"THE JOY OF DISCO" (2012) (youtube)

 

WATCH IT ON youtube

  (I love how it's summed up:
"IT WAS THE BIRTH OF A NEW DEMOCRACY")

A documentary about how a much-derided music actually changed the world. Between 1969 and 1979 disco sound tracked gay liberation, foregrounded female desire in the age of feminism and led to the birth of modern club culture as we know it today, before taking the world by storm; with contributions from Deney Terrio, Nile Rogers, Earl Young, Nicky Siano, David Mancuso, Robin Gibb, Kathy Sledge, Edmund White, Ian Schrager and Rollerena, just to name a few.

I never knew this existed; produced by the BBC.

Personally my disco experiences started in the New Jersey parties and straight bars in 1972 and peaked in the 1980's. This pop explosion just morphed later on to house music, tribal and other danceable pop music.

My first gay disco was " THE ROUND TABLE" in Midtown NYC-I was 15 years old (yay fake ID's).
It was also the first time I saw men in drag.

Of course the top NYC discos we frequented in the late 70's and 80's (and we'd later refer to them as dance clubs to sound cooler; silly us.) were: "The Gallery",  "Studio 54" , "Xenon". "Infinity", "12 WEST", "The Barefoot Boy", "Flamingo", "The Anvil", "Les Mouches", "Ice Palace 57", "the Paradise Garage"and the epitome of all dance clubs, "THE SAINT".

Other cities had comparable dance clubs: Los Angeles had "Studio One"; South Florida had "COPA", "Salvation" and "Backstreet"; Atlanta had "Backstreet" as well.

And Philadelphia brought a unique sound the world embraced. It took soul, R&B and Motown to create timeless, danceable sounds still influencing artists today.

While the Salsoul Orchestra created the hybrid of soul, Latin and disco.

Any dancer worth his self respect danced the Latin hustle-not the "Saturday Night Fever" more Anglo style. This movie & soundtrack by The Bee Gees took disco to the mainstream (as Madonna's song "Vogue" did for voguing; another established underground phenom-watch "Paris is Burning" to explore its genesis).

(And screw the backlash of "DISCO SUCKS" in July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago--most of the music THEY were listening to REALLY SUCKED...it was pure homophobia & racism..hate at its most vile !)

DISCO LIVES!

A seminal work into this musical, transformative phenomenon is:

My Life in the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin'

by Mel Cheren, Gabriel Rotello