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Reaction videos: the Bee Gees “Too Much Heaven” through young ears — 120 Comments

1. I got a big smile from the woman in the third video. That was fun to see!

   I went through a similar thing with Gregorian chant about a decade ago. I had heard it before, at least briefly. But I was looking for something different to play around the house around Christmas and stumbled onto a full album and was just blown away by the mastery of the vocals. It’s a similar thing; the way the “Brothers” (monks) who were all accomplished vocalists had also learned how to augment their sound through years of singing together and playing off one another’s strengths. There is also a lot of Bluegrass with great, near acapella singing and I find it very inspirational. I’ve also spent more than a few hours in the past wading through Barbershop Quartet competition videos. Some of those are great fun*!

   The Brothers Gibb were the real deal.

   *Most of you likely already know that Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame got his start in entertainment performing in a Barbershop Quartet.

2. As far as I can see, the majority of the YouTubers who make reaction videos are not only young but they’re also black, and although they’re generally listening to classic American rock or pop, they often seen to be from Africa or some other foreign country. I don’t know why that might be.

   neo:

   I like to think it’s a safe way for blacks to appreciate whites and whites to appreciate back without running afoul of the whole Critical Race Theory mess.

   I’m all for it. I don’t run into that many blacks in New Mexico (and fewer now with the Covid) but mostly I find that we all just want to get along and have a decent time.

   My cousin driving Lyft in Tucson says the same.

   I don’t think race relations are nearly as bad as they seem from reading the papers or watching televison.

3. Some of the best reaction videos I’ve seen are to Home Free (covers of Ring of Fire, Man of Constant Sorrow, American Pie, and most recently Stand By Me) and the live performance of Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers.

4. Of course, everyone can imagine the terrible pitfalls of a white person doing reaction videos to black music.

5. Here is my very most favorite reaction video:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDBIgfpmRg

6. This is what Linda Ronstadt said about harmonizing: “You learn so much about singing from each other because you get to sort of be them for a second when you’re shadowing them in harmony. It’s like getting on an eagle and seeing the world through that eagle’s experience. I get to sing through Dolly’s (Parton) voice or sing through Emmy’s (lou Harris) voice when I sing real close harmony.”

7. Eva Marie:

   Interesting. And the Bee Gees started doing that in earliest childhood and continued for close to 50 years, with only the death of Maurice ending the trio. They said that they could instinctively harmonize from the first time they tried; they couldn’t explain how and attributed it partly to ESP as well as being brothers. Now that both Maurice and Robin have died and Barry performs by himself, he has said that he continues to sense his brothers around him at the mic and can feel and even smell their breath.

   Harmonizing like that is apparently a very intimate thing in many ways.

8. Ok … I’m Guilty

   I do like this one with Barry.

   https://youtu.be/h27J_95OtQA

9. What a delight to see people experience pure joy! Was it Byron who wrote that “Happiness was born a twin”?

   I watched everything, and I’m first going to look up more with songs that I love.

   Thanks, Neo!

10. And now . . . something of a mega-trio here . . . let me explain . . .

    Here’s a trio of brothers, joined by two more vocalist luminaries,
    to create either a quintet, or what strikes me more as a mega-trio:

    Barry Gibb, Roy Orbison, and the Gatlin Brothers singing “Indian Summer”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1o666F27JM

    (The Big “O” died in 1988, so the performance is at least that old.)

11. A formidable video essay. If all American adults of whatever sort were to read and listen to all of this together of a Sunday morning (9 AM Pacific), race relations in the USA would improve by at least 50% above current levels immediately. Depend upon it.

12. Pingback:“Too Much Heaven” Would Be Good for the Soul of America

13. “Of course, everyone can imagine the terrible pitfalls of a white person doing reaction videos to black music.”

    I could do it and I could sell it. Depend upon it.

14. I could do it and I could sell it. Depend upon it.

    Gerard:

    Double-dog-dare-ya!

    It would be interesting.

15. If only there had never been the Sgt. Pepper movie… 🙂

16. My favorite reaction video is … for basketball.

    Here’s one gorgeous black woman who’s new to basketball and decides to do a series of reaxx on it. Early on she covers Magic Johnson and a bunch of her commenters say, well, now you gotta do Larry Bird. So she does and it’s a trip. She definitely gets Larry Joe Bird:

    –“New NBA Fan Reacts to Larry Bird Basketball Highlights”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zke4NK88yk
    ______________

    Skip the first couple minutes where shes basically reading from Bird’s wiki entry.

17. I’d certainly love to see some honest Whipeepo reaction videos to Hip Hop lyrics.

    Things have come to a pretty pass when we have to clutch at musical or white man jumping straws in order to establish some simulacrum of a shared common humanity.

    Now if Alien Tentacle People would invade, we could joyously unite with the Blacks so as to drive them into the oceans… no… err… to turn them into Takoyaki (Mayonnaise Strictly Optional).

    I will not, repeat not, try to insinuate Hokusai’s most famous Shunga print into this imagery. No, I absolutely refuse to go there.

18. …white man jumping straws…

    Zaphod:

    People are always saying Bird wasn’t athletic enough. But he could jump a straw. Even multiple ones.

19. @huxley:

    But they were probably plastic straws, so he must be cancelled. A local restaurant here tried to introduce herpes-spreading yerba-maté style drinking straws. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of push back.

20. Huxley:

    I saw Bird in his rookie season at a game in Phoenix. We were sitting behind the basket about 10 rows up – the absolute best place to watch basketball, and hockey.

    Bird took a shot from about 20 feet. As he released he knew he had missed so he ran to the exact optimal spot for the rebound and followed his own shot. He couldn’t jump but you don’t have to if you’re always in the right place.

21. Ok, I listened to it, and I can’t go any further than acknowledging the talent and skill involved. I don’t care for the style of singing and I don’t care for the song. I had also listened to one that was included in a previous post, can’t remember which one now, and had a similar reaction. I already knew that I hated “Stayin’ Alive” and the other disco-ish stuff. So I feel justified in saying I’m not going to change my opinion that I only like the early Bee Gees.

    I’m not surprised at the black reactors liking it. The male falsetto voice has long been favored by black singers, especially when they hit a song’s emotional peak.

    Someone said in another of these Bee Gees threads that Neo’s crush is kind of cute. Yes, it is. 🙂 And don’t think I’m mocking it: Tarja Turunen of Nightwish doing “Sleeping Sun” makes me get teary-eyed.

    This has made me want to hear Bee Gees 1st again, to see if I still like it. I remember especially liking “Holiday” from that album, so I listened to it. Yeah, I still like it, even more now. It has that mid-’60s magic, worthy of comparison with the Beatles.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDJ5qqiQDto

22. I would be remiss if I didn’t put in a plug for Puddles.. No falsetto.

23. “like sea anemones moving in a current of music”
    So nice! 🙂

    I’m appreciating the Bee Gee lyrics. I’ve been fascinated by To Love Somebody for a couple weeks now.
    This works for me–
    “I can see beyond forever
    Everything we are will never die”

24. Seconding commenter Mac (11:41 pm):

    I never went for the disco Bee Gees, but I always liked, and still like very much, the 1960s Bee Gees. Yes, “Holiday”, very much. Also yes, “Words” and “First of May”.

25. I’m a huge classical music fan, and pieces I listen to multiple times a week can bring me to tears, even though I am thoroughly familiar with them, especially Brahms piano concertos.

    I don’t remember the first time I heard any of them since I first got them from my parents’ cassette collection as a kid, but they didn’t have Brahm’s violin concerto. I finally got around to listening to it as a young adult and my jaw was literally hanging open. It was amazing. It is one of the few pieces of music I love (not just enjoy) that I have a vivid memory of my first reaction.

    What makes these videos interesting is that we have few if any first memories of music that amazed us.

26. Whatever, I know little about classical music, so let me ask you– is Albinoni Oboe concerto D minor, Op 9, No 2, 2nd movement famous for evoking emotion? Not necessarily you personally but in general.

27. Andy and Alex….my guilty pleasure

28. Thanks for this, as I have not heard of these reaction videos. I was 18 in 1978, programmed by then to not like this kind of music. Kind of sad in retrospect, but I was digging rock and new wave at the time, some of which has held up well over time. I am now sufficiently mature to appreciate what these men accomplished and I like it a lot.

