The "Blues-Free Environment"

We're gettin' down today
We'll pick you up and take you away
Get down tonight, well alright!

british punk liked blues and its derivatives better

The first time I heard that song, it struck me as a James Gang rip/homage, straight from "Rides Again."

Last Boston album, "Corporate America," had a decent amount of thud to it. Again I heard Scholz' fondness for heavily compressed arena rock just pre-Boston.

Boston, over the long run, was far and away heavier than Blue Cheer, who were recorded shrill and noisy, about the opposite of Boston. They didn't have anywhere near the recording savvy or equipment to comment their live sound to vinyl and by the time that rolled around, they weren't heavy, the big guitar sound was long gone.

The Scholz sound, which he patented and patented and patented again in guitar hardware, was many flavors of heavy and it surely lent itself to the blues because ZZ Top used it relentlessly, among others.
I used it to record albums and it had a lot of growl to it when you wanted it to sound rock and roll tough.

Funny enough, I no longer particularly like the first two Boston records but do listen to the last one occasionally.

wow i have never heard this but it seems true!!

I guess I've always associated 'Disco Sucks' with rock fans more than punks, though. Those people at that Chicago White Sox game, for example.

I know what they are, but they're not "blue chords", they're "blues chords."

Anyway, it's interesting and of course Chuck is always so entertaining. Boston is pretty good, it's real straight music. And to me part of the whole blues thing is not playing straight--apart from the songform aspect of it. Punk musicians also played real straight and of course there's no harmonic thing happening in most of it either. I don't get the opposition between "blues" and disco--I mean at that point in pop music what was really "blues" to begin with? Southern rock I guess, and down here all the Allman Brothers fans hated disco. And as Peter Shapiro points out, the single biggest musical influence on disco is that Gamble and Huff music with Earl Young on drums, and that had very little do with blues, even less than most soul music has to do with blues. I guess what I'm saying is, it's weird to me to even think in those terms by 1976 or whatever, it seems that anyone who really had a big animus against disco because it wasn't "bluesy" were people who were, you know, moldy old bluesniks or southern rock fans. It always seemed funny and just so counter-productive to me, even then, and now even more. Why sweat any of it? If the disco beat bothers you more than the tasty and "complex" twin drumming of those guys in the Allman Brothers, then that just strikes me as a peculiar personal problem. And the big thing that seems weird to me, too, is that disco drumming in part derives from tightened-up funk drumming which derives from parade-beat/New Orleans drumming, which is just as essential to rock and roll as is "blues." In the end (I'll quit rambling on now) it all strikes me as historical amnesia.

they might not exactly be equiv, but all the heaviest stuff i can think of is generally all the growliest stuff, and vice versa.

I would be really interested to hear an explanation as to what possible way Marquee Moon is bebop.

-- petesmith (plsmit...), August 22nd, 2005.

My point, though, was that most of Scholz's tones are not growly and he probably had the heaviest sound of them all.

Walter, yeah, I'm not saying all disco was blues-free. Off the top of my head, though, it seems to me that there was probably less use of the minor pentatonic notes in a major key, less use of the blues chords, etc. I'm not sure about all of your examples. "I Will Survive," for example, is very diatonic, I think. (It's in a minor key, but obviously minor in general =/ blues.)

well i haven't listned to it in a couple of years and i don't have it handy, but i guess i was referring less to the style of music and more to a philosophy: a sort of systematic deliberateness, confident professionalism (where even if it's being played fast it feels slow), respect for the different parts/players (not stepping on their toes), a veneer of refinement amidst the willfulness.

I hear you. And I think Gloria Gaynor's vocal on "I Will Survive" is awesome. But I still think the melodic structure of the thing maybe had something to do with people thinking it was crass pop music rather than blues.

I think for that line of reasoning to work you would need to point to some black female singers who were more bluesy and more widely accepted by the disco-sucks crowd. It also implies that the disco-sucksers would have liked some of the more blues-oriented club songs if they had heard anything outside of the big chart hits.

yeah, i was going to say...

Actually, I was arguing the opposite. Some of the other soul & funk of the period was a lot bluesier than the hits I mentioned (see David Mancuso's playlists) but was probably still equally dismissed and overlooked by the people who were rioting in Chicago. They just didn't have a motown-sucks or funk-sucks DJ to rally behind.

Really? I had assumed they were more like James Gang, Grand Funk, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin type rockers.

and again, I'd argue that the people rioting listened to a fair bit of "black" and/or blues-based and/or dance-not-AOR music, but didn't want stuff gettin' all gay on 'em

somewhat noble, ultimately futile.

it was hardly an articulate movement in any sense of either term. dan selzer is correct in summarizing it as a knee-jerk reaction against late 70s black music in general: soul, R&B, whatever.

is that steve dahl jerk still on the radio in chicago? or as they used to say in chi, "jagoff" he started the comiskey park riot.

