The Smiley Smile Message Board

Do you hate disco? Sure you do, that's why you hate the Beach Boys reworking of the beloved track 'Here Comes The Night'.

And of course, you also buy into the myth that they created this monstrosity in an ill-conceived effort to 'cash in' on the disco scene.

I have a different interpretation of that event.

The Beach Boys hated disco just as much as the rest of us. Their motivation in reworking 'Here Comes the Night' was to prove to the world that the Beach Boys could do it better.

Sort of a 'Let's show'em how it's done' thing.

Did disco suck? Sure it did. But, as in any rogue music trend, there's always some glimmer of brilliance. In this case, it's the Beach Boys.

There's really only one song that might possibly not have been outstripped by 'Here Comes The Night' and that's 'Disco Inferno'.

If you disagree, say so... I don't mind. I expect it. I encourage it.

Well I don't hate disco, I dig it.  It doesn't take itself seriously and it does its job effectively considering what it's designed to do. 

With that said, "Here Comes The Night" hardly makes a blip on my radar as the best or worst of all time.  It just wasn't a great "Beach Boys" song (or redo) for it to garner a double take from fans and non-fans alike.  Disco was doing pretty well without it (whether you like the genre or not) and this tune hardly made a dent in the grand scheme of things.  It would have been interesting if they (Brian mostly) buckled down and wrote a great song that happened to be disco but "Here Comes The NIght" comes off rather half-assed and I think everyone noticed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRYnbuUwOYk

Make no mistake..... I am NOT saying it's the Beach Boys greatest recording. (not saying it's their worst either)

Also not claiming it was commercially successful. I'm merely addressing what I imagine their motivation MIGHT have been, contrary to popular notion.

No it didn't. "Disco Sucks" was a racist movement that caught on in the public imagination.

*LOL* .... sure, like 'All in the Family' or body art.  :lol

Actually, in the words of the British National Party at the height of the Disco Sucks movement: "Disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys."

Wow! That came out of left field. I know I shouldn't ask ;) , but please explain your rationale.

I see your explanation above.

See that, and I always just thought it was a play on words of "Disco Duck". :)

I should also add that the Disco Sucks movement was accompanied by a lot of homophobic rhetoric, much of it emanating from the slogan's creator Steve Dahl.

Racist?  Naw, not from my perspective.  I was among the 'Disco Sucks' crowd back then, but it had nothing to do with race.  I was going to college in the mid '70s, and also playing guitar in a rock band on the side.  When my favorite clubs started to tear out their stages to make room for disco dance floors, it was much more difficult to see bands play, or to get jobs playing.  I saw it as a threat to live music in my area.  Thus, Disco Sucks.  In the very many years since then, I've learned to appreciate the genre for what it was.  As for The Beach Boys, I think Bruce Johnston and Curt Boetcher thought it would be a good idea to do a disco tune in order to keep up with the trends of the day.  I don't believe they were trying to show anybody that they could do it better (although the arrangement, especially the vocals, is quite good).  It was simply a failed experiment to see if they could get a song on the radio and in the clubs.

I said the movement itself was racist. I'm sure there were plenty of individuals within the movement who came to their opinion for different reasons. That doesn't change the fact that the sentiments behind the movement were staggeringly racist and homophobic.

Not trying to be argumentative, but what is your evidence for such a claim?  Curious minds want to know.

That it was racist should be uncontroversial. As already noted, disco was held as a threat to white hegemony by nationalist organizations who spearheaded anti-disco movements during the time of Disco Sucks. As Lester Bangs noted at the time, leading rock journalists and critics were even prone to referring to music by Otis Redding as "n----r disco sh!t." The movement itself gathered steam as a racist movement too. Rolling Stone magazine is on record as noting that when they devoted part of an issue to disco, they were inundated with racist letters.

Steve Dahl who coined the term Disco Sucks admitted that he had more of a problem with the culture than the music. Disco, for Dahl, was "intimidating" and he wrote a parody of Do You Think I'm Sexy called Do You Think I'm Disco which suggested that men could "re-masculinize" themselves by abandoning disco music.

