I watched Thank God It's Friday last night. Released in 1978 at the peak of the discotheque period, Last Dance by Donna Summer won the Academy Award for Best Original song.
There is something about disco that turns most people off. I like it. So what's wrong with me?
Well, nothing to do with disco, but another example of what I like is You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone. Many, it turns out, despise this song for its saccharine sweetness and worse.
Here, there are good reasons for hating the tune, for Debbie in 1977 was inserted into overvoicing it only after Kasey Cisyk (left), who performed the original, rebuffed Joe Brooks, who wrote the song for a film of the same name. Boone was told to mimic the Cisyk version. Oh, Brooks in 2009 was indicting on 91 counts of casting-couch rapes. He was never really convicted, for he committed suicide in 2011. I should note that You Light Up My Life broke the BillBoard Hot 100 record by staying #1 for ten consecutive weeks.
But back to disco, remember how Matt Damon, as The Martian, loathed those songs? But he had a special reason.
Searching back on why such animosity, this reputation goes back to 1979 when DJ Steve Dahl of Chicago was fired because standard rock was displaced by disco, and organized an evening known as Disco Demolition Night at Commiskey Park. The explosion of disco records so destroyed the field and cause a riot that the White Sox actually forfeited the baseball game itself to the Detroit Tigers.
Perhaps the #1 disco film is the 1977 Saturday Night Live with John Travolta and the Bee Gees, but also, If I Can't Have You (Yvonne Elliman, from Hawaii, who this year was convicted for drug possession in Guam), Disco Duck (DJ Rick Dees, who was fired from KHJ in Los Angeles for complaining on the air that he could not play that song) and Disco Inferno (Trammps, the nearly 11-minute version).
Maybe the worst was the 1980 Can't Stop the Music, for it won the first Worst Picture Golden Raspberry Award. Watch YMCA, for the story, sort of, is about The Village People.
Maybe the worst was the 1980 Can't Stop the Music, for it won the first Worst Picture Golden Raspberry Award. Watch YMCA, for the story, sort of, is about The Village People.
The final disco film was The Last Days of Disco in 1998, a box office disaster, with I Love the Nightlife (Alicia Bridges) and Love Train (O'Jays).
Disco opened the dance floor to anyone, for you didn't have to memorize any steps. Most of the leading performers were female and LGBT rights began to gain a foothold. Internationally, I recall being surrounded by effervescent lights from those glass balls and pulsating sounds in Tokyo, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, London.... Interestingly enough, disco has not died. 
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