Disco Music Quotes

Different elevator music was playing since my last visit-that old disco song "Stayin' Alive." A terrifying image flashed through my mind of Apollo in bell-bottom pants and a slinky silk shirt.

Burn down the disco Hang the blessed D.J. Because the music that they constantly play It says nothing to me about my life

The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.

I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated pointing at the ceiling to in 1977.

Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.

Mark, some answers to your earlier questions: No, we will not tell our Botany Team to "Go fuck themselves." [...] The data transfer rate just isn't enough for the size of music files, even in compressed formats. So your request for "Anything, oh god, ANYTHING but Disco" is denied. Enjoy your boogie fever.

He watched in awe as she stacked up an enormous armload of music. "There," she finished, slapping Frank Zappa's Greatest Hits on top of the pile. "That should do for a start." "You are a music lover," said the wide-eyed cashier. "No, I'm a kleptomaniac." And she dashed out the door. He was so utterly shocked that it took him a moment to run after her. With a meaningful nod in the direction of the astounded Cahills, she barreled down the cobblestone street with her load. "Fermati!" shouted the cashier, scrambling in breathless pursuit. Nellie let a few CDs drop and watched with satisfaction over her shoulder as the clerk stopped to pick them up. The trick would be to keep the chase going just long enough for Amy and Dan to search Disco Volante. Yikes, she reflected suddenly, I'm starting to think like a Cahill.... And if she was nuts enough to hang around this family, it was only going to get worse.

There’s a little tagline in there that I throw out to our fans, I like to call them my sinners, and I’m a fellow sinner, and so I think that’s a special little throw-out to them.

Life is beautiful and life is stupid. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy, the history of a planet, the history of a person is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of glittering, occasionally peaceful light to help you follow along. Cue the music. Cue the dancers. Cue tomorrow.

There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it — no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never ever. An inordinate amount of time passes. It is utterly void of struggle. No ex-wives are contained within it [...] The song of death is sweet and endless... But what is this? Somewhere in the sore, bloated *man-meat* around you — a sensation! [...] The limbed and headed machine of pain and undignified suffering is firing up again. It wants to walk the desert. Hurting. Longing. Dancing to disco music.

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.

(On disco) I don't consider that a genre as much as a level of hell.

A history of nightlife!--what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse.

And so, given the musical sensibilities Hatcher treasured in his earthly life, it is hard to exaggerate the severity of his torture at standing naked in his tiny kitchen in Hell as former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sings a Bee Gees disco song backed by a full studio orchestra and Robin and Maurice.

A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling, but the music is something I've never heard, discordant and haunting and insistent, the kind of music that demands you dance.

The night lantern next to Begum’s khaat(Bed) was buzzing with mosquitoes and insects like a cheap night disco bar where they came in for their daily dose of dance and music.

Too embarrassed even to try as long as everyone was looking at me, I made what was probably a fairly unique request. ‘Um, I’ll have a go. But I can’t do it if you’re all looking at me. Can I go inside the wardrobe and sing from there?’ The others looked at me strangely, possibly beginning to worry about the apparent absence of any stage personality in this girl they had just recruited, but to their credit they agreed, without killing themselves laughing, and so in I went. From inside my hidey-hole I sang David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’. I emerged to a very positive response, the others all declaring that I sounded like Siouxsie Sioux – I was trying very hard to – and while I was quite pleased with myself, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do it in front of an audience. We could hardly take the wardrobe around with us.

Love is an art, Berk. Just like painting or music. Some painters draw mere lines, scratches on the canvas and call them art; some paint stars studded skies like van Gogh; or Chopin’s music conquers the hearts of millions while the execrable disco music blaring out of the open windows of a car have also their audience. Some describe love in high-flown flowery language and you identify yourself with the hero and the heroine and feel yourself in the seventh heaven while some give such a lamentable picture of it that you almost curse it!

If the door frames aren't rattlin', it ain't loud enough.

I was born during the only week "Disco Duck" by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Things went about how you'd expect from there.

El disco gramofónico, el pensamiento musical, la notación musical, las ondas sonoras, están todos entre sí en esa relación interna figurativa que se da entre lenguaje y mundo.

The soulless blood-rush of synthesized climax over a repetitive backbeat made disco the perfect music by which to score with a stranger.