Sorry to continue w/ my "half-baked binary," but if there were indeed 'disco sucks' people who thought disco was less authentic than classic Motown, then it would probably have been because classic Motown occurred when pop music was still in its *pre-literate* stage, i.e., early Beatles and Elvis were okay, too.

I still think that some people equate the presence of more blues elements (melodically and harmonically) with music that is tougher and more authentic. Thinking that Black Sabbath is total righteous heavyosity, but Boston is candy-assed shit, for example.

motown's heyday (mid-to-late '60s) was concurrent with pop's "literate" stage though.

x-post

And even if they didn't think about those topics specifically, they might have been "in the back of their minds" and they were also still reacting to the sound of those records.

and if i have, i mean.

That's kind of my point, though. That you WOULDN'T read anyone criticizing classic Motown lyrics even if they weren't topical enough or avant-garde/psychedelic enough. But from the late sixties on, it's tougher for that shit to fly.

Well yeah, it's a different group of people is it not? I don't understand what you're getting at. Do you really think that kids in the '70s had any interest in the Motown music of the previous decade?

If memory serves by 1979 much of classic Motown was shoved to the oldies back shelves much in the same way that 50s-era rock was already musty by 1970 (even if it was only just over 10 years old)

queen did that too.

-- The King's English (jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj...), August 22nd, 2005.

OTFM. Idiot mob mentality isn't exactly an intellectual position to pick apart.

Indeed, and then in the immortal words of Dave Q

I will forever remember the words 'Oberheim OBX' because it was officially 'the FIRST APPEARANCE of a synthesiser on a Queen album'('The Game'). Not strictly 80s synth-pop I know but the first couple seconds of this disc is the most synth-qua-synth synthness of anything ever, it's like "WE ARE NOW CHAMPIONS OF THE SYNTH!!!" Just totally overbearing in that we're-the-first-to-every-use-this!!! overkill fashion. (It's the intro to "Play the Game" if anyone has the greatest hits compilation) Even better, it has nothing whatever to do with the rest of the song. The local minor-league hockey team used it as intro music for about 8 years, I think it took over from the '2001' theme, it's that kind of synthness

-- dave q (scrape10...), October 30th, 2003 1:14 AM.

18-34

Ha-ha, you're spending some time in the department of fictions. Whatever Tom Scholz is, being opposed to machines and invention isn't part of it. There are a number of websites devoted to chronicling his patents and every possible iteration of circuitry developed for his Rockman/SR&D series of guitar amplifiers and pre-amplifiers.

If anything, Scholz would have turned expensive studio managers at the major label into "neo-Luddites," a daft term, because he worked assiduously at providing relatively cheap professional level machinery to the struggling (as well as pro established) musician who could apply it at home (like synths!) to get pro quality results.

No, but I would GUESS that, given the opportunity to judge, a lot of 'disco sucks' people would have thought that the classic Motown hits were better than the classic disco hits.

And for chrissakes, I'm not saying that this was definitely true! That I'm not just theorizing about this stuff, but that these are the facts! And that all the 'disco sucks' people had a polemic that they could articulate clearly!

"For those concerned: There is no guitar on this album."

Nevertheless, that didn't stop him from being anti-computers and synthesizers in 1979.

Exactly, which is why I blame Saturday Night Fever. If there were a movie tomorrow about grime that went to #1 at the box office in the US and spawned a #1 soundtrack album you would see a similar backlash even among grime loving ilxors.

i can see session musicians being upset about losing their jobs, but i can't understand why else people would consider synthesizers a force of evil.

apologies for loosening associations in the above

you mean like chic? (xpost!)

Heart? Carly Simon?

Was he "anti-synthesizers" or was he just letting it be known that, yes, he did all that shit on his guitar?

-- Tim Ellison (thefriendlyfriendlybubbl...), August 22nd, 2005.

My assumption was that it was this + his belief (as you quoted on the noise board) that digital music technology didn't meet his technical standards as well as the analogue stuff. If anything, I think a lot of 'rockists' hated Boston because they were so studio-oriented and 'overproduced'. The guy's a goddamn engineering grad!

After Saturday Night Fever broke in late 77 disco became a national fad. Lots of working-class bars "went disco" along the lines of the Brooklyn club depicted in the movie. Disco songs dominated the pop singles chart through 79 but AOR rock still ruled the FM airwaves; in fact the Comiskey Park "Disco Demolition" was inspired by DJ Steve Dahl's former employer switching to a disco format. Hits songs by Journey Styx Bob Seger and Queen (w/appropriated disco flourishes) seemed even more ubiquitous than the Village People or BeeGees but there wasn't a "rock blows" movement that I remember. Most punk/new wavers I encountered in the late 70s hated disco but weren't as vocal about it. When I'd play the occasional disco single at the record store, it was always the one thing my co-workers (classically trained music omnivores) would object to, though some customer would always come forward to buy "Ring My Bell" or "I Love The Night Life" to prove my point.

