<p>It seems to me that only those in college from 1975-1980 are willing to say they really liked disco.
Everyone else seems to disassociate themselves from the era. Every time I mention disco, my wife makes fun of me by doing the YMCA dance.</p>
<p>I am not talking about the “YMCA” song, but rather the Bee Gee’s “Staying Alive” album which started disco. What a great album.</p>
<p>I graduated college in 78 and truthfully I LOVED the disco music.</p>
<p>It was an era that was easy to malign, yet many artists today “sample” from the era.
But if the OP thinks “Staying Alive” started disco, the Op doesn’t know much about the era.</p>
<p>I have many disco tunes on my iPod as it makes for good music for working out.</p>
<p>I think that part of the era was the clothes and dance which my wife was into in a big way. I just liked some of the songs.</p>
<p>///But if the OP thinks “Staying Alive” started disco, the Op doesn’t know much about the era. ///</p>
<p>you are right. What i should have said is that in 1977 “Saturday Night Fever” brought disco to the national spot light and colleges across the country had disco fever for 2 or 3 years. Disco was not main steam until that movie came out.
I cannot remember the exact story, but the music for Saturday Night Fever was originally suppose to be provided by another band. However, something happened and they approached the Bee Gee’s about providing the music.
As I recall, they needed the music quickly. The Bee Gee’s were almost through with a album and told them that they could use that album for the movie.
The rest is history. Over night the Bee Gee’s, already famous, were the hottest band in the world along with Donna Summers who was known as “the Queen of Disco”. Disco clubs sprung up everywhere with the mechanical bull and the whole nine yards. It lasted 2 or 3 years and was gone.</p>
<p>I think it is making a come back, with the kids too. I have been to few parties (with DJs), and I see kids dancing as well as old people like me. My girls think it´s funny that H and I could move.</p>
<p>I am unabashedly a disco-lover. Graduated college in '84.</p>
<p>Some of the earliest disco songs were influenced by funk and soul hits, such as James Brown’s 1970 hit “Sex Machine,” with a track that ran 10 minutes.</p>
<p>I’d go with that- when was In a Gadda da Vida?</p>
<p>[Who</a> Invented Disco?](<a href=“http://www.ehow.com/about_4616164_who-invented-disco.html]Who”>http://www.ehow.com/about_4616164_who-invented-disco.html)</p>
<p>The mechanical bull entered dance clubs shortly after the movie “Urban Cowboy” in 1980.
Disco was a time of really dressing up(albeit much in poly) and really wouldn’t be in keeping with riding a bull. One might say a bull in a dance club would have been when 70% of the era was over. So yes it existed, but while disco was in a big decline, and people that had never been on a horse were suddenly becoming cowboys.
The movie came out about the time disco was at its peak popularity. So, shortly after the movie, the era and the popularity declined. I have a few fav songs from back then,(hs grad 1976) but many more memories of places and people than songs. I suspect the OP got an interest in disco when the album came out, and as evidenced by the top 100 songs in '75, '76, and '77, it was in the mainstream well before the album. The album wasn’t released until Dec of '77.</p>
<p>Of course music with much the same beat continued for a few years, but it wasn’t referred to as disco.</p>
<p>If I allow myself to, I can still hear some of those disco songs in my head. I certainly spent enough time in bars and clubs between, say, 1976 and 1979, listening to disco. (Not pleasant memories, on the whole!) Fly, Robin, fly, up up in the sky. Oy.</p>
<p>to clarify my post 9… When I said the movie came out when disco was at its’ peak, I was referring to "Saturday Night Fever(and of course the soundtrack), not to Urban Cowboy.</p>
<p>Well, muddyb, I attended college during those years. I thought it was dreadful.</p>
<p>I like the very, very best of Disco. But my problem with it was that it was THE ONLY thing on the radio other than ‘progressive rock’ (instrumentals) and country. I became a country listener during those years (and folk). As for disco, we had to listen to the good, the bad and they ugly and much of it was ugly. Doesn’t anyone remember that nearly every artist had to do a disco number just to sell records? They had to have a riot to end the dominance of disco.</p>
<p>I was really afraid that when rap and hip hop became popular it would overtake the music industry as disco did, but thank heaven it did not. We can listen to rock and pop on the radio and completely avoid the rap/hip hop/etc if we want.</p>
<p>1983 college graduate, with a fake ID during high school. My excuse to my kid for my comparatively poor grades is “disco.”</p>
<p>Loved the movie and soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever,and will watch it anytime it is on,and whatever format(PG,or R)…That said, the movie release was probably the “nadir” of disco,and slowly lost popularity in the next 2+ years… I remember waiting for what seemed like eternity to get into Studio 54 around 1976-77, then in 1979-1980,there was no long wait to get in…crazy times there at Studio,for a young suburban person, it was eye -opening to say the least ;)</p>
<p>High School class of 80—college 84…wore out my Saturday Night Fever album. Play That Funky Music White Boy was my ring tone for years…not sure that was disco??
I do remember my sister and I taking disco lessons at the local community center. And I can still do the hustle if necessary!</p>
<p>I’ll take disco over rap…</p>
<p>Saturday Night Fever was to a large extent the beginning of the end for disco. The high point of disco was the period it chronicled – 1973-1974, roughly. Van McCoy and “Do The Hustle” – I remember the cool Puerto Rican kids next door teaching me and my roommates various forms of the Hustle. “Kung Fu Fighting”. “Rock Me Baby” and “Rocking Chair”. And the great revival of old bands in new settings: Parliament, the Isley Brothers, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (but featuring that youngster, Teddy Pendergrass), and the sublime Trampps (whose great record containing “Disco Inferno” and the equally great “Body Contact Contract” predated SNF by a year). Marvin Gaye’s foray into dance music. Donna Summer and Barry White. One of the coolest parties I went to in college was an all-Barry-White party at Harvard in 1974. TSOP, including the O’Jays, and the Ohio Players. And KC and the Sunshine Band. Nothing made me happier in 1975 than “Get Down Tonight”; I didn’t even care that they were all white.</p>
<p>There was kind of a Disco Indian Summer in the early 80s, with the rise of Madonna and Prince, and the apotheosis of Michael Jackson.</p>
<p>I heartily recommend the movie The Last Days of Disco to any of you who have never seen it.</p>
<p>You said it before I could JHS. I was in college 1972-1976, with the earlier years as the disco years. I loved disco because I love to dance and disco music was designed for it like no other. We never really did the version of the Hustle made famous by the movies but we had our own that was real partner dancing. We danced until we dropped. Later when I really learned to dance, I learned the Hustle and still love it. Can’t sit still when I hear disco and still love “The Love I Lost” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, among others.</p>
<p>“Wake up Everybody” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes is one of my all time favorites!</p>
<p>I’m with TTL and a few others. I was in college 76-80. I was truly afraid that disco had killed rock, which I was afraid was already killing itself being all rock and no roll. I distinctly remember when I was in my mid-teens hearing commericals for clubs playing stuff like “Rock the Boat” and thinking–what the hell is THAT? And then hearing it on the radio, where there used to be rock, and wanting to cry. Hated disco dancing, disco clothes, and the whole club/dance scene. Still do, for the most part.</p>