The data transfer rate just isn’t good enough for the size of music files, even in compressed formats. So your request for “Anything, oh God, ANYTHING but Disco” is denied. Enjoy your boogie fever. Also,

God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead. Jazz was dead, pop music, disco, rap, classical music, dead. Culture was dead. Decency, society, family values were dead. The past was dead. History was dead. The welfare state was dead. Politics was dead. Democracy was dead. Communism, fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, all dead, and marxism, dead, feminism, also dead. Political correctness, dead. Racism was dead. Religion was dead. Thought was dead. Hope was dead. Truth and fiction were both dead. The media was dead. The internet was dead. Twitter, instagram, facebook, google, dead. Love was dead. Death was dead. A great many things were dead. Some, though, weren’t, or weren’t dead yet. Life wasn’t yet dead. Revolution wasn’t dead. Racial equality wasn’t dead. Hatred wasn’t dead. But the computer? Dead. TV? Dead. Radio? Dead. Mobiles were dead. Batteries were dead. Marriages were dead, sex

Commander Lewis was the last one to use this rover. She was scheduled to use it again on Sol 7, but she went home instead. Her personal travel kit’s still in the back. Rifling through it, I found a protein bar and a personal USB, probably full of music to listen to on the drive. Time to chow down and see what the good commander brought along for music. LOG ENTRY SOL 38 (2) Disco. God damn it, Lewis.

James Brown had many guises, many names: Crip, Music Box, The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please, Butane James, Soul Brother Number One, Skates, The Godfather of Soul...He was His Own Bad Bad Self, the Sex Machine, Black Elvis, the Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk, The Original Disco Man, Universal James. But before any of them, he was simply a dancer doing the James Brown.

I Feel Love,” by Donna Summer, and this had a profound influence on how I perceived music from that point on. Additionally, it led me toward a greater appreciation of disco; Chic were now filed next to the Clash in my album collection. These elements, merged with many other stylistic references, formed the basic blueprint for Duran Duran: the raw energy of punk, disco rhythms, electro pulses, and the panache of glam rock, which was already deeply embedded in our consciousness.

I’d grown up with disco in the 1970s, when I just knew it as exciting pop music on AM radio. In the 1980s it died off, but still inspired everyone from New Order to Duran Duran to Kraftwerk. And then in the late 1980s the ghost of disco came back with a fury, giving birth to house music, techno, rave culture, and even a lot of hip-hop. Disco was the crucible in which most modern music had been born, and within the disco pantheon no one had ever reigned higher or more supreme than Donna Summer.

Techno emerged in the early to mideighties in and around Detroit, at the hands of black middle-class DJs who for some reason idealized the glamour and suavity of European electronic pop and Italo disco, as it reached them via GQ and the radio DJ who called himself the Electrifying Mojo. They brought some rigor and a hint of Motown to it and created an industrial-sounding music that was funky, futuristic, and kind of arch—evoking the auto plants that were putting these kids’ parents out of work.

And he was introduced to Loki, the family’s hairless cat. “The kids wanted another pet,” Becky explained as Felix stared in horror at the creature beside him. “But with Polly’s allergies . . .” “You are lying to me. You borrowed this creature from a zoo to play a prank on me. This isn’t even really a cat, is it? This is some sort of rat and opossum hybrid. This is a lifelike Japanese robot that can dance to disco music.” “Funny. They’re called sphinx cats. Come on, feel her skin. Like peach fuzz, right? Isn’t she sweet? Give her a good rub. She’s very affectionate.” “Ah-ha, yes, isn’t that just . . . er, what is coating my hands?” “It’s . . . it’s like a body wax. I should’ve bathed her before you came. The hairless cats, they ooze this waxy stuff to protect their skin. ’Cause they don’t have hair. To protect them. So the waxy ooze helps. You see.” Felix stared at her for several seconds, his hands held up like a doctor about to perform surgery. “I’m going to wash my hands now. And I’m going to try very hard not to run out of this house screaming.