It was a complicated time, in music and the music business. People got sick and tired of disco by the summer of 79, but the immflamatory "disco sucks" mentality was a minority sentiment.

please god don't let me kill a thread (again)

This is more apt than the tortured claims upstream. It seemed especially so with Queen. Brian May's long, sustained legato passages could have easily been mistaken for synth lines and it was Queen's way of saying, "Hey, the guitar player's pretty special." Same with Boston.

Scholz was nuts about his tones and what could be done with the guitar. And the Rockman technology did very much make it easier for rock guitar to recreate the phrasing and passages usually reserved for synths.

If you people go back and listen carefully to the music of the Eighties, you're going to find Scholz's Rockman technology and its sound all over the hit records of the time and most definitely with ROCK bands that used synthesizers. The biggest example you can find is ZZ Top, who adopted the Rockman sound at the same time they tied their songwriting to sequencers.

Not quite. Hip hop was already mainstream long before 8-Mile. The movie was probably #1 for a week or so but the soundtrack was nowhere near being the top selling album of all time like Saturday Night Fever OST was (at the time). To find a parallel you would need to find an underground movement that was suddenly catapulted into mainstream consciousness through a wildly popular movie and soundtrack.

it's so weird to me that people could be so pro- electric guitar but so anti- analog synth, when both instruments operate on a similar principle: naturally occurring sounds that undergo some degree of manipulation and amplification.

That's not at all how analog synthesizers work.

that, and songs like "more than a feeling" don't really kick as much ass as "paranoid" or "sabbath bloody sabbath," dude. even sab's lamer love songs aren't as forced and prom-dance friendly as boston's, bro.

well it's a little more complicated than "naturally occurring" sounds, i agree, but what's the difference between bending strings and and playing with voltages?

A classic case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

xpost

Tell that to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), August 23rd, 2005.

I'm not sure why the accusation of "forced" is being made wrt Boston, for one. But I don't think I agree with the kicking ass distinction either, though (bro). Boston was mammoth. The Raspberries actually kicked a lot of ass and (as Metal Mike Saunders once pointed out) actually had the balls to open for Blue Oyster Cult once. Kind of a similar thing wrt perceptions of pop/less blues based stuff and its ability to kick ass.

God Bless movie rock band names

Well Rex Smith sure knew fake metal when he saw it, even without a script. He was in a metal band -- named Rex -- and his brother was in Starz.

Yeah, with velvet ropes to separate the have-nots from them that got...

(I believe that was the character's name, not the actor.)

"High school, high school, twelve long years of the education blues..."

Yeah, with velvet ropes to separate the have-nots from them that got...

i find that hard to believe. okay, there was studio 54, and it probably had its equivalent in other big cities, but with so many discos out there, SOME of 'em had to figure it would be bad business to turn paying customers away. even if they weren't the most glamorous discos.

(a) Steve Dahl is STILL on the air here in Chitown...matter of fact, last summer was the 25th anniversary of Disco Demolition, and there was a TV special that looked back at it. To their credit, no one who was involved w/Disco Demo (who is still alive) is embarrassed about it. They were just as fired up about it as they were the morning after it happened.

(b) The radio station that Steve worked for back then, the Loop, was fairly diverse...in addition to the staples like Led Zep, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc., they also played the "safer" new wave acts (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and several post-Knack power-pop bands). Somewhere in there, they found room for Charlie Daniels. But no disco. This was actually considered revolutionary at the time. (The Loop is still on the air today, but they've limited the format to a general hard-rock/classic rock format.)

people love to play the "hell hath no fury like a scorned underdawg" card though -- woe i'm excluded, woe i'm intimidated, why doesn't the world stand on its head and carry MY tiny little universe on its feet?

wasn't there a 25th anniversary disco demolition dvd released?

Yeah, that's strong considering BOC was about the finest live hard rock act in the arenas and semi-arenas at the time Raspberries would have opened for them. But for the most part, the crowds were not as idiotically glued to niche loyalties and far more allowing.

One of the features of rot in hard rock and heavy metal and its fans was the intolerance to stylistic variation and anything off signal.
It started in the mid-80's and fossilized into codes of conduct in the early 90's. Punk rock not excluded. It was kind of like high school football. Root for the home team, harass and curse the visitors and the refs.

It was always such a pleasure interviewing or dealing with Slayer bills while doing newspaper entertainment journalism. Every opening act -- Motorhead, Danzig -- a member would make an idiotic point of pride of being part of an act that wouldn't be immediately assaulted by those members of the audience armed to throw nails, golf balls, quart cups of soda, at the faces of the openers.

Lame acts that opened for Kiss in the mid-70's were treated better. The worst they got was mild impatience and cheering for the headliner.

i know that b.o.c. were arena monsters too, but that was later, after the raspberries broke up

This is so full of shit it squeaks.

wouldnt b.o.c. have been opening up for the 'berries and not the other way around?

