disco

Disco is the music that will not die. Born in the late seventies, disco music briefly ruled the world, reaching a fever pitch (pardon the pun) with the movie Saturday Night Fever and its disco-fueled soundtrack by the Bee Gees.

Basically a hybrid of funk and R&B powered by faster, metronomic beats, the club-based music became a world-wide phenomenon, impacting everything from fashion to culture, with the DJs spinning the records becoming stars as big as the artists (who included Chic, Donna Summer, and the Village People) that recorded them.

The backlash, however, was equally explosive, for a time spawning public burnings of disco records (Disco Demolition 1979), and selling a ton of Disco Sucks T-shirts. By the early eighties, disco was on the wane — but some argue it has never really gone away. Today's club music, from techno to trance to house owes a considerable debt to disco. Even hip-hop's do-it-yourself mantra of "two turntables and a microphone" can be traced to New York's thriving seventies disco scene.

Today disco lives on in the form of both nostalgic movies and club nights, and through it's continuing influence on dance, R&B, and pop. After all, aren't they all the same thing these days? You'll find disco fans boogieing the night away at blogs like The Disco Blog, Disco Delivery, and Space Disco.