Disco: The last dying gasp of the Golden Era?

[scottyrocks]

Only one Scotty? What with an avatar like your's?

It's the only one that survived that long. I have newer suits, but I wear them with contrasting waistcoats these days.

 

[MisterCairo]

New wave and the new romantics in the 80s adopted a style many of us would find familiar.

Tell me those aren't "Hollywood" trousers on Jim Kerr, and dig the jackets:

 

[Stearmen]

^^^ Of course, today, some of the younger wearers, wear them with sneakers (seems the new thing to wear suits and sneakers) which, to my eye, undermines the elegance of the look.

That's what they said about two tone wingtips!

 

[MikeKardec]

I'd say you are right about disco "last gasp" or a "harmonic" of the swing era. Arguing that it was "the same" or assuming that this concept means the two times were "the same" is missing the point.

Along with many of the things others have brought up, I was always impressed in the similarity in some aspects of the music: large orchestras or the synthesized sound of large orchestras, more rhythmic melodies (even if buried in the production), the sense much of the time that the musicians were playing together as opposed to playing separately yet in a way that worked together (like rock or true improvisational jazz as opposed to swing).

When I was starting out doing radio dramas we always looked for old Swing era studios because they are 1) built for a large orchestra and thus have enough room for multiple mics and a big cast, 2) were live yet very smooth sounding because they were built to record a large orchestra with just a few mics set a good distance away. Typically rock and roll studios were very soft and dead sounding and sucked up sound like a sponge requiring a LOT of level.

By the time I did my last show, just a few years ago, we were desperately trying to find the last few studios built during the disco era because all the old Swing rooms (except for Capitol Records Studio A which was too expensive) were gone. The Disco studios worked just as well if not better. People who worked in the technical aspects of the recording business always associated the two eras without without feeling that they were "the same."

We might be better if we called Disco a cartoon of Swing. It's also good to remember that Disco was a lot more than Studio 54, it had a considerably more conservative life in many more conservative locales and certainly convinced high schoolers like myself to actually want to wear a suit, an influence that held over into the vintage clothing era that sprung up right afterward.

Without thinking about it too much I'd say that post war UK culture contributed to American counter culture but the UK and Europe in general did not accept American counter culture back in the same amount. What I think of as "counter culture" doesn't seem to have translated eastward in the same way.

I was just looking at photographs my family took during an extended trip to England in 1969, nowhere do I see the sort of counter culture style that was so obvious every minute in our home neighborhood of West Hollywood (which was counter culture central at the time) ... the most extravagant British styles (in clothes ads and design) were very slick and modish and occasionally Edwardian or even older. But usually elegant as opposed to the tattered, rural or distressed look you'd see in the US.

 

[Edward]

I was just looking at photographs my family took during an extended trip to England in 1969, nowhere do I see the sort of counter culture style that was so obvious every minute in our home neighborhood of West Hollywood (which was counter culture central at the time) ... the most extravagant British styles (in clothes ads and design) were very slick and modish and occasionally Edwardian or even older. But usually elegant as opposed to the tattered, rural or distressed look you'd see in the US.

It's often all too easy to forget (perhaps the pervasive influence of the Hollywood entertainment machine) that the UK and the US were very different places during the twentieth century. Still are, of course, though the web and other entertainment factors haverapidly narrowed the gap in pop culture. The popular rock and roll fifties revivial subculture in the UK (which I very much enjoy) is very American - "the fifties" that it revives is a very, very different one than ever happened here in the post-war UK. Unrecognisably so to anyone I've known who lived through it. (Of course, that could also apply in the US). I should think it was approaching the turn of the nineties before you started to see very significant commonality between UK and US pop cultures on a day to day basis.

 

[Stearmen]

It's often all too easy to forget (perhaps the pervasive influence of the Hollywood entertainment machine) that the UK and the US were very different places during the twentieth century. Still are, of course, though the web and other entertainment factors haverapidly narrowed the gap in pop culture. The popular rock and roll fifties revivial subculture in the UK (which I very much enjoy) is very American - "the fifties" that it revives is a very, very different one than ever happened here in the post-war UK. Unrecognisably so to anyone I've known who lived through it. (Of course, that could also apply in the US). I should think it was approaching the turn of the nineties before you started to see very significant commonality between UK and US pop cultures on a day to day basis.

We sure shared Rock & Roll in the late 50s on.

