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| Disco to Disco Part 2 - Pink Plastic Bubble Wrap |
| Posted on 24/03/04 at 11:41 by Dead Ball Descendant |
In the hegemony of early disco culture Saturday Night Fever formed the apex of both the brave new world of technological development and the plethora of disco flicks which would sweep aside the soul cinema blaxploitation genre of the 70s.
Hardcore Brooklyn vox pop & the movie itself characterised that whole ridiculous trope known as disco in a way that the ensuing low-budget Thank God Its Friday (a kind of beat-synched American Graffiti) liberated the gay movement. Between them they defined a generation.
1978 the birth of the first test-tube baby and the year Disco peaked was absolute in its ability to liberate. In the annals of Disco there will never be another year like it. 78 not only moved the New York gay scene out of Fire Island and into the mainstream, but gave us the extended 12in release (pioneered by Donna Summer's steamy and trancey 17-minute epic Love to Love You Baby), the Hustle (a kind of disco line dance for the urban-savvy), the onset of beat mixing and bling bling slit dress/leotards and lycra. And of course an infestation of John Travolta lookalike competitions.
In New York, Billboard Disco Forums were in their pomp where they would probably have stayed, had the trade bible not shocked the world by unexpectedly voting to marmelise the entire idiom.
One abiding memory (aside from Studio 54) was hearing former NYC Mayor Ed Koch officially declare Disco Week in his bankrupt city, believing that Disco would be the saviour of the Big Apples sinking economy. Imagine all that bunting and ticker tape floating down to meet the belching gesyers of Midtown. The announcement ceremony bordered on farce; guest of honour, Bee Gees Robin Gibb failed to attend the ceremonial opening, and chart-topping kid brother Andy (who was tragically to die at the age of 30) couldnt be woken in time. In fact there was so much bullshit paving the streets of Manhattan you needed a plane to rise above it. And we all wallowed in it.
The event itself was primarily a record industry convention a showcase for dance labels and promotional pools who occupied suites in the 6th Avenue hotels, although there was plenty of technical equipment down on the shop floor. Donna Summer and Linda Clifford were appearing at the newly-opened and excellent Xenon, and VIP wannabes were queuing to get into Studio 54 and
Les Mouches. It was disco round the clock; and at the centre was the androgynous Grace Jones, whose I Need A Man was the totem of sexual ambiguity.
From a technical point of view the era that best defined the PAR 36 helicopter light and illuminated dancefloor was beckoned by the arrival of that movie. At a stroke it kick-started the modern idiom and consigned legions of personality DJs to learn the meaning of the word segue (seg-way) and the difference between chop and running mixes, as the New York-inspired confections were thrown into sharp contrast with the old Mecca, Rank and THF ballroom boilers.
Saturday Night Fever, a Dionysian celebration of middle class values, had grossed well over οΎ£50m less than three months after its UK premiere (in March) and the soundtrack double album had occupied the top slot since Christmas.
Odyssey 2001 in Bay Ridge the nightclub used for the movie had been created around a Litelab underlit dancefloor and effects. At the time, Paul Gregory's company could little have known the icon it would be creating in a country largely devoid of any discotheque (if not dance) culture outside the heavily urbanised areas.
The arrival of the movie certainly polarised club culture in Manhattan. While venues like Le Clique readily admitted to extending their clientele (their patrons experimenting with the many variations of The Hustle), over at Studio 54 the movie was already too old hat for their progressive customer profile.
SNF also set in train a whole succession of me too dance flicks (one of which, starring Patti Boulaye, was set in Camden Town's Music Machine, later converted by Tony Gottelier & Co into the mighty Camden Palace).
For 44-year old Australian impresario Robert Stigwood it was to mark another milestone (a formula which he was quick to follow up with Grease).
Directed by John Badham, the UK Gala Premiere took place at the Empire Leicester Square on March 22, 1978. By this time a massive roadshow promotional campaign had been put together by Robert Stigwood's RSO Records, distributors Polydor, film distributors Cinema International Corporation (CIC) and advertising agency, Lonsdale Osborne to drive the message into the UKs clubs.
