vainandy said:

PANDURITO said:

Yet the laughing stock was a trio of white brothers

Who sang in very high falsettos which a lot of people considered very "gay" sounding.

Thank you. To deny that the diss on Bee Gees didn't have a homophobic slant on it (and they weren't gay in reality but that was the ASSumption by disco haters) is like denying that some folks had problems with Donna Summer on the cover of Rolling Stone not because she was a disco singer but she was someone who dared NOT to sing "R&B music" but rather pop and rock music.

I L.O.V.E The Bee Gees..... Their 1 of my top 5 favorite groups/bands ever... and im only 15 lol

How could you not like The Bee Gees? Even Alice Cooper likes them. I could not find the clip of when Alice admitted to turning the stereo up when a Bee Gees song comes on the radio, but I did find this:

NDRU said:

dseann said:

Prince had that same look back in 79. What's wrong with it?

Barry Gibb is STILL trying to rock that look

You're wrong. Just wrong.

lazycrockett said:

[img:$uid]http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p3/Lazycrockett/sgt-pepper.jpg[/img:$uid]

One of the best movies ever!

Timmy84 said:

vainandy said:

Who sang in very high falsettos which a lot of people considered very "gay" sounding.

Thank you. To deny that the diss on Bee Gees didn't have a homophobic slant on it (and they weren't gay in reality but that was the ASSumption by disco haters) is like denying that some folks had problems with Donna Summer on the cover of Rolling Stone not because she was a disco singer but she was someone who dared NOT to sing "R&B music" but rather pop and rock music.

the thing is though The Bee Gees really just got lumped into that whole disco thing, as John Travolta said when doing SNF, the whole disco thing was dieing at that point, he had to go to a "thrift" shop for the clothes because no one was wearing it, the suit he wore was a fluke and that pose on the cover was an outtake. When the Bee Gees got with Arif Mardin and were doing things like Jive Talkin, they werent doing disco but more of a funk vibe. To me "disco" was not what the Bee Gees were doing but more for like artists like Alicia Bridges, Linda Clifford, Santa Esmeralda etc.. But yes the whole "gay" thing was part of the stigma thrown on the Bee Gees for a long time, there were tons of people that didnt know they were a top group in the 60's, and didnt just start in 1977.

I always loved the Bee Gees, never even knew that there was a significant segment of people out there who didn't like them. They were a damned good musical group.

Timmy84 said:

vainandy said:

Who sang in very high falsettos which a lot of people considered very "gay" sounding.

Thank you. To deny that the diss on Bee Gees didn't have a homophobic slant on it (and they weren't gay in reality but that was the ASSumption by disco haters) is like denying that some folks had problems with Donna Summer on the cover of Rolling Stone not because she was a disco singer but she was someone who dared NOT to sing "R&B music" but rather pop and rock music.

I dont want to get all nit-picky all late in the game, but Donna Summers sang dance music known as Disco...and it was not her fault that folks chose to catagorize it in the manner in which they did. Her criticism came because of a few reasons. For starters many black artists were "unwilling" to let go of "soul" and they viewed disco the way that many true hip hop heads viewed "MC Hammer" and "puff Daddy" as commercialized music makers that watered down the true art form. You hear people such as Don Corneleous, Pattie Austin, Quincy Jones and others from back in the day mock Disco music in general, Donna was just a victim of that entire mindset. There were others who sang disco that did not get criticized like Donna Summer ie. Gloria Gaynor. But Donna Summers was bigger, much bigger.

In addition, that song "Hot Stuff" garnered a lot of criticism due to the bisexual lyrics, and then the rumors started about her being a man instead of a woman. Poor woman ended up having a nervous breakdown at some point in her career, and then the whole disco thing died along with her career. I don't think most people considered Donna Summers as a "rock" singer as you stated though. Most would classify her as Disco moreso than Pop (eventhough by then almost anything that non black people liked could be catapulted into the catagory of music called "Pop".

vainandy said:

therevolutionwillnotbe said:

Most people are fearful of happiness. They are threatened by it and anyone who dare to openly display it. This leads to them wanting to destroy the thing they are threatened by. This is why D-I-S-C-O had to be eradicated. Don't even mention the word to some people. Its' mere utterance conjures up all kinds unpleasant images.

