DISCO HANDBOOK
DISCO HANDBOOK
DISCO HANDBOOK
DISCO HANDBOOK
DISCO HANDBOOK
NIGHTLIFE
Nightlife is the collective term for any entertainment that is available and more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning. It includes the pubs, nightclubs, bars, live music, cabaret, small theatres, small cinemas, shows, and sometimes restaurants a specific area may have. Nightlife encompasses entertainment from the fairly tame to the risque to the seedy. Nightlife entertainment is inherently edgier than daytime amusements, and usually more oriented to young adults. Under some rubrics, Nightlife also encompasses such "adult entertainment" as a red-light district.
For instance, many young people would choose to go to Berlin or other such places "for the nightlife" as there is a wide range of clubs and other such places to go, although there may not be much else on offer in the locality. Madrid is particularly well known for the range of ages that participate in the nightlife and for the extended hours that they stay out. For example, the last call in Montreal is at 3am and Afterhour clubs open at 4am to close near 11am. Dublin is also an immensely popular destination for revellers wanting to experience its vibrant nightlife, with the Irish Government crediting this with a large upturn in the city's tourism in the last 15 years.
DISCO history
Some people claims the Disco scene started already in the early 70's. Like in '71-'73. But I guess that really depends on what you think is DISCO?! The Discotheque scene really started back then, with clubs starting playing music on records to the audience. In these clubs, the Disc-Jockey [the DJ] was formed as this guy putting the records on the turntables and often talking to the crowd in a radio show kind of way.
Other people say the Disco days started in the mid 70's and that's also my opinion. I think that you in tunes from around '74-'76 can start hearing more of, what I call, "the Disco sound" - than you could just a couple of years before.
One of the first "Disco Hits" was Gloria Gaynor's "Never can say goodbye", which was on top of the charts already back in 1974.
Most of the first Disco hits from the mid 70's often had a little slower tempo, like some 90-110 bpm [Beats Per Minute]. But as the years passed by the Disco music became faster [110-140 bpm] and most of all - the songs became longer... Much thanks to this guy by the name Tom Moulton, who thought the "standard" 3 minute songs were just too short and he came up with an idea; "There's got to be a way to make it longer where you don't loose that feeling. Where you can take them to another level.".
He sat in his home and mixed together a tape on which he mixed the same song with itself to make a longer version before mixing it into another track. That's how he invented the Disco-mix. This break-through made him one of the hottest and most credited mixers of all times. Everyone wanted him to make "A Tom Moulton Mix" of their songs.
He had a hard time trying to get these longer versions put on vinyl, the problem was that the 7" single couldn't hold more than some maximum 4-5 minutes with good quality. That's why he often was made to make 2 versions of the song - an album version, the full-length version, and a single version with the best parts of the long version. But he really wanted people to get to hear the longer version, especially on the dancefloors, so Tom and his mastering guy, José Rodriguez, pressed one single on 10" instead of 7". The next "single" they choose to cut on 12", same format as an album, this was how they come to invent the 12" single - which fast became all DJ's tool and format.
But the inventor of the 12" single and the Disco Mix, Tom Moulton, says this about his own work; "I didn't make a dance record, I made a record you could dance TO".
Saturday Night Fever 12inch promo With the new format and the huge Disco explosion, special and exclusive mix versions were released on 12" DJ promotion copies only. One of the most sought for (and hard to find) 12" promos, is the "Saturday Night Fever" 5-track promo, which include Yvonne Elliman's "If I can't have you" and 4 Bee Gees tracks; "Stayin' alive", "Night fever", "More than a woman" and "You should be dancing".
The Yvonne Elliman song isn't available on any other 12", nor is the exclusive mix of "Stayin' alive" which is also only available on this white label promo.
Just as Tom says above; "I made a record you could dance TO", this was the whole idea behind this whole new genre. The Disco music should be happy and danceable. It was designed for making people move and have fun to, on the dancefloor and everywhere else. With its driving beats, it almost has a hypnotic feel that makes you wanna dance or at least stomp your feet to the beat. It's really hard to sit still when you hear a good Disco tune, and you get happy when listening to Disco.