Weren't alive then, where you?

i know that b.o.c. were arena monsters too, but that was later, after the raspberries broke up

Maroon. BOC were arena and small venue monsters by 1972. Their live draw and ticket sales far exceeding their LP sales which wouldn't catch up until "Don't Fear the Reaper." The Raspberries were never arena monsters and sales were not competitive with BOC. It was a fact of life in the 70's that you could be a commercial draw live and not have sales of records to back it up. BOC were a serious national hard rock act with an upward trajectory. The Raspberries never were.

Get a grip. BOC had a unique and distinctive image, a gangbusters -- some would say 'diz-busters' live delivery, and one of the nation's premier hard rock heavy guitarists skilled in melodic composition, Buck Dharma. Raspberries were not even close. They have no song in their catalog even remotely as hard rock seminal as "Cities on Flame," which didn't even chart.

But it being cyberspace, you can make up whatever shit you want regarding the Raspberries. As for it being real, ha ha...

East of the Mississippi, Rush were a bigger act than the Raspberries after -one- album. Brownsville Station was bigger. Nugent was bigger. Artful Dodger had better gigs than the Raspberries. Christ, the Raspberries were a virtual non-entity outside of "Go All the Way" on the radio, and it wasn't played that much in my neck of the woods.

http://www.oldkc.com/cgi-bin/ticket_viewer.pl?kcbands_bobseger_rush_thepalladium_030677

Mark, this is an overstatement - I'll say again, disco wasn't rave. There were dress & social-strata codes up the ying; only a very specific cultural group is really "invited," with or without a velvet rope. This is why the issue of class is ultra-present in disco culture, even as it isn't present in the music. Clubs in every town isn't the same as "everybody's welcome at the clubs," and the existence of clubs in the mythical "middle America" isn't evidence of an underlying ideology of inclusiveness: it's evidence of entrepreneurs knowing when they've seen a good thing.

Now, to a certain extent (I would even say to a HUGE extent) every subculture however large has these sorts of entrance-barriers; such barriers are how subcultures (and cultures) define themselves in part, and they're necessary for the culture to have an identity. (So the theory runs, anyhow, though I think rave really gives a good kicking to that idea.) But disco celebrates opulence; fabulousness; a very material sort of excess; etc. These are both 1) goads to dormant class consciousness and 2) red flags to insecure straight guys.

No question, the average rock dude's hatred of disco in '79 was made up of a lot of things. My only point is that over here on ilm, we'll happily posit race as the prime mover in almost any struggle. In this particular conflict, though, I think the order of importance is 1) gender [if gay/straight is construed as gender] 2) class and 3) race, followed by some certainly legit-on-their-own-terms musical points i.e. disco doesn't shred.

Rush headlined the Tower in Philly -- opening, Tom Petty, of all people, after the Heartbreakers first, maybe second album. I interviewed them, and -- boy, they did not like being second fiddle to Rush. Petty was wired on amphetamines and ready to fight. I understood it, it was an inappropriate pairing, and Rush flattened the Heartbreakers, a band I liked very much. I liked Rush, too. Alex Lifeson fucking ruled.

Another example: Kansas pre-Leftoverture, on the Masque and Song for America tours was a middle tier headliner. The Raspberries weren't competitive with them, and like BOC, Kansas was on an upward curve.

The Raspberries never even produced anything like "On Your Feet Or On Your Knees" by BOC. How did the Raspberries even get dragged into this?

The Raspberries were proof you could have a single that charted, and while it didn't hurt you, it certainly had no impact on what people were shelling out to see hard rock wise in the mid-size arenas and theatres. Look, REO Speedwagon was a bigger draw, after "REO TWO" and "Riding the Storm Out," both of which were well prior to their charting singles period.

Maybe I'm a little harsh. Perhaps the Raspberries were just ahead of their time or stuck onstage or in the market with the wrong acts, groups too powerfully hard rock and emergent metal.

I was in grad school in '79. All my 'average rock dude' pals, heavy metal fans, one of whom was in my band, went to disco clubs every weekend because that was where the girls were. They wouldn't buy the records, but they sure had no problem listening to it or looking over its attractions.

Watch Saturday Night Fever again. For every insecure straight guy who was intimidated by '70s disco opulence, there was another working class stiff who felt liberated by its fabulousness and er empowered to go out dressed up to the nines and try to get laid at a suburban disco. For the most part, people repelled by material excess in the US are upperclass college-educated lefties.

Disco was the soundtrack of economic aspiration for a lot of lower-class Americans, another reason why the hippies didn't like it.

easy to say if you're an upper class college-educated lefty.

yeah I'm American Mark we actually kinda know each other.

