Le freak c'est chic

[Phil W]

Jay plays some great stuff on that Steely Dan tribute I posted about recently (The Royal Dan).

[Phil W]

Wow, thanks for the link, Chad!

[Flemtone]

Chad, that's just way cool. Thanks for the link, and the little bit of MP history.

 

[picker]

From what I can recall, disco got popular because rock forgot it's dance hall roots. By the mid 70's, all you could do at a rock show was get stoned, sit on your butt, and be impressed. That's a big ego trip for the band, but bo-o-oring for the audience. When music becomes more fun for the band than the audience, you gotta know the audience is going away.

At a disco, Joe Nobody could become Jim Dandy, dress up in stylish clothes, drink expensive drinks, and show off his moves on the dance floor, all in hopes of making that "luhhvvv connection". By then, most of the desirable girls had gotten tired of guys with waist-length hair who wore dungarees, and thought a good time was going over to their bud's house to hit his bong till they passed out. They wanted to get dressed up, go out on the town, and have a guy or guys buy them drinks and dance with them. The disco scene provided all that for them. Yeah the music was cheezy, but foils were having too much fun to care about that.

Another thing that's interesting to me is the fact that it was the late in 70's that the popular drugs of choice changed from pot and acid to coke and speed. Drugs that make you passive and introspective were supplanted by drugs that make you hyperactive and overly outgoing, all about the same time that the rock scene was supplanted by the disco scene. I guess folks got tired of sitting around doing nothing and got into "being somebody".

[ZZ Thorn]

Very well put.

[Steve Lawson]

To these ears, there's pretty much nothing wrong with anything I've ever heard Chic do - love it love it love it. Le Freak is definitely in my all time favourite bass lines and bass sounds list. Playing along with Nile Rogers and Tony Thompson is pretty much any funk bassist's dream gig... Bernard is way up there in my favourite players list.

 

 

Steve

www.stevelawson.net

[jeremy c]

Caution: semi-crazed rant ahead.

 

It's very easy to make statements like "disco sucks" and "disco ruined funk".

 

Funk seems to be coming back in a very big way these days. The neo-soul movement, the acid-jazz movement and some of the hip-hop and hyphy groups are definitely funky. Prince has always been funky.

 

The world of r&b/soul/funk is very changeable and groups and styles get dated quickly. It could have been disco's fault. It could have been rap's fault. It might just have been time for something else to happen.

 

In the meantime, disco changed everything.

 

Yes, I played in a disco band in the 70's and early 80's. When this music started to be heard, many club bands around here refused to play it. Many so-called drummers, now that the audience knew what the drum part was, failed to make the grade. The bands that learned the new style were very popular. Clubs were packed with dressed-up people who wanted to dance.

 

Disco music let them dance. You can put down the general audience for their musical tastes all you want, but audiences wanting to dance is a constant. Jazz was once dance music and bebop pretty much wiped that out. Maybe progressive rock wiped out rock as dance music.

 

Disco found a formula: not that different from the Motown formula (which was also very commercial formulaic music...I'm talking about the Motown record company, not general late 60's and early 70's soul which these days is all lumped into a style which is generically called Motown.)

 

The drum beat was simplified and the bass was turned up. Disco just took it up a few more notches.

 

As a bass player, it was great. The bass parts became the most important part of the song. Yes, the drum parts were pretty constant. Bass and vocals became the centerpiece of the music.

 

What could be wrong with that? (other than the vocals )

 

Since the so-called demise of disco, the bass and especially the drums remain turned up. Listen to recordings of any style pre- and post- disco and you will hear this. Tempos on records became more even.

 

And disco is still around. What is trance, house, electronic, drum & bass, and about two dozen other sub-styles? It sure sounds a lot like disco to me. The boy bands, movie starlet girl recordings, and arena shows aimed at pre-teens all sound like disco to me as well. What kind of music would you call the music that Madonna plays? Or the big hits by Pink and Gwen Stefani?