I bet Hitler hated having wet socks as much as the next guy, that doesn't make that dislike evil! It's a genre of music, and anyone can feel free to like it or dislike for whatever reason they choose.

True. Fortunately no one here is suggesting otherwise.

Every time I hear the begining of this song I envision Ponch & Jon roaring down the freeways of LA on their motorcycles.

NOW, I understand why I've always been bigoted toward, and afraid of,  those black queers, the Bee Gees.

 :lol :lol :lol

I can't blame the Beach Boys and Bruce for trying. I think L.A. The Light Album was the last great Beach Boys album before TWGMTR appeared. The attempt at a disco hit was nothing new at that time. This was one song on one album.

Wasn't Elton John's "Victim of Love" a failed attempt at Disco?

Rod Stewart's "Do ya think I'm sexy?" was a huge hit.

Blondies "Heart of Glass" was good.

How many others have traveled down the disco road? How many more can you come up with?

http://www.afterelton.com/content/2012/05/bee-gees-9-gayest-songwriting-contributions (http://www.afterelton.com/content/2012/05/bee-gees-9-gayest-songwriting-contributions)

Also, look for the blog article online titled "Bee Gees: Reunited and it Feels so Gay" which contains this gem: "The Bee Gees! Remember when they were cool? Neither do we. We’re not that old and we have never been that gay."

Don't laugh, Fanny, it's not funny. You should be dancing.

I am. I am. The Mexicorn Hat Dance. Join in.

Don't forget Kiss and "I Was Made For Loving You", the ultimate fusion of disco and rock!

Not a big fan of disco, but the production is great on some tracks.

Oh yeah, and musicianship too. Those disco violins and basslines. I'd like to have a stack-o-tracks disco collection concentrating on those.

Hot Stuff by The Stones.  The Dead's version of Dancin' In The Streets might qualify as disco.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ASnFmOV4Q

Actually, Rudy Ray Moore hitched himself to the disco bandwagon too late as well, lost everything and ended up working as a waiter in Dallas for a while as a result of this film, I think.

Most extravagant topic title ever, or close to it. Not only is HCTN, disco style, not on a par with Disco Inferno - it's not on a par with at least a hundred disco records from that time. For one thing - it didn't have producers with much of a background in disco. Had Bruce produced a disco record before it that got much play in the clubs? Or Boettcher?

Now, if Dan Hartman had been the producer - a guy who knew both disco and California rock'n'roll - it might have worked.

And HCTN wasn't exactly the most promising material for this treatment, either. To my ears, some of the BBLY songs - say, "Honkin' Down The Highway" - could have made the transition to disco. But that's just my op-ed.

Good choice.  I can hear it in my head. 

Then again, it might not. What brand cans are you using?  ::) Of course you are completely welcome to your opinion.

Shake it out, and turn on, baby!

 :3d

Actually saw a RRM stand-up comedy album at the vinyl store the other day....  ;D

Cans?  I don't use no stinkin' cans.  ::)   :3d

Of course I'm welcome to my opinions.  And so are you.

But disco is fucking brilliant! If you cannot dance to Chic I don't think I want to know you tbh.

Sorry to say but I don't think the Beach Boys are savvy enough to mock pop culture.  At that point in their career, they were pretty desperate for any kind of relevance.  The disco-fied "Here Comes The Night" was Bruce's idea.  It was one of his many lame attempts at trying to be hip.  But Bruce wouldn't know what "hip" was even if he was having his replaced.  Later on he thought it would be pretty cool to record a "Britney Spears" version of "Surfin'".   :brow  Anywho, I recall Jardine once said in an interview that the recording session for that disasterpiece was one of the worst experiences of his career.  And that's saying a lot for a guy who almost traded his fame to be a dentist. 

And yes, disco did indeed suck, but not simply because racist homophobes didn't care for it...

Where did he say his? Do tell more.

It was in an interview he did with ESQ back in the late 90's/early 00's. This was during his feuding with Mike Love and he was kind of bitter.  I don't remember his exact words, but he did not enjoy that recording session.  

In the Rolling Stone article from the period, I remember it said Brian and Dennis were not involved, and Carl said he "just kind of walked through it". Since Al wasn't into it either ...