29. You should watch the reactions to “Staying Alive.” The vast majority thought the Bee Gees were black.

30. I lived in Boston during the height of the Celtics/Bird era and as far as I could tell the Celtic Strategy for winning was:

    “Give the ball to Bird.”

31. Brendan:

    I’ve watched tons of them. Another post for another day.

32. Watching these video compilations, it strikes me that in general, the females are having emotional/sexual (think climactic) reactions, while the males are having logical (think technical/analytic) ones. It’s also evidenced in their body language. The females tend to move their hands toward the middle of their bodies and downward, while the males tend to move their hands outward and openly as if striking a pose of welcoming or perhaps awe, but at the least, recognition of accomplishment.

    Both responses are, of course, perfectly reasonable. It’s simply striking how consistent they appear to be within the sexes and unique to each.

33. I was 24 in 1978. I always liked the Bee Gees and I liked disco – I still do. (I know it sounds trite, but it did have a beat and you really could dance to it.)

    Folks have different musical tastes. That’s okay. Disco was very popular for a number of years, but I think what turned a lot of people off to it was that radio disk jockeys of the time played it into the ground.

34. I lived in Boston during the height of the Celtics/Bird era and as far as I could tell the Celtic Strategy for winning was:

    “Give the ball to Bird.”

    Gerard vanderleun :

    For the clutch play and buzzerbeaters, sure. That was a big part of Larry’s “Legend.” He was astonishing in those situations.

    However, the thing about giving the ball to Bird is that he was just as likely to pass it on to someone else — to great effect. He seemed to know where the other four guys were at all times and he was a master of the no-look pass.

    It was Bird’s philosophy to bring everyone into the game and it showed. The joy of seeing a Celtics game was watching a TEAM play. The Lakers were their only competition in that regard.

    Bird was Captain and he fused the Celtics into a formidable unit. His teammates knew they had to be prepared at any moment to respond to him. They couldn’t just figure Larry would handle it with a massive slam-dunk.

    If you study Bird’s famous swindle steal against Detroit in the East Coast Finals, naturally you notice how great Bird was, but also that Dennis Johnson had to be ready to run into the basket, catch Bird’s pass and nail the shot in a split-second.

    –Bird’s steal 1987 ECF Game 5
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYKdI_Xm9es

35. Roy:

    I liked disco well enough, too. I wasn’t deeply into it or anything like that, but I liked it for the same reasons you state. At the time, I didn’t hear about the backlash to it – I really wasn’t into the music or club scene. But on learning about it recently, the backlash puzzles me somewhat. Looking at it now, though, I have a sense that it was at least partly driven by something a bit like Trump-hatred today: in other words, snobbery. I’ve read other explanations, but they don’t make as much sense to me as people looking down on the sort of people who liked disco.

    Also, apparently, it was the disc jockeys themselves who tired of disco and of playing disco, and who led the charge against it. In the US, they boycotted the Bee Gees in particular for much of the rest of the group’s career. The Bee Gees were successful in Europe in the 80s and 90s, with many hits that didn’t get airtime in the US.

36. Steve:

    The clips here represent a tiny sample of the whole. I’ve watched tons more of them, and there are lots of men with very emotional reactions. In addition – although of course for the females there is often a sexual attraction factor – when the women speak (usually at the end of the video) at greater length, they often mention two things, as do many of the men. The first is the fact that the Bee Gees sing about love primarily rather than sex – that a lot of attention is paid to an ideal of love. Reactors of both sexes seem to find that very attractive, and contrast it to the raunchy content of so much of today’s music. The other thing both sexes tend to mention quite often is that this song and the Bee Gees’ voices seem heavenly or celestial or spiritually uplifting and calming in some way.

37. Because I have had nothing constructive to add, and because I recognize that some great part of the appeal of any music for most people, is a subjectively experienced and highly contextual emotional resonance to a series of humanly produced sounds, I’ve kept my trap shut on the subject of the Bee Gees.

    But I do feel it reasonable to say this: It would never have occurred to me in my wildest imaginings to characterize the high pitched, affect-intense vocal emissions of emotionally vulnerable males, whether emitted singly, or in unison, to be “soothing”.

    There is obviously an attraction there that for some is plain to see, but completely invisible to others.

    And unlike an appreciation for Scotch whisky, which is not to be developed through a process of increasing familiarity.

38. DNW:

    The Bee Gees often sang in their low chest voices as well, and those songs often are “emotionally vulnerable” too. In fact, so much of pop music singing (and even rock music and classical music singing) by males involves “emotional vulnerability” that I think it’s more the exceptional song that doesn’t involve it. Songs like the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” come to mind as among those exceptions, but they are far outnumbered by the emotional ones.

    As far as the sounds in this song being “soothing” or “calming” goes, obviously not everyone will perceive it that way, but a lot of people do. However, they are mostly listening to the sound of the harmony and what they often refer to as the smoothness of the voices. That’s another word that can mean different things to different people, but it’s a word that comes up again and again in these reactions, as well as references to the voices as being “heavenly.” On the other hand, I’ve never heard anyone describe the Bee Gees’ falsetto voices in faster disco stuff like “Stayin Alive” or “You Should Be Dancing” as “calming” or “soothing” or “heavenly.” Their falsettos in those songs have a totally different quality of urgency and excitement, for a lot of people – although it’s still falsetto. And the lyrics of “Stayin Alive” contain an interesting combination of braggadocio (including sexual braggadocio) and vulnerability. The vulnerability is expressed in the bridge (“Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me/Somebody help me, yeah”) and is not sung in their falsetto voices – for that part, the brothers drop down to their lower chest voices.

39. I disagree with what you like, but I’ll defend to the death your right to like it.

    –Voltaire, “On Toleration In Connection with the Bee Gees”

40. First of the “Blue Eyed Soul” groups or was that the Righteous Brothers?
    I remember my older sister insisting that “I Started A Joke” was about Jesus Christ.
    Wasn’t a big disco fan but they were the standard in the 70’s.

41. Bill Serra:

    The fabulous Righteous Brothers were earlier – unless you count the Bee Gees’ years as child performers (they weren’t doing blue-eyed soul as kids, though). The Bee Gees cited the following as the biggest early influences on them: the Mills Brothers, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and then later the Beatles.

42. huxley:

    🙂

43. In fact, so much of pop music singing (and even rock music and classical music singing) by males involves “emotional vulnerability”… –neo

    Rap is interesting in that male emotional vulnerability is, practically speaking, against the rules.

    I read an essay back in the 90s citing that as a drawback to rap with the hope that a figure on par with Dylan would emerge and open rap to wider emotional possibilities. So far as I know, no one like that has shown up.

    Hip-hop may be more open but I haven’t followed it. I’m not sure whether female rappers have more latitude either.

44. huxley:

    Yes, although I listen to very little rap, it’s not my impression that male emotional vulnerability has a place in it. In fact, emotional vulnerability, period, seems to have very little place in it.

    Which is interesting because the genre of black music it appears to have more or less replaced, R&B, is hugely about male vulnerability.

45. Mac; M J R:

    I also love the 60s Bee Gees of their baroque pop era (for example, “Holiday”), with some R&B (for example, “To Love Somebody”) thrown in. In fact, I loved those songs and other songs of theirs during the 60s. However, I had no idea at the time who wrote or performed them. I didn’t pay attention to that; I just knew it was one of the many “British invasion” bands, but that’s all. Later, when the Bee Gees became the disco kings, I was completely oblivious to the fact that they were the same group I had liked so much in the 60s. They seemed a completely different entity.

    In fact, I only learned it was the same group when I got into the Bee Gees about 6 weeks ago. I was stunned when I found out.

46. neo, huxley,

    Generally thought of as the first rap love song by the first rap superstar.

    From 1987

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEUX-HYRtUA

47. neo (2:15 pm) wrote, “I only learned it was the same group when I got into the Bee Gees about 6 weeks ago. I was stunned when I found out.”

    neo, I remember you writing that when you were first introducing the Bee Gees as an ongoing topic. I was the opposite, by which I mean . . . I’d been an avid Top 40 listener of rock-n-roll since the late 1950s, and I had a way of remembering rock artists’ and rock group’s names and songs (still do, up until the early 1980s, after which the contemporary music was no longer speaking to me).

    Anyway, I knew all along that it was the same group, and I could sense in real time that they were metamorphosizing. Actually, as I recall things, the metamorphosis was gradual. They moved away from what neo calls their baroque era when they recorded songs like “Jive Talkin'” and “Nights On Broadway”.

