origins of fear/hatred of disco

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I don't mind what machines do in the privacy of their own home, but do they have to be so upfront about it? The other day, this computer calculated pi to 80 decimals right in front of me and the kids!

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:13 (nineteen years ago) link

This is a very gross simplication of what I think Spencer's getting at, but it's this "It.. just.. ain't RIGHT is all!" sentiment.

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:15 (nineteen years ago) link

"It just ain't RIGHT is all" ---> "it's not the natural order of things... it's not the way things should be" ---> ????

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:16 (nineteen years ago) link

xxxpost
I actually don't fully subscribe to the Empire of the Beat equation. I think the related 'unnatural' qualities of homosexuals and machines (and by extension disco) have more to do with their challenge of origin myths (whose privileging is also related to logocentrism and the obsession with authenticity).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:17 (nineteen years ago) link

---> some very ingrained form of puritanism. Again, subconscious. People don't have to be outwardly religious to have this mindset. It's hard to describe, but I think that's getting at it. (or am I?)

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:18 (nineteen years ago) link

A lot of this can seem pretty off-topic, but I would say that the disco era really put these ideas and anxieties on full display.

This whole discussion has got me craving the new Daft Punk album for a number of reasons!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:19 (nineteen years ago) link

thx for clearing that up Spencer (the "unnatural" thing didn't occur to me at all - mostly cuz the whole judgment of something being "unnatural" seems fundamentally flawed to me)

now I can go back to fantasizing about my new, healthy, all-natural gay robot-a-go-go band, the Sperm Trees.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:29 (nineteen years ago) link

Quite a thread. Now if I only didn't have to be working this afternoon. And now waiting on a FUCKING IDIOT TO FINALLY TAKE ME OFF HOLD. (Nobody here, thankfully.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:31 (nineteen years ago) link

Now I may go listen to "The Wanderer."

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:38 (nineteen years ago) link

Haha Shakey, I don't know if you're kidding as I don't feel like I've given a full explanation. I'm unable to really elaborate on it at the moment, but I certainly plan to.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:40 (nineteen years ago) link

First of all, give up the idea that hatred against disco had anything to do with rascism or homophobia. It didn't. Not at all.

There were several other good reasons for people to dislike it though:

- Rockers felt threatened by the polished sound, completely free of noisy guitars
- Prog fans disliked it for the same reason they had also disliked bubblegum and the teen oriented glam stuff, and would later dislike punk: It was too musically simple
- People preoccupied with rock ideologi disliked the fact that there were people behind caring more about constructing hits to bring them money rather than about making good music.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:43 (nineteen years ago) link

I'm kidding, I do not have a new all gay-robot band called the Sperm Trees.

YET.

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:44 (nineteen years ago) link

And, yes, indeed (and some of you funk fans seem to ignore): Funk fans disliked it because the disco beats were too simple and too machine-like

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:45 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't doubt that all those reasons are correct at the subtext level, Geir, but the real reason is what Matos and Chuck have suggested: the bottom fell out of the market, supply exceeded demand, etc. It's simple economics.

(By the way, straight males might have listened to Sylvester and Chic's "Real People" album more carefully if they'd realized they would have gotten laid if they'd danced to those hits. Most indie boys nowadays know that dancing - well or badly - makes you 10 times hotter. Here in Miami we have the swishy mid '90s Britpop to thank for that development).