The monkey scream is a little much for my taste.  It is the product of that 'dark' period of pop culture but I still enjoy it for the cheese factor.

ALthough worse than most Beach Boys material -  it's better than most 'Disco' material, simple because it's the Beach Boys.

That's my story and I'm stickin' with it.

I never saw it as a race thing or lifestyle, I simply think it wasn't a good genre. I've heard some disco I liked but it was by people like The Jacksons, James Brown, or Ike Turner which all was a lot harder than a lot of the music being done then. Elvis and Jerry Lee incoperated it slightly into a few songs but it worked because it was still rock and roll. The Beach Boys went about it wrong because it wasn't subtle, it wasn't unique, and at least four out of six members didn't like it. Honestly I don't think rock or r&b ever totally recovered because it took electronics to an extreme and set us up for synth pop and all the other crap to follow. Maybe it would have happened anyway but it certainly didn't help organic musicians thrive.

I'm telling you, DISCO RULES. If you cannot kick it with Donna Summer, you're fools, I tell you!


Sure, the disco HCTN sucks, not because it's disco, but because it's just an old song dreadfully sung and produced.

Couldn't agree more!

As far as I'm concerned, Curt Boettcher wasn't a very good disco producer to begin with (love his work with The Millennium, by the way!). I've heard the California Music album and most of it is really dull and uninspired (save for Jamaica Farewell, which is really nice). HCTN is not even half as bad as CM'S attempt at I Can Hear Music but still... an experiment, yes, but not very successful at all.

Completely agree but would Ponch think disco was gay?

(http://static.customizedgirl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/erik_estrada2.jpg)

Timely thread. Last time we moved, I thought I sold all of my vinyl. My wife and I are moving again, and I woke up this morning to find that she had found my HCTN 12" and the Celebration album among hers. No sign of Pacific Ocean Blue.

Kill me.

"Here Comes the Night" is an alright song, I don't see why so many people hate the disco version.  It's not bad in any way (besides being disco), but it's not a very good disco song either, I guess it's just the boys experimenting with it.

My favorite disco song is probably "Disco Inferno"... the Trammps lead singer just died in Rock Hill, SC a few months ago... .where I happen to be logged on at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbFgH0mHw3w

The video is so great, and the guy is so into it.  If the Beach Boys would have sang "Here comes the night" with the same zest that this guy sings with, maybe it would be the greatest disco recording of all time.  Doubt it, though.

At the end of the actual record, he goes "How many of you understand what I'm talking about?  I ain't talkin' about burnin' down a building.  It's comin' from my Soul, yall!    Don't you rescue me!  Let my spirit burn free."

His name was Jimmy Ellis, he just died 3 months ago. 

I can understand people aren't into Disco, but don't lump it all in as just shitty music, some of it was fantastic.  It was birthed in Soul Music, some of it is indistinguishable from fantastic soul stuff that was being recorded at the time. 

Here's the Trammps doing "Where do we go from Here", the guy was a fantastic singer.  So soulful. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QvNClAC6BQ&feature=related

If that's disco, sign me up. 

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That it was racist should be uncontroversial. As already noted, disco was held as a threat to white hegemony by nationalist organizations who spearheaded anti-disco movements during the time of Disco Sucks. As Lester Bangs noted at the time, leading rock journalists and critics were even prone to referring to music by Otis Redding as "n----r disco sh!t." The movement itself gathered steam as a racist movement too. Rolling Stone magazine is on record as noting that when they devoted part of an issue to disco, they were inundated with racist letters.

Steve Dahl who coined the term Disco Sucks admitted that he had more of a problem with the culture than the music. Disco, for Dahl, was "intimidating" and he wrote a parody of Do You Think I'm Sexy called Do You Think I'm Disco which suggested that men could "re-masculinize" themselves by abandoning disco music.
[/quote]

Um, no - The biggest Disco fans where the racists.  I was going to school in Boston at the time and what you would find is that the discos were full of the Italians from Eastie and the Irish from Southie and Charlestown who four years earlier were throwing rocks at school buses.  The culture portrayed by Saturday Night Fever was very real and very racist.

