1. How could one rally, the "Disco is dead" one, really kill an entire genre that had been that dominant? I can tell that it was overexposed, and was possibly going to die out eventually in some way...but how could that one rally, especially before the social media era, cause such a major backlash against the genre to where club owners became ashamed to say they owned a Disco club? And was it just propaganda for them to show that two months after the rally, none of the top ten hits were Disco, while before it, it was like 10/10 of the hits were Disco?

2. Michael Jackson "Off the wall" came out in August of 1979, which was like a month after this rally. Was it successful because the music was like the best of the best Disco possible for the time, to the extent that it wasn't even classified as Disco? And with many of us feeling it was a better album than "Thriller"...do you feel that this album's timing, coming right when Disco was at it's decline, may be a reason to why it wasn't accepted as much as Thriller?

3. I've heard people say "Disco killed Funk" but how was this the case? Is this in reference to the earlier Funk that was more acoustic, maybe from the James Brown era more so than George Clinton and Parliament? It feels as if one half of the main Funk hits I know of (Flashlight, etc) came around the middle and end of Disco, while the other half and even the majority of Funk classics I'm familiar with came in the early 80's, right after Disco ended..such as More bounce to the ounce, Atomic Dog, and Cutie Pie.

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Disco never really "died". The bandwagon, the fan, the dominance did, but especially among Black folks, it didn't "die" as a backdrop to the music until well into the 1980s. that's how Mike had a monster record in Off The Wall, which had a lot of "disco"-influenced music.

R&B spent many years in a "post-disco" phase, which IMO was like "post-racial"... 'cism still exists, so did disco.

granted, the "Disco Sucks" rally really was more of a symbol of the white divestment in the music more or less. and you know how that goes.

in 1980, the Grammys followed suit as yacht rock was basically scooping up all the awards (the ironic thing about that is some of those records had to conform to the "disco" standard just to get play in clubs).

>1. How could one rally, the "Disco is dead" one, really kill
>an entire genre that had been that dominant? I can tell that
>it was overexposed, and was possibly going to die out
>eventually in some way...but how could that one rally,
>especially before the social media era, cause such a major
>backlash against the genre to where club owners became ashamed
>to say they owned a Disco club? And was it just propaganda for
>them to show that two months after the rally, none of the top
>ten hits were Disco, while before it, it was like 10/10 of the
>hits were Disco?

yeah it was a bit of an exageration. That rally didn't really dead it....it was more demonstrative of the overall climate at the time where the movement was played out in the mainstream. The country as a whole was moving to a more politically conservative climate...whereas before you had a mainstream popular culture that treated Disco like something cool and hip....to a culture that began to become polarized...us vs. them type of thing.

other DJs did start to copy cat around the country...but it was falling off in the mainstream anyway..

a lot of the artists who were assocaited with Disco..who were making hit records...they were starting to look at the downside of their careers...their run was over and they began to fall off.... it wasn't overnight after the riot...it was already starting....but the riot was demonstrative of the overall disco burn out...and the less cooperative society that we were seeing evolve in the 80's.


>
>2. Michael Jackson "Off the wall" came out in August of 1979,
>which was like a month after this rally. Was it successful
>because the music was like the best of the best Disco possible
>for the time, to the extent that it wasn't even classified as
>Disco? And with many of us feeling it was a better album than
>"Thriller"...do you feel that this album's timing, coming
>right when Disco was at it's decline, may be a reason to why
>it wasn't accepted as much as Thriller?

well.... I would be one of those who considers to be more of a sub-genre of R&B/Funk type of music.... Yes with a very distinctive style...culture...very unique...but just as at the begining the records that would go on to be considered Disco staples even though they were really just dance oriented up tempo R&B records.....in the end....R&B would survive so to speak....Off the Wall had a disco vibe for sure....but it was really and R&B record...and artist like MIke who were identified strictly as Disco Artists...or whose music wasn't strictly pigeon holed as Disco...those artists didn't fall off...they just kept doing what they were doing.... so-called disco may have "died" in terms of a indentifiable mainstram sub-genre..but RandB and Funk went on.... (Disco went on too really....but people just stopped calling it that)

the thing about Off the Wall.... that door that Mike went through with Thriller hadn't been opened yet when Off the Wall came out.... The solo R&B cross over superstar ...pop culture idol hadn't happened yet....R&B music sold a lot of records...got a lot of accolades....the opportunity wasn't there yet to push through all the way.... Off the Wall opened the door.......Street Songs opened it some more...... by Thriller....Mike had enough room to go through the door and take off...

