If all disco means to you is records like 'I
Will Survive' and 'YMCA', tacky fashions and glitter
eyeshadow, this book will be a real revelation. For Alan
Jones and Jussi Kantonen, disco was an essential
soundtrack to their lives. They loved its total
hedonistic excess, its drive, its punch and its sweet,
catchy melodies. For every chart hit that pounded into
the public's consciousness, countless other better
tracks were causing hair-raising highs on dance floors
where Alan and Jussi and thousands of aficionados like
them were strutting their funky stuff. Disco started
in obscure underground clubs as a glamour-filled
reaction to the plodding, self-indulgent rock music of
the late '60s and really took off in the
excitement-parched early '70s. Created by people
marginalised by their colour (black), race (Latino),
sexuality (gay) or class (working), the music and its
attendant lifestyle inevitably became watered down and
distorted once it slipped from the control of small
independent labels and became a worldwide craze. The
massive popularity of films such as Saturday Night
Fever and the accompanying Bee Gees soundtrack led
people to believe that this was disco. But the authors,
by exploring such diverse strands as Eurodisco and
roller disco, gay disco, and disco fashions, drugs and
clubs, show this to be untrue, and instead uncover the
magical, multi-layered genre in all its shining,
strobe-lit glory. They believe in mirror
balls.
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