[Edited 8/18/10 3:25am]

They also hated to see other white people listening to all that black music. The disco era was less than a decade away from the civil rights era of the 1960s and they just could not stand seeing all those white people listening to a form of music that was predominately black. Listen to black folks music and you'll eventually start hanging with them and seeing them as your equals. I can't tell you how many times I heard that. And then there was the gay aspect of disco that pissed them off even more.

During the disco era, white radio had just as many black artists getting regular airplay as white artists. Hell, black artists may have even been getting more airplay from what I remember during the era. But I remember in late 1979, when the backlash began. For years, you didn't hear any black artists on white radio unless they were the more toned down and safe ones like Lionel Richie or Michael Jackson.

This is true, but the hate was spewing from both sides. One side was intimidated by the possiblity of "mingling' with blacks and their "J" music, the other side was concerned that yet another artform of theirs would be stolen and recatagorized as white such as what happened with "Rock and Roll". Some black folks just weren't ready to let go of their "soul" music. Because there were only a few non-black artist to Successfully infiltrate soul music (kinda like Hip Hop today), but Disco was a free for all, anyone could mimic it and make it dancable and then "boom" another lost artform. That was the mindset of some of the people back in the day. So it was killed.

I always thought that people hated the Village People, but not the Bee Gees because they were a serious musical group right there. Victor Willis carried the Village People on his shoulders, I've heard of the Village People being mocked and hated but I really was oblivious to the Bee Gees being hated until I read this thread.

I read somewhere that Victor Willis is about 57 years old and just got outta rehab and made a statement to the effect that he's "Now ready to live the other half of his life sober". Wow...so he was high as a kite during that whole wild disco experience huh? That musta been one helluva ride.

rmartin70 said:

How could you not like The Bee Gees? Even Alice Cooper likes them. I could not find the clip of when Alice admitted to turning the stereo up when a Bee Gees song comes on the radio, but I did find this:

I the Bee Gees. I used to want " I Started a Joke" to be played at my funeral.

Reel said:

I always thought that people hated the Village People, but not the Bee Gees because they were a serious musical group right there. Victor Willis carried the Village People on his shoulders, I've heard of the Village People being mocked and hated but I really was oblivious to the Bee Gees being hated until I read this thread.

I read somewhere that Victor Willis is about 57 years old and just got outta rehab and made a statement to the effect that he's "Now ready to live the other half of his life sober". Wow...so he was high as a kite during that whole wild disco experience huh? That musta been one helluva ride.

Well in the UK, the Village People were always seen as a great fun group, they were mocked certainly - but never maliciously. However, not many here at the time would have thought of the Bee Gees as "serious musical group" - they were, and still are, regarded as little more than a joke.

(I think their reputation was made and sealed in the UK after indirectly insulting the Beatles, and anyone else with ears, in that truly horrendous and tasteless Beatles 'tribute' film they were in, circa '75? - I forget what it was called)

The BeeGees are probably more well known here now for their pomposity and ease of being offended when people did not state that they are best thing since sliced bread. Their legendary egocentric appearance (and subsequent disappearance) on Clive Anderson Talks Back is still a classic and is the only time I have enjoyed seeing them on TV.

vainandy said:

RodeoSchro said:

WTF?!? There was no anti-black, anti-white stuff associated with disco. At least, not here in Texas and we have no shortage of rednecks.

Hell, I can remember going to former NFL quarterback/Alabama alum Kenny Stabler's nightclub, and the dance floor was never more packed than when they'd play disco songs.

People said disco sucked because they thought disco sucked. Yes, there was gay stigma attached to the Village People, but that's because they were pretty flaming gay and were easy targets for bigots. It had nothing to do with disco per se.

"Disco Demolition Night" was alcohol fueled. They blew up the disco records at the end of the game, after everyone was drunk.