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Of course, disco lived on in a way. Those 80s soul weekenders were pretty close to disco, as was a lot of 80s Europop. And today you will hear artists from Daft Punk to Annie using discofied 4/4 beats. But the original disco sound, with strings and all, more or less died in the late 70s/very early 80s.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:58 (nineteen years ago) link

The supposed subconscious machinephobia = gayphobia thing still completely eludes me. (and this ranks with the more cryptic comments I've ever seen on ILM: "the related 'unnatural' qualities of homosexuals and machines (and by extension disco) have more to do with their challenge of origin myths (whose privileging is also related to logocentrism and the obsession with authenticity)") What if I explained to you that the disco sucks crowd was way more likely to be working on automobile assembly lines than to be, uh, Amish or something? People in the Rustbelt LOVE machines; machines are their LIFE. (Why the hell do you think techno and house were invented there, for Crissakes?) ROCK MUSIC depends on machines -- or at the loud heavy kind that came from Detroit always did. (And a lot of it, from Iggy to Alice Cooper was blatantly androgynous, too. Detroit rock fans had no problem with Bowie singing "Panic in Detroit," either -- and Bowie's diamond-dog decadence blatantly influenced disco, as well.) So sorry, I don't buy it.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 22:59 (nineteen years ago) link

Spencer, read the essay before ascribing an "Empire of the Beat" equation. He's talking about stuff a lot differently than we are here (as I keep pointing out!)

xpost that proves my point!

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:01 (nineteen years ago) link

Chuck as per usual, we'll just have to agree to disagree. There are a number of texts which elaborate on this theory so I know I'm not out of my mind - or at least I'm not alone, haha.

What is cryptic about it? For the record, I do not think that homosexuals and machines are 'unnatural'.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:03 (nineteen years ago) link

for the record, my dad may have hated "i feel love" because he found it machine-like but he did not hate gays.

he did kind of hate machines, now that i think about it.

and all this talk about disco, machines and gays cannot lumber forward another step withour a mention of "There But for The Grace Of God Go I" by MACHINE which is, in and of itself, a version of this very discussion...

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:03 (nineteen years ago) link

Matos, did you mean me?? I've read it!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:04 (nineteen years ago) link

Carlos and Carmen Vidal just had a child
A lovely girl with a crooked smile
Now they gotta split 'cause the Bronx ain't fit
For a kid to grow up in
Let's find a place they say, somewhere far away
With no blacks, no Jews and no gays

Chorus:
There but for the grace of God go I

Poppy and the family left the dirty streets
To find a quiet place overseas
And year after year the kid has to hear
The do's the don'ts and the dears
And when she's ten years old she digs that rock 'n' roll
But Poppy bans it from home

Chorus

Baby, she turns out to be a natural freak
Popping pills and smoking weed
And when she's sweet sixteen she packs her things and leaves
With a man she met on the street
Carmen starts to bawl, bangs her head to the wall
Too much love is worse than none at all

Chorus

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:05 (nineteen years ago) link

I can see how someone would think gays are "unnatural", and I can see how someone would think machines are "unnatural" - but those POVs don't seem to actually overlap or complement each other (unless we're talking about Puritan Luddite grandpas here, which we obviously are not since, as chuck points out, it wasn't the Amish leading the "disco sucks" charge)

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:05 (nineteen years ago) link

Fritz, the hatreds do not necessarily go hand in hand, but there are interesting parallels and they often overlapped especially during the disco period.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:06 (nineteen years ago) link

gotta longer post coming but Spencer: I haven't read it in a long time and I apologize for assuming you hadn't read it. the misapprehension here is undoubtedly mine.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:07 (nineteen years ago) link

x-post
yeah, i get the concept, spence... just it came up after i mentioned my pop and didn't want him to suffer from guilt by association, not that anyone cares. :)

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:08 (nineteen years ago) link

(meaning I remember the piece being different than you, basically, and only tangentially touching down on the topic/s here.)

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:08 (nineteen years ago) link

cryptic (translate into comprehensible english, ok thanks):

challenge of origin myths

privileging

logocentrism

obsession with authentic

(i get the idea you might be taking an interesting idea and turning it boring; i just have no idea what the idea *is*, because you haven't remotely explained it.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:10 (nineteen years ago) link

hell, the disco sucksters all had CB RADIOS, dude! AND quadrophonic speakers!