I personally disliked disco because I viewed as taking the blues out of R&B.

As for HCTN - It isa generic disco song.  It sounds like it was produced, played and arranged by the same people who did the CHiPs soundtrack.  Every time I hear it I expect to turn around and see Ponch and Jon break into smiles.

The greatest Disco song - "Miss You".  gotta love "Some Girls" where the Stones show the Punks and the Disco people how it's done.

I agree, disco gave a lot of suburban kids the excuse to say "black music sucks", despite the years preceding disco having some of the best music ever recorded by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and many others - hard to believe now, but early to mid  70's FM rock radio (AOR) included a lot of soul or r&b music. Earth, Wind and Fire, Tower of Power, Billy Preston, Stevie, Marvin, they were just as much a part of that format as Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Bad Company, and Elton John. The backlash against disco meant that AOR went totally white, arena rock...anything with a bit of "soul" to it was now branded "disco"....and you didn't get your music played on AOR if you were black....unless your name was Jimi Hendrix. Racist? That's a strong word....but a lot of people felt that's just what it was all about. As for incorporating a disco sound into the music of an already established act, I would say that Wings, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones did it a lot better than the Beach Boys. Wings hit "Goodnight Tonight" certainly had a disco tempo/rhythm, but was still a very McCartney-esque production. The Kinks did "Wish I Could Fly Like Superman" with Mick Avory play a straight disco beat on the drums throughout, but the guitars were pure Kinks. And no one but Ray Davies - at least in the Rock God Universe - would write a song with lines like "I'm so weak, I'm too thin, I'd like to fly but I can't even swim!" Can't imagine James Brown or Wilson Pickett covering that one!

I can just picture Bruce in the monitor room now, speaking into the mike saying "it needs more monkey".

That it was racist should be uncontroversial. As already noted, disco was held as a threat to white hegemony by nationalist organizations who spearheaded anti-disco movements during the time of Disco Sucks. As Lester Bangs noted at the time, leading rock journalists and critics were even prone to referring to music by Otis Redding as "n----r disco sh!t." The movement itself gathered steam as a racist movement too. Rolling Stone magazine is on record as noting that when they devoted part of an issue to disco, they were inundated with racist letters.

Steve Dahl who coined the term Disco Sucks admitted that he had more of a problem with the culture than the music. Disco, for Dahl, was "intimidating" and he wrote a parody of Do You Think I'm Sexy called Do You Think I'm Disco which suggested that men could "re-masculinize" themselves by abandoning disco music.
[/quote]

Um, no - The biggest Disco fans where the racists.  I was going to school in Boston at the time and what you would find is that the discos were full of the Italians from Eastie and the Irish from Southie and Charlestown who four years earlier were throwing rocks at school buses.  The culture portrayed by Saturday Night Fever was very real and very racist.

I personally disliked disco because I viewed as taking the blues out of R&B.

As for HCTN - It isa generic disco song.  It sounds like it was produced, played and arranged by the same people who did the CHiPs soundtrack.  Every time I hear it I expect to turn around and see Ponch and Jon break into smiles.

The greatest Disco song - "Miss You".  gotta love "Some Girls" where the Stones show the Punks and the Disco people how it's done.
[/quote]

You may have gone to school as a "visitor" in Boston, but the stereotype which you castigate, appears to be insultingly replicated with your intolerant pigeonholing of "Irish" and "Italian" kids.  Those neighborhoods, as well as others were havens for clusters of people who emigrated from Europe, with little but what they wore, and the comfort of a common language, and/or background.  South Boston had a large immigrant population from Eastern Europe, specifically Lithuania and Poland. New York was similar, in that large immigrant groups "self-grouped" for religious reasons, and for similar cultural identity and commonality of languages. The great Dick Dale is from South Boston. (Lebanese/Polish/Belarusian) SNF is a "snapshot" of a cultural phenomenon and not an indictment.  JMHO

And frankly, as one who taught in that school system for several decades, after the busing order, what was largely left, were poor people who could not afford private school and who had no choices in life and no education.  People who view themelves as powerless often become violent.  This is no apology for that outrageously bad behavior. And, Apartheid was no different, with violence, but for different reasons. (sandbox discussion)

I happen to like HCTN, because it shows the Boys were open to trying a different genre, even though the timing of the release seemed to coincide with the wane of disco. (Thank God)

Rock music was classified largely as "white music" as well.  Does that make it racist?  I don't think so. Composers take their influences from many genres, nations, and races, and often subliminally influenced.   It is largely race "neutral" as a finished product. 

