TonyVanDam said:

FUCK Vanilla Ice!

Timmy84 said:

I like Vanilla Ice.

coolcat said:

Shall I bring Ganon?



Just joking.

Timmy84 said:

What was that??

Harlepolis said:

maybe somebody beat me to it but those fuckin boots?

vainandy glad you checked in. This is right up your alley!

The sad part about rap and even Shitney is that it was White folks that blew it up and kept it going. LOL...if it was down to Blacks and the rnb charts, I think a more traditional rnb sound would have re-emerged. Unfortunately, there's far too much reason to crossover which means either hip hop OR adult contemporary.

Good news is that I think people are in a mood for a drastic change. Many younguns have a thing for pre hip hop sounds in rnb, rock, etc...for them, the old is the new.

bboy said

Does this professor have ANY idea about the evolution of popular music and what it signifies in terms of cultural shifts? Honestly, he must think the world ended w/ Pink Floyd or ELP. If he knew anything, he'd know that it represented a radical shift by putting previously marginalized minorities front and center. Disco was one of the only forms of music to date who's perfomers were not overwlehmingly male, white, or suburban. Let's not forget its 1st and still loyal fan base was NOT heterosexual either. Disco is one of the 1st things that gays openly blew up. It proved that not only were they there, but also a serious consumer base. That hardly says "shallow" to me.

Disco was the LAST time that so many minorities were so absolutely invisible. That's what the whole kerfuffle of Disco Sucks was about. The genies were out of the bottle!

For the record, there were plenty of straight white dudes who dug disco. "Saturday Night Fever" was truthful in this regard!
[Edited 6/17/09 21:48pm]

bboy87 said:

see

brooksie said:

the guy also classified Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna as "Dance Pop"

and said that of the 3, Madonna is the most successful ("She's the only one who has been on the covers of major magazines every year for the past 25 years")

Matter of fact, he completely ignored Prince, downplayed MJ, and said Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, and The Isley Brothers didn't hold much significance

I haven't said anything about those cowboy boots and that dress (hoping they'd go away or that I mistook it), but unless she was doing Dolly Parton does disco, that cover alone would ensure a fail. Re looks hot tho, nevertheless.

coolcat said:

I don't know. Some kind of meme on YouTube.

brooksie said:

So what happened that changed all that...

bboy87 said:

Man I wish I was in California...

...so I can hit him with my shoe, dirty bastard, how dare he say Donny, Roberta and the Isleys weren't shit, you old wanna-be-young think-you-too-smart-than-the-students ass!

heybaby said:

then homegirl discovered the wonders of cheeseburgers, pizza, and chocolate pudding.....and it went all bad

bboy87 said:

This dude seems to have a problem w/ Black folks. I guess Jimi Hendrix was a lesser technical guitar player than EC and Muddy Waters was a passing fluke! Chuck Berry...he stole his shit from Buddy Holly! Motown was also a somewhat successful record company. Pat Boone kicked Lil Richards' ASS! (This is just how his line of thinking sounds....jerk.)


On the MJ-Madonna thing, what an idiot! MJ gets more coverage than Madonna in the world. MJ is probably the most famous person alive...and even when Di was alive, I couldn't tell ya who got more coverage. The world is bigger than People or Rolling Stone, Mr. Prof...buy a clue.
[Edited 6/17/09 22:07pm]

vainandy said:

I'm glad you said this because disco was really the 1st FULLY crossover music. It was popular w/ all ages, races, and it offered an upbeat cheerful vibe that people were in need of. If you wanted to experince it "live", clubs were the place for it, not stadiums. As I said earlier, rock had gotten too morose, pretentious, and lacked much intimacy. They didn't call it "arena rock" for nothing. No coinkidink that Disco Sucks happened at a stadium.

bboy87 said:

AFTER she:

1.) quit alcohol
2.) quit smoking Menthols
3.) her father getting shot, then put into a coma, only to die five years later
4.) men dumping her or her getting frustrated easily with the men in her life
5.) possible bouts with depression
6.) emotional reactions to ALL of her siblings dying (especially Carolyn and Cecil at early ages)

You know I've joked about her for so long but seriously I think a lot of things caused Aretha to blow up when she did.

vainandy said:

Alot of those lyrics also applied to gay men...so that made it all the more interesting.

You mentioned Debbie Boone (Pat Boone's daughter...ick) and I had to laugh cuz she and Marie Osmond, Tenelle, the Dawn singers, Olivia Newton-John etc...were so typical of how women pop artists were back then, both in lyrics and looks. These disco chicks were like compared to them.

Harle before disco, Marie Osmaond was HUGE. Does that tell ya something?

brooksie said:

Don't forget Karen Carpenter. Today, we look at her music in a new light but her record label didn't know what to do with her and they had her as some goody-two-shoes granny-clothes wearing chick. After she tried to go the OTHER route with her solo album, they bashed her and shelved it.