    Or are those considered early disco?

    Roy (11:24 am) opined, writing of disco music, “I think what turned a lot of people off to it was that radio disk jockeys of the time played it into the ground.”

    We might file this under the heading You-Say-Tomayto-I-Say-Tomahto, but for my musical palate, “I think what turned a lot of people off to it was that radio disk jockeys of the time played it.” Just wasn’t my cup of cocoa.

    *Major* exception: Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. Why the exception, darned if I know. No accounting for taste, including mine . . .

    Anyway, huxley (1:32 pm), improving on Voltaire, nails it pretty well:
    “I disagree with what you like, but I’ll defend to the death your right to like it.”

48. @ Neo,
    Ok.

    Well, not to be disputatious but just to be conversational …. I`ll briefly refer to half a dozen hits or relative hits from the mid-late 60′ to mid seventies that got radio play and which include some level of emotion, but definitely exhibit no plaintive vulnerability. I might mention and in no particular order: ‘Green River’, CCR; “It’s Nature’s Way”, Spirit; “Undun”, The Guess Who; “From the Beginning,” Emerson Lake and Palmer; ” Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, Led Zeppelin; and “Walk Away”, James Gang/Joe Walsh as a few among many others. “Wah wah” by Harrision as performed at the Concert for Bangladesh, is one of those oddball ones of this genre which I find fascinating but am probably happy to hear every year or two, if that often.

    All the aforementioned are basically sung tenor and include some high register stuff. But while treating common themes, avoid the pleading falsetto so beloved by many, yet seen as unmanly and contemptible, and heard as grating, by others.

    My take is that there are indeed times when, and manners wherein, such raw and yearning emotions can be convincingly conveyed by a male in a song, but in a way which is not courting sneering contempt. I think I learned this from Elvis, of all people.

    Despite the fact that when I was a kid, I despised his Vegas persona, I decades later came to appreciate the early Presley.

    And in the category of songs you speak of, I would include : Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, Trying to Get to You, and One Night. Maybe baritone, but still intensely delivered.

    As an aside: For those who have never taken a moment to delve into the Sun Record archives but might have meant to do so,, I’d recommend they cue up, “Who will the Next Fool Be”, by Charlie Rich. He’s a guy most of us will remember, if at all, as a sketchy middle aged fellow who made a comeback of sorts playing the piano and singing a vaguely salacious and embarassing song on TV variety shows.

    Of course, it’s what resonates personally for the most part, isn’t it ….

49. I agree, MJR. For some, it just wasn’t something they liked, and that’s okay too.

    Back in my teen years, the Beatles were the thing. I liked them okay right up until Sgt. Pepper. After that – Meh. But I was a member of a very small minority back then.

    Oh, some say tomayto and some say tomahto. Some say potayto, and some say potahto. Around here, a lot of us just say maters and taters.

50. Looking at it now, though, I have a sense that it was at least partly driven by something a bit like Trump-hatred today: in other words, snobbery. I’ve read other explanations, but they don’t make as much sense to me as people looking down on the sort of people who liked disco.

    Yes, I agree. I have gotten hooked on a different YouTube set of videos.

    Here is an example.

    Think of these Russians singing US pop music in the 70s. The French Horn is played by probably the greatest French horn player in the world.

51. For emotional vulnerability, I like “So Lonesome I Could Cry”. Leaves open the reason for being lonesome. Lost love. Out of town and no way home. Busted, broke and your friends don’t recognize you.
    And NO FALSETTO!
    Saw an amateur choir–actually a random group got together for one event–and one guy said he can go up to….whatever is a really high note…without going falsetto.
    This was apparently a respectable accomplishment and I was interested to hear it but the selections didn’t require it.

    It was a Brigade formal at Ft. Jackson summer of 1970. The downer of the evening was a mashup of two songs, “It’s not fair” “after all the time we’ve spent together” and so forth, and “Don’t let the sun catch you crying” and parts of that one.
    Run on the mascara just about then. Reminded me of something I’d either read or made up, how many women figured out, or didn’t figure out, they were dancing with dead men.

    Bad choice, guys.

52. Looking at it now, though, I have a sense that it was at least partly driven by something a bit like Trump-hatred today: in other words, snobbery. –neo

    Maybe. Sorta. To a point.

    But I’d add a heaping tablespoonful of fear. Fear of change. Fear of losing something precious. Fear of being phased out.

    I’m there too. Rock’n’roll mattered to me. It was part of how I defined myself and my friends. Lou Reed wasn’t far off when he sang about people’s lives being saved by rock’n’roll.

    Bob Seger’s stompin’ hit, “Old Time Rock and Roll,” was the anti-disco anthem of the era. Listen to the lyrics:
    ____________________________________

    Just take those old records off the shelf
    I’ll sit and listen to ’em by myself
    Today’s music ain’t got the same soul
    I like that old time rock and roll

    Don’t try to take me to a disco
    You’ll never even get me out on the floor
    In ten minutes I’ll be late for the door
    I like that old time rock and roll

    Still like that old time rock and roll
    That kinda music just soothes the soul
    I reminisce about the days of old
    With that old time rock and roll.

    –Bob Seger Old Time Rock n Roll – YouTube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoaAb5MnKtY

53. I like the Bee Gees, but if I have to choose one: “To love somebody”, by far.
    I can’t say why it touches me so deeply, I could see and listen to the original video ten consecutive times with unchanging awe. Simple and perfect, not unlike some Mozart’s piece; and they were 21 and 17 years old (1967, my year).
    It’s a superior pop song.
    It’s the same kind of incantation I experience with this famous Italian love song by Mina, probably the best pop singer we ever had (sorry for the video quality, but somehow it confers some magic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRzC7PS3Dk

54. To be more precise, that is a hugely famous Italian version by Mina of Gene McDaniels’ “It’s a lonely town”:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRpbqUAnV3k

55. Well Neo, really thank you.
    It’s so moving looking at young people experiencing, discovering beauty.

56. @ Paolo,

    I think if I were listening to that there Eye-talian music, I’d gravitate more toward the music your mother or grandmother or uncles were probably listenimg to.

    Initially got started mining YouTube back awhile ago for French and Italian pop classics by re-encountering this scene from an older American film. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvMB4Tw84x4

    The old Italian television version rendering by Ornella Vanoni seems to me to be superior to most covers, offering a very slightly up tempo delivery. The dancing fairies really detract, though.

    Then, stumbled on to this eventually,
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qZqB2CczTes

    And of course this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WamWU7RKoGM

    I think I found about six or seven classic or semi-classic Italian pop tunes that I must have heard sometime in my life, but had eventually forgotten about completely.

57. Paolo Pagliaro:

    Glad you enjoyed it!

    “To Love Somebody” is one of the Bee Gees absolute best, a real classic and in my opinion an R & B masterpiece. The fact that they were practically kids when they wrote it is amazing, but that’s not unheard of for pop/rock music. That song has been covered over 100 times, apparently, including by Nina Simone and Janis Joplin. I love the Bee Gees version, though – Barry does a really great job on it and so do Robin and Maurice on the chorus. They look soooo young in that video – I’ve seen it many times, too.

58. huxley:

    I never saw it as “either/or,” or as one thing replacing another. Rock, pop, R&B, folk, classical, I liked it all and it all co-existed for me. Disco was just another entry. It never seemed as though it was going to replace anything. There seemed to be plenty of room in – as Leonard Cohen calls it – the Tower of Song.

    Back then, anyway.

59. I never saw it as “either/or,” or as one thing replacing another.

    neo:

    I don’t imagine you did.

    My point was many of the anti-disco people feared rock’n’roll was being replaced and that was their animus towards disco, not snobbery.

    Bob Seger doesn’t have an ounce of snobbishness in “Old Time Rock and Roll.” He feels isolated and somewhat threatened. He’s worried about losing something.

    Call me a relic, call me what you will
    Say I’m old fashioned, say I’m over the hill
    Today’s music ain’t got the same soul
    I like that old time rock and roll

    I’m sure there were snooty rock’n’roll folks — writers at “Rolling Stone” for instance — who looked down on disco, but that wasn’t it for most rock fans against disco. For them it was more tribal-identity stuff.

    I’d say there were some working-class issues too. I worked in a factory in the late seventies. The guys didn’t like disco. They’d put up with it to dance with the girls, but their hearts were with classic rock.

