From: Stimp (stimp@aei.ca)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 02:27:07 CEST
No offence taken at all; I love the fact that the thread sparked so much
great discussion. However, when you talk about musicians of that era having
work, then maybe you're not seeing the whole picture. I've read "Last Night
a DJ Saved My Life", and it's an indispensible source of information for the
DJ culture, but on the whole musician thing, you should really check out
Rickey Vincent's book, "Funk". The book is excellently researched, and it
provides an excellent counterpoint to your Disco/musicians not losing work
argument. Despite the very valid points you make in your post, another
indisputible fact is that Disco totally whitewashed funk. 20 piece funk
bands were replaced by the more cost-efficient "Disco Diva". The 12-inch
replaced the live concert. Again, I refer to Rickey Vincent's book, it's
all there. Of course, the massive backlash that it caused in the Rock n'
Roll and Jazz community is another can of worms, but that's for another post
(Remember Disco Sucks night in Chicago?), and not necessarily relevant to
this thread.
As if for the roots of hiphop, that's been discussed a million times on
this list, and many people here would mention the generations of toasters in
Jamaica in the late 60's (I Roy, U Roy, King Tubby, any one of dozens of
early Dub artists, etc..). Heck, someone even suggested that it may go
further back to New Orleans to include the likes of King Pleasure (don't
remember who made that argument. Maybe Bob Davis?). I'm not all too
familiar with King Pleasure, but I'd certainly trace hip hop's roots back to
Jamaica way before the first Disco track was laid down. Did disco influence
hip hop? Absolutely. Was hip hop born of disco? Not on your life. The
waters of hip hop run far deeper than the Disco era.
Disco certainly influenced house and techno, but so did Xenakis and
Stockhausen if we get into the electronic part of disco, Lee "Scratch" Perry
if we talk about the mixing part of it, or Swing and Bebop if we get into
the dance part of the equation. People like dancing, they always will, and
house and techno will eventually be replaced by something else. So I'd say
that disco is just one link on the chain, but it certainly ain't the first
link. The Hustle was preceded by the Jitterbug, which was preceded by the
Waltz, and so on. So yeah, I disagree. Disco may be the mother and father
of Techno and house, but it had parents and grandparents as well.
Finally, your hip hop comment makes my point perfectly. Disco may not be
all bad, but the shit that the masses were bumping to was. There's a
thousand Nelly fans and a million Will Smith fans for every Blackalicious
fan, and these people don't know the first thing about hip hop, they just
consume pop, and hip hop is the flavor of the week. Any scene has an
underground, and that's generally where all the vital music is being made,
by those who care about the music rather than the selling of it. It's an
argument we have here all the time, and we all seem to be in agreement, no?
So maybe we grew up on the same planet after all, lol.
Stimp
----- Original Message -----
From: "terrence grant" <leftalive@comcast.net>
To: <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 5:18 PM
Subject: Re: [acid-jazz] tool requests was 21st Century
> Spoken like someone who truly does not know what they're talking about.
>
>
> > Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone on this list would even mention most
> > disco the viable musical choice of that era when there's TONS of great
> > Hip-Hop (Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, Sugarhill gang,etc... you all
know
> > 'em) and Punk rock acts whose musical influence is still being felt 30
years
> > later.
>
> Two separate eras, my man. Disco was the soundtrack to the club revolution
> of the SEVENTIES, and by the start of the eighties, was mostly a distant
> memory. Hip hop was BORN in the early eighties, and born of (among other
> things) DISCO. You gonna play "rappers delight" and then tell me that's
not
> disco? Good God in heaven, they stole an entire song from Chic!
>
>
> > Who'd KC or Teena Marie ever inluence? Sure, it's not all bad, but
> > most of it sucked ass and put musicians out of business. I ain't with
that.
> > Throwaway music is just that, no matter how old it is. If not, I've got
a
> > pile of Glen Miller and Pat Boone records I wanna sell you......
>
> Put musicians out of business? What planet did you grow up on? Who do you
> think played on all those disco records? I'll tell you who - the cream of
> the crop of the studio scenes at the time. Heavyweight cats in NY and LA,
> the same guys who played on a lot of records that you probably DO think
its
> cool to like.
>
> You're exclusion of all but the most mainstream disco artists in your
post,
> leads me to believe that you never really bothered to look at what
actually
> went down back then. By your rational I could say that hip hop isn't any
> good, because all I see on the charts is Nelly, and Trick Daddy, and that
> awful f**king song by Khia. But I know better, and thank the Lord for
> Blackalicious, the Roots, Dialated Peoples, and they whole philly scene.
>
> And do not forget that whether you like it or not, disco was the mother
and
> father of modern dance music. Disco gave birth to house and techno, and so
> on and so on. If you disagree, you are wrong. I'm sorry - thats just the
way
> it is.
>
> Read a book called "last night a dj saved my life" by Bill Brewster and
> Frank Broughton. Its been discussed many times on this list, and is an
> exhaustive history of the DJ's rise to fame.
>
> Lastly, I appologize in advance if my tone seems harsh. Its just that I
have
> a passion for groovy music that is rivaled only by my love of baseball,
and
> when I encounter someone who is as ill informed as you were, I take it
upon
> myself to set things straight.
>
> -Peace and love.
>
>
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