I don't think that the disco back lash really held Off the wall back.... it just that the opportunity to go to where Mike would eventually go..wasn't there yet.



>
>3. I've heard people say "Disco killed Funk" but how was this
>the case? Is this in reference to the earlier Funk that was
>more acoustic, maybe from the James Brown era more so than
>George Clinton and Parliament? It feels as if one half of the
>main Funk hits I know of (Flashlight, etc) came around the
>middle and end of Disco, while the other half and even the
>majority of Funk classics I'm familiar with came in the early
>80's, right after Disco ended..such as More bounce to the
>ounce, Atomic Dog, and Cutie Pie.
>

yeah....that's alwasy been a big myth that Disco killed Funk. You know in a lot of the music debates and written works..it always tells a more exciting story to act like music evoloution or history involved This genre killed that genre...or this genre was a rejecting of that genre..... That stuff is usually bullshit literary exagerations...or extras that people put on things to tell a better story...but that story is usually false....

yeah.....like you mention.... the so-called Disco era saw some very serious artistic advances in Funk music....a lot of impactful innovations...and really what would end up seeing the early seeds of what would become hip hop...

like you said...yeah...James Brown's run was ending...Sly was M.I.A..... but P-Funk.....P-Funk greatest run was during the time of disco....They flew above the disco movement so to speak by perfecting their formula.... They had records that were super hot on the disco floors...but they weren't involved in the marketing of the disco movement..... they were busying taking the baton and running with the Funk movement...which really grew during the disco era..and with the synthesizers and drum machines coming into play more...you saw bands like Lakeside, Cameo, The Gapp Band, Roger and Zapp, Junie and P Funk, eventually Prince...so many others combine the acoustic style traditional funk styles with the new synths and drum machine styles.....the technology really expanded funk...

as far as disco and funk....a lot of the freestyle music...and DJ culture type of stuff that settled in the East after Disco really played out..... you saw earlly Hip hop coming out of this...but you also had an Electro Funk style music that came out of this ... The Jonzun Crew....Full Force later....and tons of other groups and artists.... That music was becoming hot at the same time Funk had a very heavy synth based feel.....even the New Wave styles that were happening in Pop music seeped in...particularly in Prince's early stuff....

it could easily be said that the Funk movement THRIVED during the so-called Disco era..and post Disco became the foundation for what would eventually evolve into hip hop...

...on the industry who couldn't figure out why people backlashed on it so they just put that stamp on the previous released disco but continued to let artists make disco but under different musical tags like boogie, funk/electric funk, smooth-rock (which we now call yacht rock), etc. but disco only died for everyone who was thinking of hopping on the bandwagon and tried to make commercial disco tunes to gain fans & money.

R&B has always been treated like a step-child to the music industry and when disco was being done by r&b acts before it even labeled disco, when it was taken then told that sound is over, they ignored that r&b acts still made the best disco without it being labeled so and it went back to being just r&b & funk.

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---------
"We in here talking about later career Prince records
& your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine
trying to collect props for a couple of sociopathic degenerates" - s.blak

>1. How could one rally, the "Disco is dead" one, really kill
>an entire genre that had been that dominant? I can tell that
>it was overexposed, and was possibly going to die out
>eventually in some way...but how could that one rally,
>especially before the social media era, cause such a major
>backlash against the genre to where club owners became ashamed
>to say they owned a Disco club? And was it just propaganda for
>them to show that two months after the rally, none of the top
>ten hits were Disco, while before it, it was like 10/10 of the
>hits were Disco?
>
>2. Michael Jackson "Off the wall" came out in August of 1979,
>which was like a month after this rally. Was it successful
>because the music was like the best of the best Disco possible
>for the time, to the extent that it wasn't even classified as
>Disco? And with many of us feeling it was a better album than
>"Thriller"...do you feel that this album's timing, coming
>right when Disco was at it's decline, may be a reason to why
>it wasn't accepted as much as Thriller?
>
>3. I've heard people say "Disco killed Funk" but how was this
>the case? Is this in reference to the earlier Funk that was
>more acoustic, maybe from the James Brown era more so than
>George Clinton and Parliament? It feels as if one half of the
>main Funk hits I know of (Flashlight, etc) came around the
>middle and end of Disco, while the other half and even the
>majority of Funk classics I'm familiar with came in the early
>80's, right after Disco ended..such as More bounce to the
>ounce, Atomic Dog, and Cutie Pie.
>