    Maybe things were different in “Saturday Night Fever” Brooklyn, but they weren’t that way in Boston.

60. huxley:

    Well, apparently we differ about “Old Time Rock and Roll” too. I saw that song as a fun tribute to the rock and roll of my youth, the Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and the Comets type. I don’t see any particular feeling of being threatened in the lyrics, just nostalgia for the good old music of the 1950s, which I remember very very well.

61. Neo: “I was stunned when I found out….” Well, we have that in common. When “Stayin’ Alive” was on the radio, it certainly never crossed my mind that it was the Bee Gees.

    Neo and huxley: neither snobbery nor a sense of good things passing away had anything to do with my dislike of disco. I didn’t even know at first that there was such a thing. That is, I disliked the music before I knew it had a name or genre attached to it. I disliked “Stayin’ Alive” from the moment I heard it–that “haa haa haa haa” just really grated on my nerves. To my taste–I emphasize that–and where I lived, the music on the radio in the late ’70s was just mostly awful. What I eventually learned was called “disco” was only one strand in the awfulness. I think I remember it (the awfulness) so much because due to weird circumstances I didn’t have a stereo at the time and whatever was on the radio was pretty much all I heard.

    Here’s the Billboard Top 100 for 1978. There are at most a dozen songs there that I could say I even sort of liked. I didn’t like Jefferson Starship or Crystal Gayle or Eddie Money any better than I liked disco (though I had been a big fan of Jefferson Airplane’s first few albums).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1978

62. Mac:

    I certainly didn’t mean that individuals who didn’t like disco or “Stayin Alive” were all motivated by snobbery. I was speaking of the DJ-driven “disco sucks” movement that was a sociological phenomenon, with the destruction of disco records and the banning of groups like the Bee Gees from the airwaves.

63. ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ is horrible. A low point for Seger. A far cry from ‘Turn The Page’.

64. Re: Bob Seger song.

    neo:

    We do differ. Seger goes after disco, by name, immediately in the second verse and he is not complaining about the Beatles, Yes, or Fleetwood Mac for lacking soul in the rest of the song because they weren’t Jerry Lee Lewis and the 50s crew.

    Seger himself was a 60s rock’n’roller under the Bob Seger System, though he didn’t become a big national name until the late seventies.

    –Bob Seger System, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” (1969)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTLOvWHkic

    “Old Time Rock and Roll” came out in 1979 and many listeners certainly heard it as anti-disco.

65. huxley:

    I have no doubt many listeners heard it as anti-disco.

    Many did not.

    Has Seger ever spoken on the subject? I saw him in an interview talking about how much he liked those early rockers. That’s the way I see the song. Doesn’t mean it’s the only way to see it.

66. Mac:

    We certainly differ on that 1978 list. Although I prefer some of the Sixties years, I like lots of songs on that 1978 list. It is true that the dominance of the Bee Gees or songs written by the Bee Gees is quite noticeable. By my count, they’re responsible for 9 of those songs, 5 of them in the top 10 and 8 of them in the top 20. That’s quite extraordinary.

    But there are plenty of other good songs there, at least according to my taste. Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, Player, Queen, Kansas’ “Dust In the Wind,” just to name a few.

67. Mac’s list of songs from 1978 was fun to run down. The BeeGee’s killed the top end of the list, and surely there is not a lack of vapid songs listed. But boy, there are some nice ones too. Blue Bayou? Terrific. Two Ronstadt songs, two ELO songs, Rita Coolidge, Boston “Don’t Look Back,” two Bob Welch, and two Steely Dan’s, including my favorite “Deacon Blues” listed dead last of course.

    I thought I knew all the popular Earth Wind and Fire songs, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Serpentine Fire.” It’s not their best, because it doesn’t have an ear worm melody or a series of fabulous hooks but I like it a lot. I could drive down the road all afternoon listening to it.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoI1XPqXQ90

68. I didn’t notice “Slip Slidin’ Away” on that list when I skimmed it earlier. I guess it’s the only thing on there that I consider an absolute gem, something I liked a lot then and would like just as much if I heard it today: a permanent keeper.

    Supposing a 5-star rating system, that’s the only one that would get a 5 from me. Well, “Deacon Blue” as well, I guess, but I can’t really separate it from the album. I don’t remember even hearing “Peg” at the time. There may be a dozen or so 4s–“Blue Bayou,” for instance. I really liked Joe Walsh’s ‘Life’s Been Good to Me,” for instance, but I don’t have a great yen to hear it again. “Baker Street”. But the 1s and 2s way outnumber the 4s.

    And there are at least half a dozen that just jump right out at me as “can’t stand it.” “Sometimes When We Touch”–ugh.

69. I’m late to this thread, but, based on neo’s passion my guess is the Bee Gees will turn up again and I’ll have another opportunity to give my view on why Disco disappeared seemingly so abruptly. It’s the major thing the HBO Bee Gees documentary got wrong. One of the men interviewed (who happened to be black and gay) blamed it on rising anti-black, anti-gay hatred after the election of Ronald Reagan. That had absolutely nothing to do with it! The documentary made it seem like Steve Dahl’s disco demolition at Comiskey Park was a catalyst that instantly put the brakes on disco and the Bee Gee’s popularity. Almost completely wrong. I know. I was a big, Steve Dahl fan and a White Sox fan. I was out of town, and missed the event at Comiskey, but I had friends there.

    O.K., I guess I’ve started down the path. Hopefully folks are still reading this thread:

    As Mac points out, Disco was it’s own thing. It was not Rock. Nothing against it, but it was not Rock. And dancing did not occur in rock in the ’70s. How do you dance to, “Stairway to Heaven,” or “Toys in the Attic,” or “Freebird?” I mean dance, together, 1 boy and 1 girl. You can’t. And no one did. Disco was the dance music of the era. It had its own rhythm (we called it “peasoup” music for the beat on the highhat of the drums; “peasoup, peasoup, peasoup, peasoup…”).

    Despite what the documentary claimed, Disco was not seen as effeminate in Chicago. It was dominated by macho, Italian males (just like in NY in “Saturday Night Fever”). The guys in my high school that danced Disco were ladies’ men (you could tell by the way they used their walk 😉 ), very heterosexual and many were in good shape and could more than hold their own in a fight. But, among teen-agers, Disco was the opposite of Rock. Many people I knew liked both. This was much more common with girls, but lots of boys did also. But many teens who liked Rock loathed Disco and mocked it. Most Disco lovers were not as picky. They typically were fine with Rock also, but a lot of Rock’ers, especially those into Skynyrd, Yes, Styx, Tull, Aerosmith… hated Disco because it was not Rock ‘n Roll. Despite what the HBO documentary said, no teen-aged boy I knew thought Disco meant “black” or “gay.” To us it meant macho Italians and Latinos who were killing it with the women.

    So, there was a DJ on one of the Rock stations, Steve Dahl. An early “shock jock.” Very talented. Very funny. He was on a Rock station so, in typical DJ fashion, he picked on his station’s main rival; which happened to be a Disco station. It wasn’t a huge part of his schtick, but he did it to mock his competitor. The station started selling “Disco sucks” t-shirts. This caught on with some of the pure, hard rockers. The White Sox were owned by Bill Veck (“Veck as in wreck”) who practically invented baseball promotional events. The southside (blue collar) White Sox were always second fiddle in town to the northside (stock brokers, attorneys) Cubs. And that’s sort-of how a lot of the Rock’ers viewed themselves. Hardcore, working class folks who were losing out to the Disco folks who populated expensive, northside discotechs and spent a lot of money on their clothes, cars, hair, etc… Steve Dahl proposed a promotional event where Rockers (fans of his station) would bring a disco album to a White Sox game (I think they got free admission) where they would be blown up between games of a double header. Veck, who was always struggling against the beloved Cubs to get fans in the seats saw it as an opportunity to boos attendance. The explosion was a bit bigger than planned, fans stormed the field, the second game of the doubleheader had to be canceled. Chicagoans viewed it as a disaster. An embarrassment. Dahl’s name was mud for awhile. The MLB put the White Sox on notice (the MLB didn’t like a disruption to the schedule for another of Veck’s goofy stunts). The radio station got bad press.

