Being that disco music was a surreal sound for surreal times, you’d have to imagine it dying in the most bizarre of ways. On July 12, 1979, between two baseball games, Chicago rock DJ Steve Dahl blew up 100,000 disco records in the middle of center field as part of a stadium promotion called “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park and incited an on field riot by blue collar stoners in the crowd. The riot was such that it umpires forfeited the second game of the doubleheader between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox to the Tigers and in many ways was the harbinger of the end of disco’s mainstream chart topping run, and the death of the first run of the music as a vehicle of cultural development. By September 1979, The Knack, an LA New Wave rock act had hit #1 with “My Sharona,” signifying to many the death of disco. Why did this happen to the sound? I introduce to you the theory I call the tragedy of hip.
The tragic part of anything being considered hip and cool comes when definitely not so hip people co-opt it for their own purposes of trying to gain entry into a new level of cool. Let’s look at disco under this model. Disco started in Europe as a name for dance clubs and emigrated to America as an underground, gay, black and Latino movement. So, it stands to reason that when Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes recorded “The Love I Lost,” as fellow black people, it was okay. The influence of someone like Giorgio Moroder, an Italian and European, acceptable. Latin rhythms coming in and infiltrating the sound, fine as well. The tipping point for disco and the beginning of the slippery slope? Saturday Night Fever.
You may think I’m crazy, but when hundreds of thousands of dollars become tens of millions of dollars is when a movement is well on its way to becoming tragically hip. It’s often better to see the mainstream co-opt something entirely but put a different spin on it than to see the underground wholly become mainstream. 1977’s Saturday Night Fever is a magnificent film, but let’s honestly look at what disco had done. Disco had ultimately gone from being a foriegn, gay and minority underground dance movement, to now being the province of Vinny Barbarino from the #1 rated TV show in America in 1976, Welcome Back, Kotter. Disco is an amazing sound tha deserved the growth, but what happened from there.
The Bee Gees, white, long haired balladeers who until that point never had an ounce of funk in them, rode the soundtrack to this move to #1 three separate times with “Staying Alive,” “Night Fever” and “How Deep is Your Love.” Soon thereafter, the Rolling Stones, who were plenty funky but also VERY decidedly rock hit #1 with “Miss You,” which was followed up by rocker Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” By this point, balladeers, macho, hard rocking white males and radio DJs (Rick Dees’ forgettable “Disco Duck”) all had hit the charts co-opting disco’s cool. Soon, it felt like disco had no underground at all, and that everyone was making money.
My favorite two and last tragedy of hip moments that sealed disco’s coffin long before Disco Demolition Night did are two separate moments that really show just how full circle the thing had become. Blondie were a talented yet struggling to gain access to the mainstream punk act. Debbie Harry, an ex-Playboy Club employee and model was their lead singer and stuck out like a rose amongst a field of gravel in the punk scene. Magically, one day Blondie stopped being a clash of sound and style, and the two merged for 1979’s “Heart of Glass,” which started as a blues/reggae dirge, but when a producer got his hands on it, finally took punk from downtown to uptown, pretty much killing two birds with one stone.
Village People – In the navy (version originale)
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The Village People are a fitting end to this discussion. French producer Jacques Morali noted one key element that was missing from disco in the mainstream that could really meld it back to the underground. Gay subculture. So, he found five very straight, very hetero, very fit men and dressed them as straight stereotypes that gay men liked to parody and they sang tremendous songs that parodied elements of gay culture for mainstream audiences who missed the point. A police officer, a Native American, a construction worker, a G.I. and a cowboy. The US Navy wanted to use “In the Navy,” a song that predates “don’t ask don’t tell” by some 20 years, for a national recruiting until they became hip to what was really happening. “YMCA,” a song talking about how poor gay men often rented rooms at local YMCAs because it was a place where they would not be frowned upon for their lifestyle choice by mainstream America was #1 mainstream American hit. “Macho Man,” which is an ode to lasciviously ogling a fit man? #1 as well. All great moments for social justice and music, but for keeping something hip and cool? Not so much.
So what happened to disco on the underground? Where was disco’s comeback going to come from? As it turns out, two places. Hip hop, and house music.The one wonderful thing about the tragedy of hip is that from these constantly occurring tragedies when a musical style approaches the mainstream, there’s always something on the underground ready to mutate a sound to keep it fresh, hip and cool. Disco’s tragic hipness is one of the more intriguing cases of that in the 20th century as when disco had to go back underground, it literally spawned an entire system and chain of underground musical styles. Electro, rave, hip hop, house, hip-house, G-Funk and New Jack Swing all have life because disco had to die.
The tragedy of hip is devastating, but at the same time allows for musical magic. A thought to ponder.
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