For me it’s that, in hindsight context, it’s played on real instruments. You can hear that those sweeping strings are a real string section, and those brass hits are real brass. The context of the time demanded that this be derided (“bloated production” and the like, and the fact that only music that was aiming for a mass market (i.e. very uncool) would have the resources to invest in this), but in modern context 70s disco sounds… real. Another criticism leveled at it was it’s feel good vapidness, a sound and mood which is now contemporarily praised as “chill” in that and related genres, another irony and testament to disco’s longevity.
2 Likes
Having lived through it and now looking back at it there is a ton of amazing music in Disco. It isn’t all Village People (who I think are pretty awesome for a manufactured band). What caused all the hate is it was music that was black and gay and charting, that ruffled the feather of the privileged white boy rock fans.
Here is one that I get stuck in my head from time to time now that I didn’t know of then.
If this doesn’t make you at least smile and tap your feet you have no soul.
ETA also this one…
1 Like
I mean, certainly lots of disco was (Morodor seems to be the guy who shifted some disco to fully electronic music), but then again, I’m unsure why electronic instruments aren’t considered “real” by some people or some how needing less talent in song writing or music making. Early synths were especially complicated to program and use (early Moogs, the big room sized ones that cost like 150,000 or whatever) didn’t even come with directions - you basically got a programmer who would come to your studio and help you understand how to use it (which for that much $$$ in late 60s - I’d hope so). Even a theremin, which seems like it would be easy to play, isn’t really. It’s hard to make it sound good. It’s certainly true that lots of times, synths are used to synthesize “real” instruments" but that’s not always the case. They make their own kinds of sounds that are unique to the instruments. Really, nothing sounds like an analogue Moog. Buchlas are even more strange sounding, to my ears anyway.
Just take an album like Erasure’s eponymous album, and there are sounds on there you can’t replicate with acoustic instruments. It’s still a beautiful album, top to bottom if you ask me. Vince Clarke can do some amazing things with his studio-o-synths.
Indeed! Even some punks got in on the anti-disco hate. In fact, the popularity of disco might have driven punk to be more popular among white young men.
2 Likes
This topic is leading me down the rabbit hole, remembering old song and finding new ones. Who would have thought that acid house was first created by an Indian in 1982?
I think we need that guy from Goodness Gracious Me (which had it’s first television episode in 1998)
3 Likes
They are indeed hard to play well. A live music memory that will remain at the top my lists for that would be seeing Yvonne Lambert of Octopus Project and Coco of Man or Astro-Man do dueling theremins.
2 Likes
Indeed! I keep finding that the history of popular music in the 20th century is more convoluted and strange that most people realize, and the global south has a much larger impact than people think. It’s hard to imagine popular music today without reference Jamaica for example. I’d imagine that India also had a much larger impact on developments in British popular music than most people realize.
3 Likes
Hell thanks to a podcast that focuses on soundtracks from 60/70s exploitation/psychotronic cinema I have fallen down a rabbit hole of Bollywood/Kollywood music from that era where they were big on mixing in the funk and other things from the west into their local music and it really rocks.
2 Likes
I always wonder how many of the people who look down on DJs like listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which had a damaged recording that was rescued by someone beatmatching the drums with the rest of the instruments and vocals. Mick Fleetwood said it was really hard to do, but that is one of the basic skills of DJing.
3 Likes
I didn’t know that story! Thanks for sharing! It shows how important studio work was becoming during that period to the production of popular music. There are so many albums that would not have been possible outside of a studio, though (stuff like Sgt. Peppers or anything by Pink Floyd, for example).
But yeah, working with electronic instruments, anything from synths to the tools of djing (turntables and what not) are all still skill sets that demand some time to learn how to do and they can be difficult. It’s generally a different set of skills (with some overlap, such as understanding music generally) than learning a guitar, but it’s still a skill. I don’t think one is somehow inherently better than another just because it’s been around longer.
4 Likes
Definitely. I grew up in Providence, RI, where there was a great punk and alternative music scene, and in the mid 80’s, barriers to involvement were low. My friends and I were very anti disco. I don’t think that we were particularly homophobic, just really anti… well, anti-everything, but in particular anti-anything that we saw as inauthentic. The DIY aesthetic of punk and alternative screamed authenticity to us, it lacked studio polish, and it resembled what we could achieve with our crummy instruments, whether onstage at an all ages show, or in Pete’s living room until his folks kicked us out.
2 Likes
Of course by the mid-80s, Queercore was already a thing, and for many punks, being anti-homophobic or anti-racist was part of their political stances. And I think that the early punk scenes tended to be more diverse, with regards to the music and the people participating in it - the LA scene had tons of women, lots of people of color, and lots of gay people in that scene - same with London. Not all punks were politically progressive, either, of course. The white nationalist/white power scene grew out of a weird combo of oi and punk in the early 80s (Skrewdriver got it start in punk for example).
The mainstream backlash against disco was certainly shot through with a big dose of homophobia and racism, though, even if it was not explicitly stated. At least some of that might be unconscious bias, too. Doesn’t make it any less real of course. And punks weren’t/aren’t somehow immune to prejudices, either. Dewar MacLeod does a great job in charting the shift from the early LA scene, dominated by people in Hollywood to the hardcore suburban scene.