Disco was the soundtrack of economic aspiration for a lot of lower-class Americans

what gives you this idea? as to SNF, y'know, umm, that's, umm, a movie.

easy to say if you're an upper class college-educated lefty.

OTM. Hating rich people has been a working-class pasttime for about six thousand years, it wasn't invented by the left.

for the record I'm middleclass bckgrd/colleged/MOR-to-liberal.

based on a nonfiction article in a magazine.

"Disco sux" is to me more tricky: yes, you can look at class and race and see lines of discrimination, but are they more prominent in disco than rock? Isn't rock supposed to come out of the working class too, or better yet, aren't both rock and disco supposed to mean the most to young people from all over the place? Sometimes I read about the schism between disco and [insert anything else here], and it seems like just another case of "you're not one of us, we hate you". I agree w/Mark about disco's omniprescence, which is one reason why I have a hard time looking at disco as some kind of cultural underdog that promoted diversity. IMO it was an institution, and was justifiably loved and hated for any number of reasons.

it's funny (and i say this having spent a good deal of my late teens and twenties living in trashy working-class environments), a lot of the people who complain the loudest about being poor are the ones who always manage to afford shiny new video-game consoles, or drugs, or whatever. they'll talk shit about the rich, but they're not above crass materialism.

some disco fanatics try to draw a line between the gay black disco of Paradise Garage and Better Days or the diverse and utopian Loft and the elitist glamorous Studio 54 or Xenon or whatever. Where the former was the cultural underdog that promoted diversity and the latter was not. I'm sure it's not that simple, as many of the same songs were played in both scenes, but that's never stopped anyone from acknowledging the differences.

That said, I could be wrong but I'm not sure that "War Pigs", "Paranoid", or "Iron Man" have a lot of blues harmonies to them (even compared to the first couple Zeppelin albums). I think they're considered 'heavier' because they're sludgier, slower, sung with a 'nastier' sounding voice, and blacker in lyrical content, and that they don't balance it out with breezy beats and uplifting major-key chord progressions. If anything, it might be more a presence of dissonance (which doesn't necessarily = blues). "Long Time" is playing right now and the vocal line sounds like it does have blues and soul influences. Definitely "Rock n Roll Band" and "Smokin'" must. For sure Steve Perry's vocals were soul-influenced (and Journey was jazz-influenced) but if anything Journey is lighter than Boston.

(OK, into the second side now and it's a bit of both - the guitar and drum sound etc are heavy but the tunes and harmonies are often though not always pretty light and breezy - this probably is the fundamental charm of this album.)

Hits songs by Journey Styx Bob Seger and Queen (w/appropriated disco flourishes) seemed even more ubiquitous than the Village People or BeeGees but there wasn't a "rock blows" movement that I remember.

I wasn't there but we talked about this on another thread before. There may not have been a 'movement' but that period of rock gets (and AFAICT always got) loads of critical loathing, probably more so than disco. (My popular music class a couple years ago was an example.) Chuck posted the '79 Pazz & Jop singles list, which included disco, funk, and new wave, but basically no mainstream hard rock stuff. Prog and AOR were the quintessential whipping posts for punks, weren't they?

Your comments are interesting though. Were songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Suite Madame Blue" really more ubiquitous than ABBA or the Village People at that time? Must have been an interesting time!

1. clearly, part of the disco hatred was a gender/sexuality issue. we have to keep in mind the way "sexual" and "personal" freedoms supposedly blown open by the sixties had turned often into polarizing issues by the 70's. the sexuality of disco goes outside standard sexual heirarchy and that had to get at some people (esp commingout of rock and a more masculin culture). the materialism that came into play with disco (and here SNF plays a role as the travolta character gained masculinity through an effeminate, material acquisition of power), changed the rules for how masculinity came to be impt

theres a whole race issue that comes into play here too, because race was more than ever being broken down by upward mobility.

another thing that hasn't been mentioned is how FM rock, r'n'b, etc and the BIG MONEY way of managing record co's and the outlets changed in the 70's.

rock was no longer the promised path of deliverence for a new stairway to heaven, rather than the coveralls to flannel suit American Dream. the new Pop phenomenons were ellitest. and the people that seemed to rise up weren't the cute kids or scrappy rockers, but glossed up pop stars and slick dancing queens.

this had to fuck some people off. the people that wanted to play went punk, etc. those who just wanted to buy and play along at home just hated.

(and now ive got to get someone on the system)

Now I'm pretty ashamed of myself for being a little rockist, and I'm worried about my other youthful -ist and -phobic tendencies too.

(so much for talking about Boston and their lack of Blues....does the lack blues make Boston rock without any real connection to people...was/is the fact that it'e so alien, yet still supposedly rock what appeals to so many and appalls me?)

is this the first embers to fuel the forge that forces us to hear "that old time rock n roll" at every wedding, etc ever?

And "Old Time Rock and Roll" was NOT played at my wedding. We did have the Electric Slide though.

