercurrents is persuasive). I think that the anti-disco sentiment was fed by disco's ubiquity, starting with Saturday Night Fever. I think that the Disco Sucks movement was more a reaction to SNF and Travolta's suit, and to Ethel Merman and Sesame Street recording "disco" albums, the hedonism of Studio 54, and perhaps the occasional disco music horror.

Agreed. Simon may see the democratizing potential of disco, but speaking from the perspective of a non-beautiful person, I'm sure that, had I been an adult in the 1970s, punk would have been much more appealing and welcoming.

Punk, especially American hardcore punk, was all about putting the band on the same level as the audience (often literally - playing venues with no stage per se). As has been pointed out, disco records were highly produced, so much so that most of the musicians didn't perform live, so there was a distance between the musicians and the audience that punk tried to bridge.

I know that in the 1970s, there were actual disco dancing classes and instructional books and tv shows. This leads me to believe that dancing well was considered important to disco-ers (discovians? discovites?). So right there, the uncoordinated and rhythmless are excluded. Not democratic.

QUOTE:
The trouble with saying "I don't like disco" is the same as the trouble with saying "I don't like rock music". Disco wasn't just one sound.

Simon seems to narrow the definition of the disco sound, setting it apart from funk and, presumably, apart from hip-hop, techno, house, trance, and every subsequent style of popular dance music.

QUOTE:
And disco wasn't, as Simon so rightly points out, about white suits doing that Travolta thing or about Afros.

To a lot of people living outside of New York or other trendy places, it certainly was all about that because that was the only contact with it. Besides, Saturday Night Fever is a really fucking sad and tragic movie.

QUOTE:
Disco was about fun, yes,

It's not about fun for people who don't like disco and/or couldn't get into the club.

QUOTE:
but it was also dead fucking serious about production.

That's not necessarily an asset. See above.


Also, I hate boss nova. I figure I'll just throw that in while I'm risking opprobrium from OTF's dance music lovers.