    And, I don’t think anyone else outside of Chicago even knew it happened. I think it was a national news story, but the news was the White Sox cancelling a season game due to a stupid stunt by a radio station. That was it. That was all it was. But Disco was already on the wane. More and more teens were starting to think of it as “uncool” and the antithesis of Rock.

    As I wrote, teens didn’t dance to Rock in the ’70s. Here’s what changed it all. Overnight. A Michael Jackson album produced by Quincy Jones changed everything. No, not that one. It’s not the one that gets all the attention today. It was “Off the Wall.” If you listen to that album it’s almost Disco, but it’s also Rock. And it’s made for dancing. I was in College when that album came out and overnight, literally overnight, bars were scrambling to find enough space to put in a dance floor. One day bars didn’t have dance floors. The next day they did. And then more and more dance “Rock” albums came out; Duran Duran, the Go-Gos, Modern English… and we kept on dancing. To Rock. Not Disco.

70. “Serpentine Fire” is a great song.
    It’s Earth, Wind and Fire so that’s redundant.

71. Regarding “Peg” and “Deacon Blues,” Steely Dan was one of the few Rock groups that navigated the Disco era without embarrassing themselves. The album, Aja, is very Disco influenced (“I’ve Got the News” is a Disco song), but it’s genius. Nothing simple nor basic about it.

    The Stones, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and a lot of other Rock groups wrote and performed some embarrassing stuff trying to stay relevant in the Disco era (Steve Dahl did a great parody of Stewart’s, “Do You Think I’m Sexy”), but Steely Dan took the fundamentals and created an album for the ages. Surprisingly, Hall and Oates also navigated the era well and then went on to do well with New Age.

72. Has Seger ever spoken on the subject?

    neo:

    Not that I can find from a cursory web search. Unfortunately, “disco” pulls up all the “discography” links.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Seger never bothered to explain. The lyrics and their context seem obvious to me and, I suspect, to most people who bother to think about it.

    That “many did not” consider it anti-disco doesn’t mean much. Most people don’t think about rock lyrics beyond maybe the chorus. That’s just the way it is.

    Of course Seger loved 50s rock, but that doesn’t mean he thought 60s and 70s rock “ain’t got the same soul” as he said disco didn’t, which your interpretation requires.

    For rockers, and Seger emphatically was, disco was a jarring and unpleasant break from the past.

73. I don’t think I was aware of a “disco sucks” movement. I suppose I might have read a news story about the Chicago thing, if it made the national news.

    The beat in Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” was reportedly an attempt to get with the current sound.

    In a sense disco never died. The many many varieties of electronic dance music are essentially developments from it.

74. I forgot Funk. I haven’t pieced it together yet, but Funk had something to do with this. It’s funny; I’m trying to remember back to High School and I can’t think of anyone I knew who thought Funk was not cool. I knew people who did not like Rock, or New Wave, or New Age, or Folk, or Disco, or Heavy Metal… But Funk? It was universally cool.

    And you can dance to Funk. Actually you cannot NOT dance to Funk. I think Funk helped Classic Rock breakthrough to the non-Disco dance music of the late ’70s and ’80s. Disco was considered pure dance music, like swing or ballroom. You had to know steps to dance to Disco. It was partner dancing. Classic rock was just kind-of communal swaying. But funk, and the stuff that came out in the ’80s was partner dancing without pre-rehearsed steps.

75. Mac,

    I disagree. Disco has a very distinct beat; peasoup, peasoup, peasoup. Just as bossa nova, reggae, mambo, waltz all have their distinct rhythms. Electronica is not Disco, nor is the dancing like disco dancing. Disco was co-ed, couples dancing with official steps, like swing or lindy or ballroom or rock in the ’50s. A Rave featuring Electronica is a mass of sweaty young women and men bouncing, jumping, writhing… I love that type of dance, but it’s very different from Disco (or waltz, or mambo…).

    Because Disco has a distinct rhythm performers made Disco albums putting other music to it; classical, swing, ragtime… Just as folks do with Bossa Nova or Polka or Cha Cha. The Beatles used Latin rhythms in some of their songs.

76. “Here’s the Billboard Top 100 for 1978. There are at most a dozen songs there that I could say I even sort of liked. I didn’t like Jefferson Starship or Crystal Gayle or Eddie Money any better than I liked disco (though I had been a big fan of Jefferson Airplane’s first few albums).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1978“

    Wow. Music Hell. Actual nausea, and projectile vomit inducing sounds. The mere memory of it makes me dizzy and sick.

    Fortunately – looking back on it now – you could patch together some listenable then-contemporary music from the Southern Rock bands, and passing but welcome distractions like Cheap Trick and Frampton.

    Mining the old stuff is what we did in the main.

    By 1982 it was a different and much better music world though, with the MTV hits on the one hand, and the Austin country sound on the other, and enough of this and that to fill a third hand, if you had one.

    But, I’d pay a hundred bucks to have my memories of that 1978 hit list wiped clean.

77. Bob Seeger has not put out a worthwhile piece since 2+2 in ’68. Maybe Ramblin Gamblin Man; but once you have heard those two, it’s all downhill from there.

    And, if you have heard CCR’s Fortunate Son, you will have almost – almost – heard 2+2 … too.

78. Rufus T. Firefly:

    I agree that the HBO documentary (which I haven’t seen, but I have read about it) got the disco backlash wrong, overemphasizing the role of racism and antipathy to gays. Disco may have started with those groups, but by the time of the backlash that association wasn’t in most people’s minds.

    By the way, when I looked up the album you mentioned, “Off the Wall,” it is characterized as “a landmark of the disco era,” and that it contains “funk, disco-pop, soul, soft rock, and pop ballads.” So disco is in there.

    Michael Jackson said the following of the Bee Gees:

    I cried listening to their music; I knew every note, every instrument.

    As for funk, it seems it was close enough to disco that I see there are many sites online trying to explain the difference (see this).

    Some of the Bee Gees’ 80s and 90s hits were not disco but they were dance-y. I have no idea what genre they were.

79. Michael Jackson’s first real grown up solo album ‘Off The Wall’ came out in 1979 and was really a bridge from disco back to R & B and it is awesome. Song for song better than ‘Thriller’.

    As I mentioned on one of the other Bee Gees posts disco really took over R & B for those years in the late 1970s and really changed it going forward into the 1980s and beyond.

80. Didn’t catch Rufus’s comments about ‘Off The Wall’ but he is absolutely correct. Great song after great song.

    The crack in his voice in ‘She’s Out Of My Life’ makes that song great. Little moment that thankfully they left in the final version.

81. neo,

    I agree that “Off the Wall” is very nearly a Disco album, just as Steely Dan’s, “Aja” is, but, at the time, there was a difference. We teens saw Jackson as a Rock star, so, somehow, it was “cool” to dance to Jackson, but not cool to dance to Donna Summer. When you break down their music, mechanically, it doesn’t really make sense, but to our teen-age minds there was a difference. And I exaggerated, “Off the Wall’s” impact to make a point. There was also something going on.

    Like with all music, it’s hard to define a single point where a genre changes, but New Wave was something different and, in my life (and millions of other teens), that’s ultimately what supplanted Disco. Blondie’s, “One Way or Another” came out in 1978 and is considered New Wave. It has a 4/4, pounding, disco beat. You could easily add the “peasoup” highhat to it without changing the song, or its feel. Yet it’s not a disco song. It’s somehow different. Debbie Harry and her band didn’t look like a Disco band. New Wave had some roots in Punk Rock, but was more accessible. Add Jackson’s, “Off the Wall” is not New Wave. At all. New Wave was really getting traction in the ’70s and by the late ’70s there were enough teens ready for a new form of pop they could dance to and New Wave took over the charts.

    Side note: Quincy Jones (the man behind “Off the Wall”) is a genius. Responsible for quite a few breakthroughs in music and recording.

82. And all of my ranting above is really to make the point that it upset me when the HBO documentary tried to blame Ronald Reagan (and Reagan supporters’ anti-gay, racist attitudes) for the death of Disco. It’s a little attempt at rewriting history to get a dig in on Reagan. And, somehow coupling that with a disc jockey unknown outside of Chicago.

    Ronald Reagan was not anti-gay. Ronald Reagan was not racist. Attitudes about homosexuality and race had nothing to do with his support.

    Disco was not seen as “race” music. Or “gay” music. The movie and soundtrack that gave the whole craze its kickstart is a record sung by white Australians about an Italian kid from Brooklyn!