God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead. Jazz was dead, pop music, disco, rap, classical music, dead. Culture was dead. Decency, society, family values were dead. The past was dead. History was dead. The welfare state was dead. Politics was dead. Democracy was dead. Communism, fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, all dead, and marxism, dead, feminism, also dead. Political correctness, dead. Racism was dead. Religion was dead. Thought was dead. Hope was dead. Truth and fiction were both dead. The media was dead. The internet was dead. Twitter, instagram, facebook, google, dead. Love was dead. Death was dead. A great many things were dead. Some, though, weren’t, or weren’t dead yet. Life wasn’t yet dead. Revolution wasn’t dead. Racial equality wasn’t dead. Hatred wasn’t dead. But the computer? Dead. TV? Dead. Radio? Dead. Mobiles were dead. Batteries were dead. Marriages were dead, sex lives were dead, conversation was dead. Leaves were dead. Flowers were dead, dead in their water. Imagine being haunted by the ghosts of all these dead things. Imagine being haunted by the ghost of a flower. No, imagine being haunted (if there were such a thing as being haunted, rather than just neurosis or psychosis) by the ghost (if there were such a thing as ghosts, rather than just imagination) of a flower. Ghosts themselves weren’t dead, not exactly. Instead, the following questions came up: “are ghosts dead are ghosts dead or alive are ghosts deadly” but in any case forget ghosts, put them out of your mind because this isn’t a ghost story, though it’s the dead of winter when it happens, a bright sunny post-millennial global-warming Christmas Eve morning (Christmas, too, dead), and it’s about real things really happening in the real world involving real people in real time on the real earth (uh huh, earth, also dead):

My father gave me a present every time I encountered him. I believe the biggest present he gave me was his gift for music.

I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.

The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock at night. It was a new kind of music called ‘rap’. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like.

Il suono del disco che cade sul piatto è un sospiro veloce, che sa appena un po' di polvere. Quello del braccio che si stacca dalla forcella è un singhiozzo trattenuto, come uno schioccare di lingua, ma non umido, secco. Una lingua di plastica. La puntina strisciando nel solco, sibila pianissimo e scricchiola, una o due volte. Poi arriva il piano e sembrano gocce di un rubinetto chiuso male e il contrabbasso, come il ronzio di una moscone contro il vetro chiuso di una finestra, e dopo la voce velata di Chet Baker, che inizia a cantare "Almost Blue".

You said to get involved with people, that I can’t learn about connections in a vacuum.” I agreed. “So what’s not working?” She pulled a long list from her purse. “This,” Linda said, “is a list I put together of all the involvements I’ve had in the past few months. And nothing’s happening.” I read the list, which looked something like this: Dancing lessons: ballroom, disco, and line Sports: sailing, rollerblading, golf, and tennis Music: opera, modern, and piano lessons Art: ceramics and museums Spiritual: Bible study, worship, and missions Career: Ongoing training, night school to earn an MBA “What are you grinning at?” Linda asked me. I wasn’t even aware I was smiling. I told her, “This is a proud moment for me. I’ve never met a real live renaissance woman.” “Now I’m really confused,” Linda said. I explained, “Linda, this is the most well-rounded, comprehensive, and exhausting list I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine how you can even get up in the mornings. But it’s not solving your problem. “These are all great activities, designed to develop you and help you in your life. But each of them is primarily functional, rather than relational. Their goal is competence in some skill, or recreation, or learning more about God’s creation. But relationship isn’t the goal. These are ‘doing’ things, not ‘connecting’ things.” Linda started to get it. “You know, I’ve noticed that I am talking to people at these activities. But all the talk is about tennis or management theories. I’ve wondered when someone in the classroom was going to ask me about my emotional and spiritual life.” “Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

O momento que ficou mais marcado desagradavelmente na lembrança dos velhos amigos foi o de sua ida a Porto Alegre para fazer o enxoval — chiando mais que bife na chapa. Isso, por si só, chocaria a gauchada, que costuma considerar a troca de sotaque uma ofensa pessoal. Se nos discos já incomodava, ao vivo...

Missing’s success came about in part because it brought a moment of melancholy and heartbreak back to the dancefloor, a combination many people had always loved but perhaps forgotten. (…) electronic music with beats. It could be melodic and heartfelt, as well as experimental. Slow and moody. Atmospheric.

Joy that a handsome man was smiling at her, his hair stuck to his forehead, his T-shirt becoming more transparent. On a whim--- and Astra would later blame it on the Santa Claus shots--- she wrapped her arms around Jack's neck and pulled his lips to hers. The shock of it caused them both to stop dancing as the minty-cherry taste in her mouth mingled with the ginger on his breath. Tentative at first, her lips waited for him to respond, a sign he was open to sharing her joy. She was about to pull away, hot embarrassment kindling to life in her cheeks, when his hands when to her hips, and his lips moved with hers, and her mouth opened for him. Their kiss found its own rhythm on the dance floor, moving them closer together as the people bumped around them, but Astra didn't care. She only cared that this kiss reminded her that she liked kissing, she liked being touched, she liked feeling wanted. It had been so long. Her hands grabbed at his shirt as he moved his kisses to her neck. She moaned but too softly for anyone to hear over the music. Lights flashed and swirled on the ceiling; the air pulsated with heat. She was dizzy and breathless. Her hands pressed against him, savoring how well they molded to his curves and angles. Her lips found his again, and she wanted to be closer, wishing she could wrap her legs around him and have her way. Her knees quaked as his hands explored the way her jeans clung to her butt and hips, finding the hem of her shirt and touching her lower back, heated skin on heated skin. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. She broke the kiss long enough to look into his eyes: they flashed from blue to green to black with the disco lights, his hair dark with perspiration, and his breath coming as fast as her own. Now that they'd kissed, she knew what it was about the way he looked at her. He looked at her like this moment had been inevitable, a done deal, foretold years ago. And she believed it. The feeling left her even more light-headed.