Not surprisingly, many Disco songs lyrics are about dancing; "Dance, dance, dance" & "Everybody Dance" (Chic), "Come on Dance, Dance" (Saturday Night Band), "Dance across the floor" (Jimmy "Bo" Horne) and "Dance yourself dizzy" (Liquid Gold).
The lyrics are mostly happy and about dancing, loving and having a good time, but another important ingredient in this pre-AIDS time was, of course, SEX!
Chic Just listen to the probably most known sexy hit of the era, Donna Summer's almost 17 minutes long Disco orgy; "Love to love you baby". This was literally like having an orgasm on the dancefloor.
Sexual undertones are also very common in Disco tunes, just look at titles like "Body to body boogie" (O.R.S), "Keep in touch (Body to body)" (Shades of Love), "Do ya wanna get Funky with me" (Peter Brown), "Do it to me 'Once more with feeling'" (by James Bond actress Britt Ekland) among others.
The sex appeal of Disco music also found its way to the big screen, if yet in a little different way. For example in the Dudley Moore movie 10, a Disco version by Thijs Van Leer of the classical Ravel tune "Bolero" played a central role when our hero are trying to have sex with the sexy Bo Derek.
But it wasn't just in this movie the classical tunes returned in Disco versions. Actually many classical melodies where "Discofied", both off and on the screen. Both "Night on Disco Mountain" (based on "Night on Bald Mountain") and "A fifth of Beethoven" (based on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) were featured in the movie that would break Disco out of the clubs and into the homes and radio stations all over the world - Saturday Night Fever!
Rick Dees - Disco Duck 12inch promo But it wasn't just Disco that inspired movies, Disco was just as much influenced by other media's as they were of Disco. You'll find Disco tunes based on different cartoon characters, like the Donald Duck voice in Rick Dees' "Disco Duck", or all the songs released about Superman when that movie hit the silver screen.
Other movies that inspired Disco tunes were the Star Wars trilogy, which scored big hits for Meco, who also made a Disco version of the main theme from the Superman movie.
Legendary writer/producer Kenton Nix also wrote a song inspired by the Star Wars movies. Kenton, recalls how he wrote Ednah Holt's "Serious, Sirius space party"; "Larry Levan and I were Trekkies and Star Wars freaks. Larry said to me; 'Why don't you write a song about a party in outer space and talk about the characters like they are at the Garage [the legendary club - the Paradise Garage] and the Garage is in space and everyone has a membership: you know, Darth, Kirk, Luke, OB1 and everybody. And they're just rocking, just up there dancing.' So I did it."
The Paradise Garage (as mentioned above) was mainly a gay club, and the gay crowd have always been very fast and open to pick up new types of music and styles. The same goes for Disco - it first became popular in the gay clubs, before it reached the broad masses through the Saturday Night Fever movie.
The gay scene also early got it's own icons in the Village People, who with their hit song "Y.M.C.A.", got people running to YMCA's all over the world. That massive success for the YMCA made the U.S. Navy ask the guys if they couldn't do a song about the navy, which resulted in the hit "In the Navy". That song made the same impact on people and the Navy got lots of new recruits.
But one really have to say that the Saturday Night Fever movie was the big break-through for Disco music. From having been the music for the people in the Clubs, the Discotheques, everything exploded like overnight. The Bee Gees became the Disco icons and all the music from the soundtrack became hits.
All of a sudden EVERYONE wanted to be a part of the growing Disco scene. Even "unlikely" people/groups like Kiss ("I was made for lovin' you"), Cher ("Take Me Home"), Rod Stewart ("Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?") and the Rolling Stones ("Miss You") wanted their part of the action.
Actually even Brian Adams' first hit was a Top 5 club hit and Disco smacker called "Let Me Take You Dancing".
John Travolta - at the Disco
The Saturday Night Fever movie also set a "standard" for the look of a clubber. Most of the guys were all Tony Manero [John Travolta] look-a-likes, in polyester shirts and suits, doing "the Hustle" in their platform shoes.