83. Except that “One Way or Another” IS a disco song….
    More correctly, it is (according to Debbie Harry) a PARODY of a disco song. A satire on the whole “genre” (funny word to use in this context…but there you go)….

    IIRC, she made the claim in an interview (damage control?) and went on to say that the fan base just didn’t “get” the joke. Many of them, alas, “were not at all amused” and gave them a whole lot of flack for it. (It appears that Blondie fans weren’t known for their sense of humor.)

    The upshot: a considerable number left the fold, as it were. No doubt, inserting a surreptitious Disco number in a punk/new age disk was simply unforgiveable to certain ideological punk “Young Turks”, or maybe it was a case of “Don’t screw around with our affections and our loyalty” (to many who undoubtedly were card-carrying members of the “DISCO SUCKS” crowd)—I admit that it confused me at the time but not to the point of disgust or anger; I just found it a bit of a curiosity (Blondie “jumping on the bandwagon”? Blondie?), plus I never really liked the song all that much. (After I read the interview, it all made more sense—I wasn’t SUPPOSED to like it?—and I even started to, if not like it then, appreciate it more.) Irony of ironies, I think it became a standard at disco clubs…. (At least the Gods of Pop Music DO have a sense of humor…or some of them.)

    In any event, it may well have been the beginning of the end for what was an incredibly talented band. (Could have done without all the heroin, of course—and all the problems THAT caused; but who knows? maybe that was the core of Chris Stein’s genius…. Have to consult with Huxley, I guess…)

84. Barry Meislin,

    I can’t disagree with Ms. Harry’s own recollection of her and her bandmates’ intent, but, if “One Way or Another” is a disco song, how is, “Heart of Glass” NOT also a disco song. “Heart of Glass” has a disco beat (including the highhat) and the bridge is very disco-y. “One Way or Another” breaks down at the bridge. You have to stop dancing briefly, and then sort-of go into a manic rage. “One Way or Another” alters movement and rearranges it. “Heart of Glass” is a steady, danceable movement throughout.

    Why would fans abandon them over “One Way or Another” but not, “Heart of Glass?” And, what’s more disco-y than, “Call Me” released even later?

    Let’s also give Blondie credit for mainstreaming rap early on and bringing it to the dance halls with, “Rapture.”

85. Yikes! Correction:
    I was thinking of “Heart of Glass”…

    Deepest, heartfelt apologies….this is embarrassing….

    (And you’re right of course: “One Way or Another” is by no stretch of the imagination a Disco song….)

86. Seems we crossed. Ah well….

    (FWIW, I was convinced early on that “One Way or Another” was adopted by the Democratic Party to be their anthem—or rather their credo—with regard to DJT…)

    Their war cry?…

87. Barry Meislin,

    I like a fair amount of the group, Blondie’s music, but one song that doesn’t/didn’t get much attention that I really enjoy is, “Rip Her to Shreds.” It’s such a clever distillation of a certain type of female aggression. There are a lot of rock songs about male aggression and how men fight, but “Rip Her to Shreds” really nails the female psyche. It’s also a good example of that early, New Wave vibe. You can hear the Punk roots, but it’s much more cohesive than a Punk song.

88. @ Rufus,

    Disco, was about sex. It was about metrosexualized (for the times) urban meat market sex, contextualized within a venue or display setting for scoring semi-annoymous hook-ups.

    It was not about politics or culture or heritage. It was not concerned with broad freedoms, love, loyalty, ideas or sublimnity of any kind. It was about mindless urges hot combed and dressed gaudily up. It promoted no virtues and condemned no vices.

    Women often danced braless and with bared midriff in tube tops and low rise hip-huggers. Guys wore ridiculously patterned form fittimg silk or rayon shirts open at the chest, and tight stretch slacks. That may not be the attire in the movie Saturday Night Fever, but that is often enough what would appear as de rigueur in the disco bars or in bars following the disco trend. No one went into a disco bar wearing normal street, casual, or dress clothes. They wore costumes of a sort.

    Disco was an exhibitionism and hedonism devoid of any ideology – other than the birth control pill in the case of the vwhite heterosexual middle class, and the “if it feels good do it” mentality.

    It was also feminized in the sense that it was built on a sensibility of a coyly uninhibited, but still somewhat rule bound display. A free floating system of sensibilities and an ethos which more resembled the rules of a card game than a reflection of any greater human morality, guided club interactions.

    Disco was most definitely for unserious people: people who one might surmise, had fundamentally unserious or even bankrupt lives to the extent that disco accurately reflected their inner and moral selves. And even if you were there just to score with a willing chick, you recognized the ridiculousness, and the ultimate perniciousness and hollowness of the whole scene; or better, charade.

    It is no wonder that its roots might be associated, reasonably or unreasonably, with the mentalities of the homosexual male, or with the stereotype of ghetto morality.

89. Tom Jones videos are great for this kind of thing too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdOJLnRZQXg

90. DNW:

    I knew people who went to discos a lot, and for them it was about dancing to great dance music, in facy-ish clothes.

    Not that there weren’t decadent elements in the scene. There were, especially at some places. But it certainly was not universal.

    And for those who merely listened to, and enjoyed, some of the music, it was also about fun music with a strong dance beat.

    The words to “Stayin Alive” are, by the way, about being a player, but that’s initial braggadocio and the main theme emerges as trying to survive in a city where it’s a struggle. “Life’s going nowhere, somebody help me…” “I’ve been kicked around since I was born…”

91. Rufus T. Firefly:

    I think to a certain extent it was about what was labeled cool and what was labeled uncool, rather than any basic difference in the music itself.

    I still want to know what genre the Bee Gees’ songs of the 80s and 90s might be – like “You Win Again” and “Love Never Dies,” for example.

92. DNW:

    Your description of disco reminds me of Allan Bloom writing about all rock music.

93. Mac,
    A lot of terrible music on that Billboard list. Perhaps none worse than “Lay Down Sally” by Eric Clapton. Just godawful.

94. By the way, the lyrics of “One Way Or Another” are said to have been the result of a stalker of Debbie Harry. The lyrics channel the stalker.

95. Rufus T. Firefly:

    By the way, the Bee Gees were British. The family emigrated to Australia and lived there for 7 or 8 years before returning to Britain. The 3 boys were born on the Isle of Man. I think one or several of them later became American citizens, too, with dual citizenship and homes in both England and Miami. Miami reminded them of Brisbane, Australia, where they had spent some of their teen years.

96. Disco was club-based. At least in my neck of the woods, NE Philly, it was very popular among the crowd that liked clubs and dancing, and not popular at all among the introverts (like me, who hated crowded spaces, dancing, and very loud music). But like many popular things, it eventually ran its course. Urban Cowboy made popular a new thing, replacing disco in the clubs with mechanical bulls and line dancing. It was mostly the same crowd that followed, trading in their leisure suits for cowboy boots.

97. Neo on March 8, 2021 at 1:10 pm said:

    DNW:

    Your description of disco reminds me of Allan Bloom writing about all rock music.”

    Yeah, well Allan Bloom probably never spent much time at rock concerts. And, Rock is certainly open to criticism. The internal potential for contradictions leading to the peak of absurdity, comes with songs of youth rebellion being sung by drug addled, half deaf, and physically pathetic middle aged people.

    The general scenario is not new. It was well parodied by C.S. Lewis in his 1930’s work, The Pilgrim’s Regress, as he skewered the then avant garde post Great War class of self-regarding poseurs and artists.

    Herbert Marcuse had much negative to say about modern music too. But their distaste probably extended beyond mere content or the lack thereof, to more broadly cultural sensibilities.

    I doubt that either Bloom or Marcuse would have approved of “Old Shep” even if Elvis had not been caught singing it.

    And you are right, he spells “Alan” or “Allen”, as “Allan”.

    What gives with that? LOL

98. DNW:

    Herman Hesse. Steppenwolf. The main protagonist starts out with the same attitude towards modern music – in that case, jazz of the 1920s. But he undergoes a change of heart during the novel, as a result of some people he meets and experiences he has:

    During the next few weeks, Hermine introduces Harry to the indulgences of what he calls the “bourgeois”. She teaches Harry to dance, introduces him to casual drug use, finds him a lover (Maria) and, more importantly, forces him to accept these as legitimate and worthy aspects of a full life.