great questions man, disco never died just got called dance music and the extended version/remix is the same thing under a different name. clubs and places kept on going. don't be fooled because Donna Summer's, still had hits, as did KC and the sunshine band and others. problem as pointed out when the rolling stones and rod stewart went on the wagon then it broke that door loose, however make no mistake you still had hits. i mean "funkytown" by Lipps INC was disco inspired and it hit and Blonde had a disco vibe as did some other acts its just it got a different name and slowly eased out 1)

Off the Wall was a Great album period however the jacksons the previous year with "shake your body down to the ground" had hit with the disco crowd and wanted that Bee Gees money. anyway "Burn this disco Out" the last song on Off the wall was disco inspired as was a few other tracks on the album, it was a polished hybrid album. MJ was told his album was too Black though and that was his backlash and one of the reasons with thriller he came back with a vengences. while he wasn't labeled disco he was told he was too Black with "off the Wall". bottom line off the wall incorperated quite a bit of the disco charm and polish that Barry white had already done. in truth MJ had to prove himself with off the wall and especially with thriller he got no pass back then, that was a different era man 2)

disco didn't kill funk because Funk Bands kept on doing there thing the thing with disco is that it was simple and it also rode on 4/4 time. now the irony is that James Brown called himself the original King of Disco in the late 70's. anyway Parliament and George Clinton were on the same label as Donna summer, village people,etc.. on casablanca records. the thing is that once synths,programming and taking away the KFC full bucket band is what hurt the bands more than Disco, remember something R&B bands always adapted to whatever, disco blurred the line, however bands kept on playing and grooving, case in Point, Isley brothers,earth,wind and fire, the jacksons, Cameo, Lakeside, Bar Kays, Brick, Ray Parker Jr, Rick James, etc.. didn't miss a beat despite disco. however the technilogy of the synths and the less is more approach is what really did away with the funk bands not disco. interesting thing, funk bands didn't ride the gimmick because they had there own lane. 3)

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

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shit like modern soul / italo disco / freestyle

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Hussein ibn Malik "if he escaped on a horse he might be realest nigga ever, EVER..2013 Nat Turner with the burner"

MaxPtah "Django is real homie.."

PoppaGeorge "If you're a child of the 70's, Ye looks like

Sylvester still hit as did Grace Jones. CHIC had a few more hits, however Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards went on to Produce David Bowie on "Lets dance" which is a disco cut and they also Produced Madonna.

matter of fact Madonna's first album was disco inspired IMO.

but anyway Rodgers and Edwards went behind the boards and stayed busy and they never changed there sound either.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

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People like to say it is a disco album (I remember saying it myself once or twice over the years) but it isn't. The reason that people started referring to Off the Wall as a disco album was mostly about trying to redeem disco.

Remember that until like 10 years ago, disco mostly still sucked... even for a lot of Black people. It was something everybody was still embarrassed about and tried to distance themselves from. Nile Rodgers, Janice Marie Johnson and all those other people you saw on that Unsung proudly repping disco? Ten years ago, all of them were denying ever being disco artists, claiming they didn't know what disco was, that it was a label slapped on them while they were just making their regular rock/jazz/R&B etc.

Conventional wisdom amongst a lot of people was that apart from maybe Donna Summer, nobody whose career started in disco survived into the next decade... which proves they were manufactured/talentless/wack etc*... But OTW was used as a defense against that argument.

Ten years ago, calling Off the Wall "disco" was almost a revolutionary act... Because everybody loves Off the Wall. So if you're saying disco sucks... well, you like OTW, don't you? So maybe disco doesn't suck THAT much! (An alternate version of this argument was "Prince is a genius, right? Did you listen to his first two albums?")