No, the Stork Club did, and that place died in the 1960s (in part) because the proprietor was too tied to the 1930s-50s model of cafe society. (Stop me before I start spewing on this topic.)

All good points, but I would add urban versus suburban/rural. Don't forget that John Travolta went and filmed Urban Cowboy on the heels of Saturday Night Fever.

what part can't younger people relate to? having promiscuous sex and getting high?

Part of why this is such an interesting subject to me is that it's an era in which my memory of what it felt like (I was 10 in 1979) clashes with how history being written now is remembering it. (Obviously my memory isn't neccesarily more trustworthy, but it's still interesting). I'm currently reading Shapiro's book and loving it, and I also loved Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, but I both these books are dimissive of the mass culture aspect of disco and suggest that the "real" scene was in the mid-70s NYC underground. The Loft, Paradise Garage, all that is fascinating and important but I think what's most interesting about disco is how massive it was at the time, not how it later led to house music and raves. A fad, sure, but most fads don't last three or four years, and no fads in the United States involve such a wide cross-section of people dancing together in public. At least not anymore.

Part of why this is such an interesting subject to me is that it's an era in which my memory of what it felt like (I was 10 in 1979) clashes with how history being written now is remembering it. (Obviously my memory isn't neccesarily more trustworthy, but it's still interesting). I'm currently reading Shapiro's book and loving it, and I also loved Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, but I both these books are dimissive of the mass culture aspect of disco and suggest that the "real" scene was in the mid-70s NYC underground. The Loft, Paradise Garage, all that is fascinating and important but I think what's most interesting about disco is how massive it was at the time, not how it later led to house music and raves. A fad, sure, but most fads don't last three or four years, and no fads in the United States involve such a wide cross-section of people dancing together in public. At least not anymore.

oh I think we tried to get people to sign a petition. we weren't going to do anything, really, except TAKE NAMES. how lame. also, I rooted for the toronto blue jays. in 1979.

Indeed (I was 14 in 1979). It seems now that disco = Studio 54 and Saturday Night Fever, both of which are important, but in terms of raw numbers there were a lot more disco clubs out in the suburbs (i know - LA/OC suburbia != all suburbia) for people wanting to just have a good time.

the swinging parents in "surrender" smoked pot too!

And hey Chris you're right...but rural Oregon was a few years behind the LA suburbs. We were FORCED to dance the Hustle in jr. high p.e. class, though, and I accidentally touched Tracy N's butt and she smacked me but not in the glasses. THEREFORE CLASSIC

no. but it did have swinging '70s parents who smoked pot.

say, can we discuss roller disco, too? pretty please?

xpost DAMMIT

until they started covering bob seger and thin lizzy!

"I'm not sure that "War Pigs", "Paranoid", or "Iron Man" have a lot of blues harmonies to them"

All three of those have tons of flat threes and flat sevens.

"I think they're [Black Sabbath] considered 'heavier' because they're sludgier, slower, sung with a 'nastier' sounding voice, and blacker in lyrical content, and that they don't balance it out with breezy beats and uplifting major-key chord progressions."

Yeah, you're right. It's physically impossible to be heavy and uplifting at the same time, right? Those are forces moving in opposite directions. But kicking ass does not require the music to be one way or the other. In fact, being "heavy" probably weighs the music down so that it ultimately kicks less ass.

"To many, disco seemed to have been born fully formed from the imaginations of John Travolta and the Bee-Gees, but the music and culture that would become known as disco was taking shape a decade before Saturday Night Fever, as the exclusive property of New York hedonists in members-only loft parties and disused warehouse spaces cum dance clubs. Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a blaze of poppers, strobe lights, tight trousers, hysterical diva vocals and synthesized beats in the late sixties. Drawing on the music of Sly Stone and Parliament-Funkadelic, and the ethos of pleasure-is-politics, disco was the first musical form to explore the relationship between the machine and the body and consequently, became the progenitor of house, hip hop and techno. As such, and as a genre, disco radically re-defined the sensibility of the seventies to the extent where reactionary rockers felt the need to launch a paranoid 'Disco Sucks' campaign at the end of the decade."

"Suite Madame Blue" definitely was not. "Equinox" was before Styx blew up big. "Lady" was more well known and that was three albums prior. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was well known.

sundar otm. ellison off his rocker.

huh? when did drum machines and electronic percussion become popular?

scholz could play through a billion marshall stacks and he'd still be kind of a douche (and i like boston alright). esp. when compared with iommi.

They didn't pop up in a vaccum though, they were busy pouring though Martin Hannett's and Echo & The Bunnymen's dumpsters before running to the bank when the critics proclaimed "the return of the guitar"

3xpost

There's an overlap in 1977-1980 with all those as everyone decided to Synth The Hell out of everything (Styx's The Grand Illusion, The Who Who Are You, etc.)

