Disco demolition night tv#

1s, in addition to hits they individually or jointly wrote and/or produced for younger brother Andy Gibb, Samantha Sang, Frankie Valli (for the “Grease” soundtrack), and Yvonne Elliman and Tavares (for the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, which soon became the bestselling album in U.S. In a five-year period from 1975 to 1979, the Bee Gees had 13 songs in the Top 20, including six consecutive No. No act was more responsible for disco’s ubiquity than the Bee Gees, a trio of brothers who started their careers imitating the most baroque parts of the Beatles, discovered their magnificent facility with soul ballads, and just as their career seemed spent in the mid-1970s, began making dazzling disco records distinguished by their elastic falsetto voices. A culture war was coming, during which white Americans would tell marginalized groups to sit down and shut up. Soon, macho man Ronald Reagan would run for president on a platform that included race-baiting references to “states’ rights” and fictional “welfare queens” as president, Reagan would ignore the AIDS crisis until well into his second term. Once disco became ubiquitous, once morning-radio jock Rick Dees and basketball star Meadowlark Lemon had released disco records, and once moms and aunts were taking hustle classes, these skeptics turned insane.

Disco demolition night tv#

Jerry Falwell was placing disco on a list of scourges that included abortion, and, for some reason lost to time, TV sitcoms.ĭisco added a quarter-note pulse to the meaty basslines and chattering rhythm guitar of funk Fred Wesley, a key member of James Brown’s band, described disco as “funk with a bow tie.” To skeptics (most of them white and straight), disco was devoid of intelligence, musicality or passion. In many cases, discos were illegal: In New York, Baltimore, Chicago and L.A., it was against the law for same-sex couples to dance together, and police were often only too happy to enforce it.Īs disco became more popular, especially after the late 1977 release of the blockbuster film “Saturday Night Fever” and its soundtrack, which heavily featured the Bee Gees, those quiet subcultures became more visible, pushing feminism, civil rights and gay rights to the lucrative forefront of pop culture. This violent debacle is a convenient summary of the backlash disco faced, and is often cited as the music’s terminus, which it wasn’t.ĭisco began as underground music enjoyed in illicit clubs by an allied subculture of gays, women and people of color. (Ed Caraeff/Getty Images/HBO)Īny retelling of the 1970s disco boom has to reckon with Disco Demolition Night, a shameful promotional event staged by Chicago shock-jock DJ Steve Dahl between games of a White Sox doubleheader on July 12, 1979. Maurice, from left, Robin and Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, performing in 1979.