OTW has got some disco-ish elements but even the track on there that's got the word "disco" in it was not straight disco in the conventional sense. It's an R&B album made in an era in which R&B had not fully shaken off much of the glitter from the night before's disco... It would not fully shake it all off until 1984 or 85 anyway, which is why you get stuff like boogie, freestyle, electro, Hi-NRG coming out during that time (not to mention Italo.)


*Lately I've heard the same argument used to diss New Jack Swing

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

Don't Stop = Disco. Monstrous Disco.
Working Day & Night = Disco. Funky Disco, but Disco.
Get On the Floor = Disco. Str8 up.
Burn This Disco Out = Disco. Check the bridge & coda.
Off the Wall = Disco. Check the bridge.

fuck you.

anticipate boogie more than rep for meat-and-potatoes disco. "Rock With You" too... if you listen to the beat, it's more of a one-two shuffle than four-on-floor.

I don't want to fall into trap of suggesting that if it ain't four on the floor, it ain't disco... but it's hard to escape that the sound is more like the style that became popular over the next couple of years and which is now thought of as a different genre... Of course, that is mostly retroactive taxonomy because it's not like there was an actual line drawn at the time; the "boogie" demarcation is relatively recent. At the time, a lot of people still called the shit "disco"--I know I did--and record stores still had their Disco sections, Billboard still had its Disco chart, etc. And if they didn't freely use the word "Disco," they still thought of the music as still being part of the same continuum.

(By the way, if it's any insight into how my mind works, I don't really consider "Boogie Oogie Oogie" to be real disco either... for me, that record marks the beginning of Boogie. To some extent, I feel the same about "Disco Nights (Rock Freak)"... All these records bear certain cosmetic trappings by which they endeared themselves to the disco market of the time, but rhythmically, they really had a different thing going on...)

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

the obvious songs, and if you added a bit more groove to "girlfriend" you could boogie to that and its the fallen in love.

truth is off the wall sounded very much like the time it was in, however Michael Jackson vocally sounded a step beyond what was happening at the time.

i mean on the triumph album can you feel it, lovely one,heartbreak hotel had disco elements in that hybrid.

working day and night with the latin vibe and groove was outta the barry white page book of disco.

and yeah prince's first two albums were disco inspired in places and remember that turkey was doing the pink panther in the "why you wanna treat me so bad" video.

i wanna be your lover echoed the emotions " best of my love" and both are disco cuts.with pop shine.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

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It's an R&B album made in an era in
>which R&B had not fully shaken off much of the glitter from
>the night before's disco...

But couldn't that be said for alot of albums and songs from the era?

A lot of so-called Disco records were simply R&B records that happened to be coming out either at the beginning...during...or at the end of the so-called Disco era? R&B records that appealed to DJs who were trying to keep people on the dance floors......aimed at charts that included so-called disco records....

I mean what would make Off the Wall any more or less a Disco album than say one of Heatwave's albums?

The classification can become very subjective.

Maybe it's because I'm in europe but extensions, developments and updates of the disco-sound were all over the charts for the entire 80's.

Did the music sound exactly like old disco? Of course not but you can say that about any genre that evolves and grows. I don't even think there was a cut-off point for the music which evolved gradually, just the genre-name... It's comparable with when grunge/''heavy alternative'' supposedly killed metal and hard rock in the early 90's; Soundgarden and Alice In Chains didn't exactly sound less metal than Bon Jovi or Def Leppard did, quite the opposite actually

The Jacksons were one of the most sucessfull disco acts ever..

all of the family albums were so heavily influnced in disco.. but what other music was there that really made young kids get on the floor like that... we talking late 70's early 80's

if you want to talk disco funk then you talking "Lets get serious" by Jermaine which was produced by Stevie Wonder ...

But, Just like many music forms disco got watered down to the point where songs at disco elements but were not put in that category..

no different than Jazz.. John Legends song ordinary people is a straight ahead jazz joint but its not called jazz...

the same thing is going to happen to hip hop as well a lot of music coming out by artist like Future... Etc straight singing over beats and calling it hip hop...

You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

>no different than Jazz.. John Legends song ordinary people is
>a straight ahead jazz joint but its not called jazz...

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

with Oridinary people. some turkey thinks because that Lion King head turkey reminds them of Bobby short that he must have a jazz connection and it ain't even so.

yeah Kap i mearly spit my teeths out over John Legend and Jazz in the same sentence and i gots my teeths ya know?

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

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