I recently saw a good short documentary from Polyphonic about the history of disco (from November 25, 2022) that does an excellent job of explaining what it is, where it went, and why it is important. I figure I’ll share it here, alongside an updated repost of a blog entry I wrote for my old Medium account back in 2017:
[Originally posted February 20th, 2017 with some updates on December 12th, 2022.]
Some context…
I have a shameful secret to admit: I have a chronic case of “disco fever,” one that has affected me ever since I was a kid.
When I was about nine, I was a latchkey kid and would go home straight from school to walk the dog and do my homework before my parents came home. Naturally, as kids that age often do, I’d put the TV on in the background and fight a constant losing battle between the screen and my assignments for the following day. The victors in this fight included a variety of things continue to influence me: Saturday Night Live reruns from the early 90s, rotating anime shows on Toonami, snark courtesy of Talk Soup, and (most importantly for this post) generous heapings of cheesy pop music retrospectives on VH1.
One of these retrospectives included 8-Track Flashback, presented initially by Suzanne Somers and later by Leif Garrett. The format was simple: host comes out, talks about their experience of the 1970s, then show videos from that time. Most of the stuff shown was so 70s, your eyes could start seeing everything in harvest gold and avocado green. It was so tacky, so nerdy, so gaudy. It was something you could never admit loving out loud.
And I loved every minute of it.
What does this have to do with my “disco fever,” especially since most of the videos shown were of AM pop songs instead? It burrowed into my brain a passion for all things ‘70s music. My first CDs when I got my Discman a year later were The 5th Dimension’s Greatest Hits on Earth and something called Pure Funk. From there, I delved into the “Retro Saturday Night” weekly mix played by DC’s Mix 107.3 during that time, with all of the disco standards people know and think of when the word’s even mentioned. Soon came a even deeper dive into heavier funk, especially P-Funk [1] and its various cousins, then followed by 70s hard rock, early punk, and glam a few years later. Even by that point, when I should’ve known better, I still had an undying love for schlocky shit.
So that’s what I’d like to share with you all: a collection of personal favorites, along with notes about general themes found in the genre. So let’s dance, dance, dance, shall we?
The Playlist
"Knights in White Satin" – Giorgio Moroder (1976)
"Love in C Minor" – Cerrone (1976)
"Everybody Dance" – Chic (1977)
Once Upon a Time – "Act 1" (“Once Upon a Time”/”Faster and Faster to Nowhere”/”Fairy Tale High”/”Say Something Nice”) – Donna Summer (1977)
These tracks represent some of the primary figures of the Quality wing in disco history. These include a pair of superstar producer and a couple acts even most casual listeners would know. One the producers’ side, I’ve included both disco mastermind Giorgio Moroder and his nearest rival Cerrone. Both of their cuts also happen to be some of the longer (and loopier) tracks provided in this list, with Moroder covering the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” for 15 minutes and Cerrone going just as long with a NSFW ode about being a mush-mouthed Casanova [2]. Chic balances them out in this list, showing how an actual band (with guitars, bass, and drums) can make amazing dance music, while frequent Moroder collaborator Donna Summer is represented by a Side A of a double album from the time they worked together prior to her superstardom.
“Fly Robin Fly” – Silver Convention (1976)
“Baby Let Me Kiss You” – Fern Kenney (1978)
“Ain’t Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You” – Teri Desario (1978)
"Baby Do You Wanna Bump?" - Boney M (1976)
“Love Magic” – John Davis and the Monster Orchestra (1978)
Following on the theme set by Donna Summer, the next four tracks represent another major them found in disco – the heavy use of female singers. A good percentage of songs in the genre rely on this, as many producers found that their tracks seem to have more “Oomph!” once those backup vocals got added to the mix. To show some of the diversity found in this trend, I split even on the representation of both solo singers and groups/back-ups. For solos. Fern Kenny and Teri Desario are good examples of disco singers who sang on a few good tracks but didn’t quite make it to Donna Summer-level. For the groups, Silver Convention is one of many units put together by producers where the singers were mostly anonymous and in service to the beat [3], a method similarly used by Boney M {via Frank Farian) and John Davis [4] here as well.
“Soul Dracula” – Hot Blood (1977)
“Silhouette” – You and the Explosion Band (1978)
“Discomonia” – Joe Tex (1979)
“Give Me the Night” – George Benson (1980)
Bouncing from there – all released during the peak of disco’s prime time – we go to some examples of the sort of various cash-ins and career redirects found during the late 1970s. The first track, “Soul Dracula,” is the most blatant one as it was a novelty record meant specifically to ride the wave (and one of the only ones I can listen to without cringing) [5]. For the other three, all of them are from artists who worked in other styles before trying their hand at going disco. On “Silhouette,” Yuiji Ohno applied disco motifs to create a silky night-moves kind of vibe for one of his Lupin III soundtracks. Joe Tex chose to stick with his soul brother/preacher/comedian persona for his track (“Discomonia”) in order to get some of that sweet disco money [6], while jazz guitar legend George Benson seemed more earnest with his 1980 smooth-jazz hit “Give Me the Night.”