 

[Fading Fast]

I just watched 1961's "The Hustler" which showed a pretty gritty society - organized underworld gambling, alcoholism, cold casual sex, vigilantism, psychological abuse leading to suicide and a general atmosphere of despair, disregard for ones fellow man and rejection of basic morality. This is the same year that "Lover Come Back" was also release, the second Doris Day - Rock Hudson "life is sweet and good and no one really has sex out of wedlock" movies. To be sure, movies always show a wide spectrum of societal views, but that the Hustler was out in '61 reveals that the wheel was already starting to turn, in '61, in the direction of the later-'60s cultural revolution.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Part of that is that the shackles of the Production Code Administration were being steadily loosened from the mid-1950s forward. Joseph Ignatius Breen retired in 1954, and with him went the single-minded fanaticism that kept Hollywood "Rinso White." There were some pretty gamy pictures in the years that followed -- "The Man With the Golden Arm" in 1955 was a hard-hitting look at the life of a drug addict that pulled no punches, and which would have been impossible to release under Breen's administration. Moving toward the early sixties, "The Apartment" and "Under The Yum Yum Tree", a couple of Jack Lemmon comedies, had a very smeary, free-and-easy attitude toward sexual freebooting.

Of course, Hollywood had little relation to the realities of any era, Breen nonwithstanding. Sexual morality during World War II was extremely loose -- Elizabeth Hawes in her 1943 book "Why Women Cry" is quite frank and unapologetic about what was going on on the homefront. Suffice it to say that "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree" was meant and understood to be an extremely ironic song.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^All that you said makes sense to me. And great call on "The Man With the Golden Arm," there was not holding back in that one and that pre-dates the "The Hustler" by a good six years. Having not seen "The Hustler" for a long time and, for whatever reason, not remember how gritty and brutal it was, I was caught a bit off guard by its full-on reveal of life's not prettiness.

It still is quite a juxtaposition those two movies "The Hustler" and "Lover Come Back" make if you are trying to make any sense of society from its popular movies (but that's why we know trying to make sense of a culture from its popular movies is a fool's errand).

 

[MikeKardec]

Interpreting reality from film has always been a challenge. The US has often had a disconnect compared with the rest of the world because in many countries films are funded to a great extent by the government. That does not automatically make them propaganda but most of the "national arts" offices that award the money want the films to (either accurately or manipulatively) represent the "history and culture" of the country in question. In the US and a very few other countries where film is an utterly commercial venture, films are more a reflection of our fantasies and fears rather than an accurate depiction of either reality or propaganda. Many outsiders to our culture don't understand this and thus get a VERY distorted vision of what life is like here. We get it but many others really do not.

Hollywood films often do reflect a specific culture but that is the culture of film executives; relatively wealthy, image oriented, over-educated and under-experienced, very authoritarian, cynical, obsessed with office politics and impressing each other ... actually making money runs mid pack.

 

[Thunderhead19]

I don't think the last gasp has happened yet. Without writing a 30 line tirade. It's all coming back. The war we've been beset with, and the economic collapse of 7 years ago seems to have re-awakened something...

 

[FedoraFan112390]

Of course, Hollywood had little relation to the realities of any era, Breen nonwithstanding. Sexual morality during World War II was extremely loose -- Elizabeth Hawes in her 1943 book "Why Women Cry" is quite frank and unapologetic about what was going on on the homefront. Suffice it to say that "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree" was meant and understood to be an extremely ironic song.

An anecdote relating to that: My stepgrandfather, due to being partly deaf, didn't serve in WWII. He was born in 1917, he was the right age. When he was asked once what he did during the War, he said with a smile that he worked in the "Woman's Home Relief Program", "helping" the wives of GI's.

 

[tonyb]

...
You could argue that the punk rock crowd that competed with the disco habitues was even more meticulous about "dressing up" for an evening out -- nothing is so detailed as the attire of a subculture.

Indeed. Witness the millions of words devoted here to the most minute of minutiae pertaining to items of attire. Turns out there's a whole lot to say about A2 flight jackets, for instance, or the various iterations of Stetson Stratoliners.

I got nothing against any of it. Quite to the contrary, actually. I genuinely appreciate those who so freely share the knowledge they have spent countless hours acquiring. But I can see how outsiders (the overwhelming majority of humanity) might wonder why we would make such a fuss.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^Amidst my friends, there are ones into cars, motorcycles, golf, fantasy baseball, sailing, cooking, tennis, travel, painting, and so on. Each one can discuss their hobby / interest in detail that is incredible. "Did you know the 1935 Buick was the first one to have the blah, blah, blah, engine blah, blah, blah," or "in 1912, the first all pro-golf tournament was held and blah, blah, blah," or "the best salt for cooking that type of bread is, but for this type I'd only use blah, blah, blah."

My interests are blah, blah, blah too to the next one, but for those of us into - fill in the blank - all those details are fascinating. It's one of the things I love about freedom - true individual freedom. Work for your money and spend it pursuing whatever floats your boat.