Reply #102: I hated "disco" with an undying passion [View All]

[hifiguy]

mainly because it became harder and harder for the bands I was playing in to find gigs as more and more clubs abandoned live bands and went to (cheaper) DJs. The mindless repetition of the music was pretty heinous, too. Not to mention all of those goofballs in the white Pierre Cardin suits popularized by Travolta.

OTOH, I am now a big fan of trance, electro-pop Asian girl-groups/singers (like Ayumi Hamasaki and Korea's now-gone Sugar), chill, downtempo and related genres, the roots of many of which can be traced back to disco. It must be said that the vast majority of the modern Asian electro-pop stuff is a direct outgrowth of the brilliant Yellow Magic Orchestra, who took the Kraftwerk aesthetic and transliterated it into something uniquely Japanese. They were (and still are) arguably more interesting and influential than even Kraftwerk because modern Asian synth-pop - and there is a monsoon of the stuff - would not exist without them. Eurotrance's debt to disco is obvious, but the likes of Armin van Buuren take it to places and depths never imagined by the 1970s-80s disco bunnies.

I have never been on a dance floor in my life, and would choose being shot at sunrise to ever being on one, but I paradoxically find a lot of today's dance-oriented music to be excellent for serious listening.

It's strange and ironic how things work themselves out, together and through over the long run...