Disco, baby.
We all remember it. John Travolta in his white suit. The black shirt underneath, open half way, revealing his hairy chest as he thrusts his right arm high into the air. “Gimme that night fever, night fever… we know how to show it.”
The Disco Era exploded when Saturday Night Live hit the screens. Everybody had to have a piece of that Disco Boogie. We even learned disco steps in gym glass. “Step. Ball. Change.” It was all sooooo cool back then.
Well. The disco era came and went rather quickly, with it popularity rising in the late 1970s. Not fast enough as far as I am concerned.
But it was a fact. Disco music utterly dominated the musical landscape of the late 1970s. And after a few years of being hammered by this, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences finally decided to give it their stamp of approval, with the category Best Disco Recording.
In the reality of things, there was a growing disillusion with it all. Besides that, disco had failed to produce many of the kinds of dependable, multi-platinum acts that the industry depended on for its biggest profits.
Anyway, as mentioned, the Grammy’s decided that Disco needed to be honored. So on February 27, 1980, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” won the first Grammy for Best Disco Recording.
Yes. The very first Disco award. And then this. The other thing.
It was also the LAST Grammy awarded for Best Disco Recording. The title of the song couldn’t help the longevity of the word:
“I Will Survive.”
Yet, the award did not.
Oh, the onslaught of catchy phrases emerges, don’t they?
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Easy come. Easy go.
What goes up must come down.
And on.
Thankfully, for us. It was just Disco.
Gone, and maybe forgotten.
“That’s the way. Uh, huh. Uh, huh. I like it. Uh huh. Uh huh.”
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“Fashion fades, only style remains the same.” – Coco Chanel
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“Every man’s memory is his private literature.” – Aldous Huxley
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” – L.P. Hartley
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Won’t you take me to…. Funkytown?