Authenticity, of course, really is a fraught thing, because how does one actually define it. It tends to be in the eye of the beholder, much like art and beauty, something that’s hard to really describe other than when you see it in daily life, more of a feel that anything else, I think. Weirdly, some of the criticisms aimed at punk itself rested on that fact that from the outside, it seems like it’s a set of enforced social codes, including mode of dress, and what music is and isn’t cool to listen to. when you’re not a punk or familiar with punk (or postpunk musics) and you go into a club or a show, and you see the people there, it might seem like everyone looks like they are dressing the same, participating in the same behavior, etc. An insider has a different, more nuanced view, of course. You and I aren’t going to see it like that, because we have some familiarity with punk culture and its history.
3 Likes
Yes! I think Chic might be my favorite of all from the disco era. One source described them as borrowing Cuban charanga rhythms – to this day I have no idea whether that’s the case, but it did lead me to Cuban music, then salsa…
In the Summer of '96 I set about buying Talking Book and Innervisions on CD, and also read Edie: American Girl, and discovered that Robert Margouleff is the link between Stevie Wonder and Edie Sedgwick.
EDIT: mostly I listen to a steady diet of Jazz (from all eras, styles etc.) but I’ve come to find out that, outside of jazz, a significant portion of what I now listen to falls under the umbrella “yacht rock.” What can I say:
2 Likes
You take that back!
8 Likes
Your posts in this thread are really excellent. I’m a little in awe of the depth and breadth of your subject knowledge. But honestly, you should win the thread for that sentence alone. Diamanda Galas is my favorite vocal terrorist! Or, in her own words, “Aurrrrrrrmmmmmm—AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-WOOOOOYAYYAYAYAYAYAYEEYEEYEEYEEYEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwoooobaaaalaaaaalaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Love this clip of her with John Paul Jones on the John Stewart show:
I think I would use a different “f” word; authenticity, as it is commonly applied to works of art and culture, is freighted with a tacit pronouncement of value. There’s no reason why that should be the case, it’s entirely possible for something to be both authentic and worthless, maybe a collection of sad clown paintings, or vintage bubblegum from inside a pack of baseball cards, but we only think of the Rembrandts when we use the word, not the dross. Over time, pronouncements of authenticity create a genre orthodoxy, and once established, that canon tends to reinforce itself. This is probably why, until I was 17, I thought the universe turned around Henry Rollins (always hated Keith Morris), D. Boon, and Mark Mothersbaugh (don’t ask). I had never even heard of Funkadelic, much less listened to their music, until I got to college (I know, I know).
…
[Gahh. I keep getting interrupted and losing my point. My daughter is headed to camp this afternoon and there is much frenzy and to and fro. I better wrap this up.]
…
I suppose the irony is that all of those works that have become canonical once broke out of some other walled garden; the history of art advances on an alchemy that transmutes the transgressive into the orthodox. Always look for the edges, that’s where the action is.
4 Likes
My strategy is to stick my fingers in my ears yelling “la la la la I can’t hear you”
7 Likes
I can’t think of a better term to describe her. But she has real depth and talent as an artist, and an incredibly vocal range. There is really no one else like her.
But clearly not, though, because punks/post punks employed that term all the time in describing the culture they were creating and putting out into the universe. Probably punks embraced the term more than any other subculture in the postwar era (though it floats about the 60s hippie culture, too, equally ill-defined).
That’s it, I think. It’s a means of gate keeping - if you don’t like this band or that band, you’re not authentically punk.
A good point - queercore and riot grrrl rebelled against that masculine punk orthodoxy, yeah?
Until everyone else is looking there, and then it’s RUINED! 
Is that working for you? I can’t say it’s worked for me. Time continues to march on!
4 Likes
Poor choice of words, perhaps should have simply said acoustic or maybe analogue. Of course there is a lot of skill and craft in electronic music, but I think there is something uniquely human sounding in instruments that require physical work to make the sound each and every time; you get more variation through small imperfections (just like people!). I think that’s why early analog synths and that retro lo-fi sound is so popular now, because it sounds like it possibly might not actually sound exactly the same way twice the way digital does.
Another reason I might make that comment is simply the lazy way synths were sometimes used. 99% of bands using synth weren’t Throbbing Gristle, and it’s hard for me to hear a lot of synth pop as more than a lazy re-orchestration (and the labeling of presets didn’t help dispel this notion). It often sounded exactly like prior pop music, only they’ve substituted synth pads for string pads, which gives the impression of merely being cheap or lazy.
1 Like
Sure, but it’s not like there isn’t pure laziness in bands that play acoustic instruments, too? Pop’s durability (in whatever form of music) in general stems from its ability to invoke the familiar for the listener (I think Adorno harped on about this very point in his critique of mass produced music). And much like not all electronic bands aren’t TG, not every rock band is the Velvet Underground. I think in those cases, we’re dealing with that weird middle between art and mass produced pop, testing the edges of music production through the guise of mass production.
I think my overall argument here is less about how the music is made, and more about what moves you. That’s obviously down to the individual. I certainly don’t think you should listen to something you don’t like or enjoy, just because someone else decided it was good art. I can understand the love of “traditional” or acoustic instruments, because having one played well is certainly satisfying and enjoyable. I just think the same is true for a mini-moog. A well-structured song is a joy in itself, no matter how it’s made.
I’ll also say that something being complicated to make doesn’t make it “good” in some artistic sense. But I think we get back into YMMV territory with that.
I wish I could take credit for “vocal terrorist” but it’s a paraphrase from this artist bio.
The New Yorker has a really good review of her latest effort.
2 Likes
Yeah, the Mezzanine album just seeps into my brain sometimes, very memorable rhythms.
1 Like