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:12 (nineteen years ago) link

Like I said Chuck, I unfortunately don't have the time to elaborate at the moment (but I fully plan to!). Sorry about the "boring" and "cryptic" terminology.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:12 (nineteen years ago) link

The thing about the rustbelt is that the folks in it heavily prize rugged individualism (haha I'm also talking about this on ILE, Let's talk about the non- pop culture pop culture enjoyed by Real Amurricans in the '70s.) whatever their contact with machines. Midwesterners love cars because cars = freedom--and also for more practical reasons, but we're talking about romantic iconography here. And for plenty of rust-belters, or at least the ones I grew up around, freedom was exemplified by rock (autonomous prime creators) rather than disco (machine-tooled, lockstep, collaborative, with often hidden or "faceless" auteurs who lacked "personality," and never mind the exact same thing could have been said of Foreigner--see also racism/sexism/classism above).

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:14 (nineteen years ago) link

i'm looking forward to the eplanation sans others personal issues with being bored or not understanding

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:17 (nineteen years ago) link

sorry--the "above" at the end was meant to refer back to something I deleted from the post. I'm just thinking about the people I grew up around (people in their early-mid-20s at the most, my mother had me as a teenager), and realizing how completely racist, sexist, and homophobic a lot of them were. all of which factors in, to me, as part of the disco backlash when in fact much of the era's rock had many of the same exact musical qualities (or lack thereof) that the anti-discoids detested.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:20 (nineteen years ago) link

Does anyone remember "no synthesizers were used on this recording" stickers? I seem to recall seeing it on some vinyl rock records (maybe a Boston record - but I'm guessing).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:25 (nineteen years ago) link

Queen! (until they started using synthesizers)

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:25 (nineteen years ago) link

Tesla's actaully always used to say "no machines were used on this recording"! Which is pretty weird, seeing how they were named after the guy who invented the alternating current motor, and their albums all had names like Mechanical Resonance and The Great Radio Controversy.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Boston would be pretty weird too, since M.I.T. genius Tom Scholz was clearly the biggest techie in the history of rock music (he even inented the Rockman, so you can walk around playing guitar without plugging it in or something).

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:32 (nineteen years ago) link

Sweet were totally a MAN's band. What are you talking about, Matos?

"ALRIIIIIGHT FELLA-TH, LET'TH GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:32 (nineteen years ago) link

I think hatred of synths had nothing to do with homophobia (who knows how many disco haters even were aware of its roots, anyway) and everything to do with an aversion to/fear of assembly-line, mass-produced, soulless music.

― ()ops (()()ps), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:35 (nineteen years ago) link

you could say that about string sections, too, but the point is that rock = masculine for a lot of the people I'm talking about.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:37 (nineteen years ago) link

There's always this pop glam rock bridge between disco and rock in the mid 70s that's always grossly overlooked.. mainly in the UK.. Sweet, Angel, Heavy Metal Kids, Johnny Kongos, Gary Glitter, etc. that sort of invented what we call "American Sports Rock".. Queen fortified it. It's an interesting paradox.

()ops, synths were the absolute shit in rock circles in the 70s.. as were vocoders. Get one Frampton Comes Alive!

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:37 (nineteen years ago) link

get one prog rock!

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:38 (nineteen years ago) link

so anyway, all this is adding up to is that rock was conflicted and contradictory about its impulses toward presenting itself as "real". but then again, so was disco -- at least once "soulfulness" of vocals (loleatta holloway, etc) became an on-again off-again obsession. (cheryl lynn and sylvester had big hits ABOUT feeling real.) and so is every other kind of western popular music. maybe rock in the disco-sucks late '70s was just more *neurotic* about it. but it was hardly alone. (disco sucks basically IS hair metal sucks, when you get down to it. sylvester was a poison fan; he would totally agree with me.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:40 (nineteen years ago) link

well then why the "no synths used" stickers? it's not as if "rock circles" is this monolithic entity, and every person who bought a rock album in the 70s liked and thought the same things.

