Welcome back my friends, to the flamboyance that never ends. This week, we shall don our finest white polyester suits and totter about on our tallest platform shoes for yet another elegantly coiffured, meticulously manicured and deliciously buff edition of Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays.
After my recent attendance at a hugely entertaining (and thoroughly exhausting) ’70s-themed disco event, I found myself musing on a few topics: firstly, the need to do some serious work on my dancing-to-the-dance-floor-dance; secondly, could I possibly convert my Zimmer frame for roller-disco use; and finally, the very high number of stone-cold classic gay anthems from the 1970s that comprised the evening’s extremely popular and flawlessly floor-filling playlist. As a result of this final ponder, this week’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday will attempt to answer one of the burning questions of our time – Why was 70’s disco music so consistently and magnificently gay?
In many ways, this evening’s missive is a tales of two riots. Riots that effectively top and tail the golden decade of disco; and I think we probably need to start in New York, in 1969, and the now infamous Stonewall Riots.
Although these demonstrations were by no means the first time the U.S. gay community had pushed back against discrimination, this was perhaps the first major incident – one in which the US gay community took a collective stand against discrimination and police brutality – that subsequently went on to become high-profile international news. The impact of these riots was quite significant and certainly marked a turning point for the gay rights movement in large parts of the Western world.
The formative events took place in June ’69 at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village area of NYC. The venue, an unlicensed gay bar and nightclub, was raided by the police and a number of arrests were made. Patrons of the club were not greatly enthused by this turn of events and gathered outside to make their displeasure known. The thoroughly disgruntled crowd quickly started to grow and began making it difficult for the police to operate effectively or even leave the area. Subsequently, an energetically robust (to put it mildly) and somewhat frank exchange of views took place.
What ensued was a three-day protest, which became a riot, which became a movement; with many members of the protest forming the central core of the 1970’s Gay Liberation Front. The impact of these riots are with us today: they are the reason Pride Month is held in June, the UK’s Stonewall charity is of course named after them, and today’s Pride marches are the direct descendants of the annual gatherings that marked the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
Following the riots, the visibility of gay communities increased, some sodomy laws (in a few U.S. States) were repealed or revised, and a few politicians became more vocal about supporting gay rights. However, crucially, New York Plod took a step back and became far more circumspect about raiding the city’s gay bars and night clubs. Additionally, New York’s mayor at the time would almost certainly have been displeased with the adverse international publicity the city’s police force had generated and would not have been overly keen on any additional civil unrest. As a result, by the start of the 70s, the gay club scene in NYC was beginning to flourish and disco music quickly became its soundtrack.
Friday evening veterans will doubtless recall that we have already considered – in some depth – many of the technical and musical reasons for the development of dance and electronic music, so we won’t dwell upon that subject here. However, I feel I need to add one more vital ingredient to our already heady musical brew: Jamaican sound systems.
Sound systems were basically a party-in-a-van, and the concept became very popular in 1950s Jamaica. DJs would load up a suitable truck with generators, amplifiers, turntables, records and – crucially – ruddy huge speakers. In fact, they would load up everything needed to set up a street party – which is exactly what they did. The street events they set up became immensely popular, with the organisers making their money by selling tickets, food and drink.
This booming sound system phenomenon had several considerable and long-lasting impacts that eventually reverberated well beyond the movement’s home island of Jamaica. The U.K. mobile disco boom of the 1970s (an industry in which your humble scribe was occasionally employed) was a minor but direct descendant of the Jamaican sound system phenomenon. However, a much more significant development was the rise of the superstar DJ – who were often billed as MCs (Master of Ceremonies). At the height of their popularity in the ’50s and ’60s, these Jamaican MCs could easily attract much larger crowds than many of the well-established popular musicians of the day – and their activities were hugely influential.
One of the innovations these MCs introduced was the act of “toasting” (a logical name, as the MC at any given event is usually responsible for organising and conducting the toasts). Toasting was the name given to the act of improvised talking/chanting, usually in a rhythmic monotone voice, delivered over the top of whatever record the MC was playing at the time. This became something of popular spectator sport and MCs would often compete in front of a live crowd, with the cheers of the crowd deciding the winner. Toasting of course became rapping, and rapping is one of the primary foundations of the globally dominant hip-hop culture we see today.
However, as important as these developments were, they are not our focus for today. The development that concerns us here is the DJ’s art of mixing. Originally pioneered by Jamaican MC’s, by the early 70s, mixing had become a polished craft and was firmly established in the U.S. club scene. A quick description of one of the simplest mix moves will serve here as an example: a DJ would load two copies of the same record onto two separate turntables. At some suitable point towards the end of the first record, the second record would be cross-faded in at a similarly suitable but much earlier point. If executed correctly, the transition between the two records is seamless and the DJ can repeat the process at various points in the tune to create the illusion of an endless dance mix.
This skill, and many others in the DJ’s toolbox, soon found a warm welcome in the booming NYC gay nightclub scene. The best of these clubs attracted the best DJs and soon became the hottest ticket in town. The emerging disco genre was the dance music of choice for these DJ’s, and, as a result, disco quickly established itself as the soundtrack of the gay nightclub scene.