The plastic world has colonized us. When we climb into the car, airplane, board ships, when we purchase contemporary cuisines, get involved in the television world, from the studio and materials up the image of the world, we enter the world of artificial chemical universes, those of the cinema and their advertisements, of what we should buy and acquire. It is like this with the café-bars and discos, in other words the pleasure of children, and the same with the food that we consume, and the hospitals and schools, the hotels, all chemicals, a substitute. The ventilation of hotels without windows, the doors without keys, similarly the walls and doors and beds and baths, the water, the carpet and the floors. Everything a sham, paradises for allergies. One can say the same of the tones and music, and the attack on clothing cannot be overlooked, as well as the attitude of men resulting from it. The computers are made of this material and therewith our thought, our memory, the simulation of life. And thus life in genetic research begins and ends as a plastic creation and plastic death. Already the announcement has come to us that the museum bring the entire program closer to us on video screens, enlarged, interpreted, free and democratic and individually accessible. We will live in Leonardo’s world. The ground is prepared, now begins the attack on the blood. Much strength will be necessary to survive it.

Do what lights up your soul like a disco ball in a dark room. Chase after joy like it’s the last slice of pizza at a party. Life’s too short for anything less than belly laughs, spontaneous adventures, and dancing like nobody’s watching. So, crank up the music, grab your sparkly shoes, and strut through life with a twinkle in your eye and a skip in your step. After all, the best moments happen when you follow the rhythm of your own happiness.

There were some low moments out there on the road tonight—abandonment and what’s the point?—but then I pulled in a radio station from Albuquerque playing historical rap and breakdance circa 1982. Kurtis Blow and disco synthesizers made me feel like I could drive all night.

Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal...

I ventured into the dimly lit darkness towards the blaring disco music and crowded dance floor. The enclosure reeked of poppers (alkyl nitrites), a recreational drug often used by gay men to heighten their sexual arousal. The club was hopping with the latest disco hits from the popular disco queen of 70s, Donna Summer. Half-naked and almost naked men were crowding the dance floor, grinding their perspiring bodies against each other in a sensual and sexual trancelike state. Men in various stages of foreplay were gyrating their muscular and sinewy bodies against each other in preparation for impulsive back-room romps. After taking to the dance floor for a couple of songs, I embarked on an exploration journey towards the back of the house. It was difficult to make out the abundance of naked bodies loathering in the dark in various stages of copulation. When I ventured into a large room with a sling in the middle, I heard a familiar, high-pitched groaning voice. It was a voice I had heard several years ago in class at the Bahriji School. It was a soprano voice that I could never get out of my head. Surrounding the voice was a queue of mesomorphically built men, waiting their turn to satisfy their sexual desires on an equally muscular hunk lying on the suspended, swinging sling. The man’s legs were spread above his torso. They were strapped to either sides of the hanging chains and so were his wrists, tied securely above his head. Although the ‘bottom’ was blindfolded with a black kerchief, I instantly recognized him as none other than the famous supermodel, Rick Samuels.

Welcome to our home and to Eternity Springs, Ms. Timberlake.” “I’m Ali.” “Ali, then. I’m Nic, and I’d get up, but my dictatorial husband has threatened me with torture if I rise from my chair in the next hour.” Alison grinned and repeated, “Torture?” Gabe nodded. “We had a discussion about bad disco music this morning. I promised to sing ‘Dancing Queen’ if she doesn’t behave.” “I rest my case,” Nic said. “As long as you rest your ankle and my back, that’s all I care about,” he fired back before offering to take the visitors’ coats. Celeste laughed. “Ah, acting like old married folk already, I see.