I've always liked to imagined that The Cars were just another Boston bar band until they saw that one Thin Lizzy tour where Midge Ure was playing guitar for them.

actually the first drum machine, the chamberlain rhythmate, went on the market in 1949!

No. You're probably thinking of when The Replacements toured with Petty (which pretty much killed them off)

Of course, but it was all in the marketing.

If you're going to say that Boston is "forced and prom-dance friendly," I could just as easily say that Black Sabbath is "forced" (actually, I don't see either of these bands as forced) Gothic/take-another-red/hokum.

No. You're probably thinking of when The Replacements toured with Petty (which pretty much killed them off)

you sure? i thot for sure r.e.m. toured with the pettster in '85 or '86.

If you're going to say that Boston is "forced and prom-dance friendly," I could just as easily say that Black Sabbath is "forced" (actually, I don't see either of these bands as forced) Gothic/take-another-red/hokum.

right, because there were so many bands doing what sab did in '68, whereas boston was just another chooglin'-with-vocal-harmonies 70s rock band. get real, timmy.

R.E.M. never toured with Tom Petty.

Also wrt to innovation: if Boston were not innovative as far as their overall aesthetic goes, they were certainly innovative with their sound and production.

get one sense of exaggeration.

I actually just read an interview with Scholz talking about when they did a tour opening for Black Sabbath. He said that Sabbath never did soundchecks so they were able to get a lot of good time in on days of shows working on their sound!

proves my point. boston is the sort of band that would take hours to soundcheck, sound great, but still be nowhere near as vital/interesting/fun/great/kick ass as sabbath (even a dio-led, no-soundcheck sabbath), i'd bet.

Also wrt to innovation: if Boston were not innovative as far as their overall aesthetic goes, they were certainly innovative with their sound and production.

that's true, but then you're getting into guitar center category. i could give a fuck if a band has great production if their tunes aren't all that. boston has some pretty great songs, but nothing nearly as awesome as sabbath's best, in my opinion. i know i'm not gonna convince you of that, and i actually find it endearing that you'll stick to your guns, but for me boston is no more than an ok song every once in a while on classic rock radio - not anything i'd ever want to own, or choose to listen to. i suppose it's my loss, but hey, that's just my taste.

if I didn't know better i'd think you grew up rich! "dress fashionably" = "you can't wear your day clothes": this shuts out a LOT of people

Positive. I saw just about every R.E.M. tour up through Document and by 1985/6 they were headlining (Irvine Meadows if memory serves. 10K Maniacs opened)

well, THAT set me straight!

you don't have to buy expensive designer clothes to dress stylishly. i bet a lot of people got into discos wearing costume jewelry and $20 little black dresses from macy's. girls know how to accessorize on the cheap.

1. All Garage membership cards are the property of the Garage and may be confiscated and revoked at the discretion of the management.

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I am so glad that I'm too old to be bothered going to clubs like that anymore.

Yeah, prob'ly true, but I always think we were kidding ourselves as immaculately denimed, coiffured teenage metallers when we thought we weren't into "fashion".

doesn't everyone have at least one outfit that they wear out on dates and stuff?

Were they? I don't know the era well enough but in that case who did pioneer the sound (and it is a very distinct sound)? Argent's "Hold You Head High" was 1972 I guess. I suppose Styx had some stuff out before Boston too, which has less boogie to it. But I did see Boston as unique in the heavily Americanized synthesis of pop-Yes and pop-Zeppelin (with maybe some Eagles in there too).

xpost (Hmm, maybe even "Layla" and "Badge" for that matter are forerunners of this sound?)

not before Booker T & the MGs?

i'm your captain.

but the blues is a feeling

I'm shocked no one jumped in and said "the blues is More Than a Feeling"

To introduce a new element, since this has ranged far and wide: what about the falsetto? I was relatively musically sheltered and had the good fortune of coming out of it just when punk/new wave broke, so I hated both Disco and longhair 70s rock and in both cases something I remember (and call this homophobic if you will) that started with The Bee Gees but applied equally to Rush, Boston, etc. in my mind was men singing like girls. Just bugged me then and though I've gotten over it I think it still is something I have to get through to enjoy certain music.

Bear in mind I was a teenager then, so this was a very knee jerk think. My exposure to 'heavy' rock was minimal (I grew up the eldest in a very religious family) and limited to what I heard on the radio ... but even say the end of 'Stairway to Heaven' ... I could hear that the band rocked out, but the guy singing in that falsetto just seemed "gay" (using the word in a very Junior High sense and well aware that it's far from it.)

I liked punk because the people sounded like they were singing in their actual voices (the yelps of Devo and David Byrne straining the top of his range notwithstanding.)

Of all the theories presented, I really think the reaction to Disco had as much to do with it's ubiquitousness (-osity?) as anything. It doesn't matter whether other rock was played on the radio at the time. Top 40 radio has always repeated 'hits' more than I care to hear them, and I don't think the 'disco sucks' of then is much different than the 'britney sucks' of today.