And the radio airplay point? That's so incorrect it makes me shudder. However, MTV did not play videos from African American artists until Michael Jackson's "Thriller", but that was TV, not radio, and came way after disco's demise.

Of course not, while the disco era was actually going on. Hell, they really weren't paying too much attention to what they were listening to. All they knew was it sounded good and they were having a good time to it. And most people didn't know it's gay roots until after it ended. But when it did end, there was a backlash from hell and it was totally racist and homophobic. I haven't heard such racist remarks made about music in my lifetime as I heard about disco in the first few years after it ended.

Once again, head in the sand denial of racism. And how am I incorrect about the radio airplay of black artists after the disco era and the backlash began. Remember, disco ended in 1979. Take a look at white radio in the early 1980s and what they played. If there wasn't a backlash against black artists, then why do most white people to this very day not have any knowledge of folks like The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, Lakeside, Bill Summers and Summers Heat, Skyy, Brick, Fatback, Roger and Zapp, Midnight Star, Slave, etc. Go over to the Prince section and look at the responses when a lot of those people first heard of Prince. You'll see so many responses of "Little Red Corvette" or "Purple Rain" that it'll make your head spin. If there wasn't a backlash, why wasn't Prince known in most of the white world until "Little Red Corvette"? He was all over black radio. Every black person knew who he was before then. And why didn't most white people have any knowledge of Cameo until "Word Up". Hell, they had been all over black radio for years before that one. White radio certainly wasn't playing them but yet, white radio was filled with black artists during the disco era before the backlash....that is until someone told them it was no longer "cool" to play them. Like I always say, a child is not born racist, a child is taught to be racist. They were fine with this form of black music until they were told they shouldn't be into it and that rediculous record burning at that stadium was a major message to them that they needed to get with the program and drop that black gay stuff or be considered an outcast.

.

.

.

[Edited 8/18/10 15:02pm]

LOL, this reminded me that before I was known as "RodeoSchro" I was called "DiscoSchro".

As I recall, I didn't discover many disco songs on the radio, whether it be white radio or black radio. We heard most disco songs for the first time in discos. The discos in Houston got most of that music from New York City.

I think you're confusing popularity with racism or bigotry. Disco was a genre that had its day, no different than punk, grunge, and hopefully, rap/hip-hop. Its day was just pretty short.

White radio didn't play many black disco songs for the same reason black radio didn't play ANY Bruce Springsteen or AC/DC songs. Each radio station picks a format and plays songs from within that format to reach a target audience.

You know, for many many years, Bruce Springsteen was the only musician ever to appear simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. And yet, none of my black friends had ever heard "Rosalita". But that doesn't mean they and their radio stations were racists. They just had different interests, playlists and target audiences.

Hell, Prince had never heard the Beatles' music until Wendy and Lisa exposed him to it.

It is not any single radio station's job to educate the mass of America on every type of music that's out there.

Keep in mind that the man who transformed popular music into disco is the same man that transformed it into country-pop. That man is John Travolta. "Saturday Night Fever" inspired one type of genre, but "Urban Cowboy" spawned the exact opposite. It's not surprising that the dwellers who existed in those genres before they got popular were like oil and water.

But those are small subsets to the larger audience. Most of my friends ditched their silk shirts for cowboy hats with feathered headbands, and no one thought anyone was gay or a redneck. We were just following the trend.

And all those black artists you mentioned? The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, Lakeside, Bill Summers and Summers Heat, Skyy, Brick, Fatback, Roger and Zapp, Midnight Star, Slave and Cameo?

ALL the white people in my age group and circle of friends knew about them, starting from around 1980 or so until 1984-85. Their brand of funk took over in the clubs after the Urban Cowboy trend petered out. I can't tell you how many funk cassettes I made for my white friends that were basically made up of the artists you mentioned, along with Junior, the Ohio Players, Evelyn "Champagne" King, Cherrelle, Frankie Beverly and Maze, and others.