“Beginning of the Hearbreak/Don’t Don’t” – Peter Gordon & Love of Life Orchestra (1980)
“Kiss Me Again” – Dinosaur (1978)
“There But for the Grace of God Go I” – Machine (1979)
Around the time of “peak-disco,” punk and new wave [7] were also making themselves known and yet, even in those avowedly “not disco” spaces, a lot of great disco music came forth. For some readers, these tracks are going to be familiar as being a core element of the hipster no-wave/post-punk revival of the 2000s. My gateway to this strain came from the near-perfect Disco Not Disco and Mutant Disco CDs released around 2005, plus several mentions by Pitchfork and other online magazines. I attribute this mostly to my DFA Records phase in college but I still love these tracks today and won’t stand for a bad work spoken about them [8].
“All Through the Night” – Escort (2007)
“By Your Side” – Breakbot (2012)
“Goody Two Shoes” – Duck Sauce (2014)
“Happy Music” – Supershy feat. Tom Misch (2022)
“Steamroller” – Anish Kumar (2022)
Around the same time I was in college listening to LCD Soundsystem and similar bands doing their takes on disco, there was also a small resurgence of more disco-disco [9] sounds starting to filter through. For me [10], the more recent neo-disco starts with Escort (which has a full brass section and everything) and their single “All Through the Night” [11]. I’ve also selected some other tracks that follow in the same vein, ranging from French-touch duo Breakbot’s chill “By Your Side,” the Armand Van Helden-side project Duck Sauce’s bouncy house “Goody Two Shoes,” and finally my two favorite additions from 2022, Supershy’s “Happy Music” and the hyperenergetic “Steamroller” by Anish Kumar.
A capper
Of course, this is all just a small drop compared to what can be found when diving into the depths of disco. If you’re curious about finding out more of the actually history, I would highly recommend reading Bill Brewster’s Last Night A DJ Saved My Life [12]. The book covers the primary origins on the original house parties that were thrown that would later lead to the genre having the impact it does todays. I’d also recommend checking out DJ DiscoCat’s YouTube channel of self-made extended mixes, which takes many of the most well-known and cult-classic tracks and expands upon them in unexpected ways while also explaining how the Montreal disco scene worked in the 1970s and early 1980s. Aside from those two starting points, you’ll find there’s a whole lot out there to discover once you’ve started to boogie.
Endnotes
P-Funk generally refers to a specific group of bands led by George Clinton, but the sound can be found in all sorts of groups from the late '70s/early '80s.
I considered adding Cerrone’s 1978 track “Supernature” originally but decided this one was a better representative. If you haven’t heard it before, you really should – it’s fucking nuts (it could’ve been called The Island of Disco Moreau…).
In this case, Munich-based producers/songwriters Sylvester Levay and Michael Kunze.
Side note: The name of the group was based off John Davis’s nickname “The Monster.” Judging from one of his album covers, he seemed like he was happy enough to just run with it…
I found out about this particular track around 2007, thanks to a post on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog called “Disco Sickness.” It covered disco novelties in some depth but I might recommend listening to it only if you want a good laugh, since a lot of the songs are really terrible.
Joe Tex, once a serious rival to James Brown, is not one to let some real funny stuff slide away from him. That’s definitely the case with this track, which makes no effort to hide that was trying to cash in on the then-hot but already declining disco trend that had swept America for three years at that point. He even calls out several other major artists throughout the song, taking the Bee Gees and Rod Stewart to task for their own dodginess while also going full Wolfie on Donna Summer. It’s a lark but a catchy one at that.
Along with early hip-hop, but that's a story best told by Jeff Chang's classic Can't Stop Won't Stop and is a huge and vital history outside the scope of this blog post.
Plus, David Byrne of Talking Heads plays the guitar on “Kiss Me Again,” which is awesome.
As opposed to the other more immediate offspring, like house and techno and IDM and EDM and jungle, etc. etc. etc.
A case could be made for Daft Punk’s 2001 album Discovery (which is an all-time favorite) but I’m going in a different direction here.
I posted the original from 2007, since I don’t actually like the reworked on from their 2012 debut, since it’s not punchy enough for me. There's also a really fun mash-up with the Muppets, if you're interested.
A key part of all this was the parties thrown by David Mancuso (as detailed in Polyphonic’s documentary). Mancuso passed away in 2016 but he had a huge impact despite being so little known in the general view. If you want a deeper playlist of the music he DJ’ed, here's a good place to look on YouTube.
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