There certainly was a 'rock sucks' movement, and it was called punk.

Naw, Styx rocked more early on in their catalog. Lots of people hear "Lady" and go full stop but, by and large, the first four records on Wooden Nickel have a very fair measure of American hard rock and boogie mixed up with grander plans. And they were all prior to Boston.

er... not that I am aware of.

I think it's cool that you were there to see it, and I like hearing your perspective - feel free to correct me 'cause you're the older guy, but goddam, I don't even know you - what's with the name calling ("maroon") and sniping ("this is so full of shit it squeaks," or whatever the hell you said) in your post? Shouldn't you be at some ribfest in the 'burbs checking out the Savoy Brown reunion tour?

So I dunno, I'm suspicious about Allmans fans being "pro-black." Pro OLD black, good old southern-liberal crap, blues fans who dig Albert Collins or whoever but find modern black music all threatening and "not real." What's interesting about Shapiro's book is the early use of records by unlikely bands like Chicago or Cat Mother (described as a "hippie jam" in the book) by proto-disco DJs. Or, listen to stuff from the early '70s like Cymande, that's certainly got affinities with the Allman Brothers to my ears. I tend to be a syncretist in a big way when we're talking about music, and disco always seemed to me to be such a perfect example of this...Shapiro's book convinces me of it even more.

I get what Don says about blues as soundscape on something like Layla, don't get the bit about Clapton on those London Howlin' Wolf sessions, or why playing like that is blues/not blues because it's "geometrical." You could say the same thing about the guitar playing on Howard Tate's records from 1967; that Greil Marcus quote just strikes me as kinda Greil Marcus's bullshit. Actually, I never much liked Eric Clapton's guitar playing, but I think what he plays on "Rockin' Daddy" on those London Wolf sessions is just about the best thing he ever did. But maybe I'm missing something here, Don, so feel free to set me straight.

Green Onions / Behave Yourself
(Volt V-102, October 1962)
Reissued as Stax S-127
Billboard Hot 100 Chart Peak: #3
Entered Chart: 08/11/62
Weeks on Chart: 16
Billboard R&B Chart Peak: #1

Booker T's crew were quietly travelling across the mid-60s South, probably in cars, or maybe a van, way before ever getting a bus, much less a plane

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/5b/bd/137119-music-resized200.JPG

because remixing as we know it now didn't exist (yet) during The Gallery's mid-70s heyday. Right around this Tom Moulton was inventing the process with his party tapes and studio work with Gloria Gaynor and her producers Tony Bongiovi and Meco Menardo.

while it's interesting, and insightful, to discern a similarity here it's also important to remember that in the early 70s these bands played to discrete audiences w/very little crossover. North of the Mason-Dixon line, anyway...

And, gotcha Don, on Clapton. My preference is for rhythm guitarists over guys like Clapton, always. Bobby Womack.

Shoot, I was in high school when that whole southern-rock thing exploded; I was one of those people nodding over 22 mins of "Whipping Post" and "Elizabeth Reed." The other thing that's interesting about the Allmans is their roots in West Coast jazz--I mean that's what "Elizabeth Reed" and "Hot Lanta" are all about, in my opinion. And I do remember folks in my high school (just north o' Nashville) remarking about the Negro fellas in the Allmans, too--or, for that matter, in Little Feat. Even at the time, tho, I was always interested in commercial soul music like the Spinners, and I remember getting some funny looks when I'd be grooving to "Pick of the Litter" back then. So yeah it's complicated--and I think Skynyrd were probably just as enlightened and "liberal" as the Allmans, back then.

naw, it struck me when i lived there that many of both chicago's black and white residents were more "southern" than me even if they've never left town. great migration and all.

Never had a mullet, a satin jacket or 8-track tape of Head East. Only vinyl, my brother was the 8-track guy.

I don't even know you - what's with the name calling ("maroon") and sniping ("this is so full of shit it squeaks," or whatever the hell you said) in your post?

Because it was. But regrettably also known to be tasteless and tactless.

Shouldn't you be at some ribfest in the 'burbs checking out the Savoy Brown reunion tour?

Savoy Brown never broke up! Haven't seem them in decades but the last time I did my girlfriend fell asleep at the table while they were playing. It ruined the evening. Consumer tip: Don't get the last two Savoy Brown CDs, a studio and a live one, they're not any good!

Re Don, Tommy Shaw didn't show up for Styx until after the Wooden Nickel days. His joining the band was pretty much when I checked out. Never cared for his voice although I saw him later in Damn Yankees, who for that show, did rock hard although probably more by virtue of Ted Nugent doing a couple of his trademark songs and Blades having the band do Nightranger's "You Can Still Rock in America" or something.

"But [I'm]" ... was -supposed- to be in there.