That was THEIR heyday. And they were accepted and enjoyed, until Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna booted them out of the clubs.

..

[Edited 8/23/10 6:44am]

TheSkinMechanic said:

Reel said:

I always thought that people hated the Village People, but not the Bee Gees because they were a serious musical group right there. Victor Willis carried the Village People on his shoulders, I've heard of the Village People being mocked and hated but I really was oblivious to the Bee Gees being hated until I read this thread.

I read somewhere that Victor Willis is about 57 years old and just got outta rehab and made a statement to the effect that he's "Now ready to live the other half of his life sober". Wow...so he was high as a kite during that whole wild disco experience huh? That musta been one helluva ride.

Well in the UK, the Village People were always seen as a great fun group, they were mocked certainly - but never maliciously. However, not many here at the time would have thought of the Bee Gees as "serious musical group" - they were, and still are, regarded as little more than a joke.

(I think their reputation was made and sealed in the UK after indirectly insulting the Beatles, and anyone else with ears, in that truly horrendous and tasteless Beatles 'tribute' film they were in, circa '75? - I forget what it was called)

The BeeGees are probably more well known here now for their pomposity and ease of being offended when people did not state that they are best thing since sliced bread. Their legendary egocentric appearance (and subsequent disappearance) on Clive Anderson Talks Back is still a classic and is the only time I have enjoyed seeing them on TV.

That's hilarious. Robin looked like he wanted to kill some crowd members.

HatrinaHaterwitz said:

lazycrockett said:

[img:$uid]http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p3/Lazycrockett/sgt-pepper.jpg[/img:$uid]

One of the best movies ever!

LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie!! I can't believe that no one's mentioned The Barry Gibb Talk Show on SNL. I can't find a proper video though. Hilarious!!!!

lastdecember said:

Timmy84 said:

Thank you. To deny that the diss on Bee Gees didn't have a homophobic slant on it (and they weren't gay in reality but that was the ASSumption by disco haters) is like denying that some folks had problems with Donna Summer on the cover of Rolling Stone not because she was a disco singer but she was someone who dared NOT to sing "R&B music" but rather pop and rock music.

the thing is though The Bee Gees really just got lumped into that whole disco thing, as John Travolta said when doing SNF, the whole disco thing was dieing at that point, he had to go to a "thrift" shop for the clothes because no one was wearing it, the suit he wore was a fluke and that pose on the cover was an outtake. When the Bee Gees got with Arif Mardin and were doing things like Jive Talkin, they werent doing disco but more of a funk vibe. To me "disco" was not what the Bee Gees were doing but more for like artists like Alicia Bridges, Linda Clifford, Santa Esmeralda etc.. But yes the whole "gay" thing was part of the stigma thrown on the Bee Gees for a long time, there were tons of people that didnt know they were a top group in the 60's, and didnt just start in 1977.

I agree. And it's a damn shame people think they were "disco". I definitely think they had a funk vibe during the '70s. I kinda blame "Saturday Night Fever" for what happened to the Bee Gees (a kind of blessing/stigma thing). And it's also a damn shame people think they had just started in '77. Musical illiteracy is a disease apparently.

GetAwayFromMe said:

HatrinaHaterwitz said:

LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie!! I can't believe that no one's mentioned The Barry Gibb Talk Show on SNL. I can't find a proper video though. Hilarious!!!!

Have you seen "Scott Pilgrim VS The World"?

RodeoSchro said:

vainandy said:

Of course not, while the disco era was actually going on. Hell, they really weren't paying too much attention to what they were listening to. All they knew was it sounded good and they were having a good time to it. And most people didn't know it's gay roots until after it ended. But when it did end, there was a backlash from hell and it was totally racist and homophobic. I haven't heard such racist remarks made about music in my lifetime as I heard about disco in the first few years after it ended.