    Hermine also introduces Harry to a mysterious saxophonist named Pablo, who appears to be the very opposite of what Harry considers a serious, thoughtful man. After attending a lavish masquerade ball, Pablo brings Harry to his metaphorical “magic theatre”, where the concerns and notions that plagued his soul disintegrate as he interacts with the ethereal and phantasmal. The Magic Theatre is a place where he experiences the fantasies that exist in his mind. The Theater is described as a long horseshoe-shaped corridor with a mirror on one side and a great number of doors on the other. Harry enters five of these labeled doors, each of which symbolizes a fraction of his life.

    There was a huge vogue for that book in the 60s and early 70s, which is when I read it. It’s a strange bird, but actually rather interesting. I haven’t read it in many decades and don’t know what I’d think of it now.

99. Stephen Miller:

    Disco dancing, yes. Disco music also appealed (or failed to appeal, as the case may be) to a lot of people who never set foot in a disco club.

100. Well, Monday duties have intervened for me, but just a couple of passing observations:

     Rufus T., I bow to you apparent superior knowledge of disco, but I’ve seen a number of music critics point to some kind of continuity between disco and techno. So maybe it’s just that electronic dance *replaced* disco rather than being a *continuation* of it?

     The idea that “Reagan” (quotes because the evil thereby referenced is not so much the man as an evil spirit) killed disco is self-evidently absurd, but in keeping with many instances I recall of people blaming “Reagan” for all sorts of things they hated. The one that sticks most in my mind is someone who got her English PhdD in the late ’80s and blamed “Reagan” for the fact that she could not find a job–totally unaware of the fact that the market for her credentials had been shrinking since at least the mid-’70s.

     DNW: I sympathize with the nausea. But it’s enough for me just never to hear some of that stuff again. Ever.

101. “Of course, everyone can imagine the terrible pitfalls of a white person doing reaction videos to black music.” – huxley

     “Hold my beer.” Gerard

     Looking forward to the cage-match.

     However, I suspect that most people carefully control which videos they publish and any negative reactions to music from are being with-held, unless they are released to make a deliberate point.

     Such as DNW, perhaps, who would “pay a hundred bucks to have my memories of that 1978 hit list wiped clean.”

     (h/t Mac: “Here’s the Billboard Top 100 for 1978”)

102. Further comments on the reactions to the 1978 Billboard:
     The top 100 of anything in any era generally boils down to a few “keepers” within a couple of decades, even if people differ on exactly which ones should comprise the canon.

     I have accumulated a large collection of printed music, and guarantee that the “top hits of 1890” have been winnowed down considerably, although you will find a few still being revived (seriously, not as parodies), or warbled by individuals who just plain like them.

     Anecdotes from other media:
     (1) a director of summer repertory theater once decided to produce a series of “The Little Known Works of William Shakespeare.” At the end of the season, he observed that he now knew why they were little known.

     (2) Dorothy L. Sayers recalls in some biography I read sometime (IIRC; if not her, then some similar authority) that, having nothing to do for some length of time (summer break? or recovering from an illness?), she wondered why Jane Austen was the only writer of that era still popular, and decided to read everything on the local library shelves for that time period. Her conclusion: Austen was, indeed, the only writer worthy of continued reading.

103. “The 3 boys were born on the Isle of Man.”
     Lovely place, I visited once. A co-worker joked “Wrong choice, you should have gone to the the Isle of Women”.

     Steppenwolf’s and Hesse’s huge vogue in America came, I think from Millbrook days and Tim Leary. Speaking of which, whatever happened to John Fowles? It’s as if his muse just up and died.

104. Unbelievable.

     Follow that link of Mac’s to the top 100. Go to the address window, back out 1978 and replace it with 1969. Nothing more needs to be said.

     Also, it is Bob Seger as Huxley had it, not as I spelled it.

     And I read all of Hesse’s works in H.S. and shortly after as recreation. They were supposed to profound. They were certainly unusual.

     I’ll try and name them without cheating. Steppenwolf, Magister Ludi, Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game and … uhhhh … damn …Narcissus and Goldmund … ehhh uhhhh

     Ok. I checked. Missed an easy one. Split one into two. And forgot the early one confusing Hesse with Mann and figuring the author of Little Herr Friedmann, did both.

     That would be a fail, if this were college.

105. @DNW

     Did you binge read Carlos Castaneda after that lot? 🙂

106. Neo, I’m super late to the comments but had to let you know that your Bee Gees posts have been a revelation. I am irrevocably hooked! The more I explore their decades of music, the more impressed I am with their songwriting genius. Not only are their main verses incredibly melodic, but their choruses and bridges too. Song after song. A great example is “Nights on Broadway” – just when everything’s groovin’ along, they slow it down to sing one of the most exquisite bridges in pop music history (which wouldn’t be possible without their otherworldly harmonizing), then effortlessly ramp up the funk again. Brilliant.

     And since your posts are mainly about their phenomenal vocal abilities and close harmonies, I have a newfound appreciation for all three of them. The way Robin used his unique voice to sing with such soulful longing just floors me. I Can’t See Nobody, I Started a Joke & so many more. I finally “get” his appeal and find myself mesmerized by his live performances. Maurice was probably the most versatile singer who was able to fill in perfectly in a completely non-ego driven way to support his two alternating lead brothers. Fabulous bass too.

     As for Barry, where do I start? What a beautiful man! How can a falsetto so pure and chill-inducing come from someone so very masculine, with a mustache and major chest hair?? And how can he sing equally well in a powerful baritone, often in the same song? And how did I not realize how sexy he was? Wow! He comes across as a genuinely good man with a great sense of humor who has remained humble despite his incredible talent and accomplishments.

     Thanks for taking me down a rabbit hole that I have no desire to climb out of. Methinks I have quite the Bee Gees crush. When I find myself irritated by the day’s headlines or the sheer lunacy of the left, a positive outlet helps takes the edge off. I just need a pair of headsets, a nightcap and music to get lost in. The beauty and love that the Bee Gees brought into this world through their songs gives me hope and a much needed escape. Many thanks.

107. “Zaphod on March 9, 2021 at 2:30 am said:
     @DNW

     Did you binge read Carlos Castaneda after that lot? ?”

108. “Zaphod on March 9, 2021 at 2:30 am said:
     @DNW

     Did you binge read Carlos Castaneda after that lot? ?”

     So, no. I did at one point purchase and try to read Morning of the Magicians, but it seemed to me to be so plainly written by idiots about frauds, as to be unreadable.

     In fact even if one tries to take it as being proffered by them as being all in good fun and no more, the whole project this class of people are proposing is so obviously a form of intellectual and moral self-abuse, that you can only look away, embarassed on behalf of the pathetic practitioner.

     An acquaintance loaned me a copy of The Adventures of Don Juan and his Peyote Pony, or whatever it was called, but I could not read it. One of the few books I could not even read skeptically. It was such outrageous preposterous incoherent and blatant bullshit that I could not force myself to wade through it.

     My teenaged adventures with esoterica extended about as far as Immanuel Velikovsky’s old books, which an elderly uncle recommended as interesting/ entertaining reads. And for a brief period in the 70’s, after the 1960s space probe discoveries had been digested, some of his predictions concerning interplanetary electromagnetism, Venusian heat, and Jupiter, seemed to have been borne out. Leaving, apparently, relatively true conclusions if not necessarily sound premisses.

     His treatment at the hands of the guardians of academic orthodoxy is perhaps somewhat relevant for our time: insofar as it exposes the fact that the myth of academic freedom and an impartial hearing on the facts alone, was debunked by events that took place long ago.

109. Zaphod has provoked certain memories in me that had been submerged.

     One of the strongest is how the minds of my humanities instructors seemed to be utterly incoherent and illogical at some profoundly fundamental level. They also seemed driven by feelings to an extent which I at the time found both suffocating and to be a personal affront and intrusion. They demanded not just your tolerance or intellectual comprehension, but outrageously, your appreciation of, or even allegiance to, their goddamned little aesthetic obsessions.

     A Robert Hughes type survey of the technical underpinnings of the fine arts, was an exception, though it was there sometimes.

     But no wonder the lunacy in our universities has principally spewed out of the humanities departments. These people, many of them, obviously have something deeply wrong with them in the way their minds work. Or fail to work.

     Some few in these departments, History, for instance and in my experience, generally do [ or did], not only grasp, but understand the necessary framework of causality, temporal sequence, careful inference, and the primacy of empirical evidence. But the others?

