Was there ever a dorkier fad then disco?

[Ranger12 46]

As I am sitting here flipping the channels and I see what is on AMC and I stop there , because I need a good laugh. Either "Saturday Night Fever" or "Staying Alive" is on (I never could tell the two apart). Watching John Travolta dancing at a disco club is freakin' hilarious.

Even though I was born in the early 70's and grew up listening to some disco music because my mom was a huge Bee Gees fan, I am so glad I was not old enough to have been a part of that fad. I have to admit the music is not that bad, but the disco dancing itself is so silly looking that it almost looks like it is meant to be funny.

There have been some crazy dance fads since then, but I think disco is the king of dorky dance fads. I am probably doing to tick somebody off with what I am about to say, but I think country line dancing is a close #2 to disco.

[AUChizad 0]

As I am sitting here flipping the channels and I see what is on AMC and I stop there , because I need a good laugh. Either "Saturday Night Fever" or "Staying Alive" is on (I never could tell the two apart). Watching John Travolta dancing at a disco club is freakin' hilarious.

Even though I was born in the early 70's and grew up listening to some disco music because my mom was a huge Bee Gees fan, I am so glad I was not old enough to have been a part of that fad. I have to admit the music is not that bad, but the disco dancing itself is so silly looking that it almost looks like it is meant to be funny.

There have been some crazy dance fads since then, but I think disco is the king of dorky dance fads. I am probably doing to tick somebody off with what I am about to say, but I think country line dancing is a close #2 to disco.

Well, I was born 10 years later, but I'm pretty sure I can safely say I would have been into KISS & The Ramones if I were around then, and that music would have infuriated me just as much if not more than Boy Bands did during their peak when I was in high school.

[Ranger12 46]

I got into KISS, but that was not until the early 80s when I started choosing my own music. Thing was that KISS was not played a lot on the radio stations my mom listened too, who I spent most of the time in the car with since dad worked, and neither owned any KISS albums. So even though I knew of their songs during the 70s through a friend's older brother, I had to wait until I was allowed to "voice" my choice of music and even then it was not warmly accepted.

My dad was a rocker too, because he owned Steppanwolf, Louisiana LeRouix, Dr. Hook, Beatles/Sgt. Pepper, Eric Clapton, Eagles, Iron Butterfly, Foghat and the likes, but he never got into KISS, Black Sabbath, etc. So, dad is where I got my love for rock and particularly classic rock, but like I said, since we were around mom the most, we were forced to listen to the Bee Gees, the Carpenters, ABBA, Juice Newton, and etc.

I remember my mom actually owning the album to the soundtrack of both "Saturday Night Fever" and "Staying Alive" besides owning Bee Gees and Barry Gibb albums.

[BamaGrad03 0]

Did anyone see the SNL where they did the Bary Gibb Show? That was freaking hilarious.

[jumbo 0]

My mom was a huge disco fan, she used to play that music when I was a kid, she even had a book on how to disco dance! I still love the music maybe because it reminds me of my childhood! Ranger looking back now at the clothes and the hairstyles they were dorky! In Saturday Night Fever Jt was trying to win a dance contest and in Stayin Alive he was trying to make it as a dancer on broadway

[Ranger12 46]

Yeah, it was "Saturday Night Fever" that was on last night. There were a lot of songs that came from that soundtrack that were hits. I don't think I heard a single song I did not recognize. Blonde Wasabi got a kick out of watching it and even got up and did a few dance moves herself. We also had fun laughing at all the leisure suits.

I am like you Jumbo, and listening to he music is not that bad because it reminds me of my more innocent times as a child. But, I am not going to make it a point to burn them to a CD and listen to it. There is one song that I really like of the Bee Gees, "Tragedy". For some reason that is the one song that my ears seem to agree with.

Another song of that era my mom listened to over and over, on 45 rpm record, was "Rocky" by Austin Roberts. It was not a disco song, but my mom wore that record out. It was not until I heard it later as an adult that I realized it was a actually a sad song. I actually have it in my music library.

