did 'the jam' have good lyrics'
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
For some reason yesterday I was thinking about a 'time barrier' thing with music where you can't really hear music in the same way decades later as you could if you heard it at the time – oh now I know, it was cos I was listening to that autechre album with the grey cover and thinking how it sounds pretty bland/standard now but maybe at the time sounded really out of the ordinary and abrasive. (Incidentally, noticing that Trap beats now appear as incidental background music in the BBC's olympic coverage and in a program I saw yesterday going behind the scenes at a british safari park...)
I love disco but I wonder now if it would have been really annoying and stifling at the time because it was so ubiquitous. (Although I know a lot of people on the 'Disco Sucks' train were homophobic/racist or into much worse music.)
I love disco but I wonder now if it would have been really annoying and stifling at the time because it was so ubiquitous. (Although I know a lot of people on the 'Disco Sucks' train were homophobic/racist or into much worse music.)
It's interesting how this stuff gets retrospectively rehabilitated and historicised as well. A bit like Luka was saying upthread about The Jam at the time, when they were young in that the contemporary context is so important and so quickly forgotten. Everyone now is like "I love disco and the I worship the legacy of Larry Levan" but who would have had the vaguest clue about that 30 years ago?
There's a difference between the West End smooth associations I have with The Style Council and the suburban casuals who were duffing up your mates. All this stuff gets smooshed together a bit.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
James Brown hated disco as well, even though he did end up doing some disco tracks, but I think he saw it as taking the repetition of funk and stripping out all the grit to make a shiny, unthreatening product.
john eden
male pale and stale
Yeah that’s fair enough - we experienced a very narrow suburbanised version of it. This stuff will have played out very differently in, for example, a student Union at a University.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Leo
Well-known member
my remark was specifically about the Disco Demolition Night which, if you know anything about 70s Chicago, absolutely had a substantial racial factor.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
It was all about race burning records
As for Clinton, he was all about the “1” with beats. 4/4 was never going to work in that regard
As for Clinton, he was all about the “1” with beats. 4/4 was never going to work in that regard
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Anyway, Weller, what a bellend
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
One aspect that’s both a saving grace and annoyance is the incessantly shit firm cctv/polis video “highlights“ on YT with accompanying Jam or Weller soundtrack, now behind a YT age verification wall
Do I need to give YT my plastic info just to see Barnsley battering Rotherham from 2002 (while hearing Weller moan-croon)? Not really
Do I need to give YT my plastic info just to see Barnsley battering Rotherham from 2002 (while hearing Weller moan-croon)? Not really
yes, basically prototype Jamiroquai
craner
Beast of Burden
Arthritic Acid Jazz
linebaugh
Well-known member
Amazing song
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
That's what Paul Weller would say
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
blissblogger
Well-known member
If you'd come through the Sixties and all that, and Sly and the Family Stone, political soul etc etc .... it kinda makes sense you'd resent disco, especially if you were not aware (as most people weren't) of its roots in the gay underground. Most people first encountered it as this commercial sound that suddenly exploded and was oppressively omnipresent. I think in the States, a really huge number of radio stations switched to the disco format. It wasn't like that in the UK, Radio One had a balanced playlist, so I don't think there was ever as much of an anti-disco feeling - plus there's the longstanding working class attraction to danceable black music from America. Quite a few major rock artists had a go, and New Wavers too.
Obviously some ugly undercurrents to discophobia and the record-burnings are hideous, seem to have awful historical echoes, but... as Luke has noted, anti-disco sentiments cut across racial lines and had all kinds of motivations. Quite possibly there are gay music fans who found it unbearable, repetitive, etc.
Greg Tate the great Black American critic and supporter of Miles in the 70s, Parliament-Funkadelic etc, he once described disco as DISCOINTELPRO - punning on the FBI's infiltration / defusing of Black Panthers and other Sixties radical groups.
Obviously some ugly undercurrents to discophobia and the record-burnings are hideous, seem to have awful historical echoes, but... as Luke has noted, anti-disco sentiments cut across racial lines and had all kinds of motivations. Quite possibly there are gay music fans who found it unbearable, repetitive, etc.
Greg Tate the great Black American critic and supporter of Miles in the 70s, Parliament-Funkadelic etc, he once described disco as DISCOINTELPRO - punning on the FBI's infiltration / defusing of Black Panthers and other Sixties radical groups.