 

As for the repetitive drum parts, it sure seems to me like main-stream rock has the same drum part on every song. Listen to U2 or Springsteen for examples of this.

 

Before the live bands like the one I was in started playing disco music (and before it hit the public consciousness), I used to go to the gay discos in S.F. and L.A. It was an amazing scene. (Yes, straight people were welcome). The music coming out of enormous sound systems..wow! When "Love's Theme" by the Love Unlimited Orchestra or "Boogie Down" by Eddie Kendricks came on, the already packed dance floor would seem to levitate a few feet from the ground. Everyone was beautiful. The sex and drugs were amazing. What more could you want?

 

I wanted to play music which had that kind of an effect on audiences, and for a few years I got to.

 

Now the stuff is considered retro and I'm getting another chance at it.

 

I used to tell the drummer, "if you hate the drum parts, the next thing that comes in will be worse."

 

And sure enough, in came punk and new wave.

 

Rant mode off.

[ZZ Thorn]

Disco didn't kill musicianship - punk, new wave and rap did.

 

I recall hearing that at its height there were 15,000 discos operating in the US. For comparision, in the US today there are 13,000 McDonald's. Audiences wanting to dance is a constant.

[Rocky McDougall]

I think Jeremy covered it well. Disco was an answer to what the dancers wanted. That desire, to be engaged with the music, may still be alive. Modern Rock has damaged it but may not have killed it. It could come back in a different form.

Rocky

[Phil W]

Oops! I think I hit a raw nerve! Memo to self - never post absolutes! I don't have time to post fully now but I'll explain myself at lunchtime maybe.

 

And I don't believe any genre could kill musicianship.

 

Also an interesting sidepoint but being in England, we had punk before disco.

[Davo-London]

Punk from a UK perspective may have been quite different. There was a really stale atmosphere to the mid-70's music. Punk came along and changed all that. It was incredibly rapid and then inevitably fizzed out but left a lot of good music/bands to carry on into the 80's. The Stranglers, The Clash, XTC, Ochestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were bands that contained great muisicians and so I don't really think punk spoilt anything.

 

I'm so bored with Rap. When we will we move on to something else? Maybe in 20 years i'll look back at the Rap/RnB era misty-eyed.

 

But there again I doubt it!

 

Davo

[alexclaber]

From someone that was born at the same time as punk, I feel the main influence of punk has been in shaping the attitude of the British music press and thus the bands that tend to be supported in the UK. Maybe it's my imagination but it seems like there is an anti-muso vibe and an even greater focus on image over content than before. Though maybe not...

 

Alex

[Phil W]

Totally agree Alex, and I think that your analysis is accurate. It also ties in with a British attitude of anti-intellectualism and a general trenfd of anti-elitism - probably as a reaction to the old British order which tends to denigrate anything seen as lofty, well-exceuted, skillful etc. The rise of post-modernism must have put a sile on most of their faces.

 

Of course there were and are great musicians in Punk, Hip-Hop, Disco and New wave.

[Phil W]

Of course the genres evolve and fashions change. Also, to become more popular in the mainstream, some styles of music become simplified and smoothed down; Paul Whiteman anybody?

People could dance to pre-disco funk: I don't recall people having problems dancing to Earth Wind and Fire, James Brown, Parliament or the Ohio Players in pre-disco days.

What disco did was create an exciting mainstream popularised version of funk that could appeal to mainstream audiences. The excitement of the SF and NY disco scenes back then must have been something; I was an English school kid exploring reggae and rock back then so I'm not qualified to give a different perspective on that.

Real funk music is rare nowadays (though not non-existent) and music moves on - just personally I preferred the complex rhythmic interplay of funk rhythm sections to the smoothed out linear styles of disco. Not that I don't have my own disco favourites. Chic, who were awesome were around at the time funk was becoming discofied -though that was in the production more than anything. Bernard Edwards is one of my all-time favourites and Chic were awesome. Personally, a lot of the disco that followed didn't affect me the same way. If I'd have had Jeremy's experience, it might have been different.