Bernard and I always believed that most pop music fits into the board category called rock and roll. Rock and roll was ever changing, and this art form had different genres of classification for the benefit of consumers, like sections in a library or bookstore. Once any genre-folk, soul, rock or even some jazz-reaches a certain position on the pop charts, it does what’s known in the music business as crossing over, and gets played on the Top Forty stations. That’s the reason so many of us own songs by artists from genre’s we normally wouldn't-their hit songs crossed over into the pop Top Forty mainstream. When a genre repeatedly crosses over and comes to dominate the Top Forty, what had originated as an insurgency becomes the new ruling class. This was the path disco had taken-from the margins where it started, a weird combination of underground gay culture and funk and gospel-singing techniques and, in the case of Chic, Jazz-inflected groovy soul. But it was basically all rock and roll, historically speaking, as far as we were concerned. But the media and the industry pitted us against the Knack-the disco kings in their buppie uniforms verses the scrappy white boys. But we never saw it that way. We thought we were all on the same team, even if our voices and songs followed different idioms. Boy, were we naïve. And boy, did things change.

Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's funny. Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here. You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind. If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it? This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around. It's the end, the end of the seventies.

The sidewalks were jammed and the crowds drifted slowly past bars from which disco music blared and where men sat on barstools looking out the windows. The air smelled of beer and sweat and amyl nitrate. At bus benches and on strips of grass in front of buildings, men sat, stripped of their shirts, sunbathing and watching the flow of pedestrians through mirrored sunglasses. Approaching the bar where I was meeting Hugh, I smelled marijuana, turned my head and saw a couple of kids sharing a joint as they manned a voter registration table for one of the gay political clubs. I stepped into the bar expecting to find more of the carnival but it was nearly empty. The solitary bartender wiped the counter pensively.

But that prescribed social necessity began to give some gay men pause. A thirty-seven-year-old Studio One regular spoke with ambivalence to the Times in 1976. ‘Even the dances have a depersonalized quality to them. The Hustle and The Bus Stop, for instance. In both, you have 50 or 100 people lined up, dancing the same way, completely unattached to each other, simply doing the same movements, like robots. Like lemmings, they begin to form those lines.’ He went on to prognosticate a dystopian future, what he called the ultimate discotheque: ‘I can envision the day when we all just walk up to the entrance to a disco, put a bunch of quarters in a slot, enter and become immediately surrounded by music. Then each of us will go into a space the size of a telephone booth and dance by ourselves.

We were first invited to Tubesteak Connection by Spider, who manned the door. The DJ, Bus Station John, played ecstatic sets of arcane disco, hi-NRG, Italo and boogie. He was in his forties, and wore a thick mustache, muttonchops, flat cap. Bus Station John gave the appearance he might be prickly, but he called us child. He was there to bear witness, to testify, using rare tracks from what he called ‘the golden age of gay,’ the period between Stonewall and AIDS. The music was our time machine. We were conscious the discs he put on the turntable may have come from the collections of deceased gay men.

Screenplay is a company that provides music videos to businesses. Music and video screens are such common attractions in city businesses that court sexual minorities that many of them subscribe to this service. Via disc-based or direct-to-system download, Screenplay subscribers pay for access to a service called “VJ Pro,” where they choose from different genres of music videos that loosely resemble radio formats: HitsVision, a Top 40 mix that promises subscribers “nothing but the hits from every source”; DanceVision, featuring “exclusive remixes, hard to find imports and popular mainstream hits and everything in between designed expressly for the fast paced dance environment”; UrbanVision, a rhythm and blues/hip-hop hybrid that purports “to be all inclusive”; RockVision, rock music featuring songs “from Classic . . . to Disco, New Wave to Old School”; CountryVision, “an upbeat mix of current hits and classic favorites”; and LatinVision, “designed specifically for the sophisticated Latin dance crowd that demands only the hottest and best in tropical, Caribbean, merengue dance and Latin pop.”48 Many gay bars subscribe to ClubVision, which features a mix of “techno, trance and euro-flavored . . . tracks.”49 For dance-themed bars, this subscription features “an extended autoplay feature and individual chapter stops for single track selection.

While Bob was busy with Clara’s recording, his modular had just notched another first in the world: it sired the genre of electronic dance music. “I Feel Love,” a hypnotic, seductive single by Donna Summer, the “Queen of Disco,” had cast the Moog in a central role. Soon after the song’s release in July 1977 it went to No. 1 in the UK, climbing to No. 6 in the U.S., and then perched atop charts internationally, eventually making the “top songs of all time” lists of magazines and critics worldwide. Donna Summer and her collaborator, composer Giorgio Moroder, had pushed the boundaries of disco permanently into the electronic sphere with this single song.