― ()ops (()()ps), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:40 (nineteen years ago) link

are you guys all still here???? yikes!

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:41 (nineteen years ago) link

the post disco-sucks era is, of course, when things got REALLY interesting and the robots took over completely. things always get so good when nobody is looking.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah but Chuck my sense is that while obviously disco divadom goes back before disco solidified as a genre, back then it was more like "church-bred R&B singing" or whatever; the "disco diva" as a vocal type didn't really come into its own till Donna Summer or so, and I'd say it didn't become solidified into an archetype till around the time "disco died," just like the Grateful Dead's music didn't become really psychedelic until after they'd left Haight-Ashbury. (and Scott is basically otm, but there's been loads of discussion and agreement about that on ILM for years now!)

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:49 (nineteen years ago) link

>eah but Chuck my sense is that while obviously disco divadom goes back before disco solidified as a genre, back then it was more like "church-bred R&B singing" or whatever; the "disco diva" as a vocal type didn't really come into its own till Donna Summer or so, and I'd say it didn't become solidified into an archetype till around the time "disco died,"<

this completely makes sense -- just like how, in the pre-sgt. pepper's '60s, none of the rock bands ever had to bill themselves as "real rock bands"; in fact, nobody had to do that until, when, springsteen? something like that. (maybe the band or creedence or flamin groovies did; I dunno -- but if your point is that the alleged authenticity doesn't have to advertise itself as such until it has sort of reduced itself to an *homage* to authenticity, i think I agree.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 23:57 (nineteen years ago) link

hey spencer c. if your thesis has to do w/ this issue i'd really like to read it, please do post

― gor gor the hill giant, Wednesday, 6 April 2005 00:16 (nineteen years ago) link

I think you can get at the gays/machines connection without having to strain yourself to make the "people who dislike the one also dislike the other" claim. With *electronic music* making (so this shades into but is not the same as disco, obviously) part of the imagery or rhetoric around it as an activity is that it is somehow *unnatural* because it is mediated by technology whose novelty makes its mechanical / thinglike qualities show up as marked in some way. Acoustic guitars are obviously manufactured technological artifacts too- but they don't *code* in that way, while drum machines and synths do- that's just how our culture has tended to see these things. This capacity of electronic gear to signify as more technologically mediated than other instruments is compounded by the imagery and sound design contexts (Forbidden Planet sdtrk, sci-fi films and TV shows in general) in which these instruments were first used in pop culture- a context and imagery bound up with the future. So if electronic music making is associated with the unnatural AND the futuristic, it is going to appeal to people who somehow feel themselves to be 1) "unnatural" in terms of their identity, their gender, their ability to fit in 2) have a stake in imagining a future society precisely because they feel ill at ease in the present society. I think this is a partial, maybe sketchy explanation for why proportionally gays are over-represented in sci-fi fandom, and also why there seems to be an associative link in the culture's imagination between queerness and electronic music making. You could compare this interface between the inhuman, the unnatural, the futuristic, and the queer with, say William S. Burrough's cultivation of the inhumanity of the junkie as one way of negotiating his queerness, routing it through a celebration of the artificial in terms that make it seem both repellent and yet powerful, compelling. What drag does to the authenticity of gender as something you can simulate, electronic instruments do with the capacity to create simulations of acoustically immediate "natural" sound: it reveals the "real" to be something you can manipulate and chop up and reconstruct- this is appealing (maybe falsely so) to people who regard themselves as shut out from access to a membership in the sanctioned collectivity of people who celebrate their real love with real legal marriages etc. This may or may not convince you, but it's one way of trying to connect these things together.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 01:11 (nineteen years ago) link

the post disco-sucks era is, of course, when things got REALLY interesting and the robots took over completely.

Well, basically, the hatred against disco ended because the same people suddenly felt even more hatred against synthpop.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 01:18 (nineteen years ago) link

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