ok so i was in Barnes and Noble with an hour to kill so i picked up this book about the American Hardcore scene from 1980-1986. I forgot the authors name.

a brief setting of the time table had him talking about punk and new wave, but also about disco.

he talked about people being fed up with disco, and rabble-rousing disc jockeys creating the "disco sucks" anthem. also he cites the socially-sanctioned events known as disco record burning. all that i was aware of, but he stated that these specific things were outright rascist and homophobic actions. i'm assuming he thought so because (he thought, not sure if it's true) disco was music mostly made by and for blacks and gays?

i don't know much about disco or that culture or that time period (hey i was only like 3 years old!) but i thought it would bring up a discussion. next time i'm in B&N i'll read more of the book...it intrigues me.

bort
np: damone

Hadn't ever thought of it that way, as I too was too young to partake in all of that, but it makes sense. People historically fear change, it amounts to book burning almost literally. Roll over a rock and we can all see that hostility towards the new or broader thinking being attacked these days even. To corroborate the point, I have seem the VH1 70's show and the burners wore some fine examples of the ever popular mullet.
Maybe more on this from some of the old(er) farts here? Was disco the Britney Spears of the day, if so, how could it rile up people so badly. Was there a massive hipster backlash, were ugly people mad at not getting into Studio 54 type clubs country-wide? Inquiring minds want to know!

I vaguely remember hearing about at least one of those big record-burnings, but that's about it. I made a concerted effort, mostly successful, to ignore the whole scene. I will say that it was pervasive enough to dominate pop culture, and certainly was not at all limited to a particular sexual orientation or race.

I've heard that argument before and it falls flat on its face in ralation to punk and hardcore if you ask me.

Punk bands nowadays are mostly nothing but suburban white boys, but go back in time and things were different. Dead Kennedys had a black drummer, Bad Brains was all black and one of the most popular hardcore bands. Lee Ving's reconstituted versions of FEAR had black members on and off. And, what about the Zeros, sometimes referred to as the "Mexican Ramones?" You had gay members of Husker Du. Before that, hell you had Pat Smear from the Germs. Ever see the guys from the Dicks in drag, or the front man from the Big Boys? Really, there were plenty of homosexual folks frequenting punk clubs in the old days from what I saw. (If nothing else, they were both usually located in shitty parts of town and had clientele trading back and forth in illicit substances.)

The music wasn't as homogenous either. Old punk bands like Blondie were putting out disco records. The Clash was experimenting with hip hop and dub. The Minutemen had a strong Latino influence. You have to wait until the latter part of the 80s to find the regimentation so prelevant in what passes for punk rock today. Sure, you could always head to the punk rock bar on an off night and hear a bill full of folks rehashing the same loud fast stuff over and over, but the top bands showed diversity, at least until the later half of the 80s, when suddenly all you started to hear in the bars were thrash bands until the whole pop punk thing went mainstream in the 90s.

The disco thing was fine if you liked to dress in polyester and dance the night away, but if you weren't so inclined, it did not make you a rascist or homophobic and to paint people with that brush is just ignorant. I don't want to be accused of the same, so I'll just mention briefly that there was probably more of the anti-gay, anti-black thing happening in more mainstream rock of the 70s and their fans than the leftover punks and hardcore fans. Besides, in the US anyway, there were never anywhere near enough fans of punk or hardcore to be seen as somehow reflected in mass events like the disco sucks crap.

Really, if he's setting the time for a look at 80-86, bringing up the disco sucks crap is kinda out of place. Maybe he's going for background or something before moving forward, but if he's labeling a majority of punk fans as rascist homophobes because a bunch of people outside of the thing were burning disco records, he's stretching. If he wants to set the scene for hardcore, he should instead be talking about Regan and the yuppie revolution as a more accurate counterpoint.

And...oh yeah, getting dressed up to impress some doorman just so you could get into a bar was seen as the height of stupidity, and rightly so if you ask me.

They talk about this in "Pump Up The Volume" the Electronic music docu channel4 in the UK made. And about how racist the backlash against Disco was. But I don't think the racism was a Punk thing & the backlash wasn't limited to punk. I think Punk got involved because they just wanted to revolt against corp music period. Case in point, Lydon's "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt.

yeah the author wasn't stating that punks/punk fans were racist and homophobic, i think he was making a statement about the disco backlash in general separate from soon-to-be-exploding hardcore scene. the book has quotes/interviews with every single person mentioned in nobody's first paragraph. he does however make a case that hardcore was very violent, and that is was very male domniated.

i think when lots of people think "disco" they think of the conrniest popiest wackast crap ever. They think of the style over substance which was presented to the world.

But disco started out as some drity ass peppy funk music. It was the logical next step from James Brown, but mixed with latin and soul and all sorts of other things. It was amazing music.

it's like thinking of Rap and only thinking of Puffy at his worst.

so i think DISCO SUCKS was more a reaction to the media and the pop stars than it was the actual music.