The ladies where all dressed up in [preferably] designer made dresses and working out the dancefloors in their high heels. Some of the most popular designers back then can be heard in the classic song - "He's the greatest dancer", in which the Sister Sledge counts - "Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci".
WestEnd Records But if Saturday Night Fever was the thing that really got the Disco ball rolling, it was really the labels and the clubs that had set the ground for it. Because some years before the Bee Gees shouted "O-o-o-oh Stayin' alive, stayin' alive", labels like WestEnd, Prelude and SalSoul had ruled the dance scene - specially in New York. These were all small independent labels, which were fast to pick up the trends and really saw what was coming.
The larger companies didn't really get on the train until the Disco era had already started. But other labels that released good Disco music were, the Miami based T.K. Disco, and also Atlantic, Casablanca and Columbia.
The domination of New York based companies lasted until around 1980 when most of the bigger companies relocated to the west coast and Los Angeles.
But just as there were so many Disco records released - there were almost as many different labels. Many labels just released a few records - mainly 12" singles - before they folded. But that's also part of the charm with Disco. You can still today find "new" great Disco records that you didn't knew of before and labels you had never heard of before. Some of these labels "Discoholics" like myself keep looking for is P&P, Sound of New York, RSO, BC, De-Lite, Fantasy and Red Greg.
What's also fascinating about these labels, is that they many times had their own unique sound. So you can often hear on a tune what label it might have been released on.
It's maybe hard to understand today what an impact Disco music had back during those days. Most hit songs fast became worldwide hits and no matter where you were - people could still sing "Good times", "Upside down" or any of the other hits that ruled the charts either in New York or Hong Kong.
One fascinating thing was when the group Lipps Inc. released their "Funkytown"... Then there were thousand and thousands towns all over the world that got another sign saying Funkytown as well as its "real" town name.
The Disco era was also (unfairly) known for "One hit wonders"... And Lipps Inc. could be one of them, but with the right song unknown people or groups could get a huge worldwide hit, but then they were never heard from again. But actually I think the music business always has been working like this, so this was nothing special for the Disco scene. It's just the same now with artists/groups having a worldwide smash and then never gets heard of again. But we all should keep in mind that it is very hard to write a hit...
Anita Ward Some of the so called "One hit wonders" of the Disco era was; Patrick Hernandez with his "Born to be alive", Penny McLean's "Lady bump", "I love the nightlife" by Alicia Bridges, "Can't live without your love" by Tamiko Jones, Melba Moore's "This is it", Jacki Moore with her "This time baby" and Anita Ward's "Ring my bell".
I think it's quite unfair to call some of these "One hit wonders", because some of them really did some great songs after their huge hit, but this other singles would always be compared to their worldwide smash. Anita Ward did for example release a great dance track called "Don't drop my love" and Melba Moore sang "You stepped into my life".
When talking about Anita Ward, her song "Ring my bell" was written and produced by a guy named Frederik Knight. He did one of the first, what I would call, "reply to" songs, when he in 1981 recorded his "Let me ring your bell again" as a "reply" to his 1979 Anita Ward hit "Ring my bell".
This kind of "reply to" hits boomed in 1983 when Michael Jackson ruled the charts all over with his "Billie Jean". There were numerous of either replies to or medleys using this song - trying to get their share of the fame. The most known reply to "Billie Jean" is Lydia Murdock, who in her song "Superstar" claims to be Billie Jean. Other songs using Michael's song is the ClubHouse and Pink Project medleys; "Do it again" and "B-Project".
Also already back in the late 70's/early 80's the first "sampling" started by the rap artists like for example Grandmaster Flash and Sugarhill Gang who was scratching and rapping over other peoples records. G.M. Flash was for example rapping over the legendary WestEnd Records first release, "Sessomatto".
Chic the Sugarhill Gang got the first big worldwide rap hit with their "Rapper's delight", which is based on the instrumental version of Chic's "Good times". It's told that the first time Nile Rodgers [of Chic] heard "Rapper's delight" was in a New York club. He first thought it was the DJ who was rapping over his and Bernard Edwards' "Good times". He thought it was quite cool and went up to the DJ and came to find out that this was actually another group using "his" song in their record without having got the permission in any way to use the song. See my Chic page for the rest of this story...