I mourn the 'seeming' death of funk. And maybe I blamed disco too easily. Fashions change. Many of the funky guys released disco albums and I've lost track of the number of artists for whom I enjoy their records pre-1980ish and dislike them after that date.

People demand constancy in dance music and there is logic in that. And that constancy is often more demanding of musicianship than music which is often perceived as more intricate). I just feel that sometimes people market music based on the lowest common denominator (although it can be argued that disco was more of a grass roots than an industry phenomenon). You could have had discos full of people dancing to early 70s style funk - and the discos did play funk and soul as well as disco (at least in the UK).

Disco does live on in terms of House music and especially Garage - and there was something similarly democratic and egalitarian in punk's and disco's mindsets and philosophies.

Drum 'n' Bass is a different kettle of fish entirely though. I don't see the disco connection there. And the fact that people dance to drum n bass leads me to avoid low expectations of dancers.

 

On a side note, I played at a wedding anniversary with a bandleader who had a slightly cynical attitude to the audience (I find that kind of attitude impossible). During the interval he put on a CD of all his 6 year old niece's favourites:- The Birdy Dance, Agadoo, Macarena, YMCA (probably the best), Stars on 45 (probably the worst)(some of these are probably British known only (fortunately) but you get the picture. The dance floor was packed throughout and it got the crowd going.

I admire music that can create something that can give the people the groove, the catchy melody or lick, the anthemic sing-along maybe that taps into our primitive subconscious and do that artistically, non-cynically and in a manner to uplift the audience (and maybe but not necessarily give them something new or extend their experience). Sometimes Disco managed that; sometimes (for me) it resembled the seven year old's mix tape.

 

Hey, let's just dance!

 

[Paul K]

"Just One"

 

That's what I pray for every night. Just one "Macarena", "Celebration", "Y.M.C.A.", or the like.

 

It's amazing how a tune can take over the world, and then never go away. I want to write one of those tunes.

 

Just one. That's all I need.

[Phil W]

I think it's an underrated talent to be able to write something that taps into the public consciousness in this way. However cheesy some of these songs are, it's not easy to compose like that otherwise we'd all be rich.

[Tom Capasso]

Jeremy - nice picture you painted. I'm glad it worked for you. I know that you are truly more broad-minded and that your musical taste covers lots of ground.

 

I am not that broad. Nor was I then - I liked the drive that rock music has, and it wasn't until sometime later that I valued the ability to dance. I'd still rather dance to "Runaround Sue" or "Brown Sugar" than just about any "disco" song. And while some of the parts were good, they lacked the improvisation that I craved in those days (days I was more into Cactus followed by Elvis Costello).

 

The part that made the transition to disco impossible for me was the attitudes. I'm well aware of the bad side of the hippy/rock thinking that I leaned towards, but the blatant faux-cool of disco folks made me sick. And the drugs - not my scene, but the "pseudo-hippie" crowd could accept that (especially since I was more Jesus-freak, so there was some kind of "high").

 

I roadied for my cousin's band - they had a Sunday night gig at one of the Brooklyn clubs that was in "Saturday Night Fever". The people made me feel sick with a combination of inadequacy and revulsion. I wasn't "cool" enough or dressed well enough to even talk to most of them (not too mention that my hair was too long). And even some of the people in the band gave me a hard time for not ever trying drugs (makes me wonder what my cousin was doing, but I didn't want to know - he seemed mostly straight).

 

There were certainly songs that I liked (anything by EW&F, even some Barry White and others). In general, it wasn't for me. I can appreciate the music a bit more now, but not enough to be glad it's back. I can appreciate that it added some color to rock music (which it needed as some of the "dinosaur rock" of the day was getting excessive). And as you've guessed, you can't find me in any of the current dance clubs. Still not my scene.

 

Tom

[josh a]

I just found a new gem, that may already be known.

But a plus... it's seasonal!!

 

Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses.

 

No joke, I've been playing it a long, and trying it out.

 

It's hard.

 

As with le freak I have the chord structure and a couple of the notes but I just don't really understand what is happening. Loving it though.