Timmy84 said:

Don't forget all the issues surrounding her two kids born before she qas 17. Aretha's such a complex person. Aretha's upbringing is one of the most unique in popular music. I'd love for a great bio of her to come out.

Karen Carpenter...how could I forget her? In the 70s, it was kinda Holly Hobby'd "homespun" that seemed to rule the day.

Wow, didn't know that.

brooksie said:

Unfortunately a REAL bio of her won't come out until she leaves us. Don't get Harle started on the autobiography she put out which she REFUSED to talk about her personal life. Ever since 1968 when TIME printed out that her mother abandoned her when she was six (which to this day Aretha said was a lie), she has refused to go into detail of her personal life thinking they may miscontrue what was going on with her. And yeah I almost forgot about the kids and the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband.

I just found out Aretha was arrested twice in her life, she was arrested once for a DUI and then again for disturbing the peace. She definitely has lived a complex life. The way she sung those songs in the '60s and '70s, you KNEW Ree-Ree had problems!
[Edited 6/18/09 8:04am]

Ironic with this thread discussing disco and Nile and company had trouble getting in to Studio 54.

Timmy84 said:

i didn't know any of that.

brooksie said:

When Karen tried to take a risk (this was during her bout with anorexia nervosa and during Richard's rehab stint after his addiction to quaaludes) with her solo career with Phil Ramone, she and Phil got egg in their faces. I always said when they shelved her album, that was the beginning of the end of her life. She never took criticism of her music well, she took it real personally too.

Timmy84 said:

Yeah, Re won't let something serious come out in her lifetime, but by the time she's gone, it'll probably be too late. So many folks who knew her, esp. when young, are already dead.

The Rev Franklin stuff...that's what she's REALLY afraid of, I suspect.

The way she sung those songs...so sexual, so knowing, so longing. Nobody's quite like her.

It sure is. Disco was my first love and it was absolutely rediculous the way they blew up those disco records in that baseball stadium and the whole "Disco Sucks" movement that happened afterwards. If you notice in the video footage of that incident, every one of them were the typical straight white male that has been traditionally intolerant of anything they consider "different" such as minorities and gay people. That crowd appealed to the people at home watching television that were just like them but were listening to disco without really paying attention to the fact that they were listening to a black and gay form of music.

And they really used that "gay" aspect to kill it with their slogan "Disco Sucks". I think that's the first time I ever heard the word "sucks" to refer to something that someone doesn't like. Before the "Disco Sucks" slogan, the only time I ever heard the word "sucks" was when straight people were referring to homosexual sex acts. After that incident, I started hearing the word "sucks" used to refer to anything that people don't like. A group of arrogant people starting an incident at a national televised event can definately influence the attitude and tastes of the viewers. As Gloria Gaynor has said for years since that incident...."If they always hated disco so much, where did they get all those disco records to blow up".



I think if black artists had not become so obsessed with crossing over in the late 1980s that a totally drastic type of new sound may have emerged. I mean, damn near every new form of music in this country has been invented by black people and other minorities. Instead, these labels just want to keep the same old shit going on endlessly forever and ever.



I think the internet is eventually going to be the thing that gets styles changed. Record labels can control style changes as long as they are the only outlet that controls it. But with the internet, hopefully people making music in genres that the labels refuse to sign will get some recognition and become popular.



And that's one thing I really loved about disco. It totally shattered the stereotype that we were all dorky nerdy ass types who were into Judy Garland and show tunes. It showed that we could throw down and throw down hard. Actually, we throw down harder than straight people. I first noticed that in the 1990s when straight people were listening to all this slow ass shit hop as slow as elevator music and we were in the clubs throwing down to some fast ass house music.

xlr8r said:

Well he got his back in "Le Chic". That just goes to show ya what it was like back then .

xlr8r said:

That was a very colorful story!

Word was Neil and Bernard were trying to get in 54, which was NOTORIOUS for their door policy and their lack of compassion obviously, and they said they were guests for Grace Jones, the door man still wouldn't let them budge. So angry, they went to the bar, got a little drunk, returned to their apartment and Nile got his guitar and started screaming "AH...FUCK OFF!" while playing the riff. Bernard looked over and said "hey man let's write a song".

The song was originally called "Freak Off" (as a protest record), Nile then alter the lyrics and renamed it "Freak Out" and gave a sly mention to Studio 54:

"Just come on down to '54'
Find a spot out on the floor
Ah...FREAK OUT!"

The rest is music history!

brooksie said:

Yeah I always wonder about the Rev. Franklin stuff.

Anyway, yeah, about Aretha and her singing, the same can be said about Patti, Gladys, Tina and Etta...