The next thing before sampling was a phenomenon that started during the 80's. At this time many records was released with accapella [vocals only] versions of the song. DJ's fast found these accapellas very useful, 'cause with the vocals added on top of other songs they could create their "own" anthem/song. This can actually be very cool, when people dancing to this popular track and in the break or on top of the instrumental you add another popular vocal. If this is done in a professional way the effect on the dancefloor is just like - WOW!
So I guess you can say this kind of technique was a kind of sampling before sampling really got in fashion during the late 80's.
Other people say the Disco days started in the mid 70's and that's also my opinion. I think that you in tunes from around '74-'76 can start hearing more of, what I call, "the Disco sound" - than you could just a couple of years before.
One of the first "Disco Hits" was Gloria Gaynor's "Never can say goodbye", which was on top of the charts already back in 1974.
Most of the first Disco hits from the mid 70's often had a little slower tempo, like some 90-110 bpm [Beats Per Minute]. But as the years passed by the Disco music became faster [110-140 bpm] and most of all - the songs became longer... Much thanks to this guy by the name Tom Moulton, who thought the "standard" 3 minute songs were just too short and he came up with an idea; "There's got to be a way to make it longer where you don't loose that feeling. Where you can take them to another level.".
He sat in his home and mixed together a tape on which he mixed the same song with itself to make a longer version before mixing it into another track. That's how he invented the Disco-mix. This break-through made him one of the hottest and most credited mixers of all times. Everyone wanted him to make "A Tom Moulton Mix" of their songs.
He had a hard time trying to get these longer versions put on vinyl, the problem was that the 7" single couldn't hold more than some maximum 4-5 minutes with good quality. That's why he often was made to make 2 versions of the song - an album version, the full-length version, and a single version with the best parts of the long version. But he really wanted people to get to hear the longer version, especially on the dancefloors, so Tom and his mastering guy, José Rodriguez, pressed one single on 10" instead of 7". The next "single" they choose to cut on 12", same format as an album, this was how they come to invent the 12" single - which fast became all DJ's tool and format.
But the inventor of the 12" single and the Disco Mix, Tom Moulton, says this about his own work; "I didn't make a dance record, I made a record you could dance TO".
Saturday Night Fever 12inch promo With the new format and the huge Disco explosion, special and exclusive mix versions were released on 12" DJ promotion copies only. One of the most sought for (and hard to find) 12" promos, is the "Saturday Night Fever" 5-track promo, which include Yvonne Elliman's "If I can't have you" and 4 Bee Gees tracks; "Stayin' alive", "Night fever", "More than a woman" and "You should be dancing".
The Yvonne Elliman song isn't available on any other 12", nor is the exclusive mix of "Stayin' alive" which is also only available on this white label promo.
Just as Tom says above; "I made a record you could dance TO", this was the whole idea behind this whole new genre. The Disco music should be happy and danceable. It was designed for making people move and have fun to, on the dancefloor and everywhere else. With its driving beats, it almost has a hypnotic feel that makes you wanna dance or at least stomp your feet to the beat. It's really hard to sit still when you hear a good Disco tune, and you get happy when listening to Disco.
Not surprisingly, many Disco songs lyrics are about dancing; "Dance, dance, dance" & "Everybody Dance" (Chic), "Come on Dance, Dance" (Saturday Night Band), "Dance across the floor" (Jimmy "Bo" Horne) and "Dance yourself dizzy" (Liquid Gold).
The lyrics are mostly happy and about dancing, loving and having a good time, but another important ingredient in this pre-AIDS time was, of course, SEX!
Chic Just listen to the probably most known sexy hit of the era, Donna Summer's almost 17 minutes long Disco orgy; "Love to love you baby". This was literally like having an orgasm on the dancefloor.
Sexual undertones are also very common in Disco tunes, just look at titles like "Body to body boogie" (O.R.S), "Keep in touch (Body to body)" (Shades of Love), "Do ya wanna get Funky with me" (Peter Brown), "Do it to me 'Once more with feeling'" (by James Bond actress Britt Ekland) among others.