There had, of course, always been dance halls and nightclubs. But, in most parts of the U.S., practising homosexuals could still expect to find themselves swiftly arrested (or much worse) if they were spotted dancing with each other. However, once the post-Stonewall environment settled down and the gay club scene began to blossom, the now unlikely-to-be-raided dance floors became a safe haven and a potent platform for mass self-expression.
As a result, club culture quickly grew and the impact of this success was considerable: for the first time, clubs, rather than mainstream radio, were breaking hit records and driving substantial record sales. Radio DJs (and no doubt pluggers as well) were greatly displeased by this development, but the record labels soon sat up and took notice. Extended dance mixes became available and content started to be shaped by the requirements of clubs rather than radio. And as the hottest and most influential clubs in town were very often gay nightclubs, this was the market driving record company demand. It was a substantial shift in focus for U.S. record labels, but it worked – disco boomed and the gay club scene boomed right along with it.
Throughout the ’70s, disco was a huge success. When punk rock came along, prog-rockers and traditional blues-based rock bands felt the chill winds of change blowing through the industry – and many who failed to adapt were quickly swept away on a tsunami of spittle and pogo-powered derision. But disco was untroubled; disco simply shrugged its shoulders and went on to ever greater success.
Of course, it couldn’t last. In the music industry, nothing ever does. Eventually (and inevitably) disco became a victim of its own success. By 1977, the genre had become sanitized, commodified and neatly packaged for the mainstream market – with all the rampant, cheesy, and depressing cash-in marketing this inevitably entails.
Disco’s tipping point probably came in 1977, with the release of Saturday Night Fever and its staggeringly successful soundtrack album. The Bee Gees’ seemingly endless run of monster hit singles from that album were played everywhere, all the time – there was simply no escape from the high-pitched howl of the brothers Gibb – and familiarity, as we all know, can very quickly breed contempt. Nightclubs were filled with polyester-suited Travolta wannabes, and comedy singles like Disco Duck climbed the charts. The same year saw the opening of Studio 54 in Manhattan, which became famous for its famously high-profile and ruthlessly discriminatory door policy – only the simply fabulous, dharling!
Inevitably, disco began to be openly mocked and satirised – even the hugely successful Airplane movie series had a pop. Comedians ridiculed Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees in equal measure, and the cheesy aroma of naff began to fill the air. Then, in 1978, enter Steve Dahl – a rock radio DJ who lost his job when the station at which he worked switched to an all-disco format. Mr, Dahl was mad as hell and wasn’t gonna take it any more. He moved to another station and began plotting the now infamous “Disco Sucks” campaign.
To raise the profile of his newly-minted campaign, Dahl came up with a cunning plan: Disco Demolition Night. The plan was simple enough: gather a load of disco records, put ’em in a crate, blow ’em up and create lots of lovely publicity for both his radio station and his campaign. He decided to pull this stunt at a suitably high profile time and location: half way through proceedings at a top-notch, televised, Chicago White Sox baseball game – what could possibly go wrong?
On paper it probably sounded like a cunning stunt with larks-a-plenty. Nothing more than a fun radio promotion with a few pyrotechnic bells and whistles. However, come the day, the Law of Sod was invoked and things soon started to go horribly wrong. TV viewers were not treated to a splendid sporting event with an entertainingly harmless half-time publicity stunt – they were instead treated to a televised riot.
The White Sox game would normally have attracted about 20,000 fans, but this time around 50,000 turned up. They screamed and jeered and chanted, they threw records like frisbees and lobbed firecrackers and glass bottles onto the playing field. By the time the crate of records was actually blown up, the crowd had gone ape – climbing over the hoardings, storming the field and rendering it entirely unplayable. As a result, the White Sox were eventually forced to call a halt to proceedings and forfeit the game.
Nevertheless, despite the carnage and the opprobrium that inevitably followed, the stunt was a massive success and produced significant results. Other anti-disco protests soon followed and the music industry’s reaction was swift: radio stations revised their playlists and began moving toward non-disco formats. By 1979, most stars and artists in the disco genre were ruefully discovering their live gigs and TV appearances were really starting to dry up and their record sales were slumping badly. And just like that, the fabulous decade of disco was over. The Disco Sucks riot had effectively halted (in musical terms, at least) what the Stonewall riots had started almost a decade earlier.
Unfortunately, a second massive blow was waiting in the wings: in 1981, the AIDS crisis hit the gay community and the magnificently hedonistic and wildly uninhibited golden age of the gay disco and club scene was over.
Of course, disco didn’t die and gay clubs didn’t die, but things would never be quite the same again. It’s true that disco ceased to be a relevant mainstream genre, but it never stopped developing, never stopped evolving (albeit with a much lower profile) and eventually went on to successfully spawn a great many forms and styles of dance and club music. But that, dear reader, is a tale for another time.
For tonight, I see the disco biscuits have been scoffed and the pink champagne has been glugged. So that’s yer lot for this week’s sequin and glitter ball episode of Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays. There is of course only one way we can possibly wrap up this evening’s entertainment: with Tony Manero, the prancing polyester peacock, aka John Travolta – strutting his fabulously flamboyant and seriously funky stuff.
TTFN Puffins – Good night, and may your Frog go with you.
Featured Image: Still taken from the 2012 televised debate between broadcaster Simon Kaggwa Njala and LGBTQ activist Pepe Julian Onziema, broadcast by the Ugandan NBS television show, Morning Breeze. Fair use/Fair dealing.
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