Where were you in 1977? I was 21, in my final year at university and out dancing every weekend to disco.
Like all trends, disco suffered a backlash; the clothes were ridiculous and the music was repetitive but that was the point. History may have decided the only cool thing to come out of the 1970s was punk but disco was more radical than people give it credit for. The skinny-white-guys-with-guitars rock band format remained unchanged through 50s skiffle, 60s Beat, 70s punk, 80s new wave, 90s grunge to contemporary rock but disco was something new. You didn’t have to be able to play live, disco was about records so if you could programme that thud-thud-thud on a drum machine and mix some swirly synths over the top you might have a hit on your hands. Without disco there would have been no rave, no hip hop, no house, no trance and no techno.
And disco was diverse; it included the jazz-funk of Earth Wind and Fire, Philly soul and Motown. It embraced white pop acts like The Bees Gees and Georgio Moroder’s weird German electronica experiments with Donna Summer. It indulged the outrageously camp Sylvester, old-school soul singers like Edwin Starr, the gospel roots of Gladys Knight and the manufactured Euro-pop of Boney M.
By 1979 everyone was doing it and it was time for a change; The Beach Boys had a disco hit and even Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones had a go but in 1977 disco was the still best party in town. We couldn’t all hang out with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol at Studio 54 but we could dance to the same records and that’s exactly what we did!
In September ’77 I started attending a Comprehensive school in Wolverhampton and was rather self consciously wearing a ‘Death To Disco’ badge.
In my fourth year at school, Miss Harvey’s class I think. I remember a school visit to the Science Museum and puppets at MAC, oh and the silver jubilee.
By that time I was embedded at the Crescent where we used to have our own disco parties – whatever happened to those????
Hmmmmm, I feel a suggestion coming on Judy.
In the summer of 1977 I was at the end of my second year at secondary school, I had a yellow David Cassidy T-shirt and was 13 going on 14. I detested punk, but later went on to paint a picture of Sid Vicious on the back of my bedroom door. I got into the Clifton picture house in Great Barr through the back door to watch Saturday Night Fever ( it was an X rating – that’s an 18 now), I loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind – before they messed around with it and changed the ending, but I never ever understood the hype around Star Wars – just never got it and still don’t. What a lovely time……I think I need to get the photos out……
In 1977 I was a science teacher at Dregerhafen High School in Papua New Guinea. Saturday nights were disco nights at the school – it was a boarding school. Brings back memories of looking out over the Pacific Ocean from my verandah while hearing this era’s music drifting down from the the school hall. Heaven!