BG, I missed that SNL skit. Maybe somebody can find a clip of it somewhere and post it.

[Guest Tigrinum Major]

"I Will Survive" will stand the test of time.

[Ranger12 46]

"I Will Survive" will stand the test of time.

Whenever I hear that song now, I think of that football movie with Gene Hackman and Keenau Reeves. I can't recall the name of the movie. Anyway, the two scenes a only remember from that movie was the players dancing to that song and the scene in which the cheerleaders were being "provactive" with each other to distract the other team.

[Guest Tigrinum Major]

The Replacements

[DKW 86 7,726]

"Knock on Wood" rules!

http://www.geocities.com/jahsonic/PeterBraunstein.html

Peter Braunstein is a Ph.D. candidate in history at New York University and a freelance writer. (1997)

But the real animosity between rock and disco lay in the position of the straight white male. In the rock world, he was the undisputed top, while in disco, he was subject to a radical decentering. Disco was an extended conversation between black women female divas and gay men. Straight men were welcome to join the party, but only if they learned the lingo. Some did, but for many, this new demand aroused a kind of "castration anxiety," as Alice Echols put it in a 1994 essay. Disco symbolized a world where straight men were not only expected to engender the female orgasm, but to incorporate it.

Only by killing disco could rock affirm its threatened masculinity and restore the holy dyad of cold brew and undemanding sex partners. Disco bashing became a major preoccupation in 1977. At the moment when Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54 achieved zeitgeist status, rock rediscovered a rage it had been lacking since the '60s, but this time the enemy was a culture with "plastic" and "mindless" (read effeminate) musical tastes. Examined in light of the ensuing political backlash, it's clear that the slogan of this movement--""Disco Sucks!"--was the first cry of the angry white male.

Craig, I put that up there just so I could lay the backdrop of this. Disco came from the gay discotechques of the late 60s. That is why it ultimately ended up being such a totally over the top genre by the end. Heck, it started that way at first, chilled out as it went mainstream, and then went crazy again as it was dying out. No one could ever relive that time after reading some of the early background material and not recognize the overtly gay/feminist backbone to the whole disco era. The Impossiply Tight Double knit pants. The extreme overtly sexual nature of some of the dance steps that are now seen as mainstream, etc. Heck, even today you will see some of the disco Divas are still gay idols and legends. Cher, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, etc.

BTW, I have to tell you that back then, (born in 1962, I was in hs from 1976-1980) that I considered myself to be an okay dancer and will even admit to owning 2-3 leisure suits, one lime green of course, a couple of sets of monster clogs, one mandatory bottle of Musk Oil, and had my hair cut where it covered my ears all four years too. I still consider the Monte Carlo the epitome of 1970s-ism. Even though I didnt own one, one of my firends did. I still feel the rush of bad taste every time I see one.

[DaddyBoyAU 119]

Did anyone see the SNL where they did the Bary Gibb Show? That was freaking hilarious.

BG, I missed that SNL skit. Maybe somebody can find a clip of it somewhere and post it.

Those skits were hilarious. There has been at least three of these skits - here is the first one:

Barry Gibb Talk Show #1

Here's another one...

Barry Gibb Talk Show 2

There was a third one here recently - I can't seem to find it on the web (I'm not looking that hard though...)

[Ranger12 46]

Well David, I guess that research you posted goes further then my assessment as being dorky. It was dorky and gay. Not there is anything wrong with being dorky.

Those Barry Gibb skits were hilarious. I need to get my mom to watch them. She does not get near a computer and does not even know how to turn one on so I can't e-mail them to her, so I'll have to show them to her next time I go over to her house. I'll probably get scolded for making fun of any member of the Gibb family.

[bammanmr 0]

line dancing takes the cake for me.

[auwallace 6]

line dancing takes the cake for me.

i hate line dancing, when i get married i'm gonna put signs up all over the reception that say "no line dancing". Actually i think i'll fix the problem by not having any terrible group dance songs played like electric slide, cha cha slide, etc.