Summoned to a meeting at the agencys austere HQ in Portman Square I arrived late, and off the back of an involuntary ghoster straight from an all-nighter, clad in two-day old T-shirt, jeans, trainers, and an advanced 5 oclock shadow). No agenda had been given, and turning up I was astonished to be directed to the main boardroom by the suspcious receptionist (sensing my inappropriate attire). Running on pure adrenalin and blind optimism, I proceeded to deliver an off-the-cuff pitch to clueless execs as to how the magazine I was representing (Disco International) could rifle-shot the movie down the clubbing industrys main arteries. In the cross-current of debate that followed I got caught up in the riptide and thereby booked myself on a 12-month tour judging John Travolta lookalike and dance contests the length and breadth of the country.
In truth, the UK suits were hardly jumping up and down & after all, Paramount, the American distributors, had only anticipated this being a small cult movie, since the rough language and earthy subject matter were considered too dangerous to give it mass market appeal. They were quick to revise that thinking once the momentum kicked in.
John Travolta, though an unproven TV actor, had signed a three-movie, $1 million deal with Stigwood, who was already predicting that a Bee Gees single would be at number one in the States before the movie's Christmas 1977 release. (There remains a deep irony in the fact that Travoltas previous movie had been called: Boy In A Plastic Bubble).
Stiggys contention was that every time Stayin' Alive was announced by DJs over the airwaves, it would be cross-referenced to Saturday Night Fever, thus creating huge amounts of free publicity for the film. And so it proved to be. By July of that year SNF had grossed more than $107 million, three Bee Gees singles had made the top ten and the double album had already sold 22 million copies (a gross of roughly $285 million).
And that frenzy of John Travolta look-alike nights saw sales of flared white suits and black open shirts go into overdrive.
So successful was it in establishing new dance routines that The Arthur Murray Dance School temporarily broke from its formal, ballroom tradition to introduce The Hustle and Bus Stop into their curriculum (though its unlikely the erotic Le Freak found its way into the syllabus). That same year, London sponsored the World Disco Dance Championships for the first time.
By now Casablanca the largest dance label of the day was already cashing in on the celluloid boom with its low-budget, West Coast-based exploitation flick Thank God It's Friday. Set in Osko's discotheque in Beverly Hills (appropriately named The Zoo in the movie) it delivered a remarkable hard funk soundtrack to RSO's blue-eyed soul of SNF but as a spectacle, a farrago of unlikely characters was set to work with the thinnest of plots.
Yet nothing encapsulated the zeitgeist as consummately as Neil Bogarts Casablanca Records a label of shameless excess with Village People, Kiss (and a hundred no-hopers) as well as Donna Summer on the roster of artistes. With its ridiculous whatever it takes business philosophy (cf Ray Caviano last month), Bogart took the ride until the bottom dropped out and by 1982 he had died of cancer.
By the time Infinity (which later burnt down), The Ice Palace (making three turntables de rigueur) and legendary gay club Paradise Garage (unmarked toilets and a Richard Long sound system), had become New York monuments, the urban dance revolution was in full spate all on a momentum created by Saturday Night Fever. It was pure theatre, no more so than at Studio 54, where DJ Richie Kaczor one of the truly unsung heroes of the age single-handedly revived the career of Gloria Gaynor by playing I Will Survive nonstop. When the 12 landing lights from a Boeing 747 swept their beams across the Mylar drapes it was easy to see where Tony Gottelier got his inspiration for Camden Palace from.
It was also the perfect playground for gay icons like Sylvester and The Village People to flourish in yet generally the hits, like Garys Gangs momentous Keep On Dancin were created formulaically in studios, by faceless session men and production teams.