[…on a Corncrake call…] Fairy music is said to do this; to lead a man on in his confusion and drunkenness, to start, then stop, then begin again from another place, ever luring him on. This was not a beautiful music, it has to be said; hardly the art of fairies. Mind you, it could be a goblin carpenter, sawing away at his little workbench, if you’d had a few too many at the island disco and were of a fanciful mind.

Web3 is to Web2 what PunkRock is to DiscoMusic.

Web3 is to Web2 what Punk Rock is to DiscoMusic.

I wander back to Musicals and wonder for a minute if Janet would like something stupid like Xanadu or Roller Boogie. But I shove them back into the display bin because I don’t want to die of a disco aneurysm. I grab Urgh! A Music War, but put that back too.

Around 1976, 12" dance and DJ singles emerged. Because the grooves on these oversize singles could be wider, and because they were spinning as fast as a 45, they were louder than LPs that spun at 33 RPM. I remember in the late seventies hearing how the low end (the sound of the kick drum and bass) could be brought forward on this format and made louder. Discos had speakers that could accommodate those frequencies, and they became a world of throbbing, pulsing low end—an experience that had to wait for the CD and digital recording to be experienced outside the club environment.

However, reality teaches us that democracy—like free markets—can be messy, especially when intense passions and partisanship are involved. Hence the episode we recounted at the start of this chapter, in which the Wikipedia article about the death of Meredith Kercher was hijacked by “haters” of Amanda Knox who were determined to make sure the page should assert her guilt and were prepared to eradicate any signs of dissension. The Kercher killing is not the only instance in which Wikipedia is embroiled in controversy—far from it. An article on the platform headed “Wikipedia: List of controversial issues” lists over 800 topics that “are constantly being re-edited in a circular manner, or are otherwise the focus of edit warring or article sanctions.” Organized under headings that include “Politics and economics,” “History,” “Science, biology, and health,” “Philosophy,” and “Media and culture,” they include everything from “Anarchism,” “Genocide denial,” “Occupy Wall Street,” and “Apollo moon landing hoax accusations” to “Hare Krishna,” “Chiropractic,” “SeaWorld,” and “Disco music.

There were girls here with fire-engine-red lips, and boys with such pronounced eyeliner that it looked permanent. And as you moved back to the dancefloor, the music overwhelmed you: Yellow Magic Orchestra, Space, Ultravox, Eno, Fad Gadget, Sparks, Grace Jones, Thomas Leer, Cerrone, Psychedelic Furs and Bowie, obviously, lots of Bowie. On and on it went, a constant swirl of automated Germanic beats – hard-edged European disco, synth-led, bass-heavy … all very angular: Kraftwerk and Gina X, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, and some early Roxy Music.

I decided to put Donna Summer on the cover of an issue in March 1978. Disco was considered the music of the anti-Christ by many, and the staff was up in arms.

Neil Tennant: I liked anything that had a slightly artificial construct to it. I’ve never really been that interested by authentic music. I think authenticity is a style. But I loved Bowie when he went electric with Low and ‘Heroes’, and I really loved electronic music. Although I wasn’t officially gay at this point, I had gay friends who I would occasionally go to nightclubs with, and you would hear what we would think of as gay disco music. That was heavily electronic. I really loved electronic music, like Kraftwerk’s Man-Machine, and at the same time I loved new-wave music. I liked the pop end of it, the Jam and stuff like that. Then the Human League came along, and OMD’s first album was great. Then, of course, at the same time you had Giorgio Moroder, who wasn’t, lest we forget, cool at this point. In fact, he was quite naff. There was a designer who worked at Marvel Comics who would put on ‘I Feel Love’ because he could put it on, go to the toilet and come back, and it was still playing.

In 1976 , Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band had a number one hit on the Billboard charts with “A Fifth of Beethoven , ” an instrumental which hybridized disco with classical music.

– there was a whole load of inner-London kids just like us, who wanted to go out.’ That state of affairs was perfect for sound systems: business opportunity meets social exclusion meets musical potential. Forced to forget about West End clubs or plush suburban discos, London’s black soul scene became self-contained, vaguely outlaw, community-based, ever-innovative, and in complete empathy with its crowds.

