Amazing how that 35 years after disco was at its biggest and brightest time period ... and loathed ... people would desire having that music back over what's on the radio these days.
I knew it would happen. I knew it 10 years after the fact. It just took others longer to realize it wasn't such a savage beast as it was ridiculed and made out to be as the 1970s were coming to an end and a whole bunch of people wanted something new to cling on to.
But back in 1979, I could understand the whole disco backlash. In the Top 40 from March 31, 1979 (which most Premiere radio stations are airing this weekend, others airing April 3, 1971), there were 18 songs that practically had disco written all over it. Eighteen! That's almost half the chart.
The problem was not that there was so much of it. It was just that because disco was the big thing of the day, everyone, it seemed, wanted to jump on the bandwagon and ride it down the road until the foundation over the wheels snapped in two and everyone crashed to the hot blacktop.
Examples? Plenty of them!
Paul McCartney, for crying out loud, decided to give disco a whirl when he debuted with Wings' "Goodnight Tonight" on the entire Billboard Hot 100 at No. 38! Wait a minute!! Paul McCartney?! You mean, Beatle Paul wanted to get down, get funky??!! Noooooooooooooooo!
Moving up seven places from No. 32 to No. 25 was Cher with her disco anthem "Take Me Home." Cher?! I knew she was cutting edge ... but did disco help her image that much?
And then, of course, there was Rod Stewart still getting his disco schwerve on with "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" at No. 7 after it had gone to No. 1 four four weeks, which he always claimed he sang in the "third-person narrative" and never in his own self-confident first person. Mod Rod went disco, too?! Really?
Many were believing the apocalypse was upon us. I mean, c'mon -- McCartney, Cher and Rod Stewart? Who next? Don't tell me Barbra Streisand wants to do a disco record, too! (Yeah, you kinda know the answer to that one.)
Disco music was becoming very much like disco's most famous hangout in the late 1970s, New York's Studio 54. Once upon a time, it was a simple disco for all the people of the city to hang out and have a good time at night, but by the time disco became bigger than it can handle being, all the famous people wanted to see and be seen at the fashionable club.
The era of disco was growing enormously out of control. It would take someone's simple pin prick to send the balloon falling helplessly to the ground with no chance of ever coming back to life. And that would come in the summer of 1979.
The first incident was on Thursday, July 12. It was the infamous "Disco Demolition Night" at the old Comiskey Park in Chicago where rock station DJ Steve Dahl, who had enough of disco and the beast it became, had teamed up with White Sox owner Bill Veeck and Veeck's son, Mike, to hold a stunt in between games of a doubleheader between the Sox and the Detroit Tigers in which all disco records Dahl collected would be put into a case and blown up. The problem was, though, that most of the people who came to the ball park that night were not baseball fans -- they were looking for an excuse to come to the park and get drunk off their shameful asses. The promotion went forward with all those vinyl records being blasted. But no one had the smarts to figure out that a) there'd be cleanup on a lot of aisles, if you know what I mean, and b) the drunks who showed up and made idiots of themselves during and after the promotion would not get off the field. This forced Veeck and the Sox to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader with the Tigers in what was one of the most embarrassing moments Major League Baseball ever encountered.
The second came via the Billboard Hot 100. "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward was at No. 1, then knocked out for five weeks by "Bad Girls" by Donna Summer, which in turn for one week was knocked out of the top spot by "Good Times" by Chic. But come the week of August 25, 1979, there was a new No. 1 song in the land ... "My Sharona" by the Knack. That was the biggest indicator that disco was about to die a sad, tragic death thanks to this rocker with New Wave roots. There would still be some disco songs that would climb to the top in 1979 ("Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Rise" and "No More Tears"), but not comparable to the heavy dosage in the first eight months of that year.
A number of artists who rode that disco wave in the mid-to-late 1970s became the biggest casualties come the 1980s. And one of pop music's biggest stars, the Bee Gees, were so stained by the "haters" of disco that they would not recover from the era until they put out a Top 10 hit called "One." That was in 1989, 10 years after their last Top 10 hit, the No. 1 "Love You Inside Out," gave Barry, Robin and Maurice their sixth straight No. 1 song.
The Bee Gees persevered even through the dark times after disco. Now in 2014, many appreciate how great they were as Barry is the lone living brother. They appreciate everything that is Bee Gees -- especially the disco era and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack music they made iconic for generations.
As for the March 31, 1979 Top 40 chart, there were seven debut singles including debuts by half the famous Fab Four -- McCartney's band Wings with the disco-laden "Goodnight Tonight" and George Harrison and his familiar guitar on "Blow Away" at No. 32. The highest debut of the week was a song that is getting a rebirth these days thanks to a tax company's commercial usage of it -- Peaches & Herb's future No. 1 hit "Reunited" at No. 26. The biggest mover within the Top 40 was George Benson's "Love Ballad," his remake of the LTD hit of just over two years earlier, which jumped nine places from No. 38 to No. 29.
And No. 1? You guessed it! A disco song as the Bee Gees' "Tragedy" made it five No. 1 hits in a row for the Gibbs. Right behind it, though, was the disco anthem for women everywhere, "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, a former No. 1 hit that was primed to get back to No. 1 by the next week. As a matter of fact, the entire Top 5 was disco-laced -- even the Doobie Brothers made us get down and dance to "What A Fool Believes" at No. 3, the band's future second No. 1 hit and a true indicator that new lead singer Michael McDonald made the rest of the band sell their souls harshly for his own solo purposes. Donna Summer was still ruling as the Queen of Disco on "Heaven Knows" at No. 4, her collaboration with Brooklyn Dreams that included her boyfriend, Bruce Sudano, who she would marry the next year. And at No. 5 was Peaches & Herb's other hit at the time, the dance-soaked "Shake Your Groove Thing."
Looking back 35 years after disco became a bit big for its britches, it was understandable how its crash was inevitable with a backlash as big as some overthrows of governments in other countries. Too much of it only meant its demise was practically mere moments away.
But most of it wasn't bad at all. You still recognize those songs today. And you still bop your head or tap your toes to those songs. C'mon now, admit it!!
Makes you appreciate it almost two generations after its popularity came and went.
It wasn't as bad as the savage beast it was made out to be.
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