Seriously, why does everybody here hate disco? Your only exposure to it being HCTN is NOT a valid reason.

Gotta love K.C. and the Sunshine Band!  :happydance :hat

As a whole, it's not my favorite genre of pop music, but there are some disco recordings I enjoy. George McRae's Rock Your Baby, the Hues Corporation's Rock the Boat are a couple that come to mind, much of the Bee Gees stuff of that era...but my favorite Bee Gees tracks are the 60's/early 70's ones.

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hz-Jb68C_mU/TMrxQfDGc_I/AAAAAAAAAPs/Bj9HuOzjdMM/s1600/Diskomo+2000.jpg)

Hell yeah! Icy Eskimo chants married to a cheesy disco backbeat. There is nothing else like this on earth.

now THIS is what great disco sounds like, compared to this HCTN is soggy bread. 

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Love I Lost http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXg0iXFHkxs

"Here Comes The Night" was a "you had to be there" moment. It really sounded pretty good on AM radio back in 1979 when you were cruisin' in your car; a bit dated but Carl's vocal really shined and Brian did write a good song.

Back when disco was everywhere, I hated it. Years later, when I began to DJ wedding receptions, birthday parties, and class reunons - it bailed me out! I can't tell you how many times KC & The Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, and The Village People filled the dance floor!

Not only did I go to school in Boston I also grew up there (in the burbs).  Yes, Southie does have an ethnically diverse population but the dominent culture there is Irish and rascial attitudes in the Boston area at that time where not very different than those found in Selma, Alabama 15 years earlier.  This is not just an indictment of the working class neighborhoods of Boston but also the affluent liberal suburbs which were all for racial diversity just as long as somewhere else.

In response to the those that have put forth the idea that the "Disco sucks" movement was a racial thing I can only relate to what I observed.

1. Disco was huge in the white ethnic enclaves of Boston.
2. If the "Disco Sucks" movement was racially motivated disco would not have been big in these areas.

Armageddon must be on it's way; I agree with Ron.

The bass line on "Disco Inferno" is all kinds of awesome. And down the scale intro let's you know that it's going to be. Yes, great vocal also. My fave disco tune, despite my love for the Brothers Gibb.

I kid you not, I broke my thumb doing the splits while dancing to this song in the eighth grade. I looked at my new 90 degree thumb in the strobe lights and kept discoing in my polyester suit.

Not nearly as good of a song, but Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" is probably my favorite disco production. Sorry, but "HCTN" is in the minors compared to these pro tunes.

Yup!  I don't know if I'd consider that "Disco"... but all that stuff was pretty similar, Disco/Soul/R&B from the 70's is some of the most underrated stuff ever.  I never even heard of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes until I heard Snoop Dogg mention them. 

Some disco is tolerable.  But overall, it is cheesy dance music that has not aged well. 

If you dig this track, be sure to check out California Music - the disco project from Curt Becher (who produced this track) & Bruce Johnston....as well as a myriad of other LA pop alumni. Also, once Curt left the project, Brian Wilson took over for a single or two....although the tracks stopped being disco at this point

There are also thousands of terrible surf songs, 60's pop songs, soul tunes, and any other music you can fathom. What's your point? Do you judge a genre of music on its low points?

Also, if I dare say it, DANCING IS FUCKING AMAZING. Why would I hate music that facilitates such a thing?

Bruce seems to have had a bonafide "club hit" with his disco mix of Pipeline.  Might explain the motivation behind this experiment.

Yeah the Stones and Wings did it a lot better, though 1980's Emotional Rescue wasn't half of what Miss You had been.

Yeah, Miss You is a classic. Emotional Rescue feels like "let's try it again', not nearly as exciting.