The sex appeal of Disco music also found its way to the big screen, if yet in a little different way. For example in the Dudley Moore movie 10, a Disco version by Thijs Van Leer of the classical Ravel tune "Bolero" played a central role when our hero are trying to have sex with the sexy Bo Derek.
But it wasn't just in this movie the classical tunes returned in Disco versions. Actually many classical melodies where "Discofied", both off and on the screen. Both "Night on Disco Mountain" (based on "Night on Bald Mountain") and "A fifth of Beethoven" (based on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) were featured in the movie that would break Disco out of the clubs and into the homes and radio stations all over the world - Saturday Night Fever!
Rick Dees - Disco Duck 12inch promo But it wasn't just Disco that inspired movies, Disco was just as much influenced by other media's as they were of Disco. You'll find Disco tunes based on different cartoon characters, like the Donald Duck voice in Rick Dees' "Disco Duck", or all the songs released about Superman when that movie hit the silver screen.
Other movies that inspired Disco tunes were the Star Wars trilogy, which scored big hits for Meco, who also made a Disco version of the main theme from the Superman movie.
Legendary writer/producer Kenton Nix also wrote a song inspired by the Star Wars movies. Kenton, recalls how he wrote Ednah Holt's "Serious, Sirius space party"; "Larry Levan and I were Trekkies and Star Wars freaks. Larry said to me; 'Why don't you write a song about a party in outer space and talk about the characters like they are at the Garage [the legendary club - the Paradise Garage] and the Garage is in space and everyone has a membership: you know, Darth, Kirk, Luke, OB1 and everybody. And they're just rocking, just up there dancing.' So I did it."
The Paradise Garage (as mentioned above) was mainly a gay club, and the gay crowd have always been very fast and open to pick up new types of music and styles. The same goes for Disco - it first became popular in the gay clubs, before it reached the broad masses through the Saturday Night Fever movie.
The gay scene also early got it's own icons in the Village People, who with their hit song "Y.M.C.A.", got people running to YMCA's all over the world. That massive success for the YMCA made the U.S. Navy ask the guys if they couldn't do a song about the navy, which resulted in the hit "In the Navy". That song made the same impact on people and the Navy got lots of new recruits.
But one really have to say that the Saturday Night Fever movie was the big break-through for Disco music. From having been the music for the people in the Clubs, the Discotheques, everything exploded like overnight. The Bee Gees became the Disco icons and all the music from the soundtrack became hits.
All of a sudden EVERYONE wanted to be a part of the growing Disco scene. Even "unlikely" people/groups like Kiss ("I was made for lovin' you"), Cher ("Take Me Home"), Rod Stewart ("Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?") and the Rolling Stones ("Miss You") wanted their part of the action.
Actually even Brian Adams' first hit was a Top 5 club hit and Disco smacker called "Let Me Take You Dancing".
John Travolta - at the Disco
The Saturday Night Fever movie also set a "standard" for the look of a clubber. Most of the guys were all Tony Manero [John Travolta] look-a-likes, in polyester shirts and suits, doing "the Hustle" in their platform shoes.
The ladies where all dressed up in [preferably] designer made dresses and working out the dancefloors in their high heels. Some of the most popular designers back then can be heard in the classic song - "He's the greatest dancer", in which the Sister Sledge counts - "Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci".
WestEnd Records But if Saturday Night Fever was the thing that really got the Disco ball rolling, it was really the labels and the clubs that had set the ground for it. Because some years before the Bee Gees shouted "O-o-o-oh Stayin' alive, stayin' alive", labels like WestEnd, Prelude and SalSoul had ruled the dance scene - specially in New York. These were all small independent labels, which were fast to pick up the trends and really saw what was coming.
The larger companies didn't really get on the train until the Disco era had already started. But other labels that released good Disco music were, the Miami based T.K. Disco, and also Atlantic, Casablanca and Columbia.
The domination of New York based companies lasted until around 1980 when most of the bigger companies relocated to the west coast and Los Angeles.