Once again, head in the sand denial of racism. And how am I incorrect about the radio airplay of black artists after the disco era and the backlash began. Remember, disco ended in 1979. Take a look at white radio in the early 1980s and what they played. If there wasn't a backlash against black artists, then why do most white people to this very day not have any knowledge of folks like The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, Lakeside, Bill Summers and Summers Heat, Skyy, Brick, Fatback, Roger and Zapp, Midnight Star, Slave, etc. Go over to the Prince section and look at the responses when a lot of those people first heard of Prince. You'll see so many responses of "Little Red Corvette" or "Purple Rain" that it'll make your head spin. If there wasn't a backlash, why wasn't Prince known in most of the white world until "Little Red Corvette"? He was all over black radio. Every black person knew who he was before then. And why didn't most white people have any knowledge of Cameo until "Word Up". Hell, they had been all over black radio for years before that one. White radio certainly wasn't playing them but yet, white radio was filled with black artists during the disco era before the backlash....that is until someone told them it was no longer "cool" to play them. Like I always say, a child is not born racist, a child is taught to be racist. They were fine with this form of black music until they were told they shouldn't be into it and that rediculous record burning at that stadium was a major message to them that they needed to get with the program and drop that black gay stuff or be considered an outcast.

.

.

.

[Edited 8/18/10 15:02pm]

LOL, this reminded me that before I was known as "RodeoSchro" I was called "DiscoSchro".

As I recall, I didn't discover many disco songs on the radio, whether it be white radio or black radio. We heard most disco songs for the first time in discos. The discos in Houston got most of that music from New York City.

I think you're confusing popularity with racism or bigotry. Disco was a genre that had its day, no different than punk, grunge, and hopefully, rap/hip-hop. Its day was just pretty short.

White radio didn't play many black disco songs for the same reason black radio didn't play ANY Bruce Springsteen or AC/DC songs. Each radio station picks a format and plays songs from within that format to reach a target audience.

You know, for many many years, Bruce Springsteen was the only musician ever to appear simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. And yet, none of my black friends had ever heard "Rosalita". But that doesn't mean they and their radio stations were racists. They just had different interests, playlists and target audiences.

Hell, Prince had never heard the Beatles' music until Wendy and Lisa exposed him to it.

It is not any single radio station's job to educate the mass of America on every type of music that's out there.

Keep in mind that the man who transformed popular music into disco is the same man that transformed it into country-pop. That man is John Travolta. "Saturday Night Fever" inspired one type of genre, but "Urban Cowboy" spawned the exact opposite. It's not surprising that the dwellers who existed in those genres before they got popular were like oil and water.

But those are small subsets to the larger audience. Most of my friends ditched their silk shirts for cowboy hats with feathered headbands, and no one thought anyone was gay or a redneck. We were just following the trend.

And all those black artists you mentioned? The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, Lakeside, Bill Summers and Summers Heat, Skyy, Brick, Fatback, Roger and Zapp, Midnight Star, Slave and Cameo?

ALL the white people in my age group and circle of friends knew about them, starting from around 1980 or so until 1984-85. Their brand of funk took over in the clubs after the Urban Cowboy trend petered out. I can't tell you how many funk cassettes I made for my white friends that were basically made up of the artists you mentioned, along with Junior, the Ohio Players, Evelyn "Champagne" King, Cherrelle, Frankie Beverly and Maze, and others.

That was THEIR heyday. And they were accepted and enjoyed, until Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna booted them out of the clubs.

..

[Edited 8/23/10 6:44am]

But that's just it, you're talking about club people that went to clubs that actually played "club music". That was just a small segment of the white world back then. The average white person back then had never heard of those groups and when they did hear the music, they called it "jungle music".

The pop charts and R&B charts (which was called the black chart back then) show the true picture of who (the average listener, not the exceptions) was listening to what.

.

.

.

[Edited 8/24/10 14:10pm]

vainandy said:

But that's just it, you're talking about club people that went to clubs that actually played "club music". That was just a small segment of the white world back then. The average white person back then had never heard of those groups and when they did hear the music, they called it "jungle music".

Or 'n****r music'. I heard that plenty of times at my Long Island high school from the rocker crowd.