The problem is that the term "disco" can be overused and applied where it really isn't valid as a musical genre. I think the tendency is to apply it wherever someone hears a 4-on-the-floor steady drum groove, a certain tempo calculated in bpm's, and various other sounds associated with it.

There's no need to mention many more because they've already been named by other posters, but what some in this thread are calling "disco" was not intended to be made as a "disco" record, which is very much unlike the BB's "Here Comes The Night" remake which was clearly targeted to the then-popular disco sound.

You could call a majority of classic Philly Soul records Disco, because they have the elements in the grooves, but you'd be wrong. Listen to T.S.O.P. by MFSB, one of the most killer grooves and coolest records of the 70's. It sounds like disco, but it came before the mass media jumped on board with their labels and everything. Listen to any of those classic Gamble and Huff records from Philly, The O'Jays, Blue Notes, go down the list. It sure as hell isn't disco, but that's unfortunately the convenient label bag which that amazing music got lumped into by a clueless media with tin ears.

The Bee Gees were the worst casualty of this, because in my humble opinion that handful of songs they added to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack are among the best records of the 70's. Period. Yet they got swept up in the disco backlash and it took well over a decade for people to wake up and hear how good they were, damn the labels and image. "More Than A Woman", "Night Fever"....terrific records. And the film itself is actually very good, and works on many levels.

What some folks don't hear about or don't remember is just how programmed, just how watered-down, and just how bland and formula it became. I think *that* element above all is what drove some of the hatred for the music itself, forget the politics for a second. You had stations - and there are tapes of this - in the late 70's which were literally playing bland, nameless disco music on continuous machine-driven loops for hours on end. No personality, no human taking requests, just a station on the dial playing pre-programmed disco beats, and the music was stripped of any personality. It was like Muzak.

And people rebelled against that part of it, and were angry. The heart of Philly Soul, and the Bee Gees, and Donna Summer with Moroder producing, and "Miss You", and the rest is that the music had an actual heart! They were real people doing it, making the records, writing the songs, and making them personal.

Whatever eventually became the convenient label is meaningless to the actual music quality. And on the opposite front, those people who sought to boil these records down to to the bare essentials, the easiest way to cash in and make a buck with minimal effort, and provide the assumed mindless drones with music they could dance to, ended up whitewashing all the character and soul out of the music.

It became a (capital F) Formula, that could be assembled and sold in convenient packaging. Take all the elements that made a record like T.S.O.P. great and strip it down for easy consumption. Fast-food music for people on the go. pre-programmed FM stations playing four-on-the-floor BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM robotic beats with flourishes of pseudo-slap chromatic octaves on the bass, some rhythmic wah wah guitar stabs, sweeping strings playing unison lines, add a bit of brass, plenty of funky Clavinet, hell throw in some damned jungle sounds and electronic Moog blips and bleeps too! What was different became formula, to the Nth degree, and I think that's what bugged music fans who would be open-minded to all styles. Some great records suffered because of the rush to cash in on the trendy sound, and the reduction of music to that obvious and that mindless of a formula.

Don't let the label distract from discovering some great records which either do or do not deserve to be called "disco". I'll make a playlist anytime. "Here Comes The Night" will not be on that list... :smokin

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Funky Town yet!

Absolutely disliked disco and the disco era. There seemed to be a sense of "snobbery" or something like that or maybe that it just seemed fake (or at least some of the people that visited the disco scene did). Also, one had to conform to the dress and style; had to know the specific dance moves; and all that stuff. Seemed a bit suffocating to me; much preferred to hang out at places where you could drink a beer, dress totally casual, listen to an eclectic set of music.

As for the song, I've listened to the whole thing perhaps 3 -4 times over the years and certainly not recently. I can understand why the BB did it but certainly glad they never took the path that the Bee Gees went down.