Carnival Cruise Lines has its own successful way of doing things, which in this case involved creating a musical group called “The Hot Shots!” The word “Fantastic” comes to mind when thinking of this musical group! Each member auditioned separately at the Carnival rehearsal facility in Miami and then rehearsed as a group until they were ready for the big leagues aboard ship. Fortunately for me and my team, which includes Jorge Fernandez, a former guitar player from Cuba and now a top flight structural engineer in the Tampa Bay area, who helps me with much of my technical work; Lucy Shaw, Chief Copy Editor; Ursula Bracker, Proofer, and lucky me Captain Hank Bracker, award winning author (including multiple gold medals), were aboard the Carnival Legend and were privileged to listen to and enjoy, quite by chance, music that covered everything from Classical Rock, to Disco, to Mo Town and the years in between. Talented Judith Mullally, Carnival’s Entertainment Director, was on hand to encourage and partake in the music with her outstanding voice and, not to be left out, were members of the ship’s repertory cast, as well as the ship’s Cruise Director. The popular Red Frog lounge on the Carnival Legend was packed to the point that one of the performances had to be held on the expansive Lido deck. However, for the rest of the nights, the lounge was packed with young and old, singing and dancing to “The Hot Shots!” - a musical group that would totally pack any venue in Florida. Pheona Baranda, from the Philippines, is cute as a button and is the lead female singer, with a pitch-perfect soprano voice. Lucas Pedreira, from Argentina, is the lead male singer and guitar player who displayed endless energy and the ability to keep the audience hopping! Paulo Baranda, Pheona’s younger brother, plays the lead guitar to perfection and behind the scenes is the band’s musical director and of course is also from the Philippines. Ygor, from Israel, is the “on the money” drummer who puts so much into what he is doing, that at one point he hurt his hand, but refused to slow down. Nick is the bass guitar player, from down under New Zealand, and Marina, the piano and keyboard player, hails from the Ukraine. As a disclaimer I admit that I hold shares in Carnival stock but there is nothing in it for me other than the pleasure of listening to this ultra-talented group which cannot and should not be denied. They were and still are the very best! However, I am sorry that just as a “Super Nova” they unfortunately can’t last. Their bright shining light is presently flaring, but this will only be for a fleeting moment and then will permanently go to black next year on January 2, 2020. That’s just the way it is, but my crew and I, as well as the many guests aboard the Carnival Legend, experienced music seldom heard anywhere, any longer…. It was a treat we will remember for years to come and we hope to see them again, as individual musical artists, or as perhaps with a new group sometime in the near future!

Disco sure did suck.

Life is all about who owes who what. It is a world of debts. If Joe does me a favor, I owe Joe. If I overpay the favor to Joe, then Joe owes me a bit more. It goes on this way until the debt owed feels equal to both parties. But only then. Do you see what I am telling you?

This view was forwarded most prominently by music critic Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone, who observed at the end of 1979 that “white males, eighteen to thirty-four, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks and [Latinos], and therefore they’re most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security.

people probably hated disco because it inflamed something dark inside of them that they might not have known was there, and they also probably hated disco because disco (like a lot of pop music) was getting pretty fucking ridiculous and played out in 1979. What’s not disputed in either narrative is the suggestion that