But just as there were so many Disco records released - there were almost as many different labels. Many labels just released a few records - mainly 12" singles - before they folded. But that's also part of the charm with Disco. You can still today find "new" great Disco records that you didn't knew of before and labels you had never heard of before. Some of these labels "Discoholics" like myself keep looking for is P&P, Sound of New York, RSO, BC, De-Lite, Fantasy and Red Greg.
What's also fascinating about these labels, is that they many times had their own unique sound. So you can often hear on a tune what label it might have been released on.
It's maybe hard to understand today what an impact Disco music had back during those days. Most hit songs fast became worldwide hits and no matter where you were - people could still sing "Good times", "Upside down" or any of the other hits that ruled the charts either in New York or Hong Kong.
One fascinating thing was when the group Lipps Inc. released their "Funkytown"... Then there were thousand and thousands towns all over the world that got another sign saying Funkytown as well as its "real" town name.
The Disco era was also (unfairly) known for "One hit wonders"... And Lipps Inc. could be one of them, but with the right song unknown people or groups could get a huge worldwide hit, but then they were never heard from again. But actually I think the music business always has been working like this, so this was nothing special for the Disco scene. It's just the same now with artists/groups having a worldwide smash and then never gets heard of again. But we all should keep in mind that it is very hard to write a hit...
Anita Ward Some of the so called "One hit wonders" of the Disco era was; Patrick Hernandez with his "Born to be alive", Penny McLean's "Lady bump", "I love the nightlife" by Alicia Bridges, "Can't live without your love" by Tamiko Jones, Melba Moore's "This is it", Jacki Moore with her "This time baby" and Anita Ward's "Ring my bell".
I think it's quite unfair to call some of these "One hit wonders", because some of them really did some great songs after their huge hit, but this other singles would always be compared to their worldwide smash. Anita Ward did for example release a great dance track called "Don't drop my love" and Melba Moore sang "You stepped into my life".
When talking about Anita Ward, her song "Ring my bell" was written and produced by a guy named Frederik Knight. He did one of the first, what I would call, "reply to" songs, when he in 1981 recorded his "Let me ring your bell again" as a "reply" to his 1979 Anita Ward hit "Ring my bell".
This kind of "reply to" hits boomed in 1983 when Michael Jackson ruled the charts all over with his "Billie Jean". There were numerous of either replies to or medleys using this song - trying to get their share of the fame. The most known reply to "Billie Jean" is Lydia Murdock, who in her song "Superstar" claims to be Billie Jean. Other songs using Michael's song is the ClubHouse and Pink Project medleys; "Do it again" and "B-Project".
Also already back in the late 70's/early 80's the first "sampling" started by the rap artists like for example Grandmaster Flash and Sugarhill Gang who was scratching and rapping over other peoples records. G.M. Flash was for example rapping over the legendary WestEnd Records first release, "Sessomatto".
Chic the Sugarhill Gang got the first big worldwide rap hit with their "Rapper's delight", which is based on the instrumental version of Chic's "Good times". It's told that the first time Nile Rodgers [of Chic] heard "Rapper's delight" was in a New York club. He first thought it was the DJ who was rapping over his and Bernard Edwards' "Good times". He thought it was quite cool and went up to the DJ and came to find out that this was actually another group using "his" song in their record without having got the permission in any way to use the song. See my Chic page for the rest of this story...
The next thing before sampling was a phenomenon that started during the 80's. At this time many records was released with accapella [vocals only] versions of the song. DJ's fast found these accapellas very useful, 'cause with the vocals added on top of other songs they could create their "own" anthem/song. This can actually be very cool, when people dancing to this popular track and in the break or on top of the instrumental you add another popular vocal. If this is done in a professional way the effect on the dancefloor is just like - WOW!
So I guess you can say this kind of technique was a kind of sampling before sampling really got in fashion during the late 80's.
What is Disco.....???
What is DISCO?
I guess there are as many answers to that as there's Disco lovers all over the world.
This section is related to things I consider - DISCO!
Check out all different sections since I think you'll find it worth the time.
Disco-on!
I guess there are as many answers to that as there's Disco lovers all over the world.
This section is related to things I consider - DISCO!
Check out all different sections since I think you'll find it worth the time.
Disco-on!
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