So much for New York. But how did this impact in the UK? London had already welcomed its first New York-style club Lady Edith Foxwells Embassy in Bond Street. The former society hotspot of the '20s and '30s had been purchased by a consortium which also included shirt designer, Michael Fish, and Jeremy Norman, a director of Burke's Peerage. American DJ Greg James, then working for GLI and a master creator of segued mixes, had introduced the gay mardi gras to London (where New Zealander Stephen Hayter was manager), before heading north to open Mike Wiand's northern equivalent, The Warehouse in Leeds. The genre had safely crossed the Atlantic and was running at full tilt.
Greg had learnt his art from who else but the aforementioned Richie Kaczor at Studio 54 and was discovered by Norman on a visit to New York. In London, he formed his own sound company Discotheque Consultants International, bringing in Illusion Lighting International's Tony Gottelier to design the ground-breaking venue. And so for the first time we saw a trio of Technics SL1200 decks, linked by a GLI 3880 mixer in a DJ station sited high above the dancefloor. American GLI speakers were powered by the then obligatory BGW amplifiers.
Illusion, having picked up the contract from their American office, set to work on creating a four-sided curtain of light, comprising dozens of Illusion bullet beam spots, a central cluster of three mirror-balls with sound to light pinbeams, and a number of Illusion vari-speed four-arm spinners. All this, plus some strobes and a fog machine, were run off Illusion controllers. It was utterly chi-chi, seductive overkill, and where there had been white suits and leotards there was now boxer shorts and roller skates.
As the industry became immersed in a world of beat counters, the role models were the new breed of American remixers , notably Jim Burgess and Johnny Luongo (and later in the UK, Disco Mix Club's Alan Coulthard). New Yorker Tom
Lewis produced Disco Bible, a computerised subscription print-out of all the latest BPMs, but saw greater marketing mileage in calling it Disco Beats.
GLI became the chic brand, and any self-respecting DJ needed to learn the different style of mixes and be prepared to work high up in the air. Thirty feet below his punters worked out on perspective-altering underlit, infinity dancefloors, while seeking vanishing points deep into infinity walls. The hallucinogenic charge was wonderful psychedelic lighting had finally met its match.
How did the impact of New York manage to cross the Atlantic? Largely because a few British equipment exporters could be found truffling their way round those early Forums people like Derrick Saunders of Pulsar, Geoff Hood of FAL and Neil Rice of Optikinetics, meeting up with ex-pats like Illusion's Tony Gottelier and Terry Thompson, and Brian Puckey from Lights Fantastic.
Other British club designers such as Dennis Eynon (of Malham) and Keith Hardy (CDC) also went across to assess whether the psycho-acoustics and synaesthesia of Paradise Garage, in the absence of alcohol, was sufficient to move people into a new aural dimension.
But by 1979 the Billboard-created idiom was already in decline and attempts to move it to the West Coast (and stage a Euro-version in Monte Carlo) were still-born.
The death knell was the now legendary Disco Is Dead proclamation. Leading the Billboard cabal was Forum organiser (and director of charts), Bill Wardlow, and from those lips did these words emanate.
'Disco Sucks' T-shirts suddenly started appearing en masse and there were ritual funeral pyres of Donna Summer records. The new rock n roll wasnt disco after all, it was mindwashing. Thinking back, it was small wonder that Jonestown happened that self same year when Rev. Jim Jones led more than 900 disciples to drink cyanide-poisoned punch at his colony in Guyana.
By the time Disco Forum 7 was held in LA it had transmuted into the 'Dance Forum', as 'Disco' was famously banished from the lexicon forever. Dance venues remained an urban phenomenon in the States, but the hype was unsustainable and the bubble had finally burst.
Yet it was unquestionably a great ride to have been on board not least because it found mainstream pop artists such as Rod Stewart and Blondie prepared to pervert their art and collide with genuine jazz fusion musicians like Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers in this subcultural whirlpool known as Disco.
Sloshing aimlessly around at LDI some 20 years later I notice this fastidiously attired man with a receding grey hairline wandering the aisles. His badge bears the name Paul Gregory, Focus Lighting and suddenly I'm transported back to 1978. Then I imagine a platoon of underlit dancefloors, riding into the new millennium on a wave of LED technology. And I pray that the Infinity effect has not time-travelled with it.
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