Every group has that aspect of exclusion, though. I remember reading something about David Johansen and a music writer (I think...) sitting in CBGB and seeing people they didn't know dressed in suits and ties coming in to hear the music after work, and David being upset and suggesting the scene was over because of that crowd coming in. What a bunch of arrogant nonsense. So the very same criticisms about having to dress a certain way or look a certain way in order to connect with any given crowd or scene was a factor across the board. The notion of tolerance and acceptance for different people who may look or act a different way than the rest of the group can be used as an effective sword, but also I think some of the non-conformists fail to realize they've been guilty of the same thing and the sword cuts both ways. I'd bet a guy showing up at a Bob Weir or Phish show wearing a white shirt, wingtips, and tie would get the same looks as a guy showing up at a Philadelphia Orchestra show wearing a Dr. Seuss hat and Birkenstocks. Maybe I'm wrong.

Above all, if the music is something we or anyone finds appealing, let's celebrate that, including music from the 70's that gets written off as disco. It doesn't matter what a person is wearing or any of that crap. In that way I definitely see a snobbery too, with disco and the Studio 54 Mick Jagger-Jerry Hall coked up glamour/fashion scenesters, but it was also there among those who were supposedly against that kind of exclusion if they had a problem with seeing a guy walk into to CBGB wearing a business suit.

Great post, man.  You're absolutley right about the Bee Gees' work in Saturday Night Fever.  I had dismissed everything the group did in the '70s because of the association to disco.  I think I may have stated this before, either in this thread or another, but I started college in the fall of '74, and there were some great live music clubs around my area.  I was a guitar player in a rock band myself, so on the weekends I would either be gigging or watching another band play.  When many of the clubs started ripping out their stages to make room for disco dance floors, I felt threatened.  So, I had a negative bias from the beginning.  Many years later, when I actually watched the SNF movie on television, I was floored at how good those songs were.  I would love to hear what you'd put together for a playlist, Guitarfool!

Can't and am not disagreeing with GuitarFool's comments and observations. Perhaps, ultimately, it comes down to individual tastes and preferences. On the subject of disco (music and scene), I never bought a record of it and to this day do not enjoy or listen to the music (even with the passage of time) although I'll acknowledge that others say there was some good music from that era and genre. If its played at a wedding our "group" doesn't dance to it and, as a matter of fact, often gets motivated to request some BB and Beatles songs - again, personal preference.

You're right, BB Universe, ultimately it does come down to individual tastes and preferences. Like you, I never bought a disco record, hated it when it was popular, and don't find much time for it today. But, as I mentioned in an above post, when I started to DJ, I did gain some appreciation for it. Maybe I'm being too nostalgic, but I found that disco does have a place, and it did find a niche, whether it be an oldies radio station, a 70's music documentary, or on a dance floor at a party.

I also agree with guitarfool's posts. While there is some crossover in genres, there is some music referred to as disco that simply ain't disco. And, due to marketing of various compilations, be it audio or video, that line will continue to be blended even more.

Off the top of my head, these were some of the most popular disco tunes I used to play when DJing parties, receptions, and reunions. They aren't necessarily the best ones, but some of the better known easy-to-dance-to "fun" ones:

01. "Get Down Tonight - KC & The Sunshine Band
02. "Disco Inferno" - The Trammps
03. "Funky Town" - Lipps, Inc.
04. "Le Freak" -  Chic
05. "You Should Be Dancing" - The Bee Gees
06. "Hot Stuff" - Donna Summer
07. "Macho Man" - Village People
08. "Don't Leave Me This Way" - Thelma Houston
09. "Celebration" - Kool & The Gang
10. "I Will Survive" - Gloria Gaynor
11. "Born To Be Alive" - Patrick Hernandez
12. "We Are Family" - Sister Sledge
13. "Heart Of Glass" - Blondie
14. "Brick House" - The Commodores
15. "More More More" - Andrea True Connection
16. "September" - Earth, Wind & Fire
17. "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" - McFadden & Whitehead
18. "Love Hangover" - Diana Ross
19. "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" - Tavares
20. "Turn The Beat Around" - Vicki Sue Robinson 

   

I'm having terrible flashbacks to just about every single bar mitzvah and wedding video gig I did on Long Island as a teenager, that's basically the setlist. Ok, plus the macarena.

Ah, yes, the "Macarena". So, I guess you videotaped your share of it's cousin, the "Electric Slide" and their offspring, the "Cha Cha Slide"... >:D

The Ross song is the only one I really like though Brick House is OK.