And we also gotta understand that music between 1979 and 1982 was very much separated. So to think a lot of folks besides from the usual R&B crowd were digging the music of Cameo, the Gap Band, Roger & Zapp and 'em would be like saying that people hated disco just because of disco's commercial stranglehold but there was a LOT more to it than that.

Unfortunately for the Bee Gees they were caught in the crossfires of that.

Does anyone know why their 1975 album 'Main Course' is so hard to find on CD these days? It seems to be out of print.

SoulAlive said:

Does anyone know why their 1975 album 'Main Course' is so hard to find on CD these days? It seems to be out of print.

It's only a matter of time before CDs are phased out like they did with every other format that came before. The labels can make as much money selling mp3 downloads without having to press and manufacture product. If you want 'Main Course' on CD you better check your local used record shops and websites like eBay and Gemm while you can still get it for under $25.

[Edited 8/25/10 4:17am]

therevolutionwillnotbe said:

SoulAlive said:

Does anyone know why their 1975 album 'Main Course' is so hard to find on CD these days? It seems to be out of print.

It's only a matter of time before CDs are phased out like they did with every other format that came before. The labels can make as much money selling mp3 downloads without having to press and manufacture product. If you want 'Main Course' on CD you better check your local used record shops and websites like eBay and Gemm while you can still get it for under $25.

therevolutionwillnotbe said:

SoulAlive said:

Does anyone know why their 1975 album 'Main Course' is so hard to find on CD these days? It seems to be out of print.

It's only a matter of time before CDs are phased out like they did with every other format that came before. The labels can make as much money selling mp3 downloads without having to press and manufacture product. If you want 'Main Course' on CD you better check your local used record shops and websites like eBay and Gemm while you can still get it for under $25.

Thanks for the info.I was hoping that the CD would get the remastered treatment.'Children Of The World' (their best album,imo) and 'Spirits Having Flown' were remastered awhile back.Oh well,guess I'll just have to find a download of it.

ufoclub said:

GetAwayFromMe said:

LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie!! I can't believe that no one's mentioned The Barry Gibb Talk Show on SNL. I can't find a proper video though. Hilarious!!!!

Have you seen "Scott Pilgrim VS The World"?

No I haven't, but would like to!

GetAwayFromMe said:

ufoclub said:

Have you seen "Scott Pilgrim VS The World"?

No I haven't, but would like to!

Well it has a lot in common in a very basic way with the vibe of Sgt Pepper movie. You'll see... go check it out. If you really appreciate the Sgt Pepper movie (hated by most of the world), You'll like Scott... I like both... a lot.

Scott is also about glorifiying rock in roll.... remember that movie "Crossroads"? With the Karate Kid actor?

ufoclub said:

GetAwayFromMe said:

No I haven't, but would like to!

Well it has a lot in common in a very basic way with the vibe of Sgt Pepper movie. You'll see... go check it out. If you really appreciate the Sgt Pepper movie (hated by most of the world), You'll like Scott... I like both... a lot.

Scott is also about glorifiying rock in roll.... remember that movie "Crossroads"? With the Karate Kid actor?

Yes, but does it feature Beatles tunes? What was I? Like 7 or eight years old when the Sgt Pepper movie came out? I learned to appreciate and love the Beatles through the Bee Gees!

By the way, I also loved Xanadu! LOL!

TonyVanDam said:

SoulAlive said:

The Bee Gees were unfairly blacklisted because of the disco backlash After the 'Spirits Having Flown' album,I didn't hear any of their singles on the radio.Ironically,other folks who were closely associated with disco (John Travolta,Donna Summer,Bernard Edwards and Niles Rodgers,etc) still continued to have success in the 80s.

Not so. the acting career of John Travoita was at an all time worst in the 1980's. The only thing that saved his career in the 1990's was Look Who's Talking? AND Pulp Fiction.

'Urban Cowboy' was a huge hit movie in 1980 and if I'm not mistaken,'Look Who's Talking' came out in 1988.Sure,he had some flops in the 80s,but I don't think his career suffered from any disco backlash.He just picked some horrible roles