     Well, I guess we are seeing their view demonstrated in the way they are now characterizing math, and logic.

     Magical thinking, seems to be built into their “liberal” brains. It apparently entails a conviction that reality can be creatively altered, or declared by simply uttering certain formulae.

     “Fiat Lux”, or fiat anything else for that natter, and it is! Socially at least. And damnation to those who fail to genuflect to the idol.

     Well, as godlets, perhaps it is only natural they should believe themselves to posses the very same power and authority as the Original.

110. Mac,

     Since this thread is a bit stale, I’ll also post this on the next open thread, in hopes that you see my response to your question.

     Disco evolving to Electronic(a). I can see the evolution in the comparison that the latter is what is now done in the venues where the former was done. Young folks wanting to go out and have fun moving to music typically dance to Electronica these days. In the ’70s it was Disco.

     The beats are similar in that most all Disco and most all Electronica are in 4/4 time. Pretty much any song in a 4 beat pattern (as long as the time is evenly divisible by 4) can be Disco-danced to. If you watch any Ballroom dance you’ll see folks doing older dances to modern music. For example; you can Foxtrot to pretty much all Disco music. Marches are also in 4/4 time. Most all music (that isn’t a waltz) written in the last 150 years is 4/4 (or 2/4, cut-time, which is basically the same thing). Just about every rock song you can think of is in that rhythm, so saying Disco evolved to Electronica because the beats are almost always identical is meaningless. Is Disco an evolution of John Phillip Sousa’s, “The Stars and Stripes Forever?” Well, Disco has the same beat, and it came along later, but that’s about all the two have in common.

     One more quick comment about their beats. The beats seem fairly similar, but there is a common difference. As I wrote earlier, the Disco beat is almost always, “peasoup, peasoup, peasoup, peasoup.” The Electronica beat is almost always, “boots’npants,’nboots’npants,’nboots’npants,’n’boots’npants.” DJs and music production people often use those descriptors. That “boots” part is where the distinction is. Electronica has a wider range. Disco does not go as far down. It stays more up. “pea” vs. “boots.”

     Disco and Electronica are both dance music, but that’s where the similarity ends. Disco is an evolution of Ballroom and Swing, even the Minuet folks did in the 1600s (also in 4/4 time). I’m not a ’50s and ’60s historian, but at some point couple dancing to memorized steps gave way to free form dances like the Twist and Shag and Frug and Monkey, which gave way to simply jumping and shaking and twirling. By the time I was dancing to New Wave there were not even names, like Twist, and it was considered a bit uncool to pay too much attention to your partner, or even look at her. Within a year or two when one went to a club playing New Wave it wasn’t even cool to ask anyone to dance. You just went to the floor and danced. Girls could always dance together, but guys tried to make sure they were near a girl, or girls. Of course, if you went with a date you’d both go to the floor together, and try to stay around the same area, but it was intentionally free, individual and disjointed.

     When you see footage of couples dancing to something like “Rock Around the Clock” in the ’50s, they are doing swing steps to Rock music and dancing as partners. If you look at couples dancing to “Incense and Peppermints” in the ’60s they do not touch, they do not necessarily do the same arm movements…

     Disco is a continuation of that Ballroom, Swing, “Rock Around the Clock” tradition.
     Electronica is a continuation of that Strawberry Alarm Clock, New Wave tradition.

     A modern “Rave” has its roots in Woodstock, Burning Man and ’80s Dance Parties.
     Disco has its roots in Minuet and Square Dance and Foxtrot and the Lindy Hop.

     I don’t know of a new form of couples dance currently extant. There is a swing-revival that has been going on for almost 30 years now. It stopped growing, but is still picking up young recruits. It would not surprise me at all to see a Disco revival make a comeback. The 20 somethings who do Swing dress in fashion from the era. It’s a hoot. I could easily envision 20 somethings doing the same with Disco era costumes and music.

111. DNW,

     “no wonder the lunacy in our universities has principally spewed out of the humanities departments.”

     You apparently didn’t spend any time around Psych Professors. 😉

112. Universities: ivy covered consternation camps where thoughts and minds are exterminated.

113. Rufus T. Firefly on March 9, 2021 at 11:27 am said:
     DNW,

     “no wonder the lunacy in our universities has principally spewed out of the humanities departments.”

     You apparently didn’t spend any time around Psych Professors. ?

114. DNW:

     I’m wondering what years you were in college. For me, in the late 60s, even the humanities were still very straightforward in the way they were taught. I don’t remember a single leftist, nor were emotions stressed nor any particular point of view pushed. America was not trashed, egos were not swollen, and truth was still considered a Thing to Pursue. Even in the psych department, where I spent a lot of time, it was pretty much rat psych all the way. My guess is that some transition began shortly after that, partly as a result of the 60s.

115. It’s a puzzle that the philosopher is confounded that not all people think alike. Excessive rumination?

116. Rufus T. Firefly on March 9, 2021 at 11:27 am said:
     DNW,

     “no wonder the lunacy in our universities has principally spewed out of the humanities departments.”

     You apparently didn’t spend any time around Psych Professors. ?

     I almost majored in psychology. And yes, you have a point. I think that one of my first professors was trying to get an orgy started in class. ( an exaggeration) Anyway, I was sailing through tbe course work, and it was keeping me on tbe Dean’s list.

     Then after about 30 some credits came the crash in a course on Abnormal Psychology. I was – an outrage!- expected to do some minmal clinical-like project work. Till then I had a flawless performance and the prof looked at me as if I were a kind of phenom. Then, all the sudden it became, “You mean I have to actually deal with and listen to effed up people?”

     My days of knocking out exams in 15 minutes to the amazement of the instructors, and getting virtually perfect scores for easy “As” , were over. Read the book all at once, do nothing else, get an A, was done.

     It is one thing to read about how self destructive mechanisms work, and to flawlessly recite the practices, theories and theorists of the field. But it is another to pretend to take the crap seriously and invest yourself in it and in the “subjects” of the discipline. What did I care if they were mentally ill. Of course they were. That is why they were assholes in the first place. I just couldn’t pretend to care, or more to the point, suffer the gruesomeness of it.

     And then, speaking of more generally of normal people, there is the whole problem of the unstated premiss behind the concept of the psychology of ( social) adjustment.

     Not unusual apparently when it comes to recoiling from the more palpable encounters with the malady laden. There is a whole subdiscipline in Medicine populated by such people. It is called radiology. Haha

117. Celadon:

     A heartfelt “You’re welcome!” You have described quite well how I feel, too. A Bee Gees’ crush is a complicated thing, with many doors and rooms to enter.

     If you read some of the comments at YouTube on Barry, you will see that there are still enormous numbers of women who find him the sexiest man alive, ever. The comments to this one are a hoot.

     The bridge in “Nights on Broadway” stopped me in my tracks in awe. I was at least somewhat familiar with the song from the past, but apparently when it was played on the radio way back when, they eliminated the bridge in order to fit into the short slots that DJs allowed for songs. So I had never heard the bridge before just a few weeks ago. It’s phenomenal.

     In terms of harmonies, you might want to have a listen to this one, from 1974. They sound like a gospel choir.

118. neo on March 9, 2021 at 1:21 pm said:
     DNW:

     I’m wondering what years you were in college. For me, in the late 60s, even the humanities were still very straightforward in the way they were taught. I don’t remember a single leftist, nor were emotions stressed nor any particular point of view pushed. America was not trashed, egos were not swollen, and truth was still considered a Thing to Pursue. Even in the psych department, where I spent a lot of time, it was pretty much rat psych all the way. My guess is that some transition began shortly after that, partly as a result of the 60s.”

     My last two matriculating undergrad courses were in 80, I think.

     I was working and I needed one class to finish up so I took two. One was a theory and practice course, I think, and the other was analytic philosophy; populated mostly by grad students. We spent most of the semester “parsing” the “Philosophical Investigations” after first reviewing logical positivism. Ayer’s book was great fun to discuss.

     But back to Wittgenstein, I think there is a major and fairly obvious logical problem with the theory of ” family resemblances” and the whole idea of language games. But that, is another matter.

119. All this disco talk reminds me of this k-pop take on it by the CEO of JYP Entertainment. There are a ton of reactions to it if one cares to search for them, but I like the uncut homage to the music rather a lot — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrsBjYukE8s

120. Something different.

     https://youtu.be/lzt12xpiMRk

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