Passar quatro dias e quatro noites em casa, vendo o carnaval passar; ou não vendo nem isso, mas entregue a uma outra e cifrada folia, que nesta quarta-feira de cinzas abre suas pétalas de cansaço, como se também tivéssemos pulado e berrado no clube. Não ligar a televisão, esquecer-se do rádio; deixar os locutores falando sozinhos, na ânsia de encher de discurso uma festa à base de movimento e de canto. Perceber apenas o grito trêmulo, trazido e levado pelo vento, de um samba que marca realidade lúdica sem nos convidar à integração. Beneficiar-se com a ausência de jornais, que prova a inexistência provisória do mundo como arquitetura de notícias. Ter como companheiro o irmão gato Crispim, exemplo de abstenção sem sacrifício, manual de silêncio e sabedoria, aventureiro que experimentou a vertigem da luta-livre nos telhados e homologa a invenção da poltrona. Penetrar no vazio do tempo sem obrigações, como num parque fechado, aproveitando a ausência de guardas, e descobrindo nele tudo que as tabuletas omitem. Aceitar a solidão; escolhê-la; desfrutá-la. Sorrir dos psiquiatras que falam em alienação do mundo e recomendam a terapêutica de grupo. Estimar a pausa como valor musical, o intervalo, o hiato. O instante em que a agulha fere o disco sem despertar ainda qualquer som. Andar de um quarto para outro sem ser à procura de objetos: achando-os. Descobrir, sem mescalina, as cores que a cor esconde; os timbres entrelaçados no ruído. Olhar para as paredes, ou melhor, olhar as paredes em torno dos quadros. Sentir a casa como um todo e como partículas densas, tensas, expectantes, acostumadas a viver sem nós, à nossa revelia, contra o nosso desdém. Habitar realmente a casa, quatro dias: como ilha, fortaleza, continente; infinito no finito; reconsiderar os livros, arrumá-los primeiro com método, depois com voluptuosidade, fazendo com que cada prateleira exija o maior tempo possível; verificar que antes é preciso tirar a poeira de um, remover a boba capa de celofane que envolve a encadernação de outro. Reler dedicatórias, abrir ao acaso livros de poetas que preferimos e que infelizmente não são os mais modernos, nem os mais célebres; copiar meia estrofe por onde corre arrepio verbal; separar volumes que não nos falam mais nada e que devem tentar seu destino em outras casas. Sentir chegada a hora dos álbuns de pintura com pouco ou nenhum texto, e dos volumes iconográficos que nos contam Paris ou a vida de Mallarmé. Viajar em fotografias; sentir-se imagem flutuando entre imagens; a terra domesticada em figura, tornada familiar sem perda de sua essência enigmática. Reconhecer que muitos livros comprados a duras penas, pedidos ao estrangeiro ou longamente minerados nos sebos, não têm mais do que essa oportunidade de comunicação durante o ano; deixar que fiquem a sós conosco e nos confiem seu segredo. Admitir a fome, sem exigência de horário, e matá-la com o que houver à mão; renunciar à idéia de almoço e jantar, com reverência ao sagrado direito que assiste a todos, inclusive e principalmente às cozinheiras, de brincarem o seu carnaval; achar mais gosto nessa comida, porque não é regulamentar nem é seguida de nada: todas as obrigações estão suspensas, e só valem as que soubermos traçar a nós mesmos. Descortinar na preguiça um espaço incomensurável, onde cabe tudo; não enchê-lo demais; devassá-lo à maneira de um explorador que não quer ser muito rico e tanto sente prazer em descobrir como em procurar. Assim vosso cronista passou o carnaval: sem fugir, sem brincar, divertido em seu canto umbroso.

Second in intensity to the regret of hating their bodies is the wish of the dying that they had appreciated their bodies in the course of their lives... So they talk about their favorite memories of their bodies.... And dancing. So many stories about dancing. I can't count the hundreds of times people--more men than women--have closed their eyes and said, when describing USO dances during World War II...or long exuberant nights dancing at roadhouses and discos and barns and whereever else there were bodies and music, "If I had only known, I would ahve danced more.

While in Hanoi, I gave a speech at the Vietnam national university. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The speech was an unremarkable review of the development of the U.S.-Vietnamese military relationship over the preceding fifteen years. But my reception was quite extraordinary. As I entered the hall, funky dance and disco music was blaring, strobe lights were flashing, and the audience—many young military officers but also a lot of young female students—was applauding, whistling, and carrying on. I knew that the only way I would ever get such a rock star’s reception would be at the order of a dictatorship.

Once they left school, Mark and Lucy stopped being religious. Instead of embodying the discourse and practices of the Catholic Church, they embodied the discourse and practice of love, sex and romance. Instead of going to church, they went to pubs and discos. Instead of embracing piety, humility and chastity, they embraced each other. Instead of kneeling down and praying, they shook their bodies to the rhythms of popular music. Instead of putting up pictures of holy men and women, they put up pictures of music and film stars. Instead of reading about the lives of saints, they read about the lives of celebrities. Instead of listening to hymns, they listened to songs about love and romance. Mark and Lucy were part of a new breed of people that began to emerge, particularly during the twentieth century, who believed more in themselves than God. They believed in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure more than in self-sacrifice. They saw passion and sex not as dangerous, but as central to living a fulsome life.

18 “Cybotron coincided with the birth of a sound known as ‘electro,’ presumably a shortening of ‘electronic funk.’ Electro was one of the great dance music developments of the early 1980s that was neither a derivation nor an extension of disco. Instead, it was a ‘switched-on’ funk variant, exaggerating the electronic sounds that Midwestern groups like Parliament-Funkadelic had perfected in the studio and brought onstage. Most critics point to New York, however, for the genre's watershed moment.” Dan Sicko, Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk [1999] (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 45.