Well the oil crisis in the 70's ushered in the disco era, and it looks to be back again in England, Los Angeles, Canada, and, well, it never left San Fransisco. Even Sirius-XM brought back its disco station. Many, like Lexi Roswell are excited (from comments here):Bob will be offering more of his observations here.My God. I have been unknowingly prepared for this moment since I was very young. Thank you, mom and dad, for making me listen to the Bee Gees so much. I am so ready for this.If Disco is really back, then we might use its life-cycle as a guide to the future. The '73 recession lasted a full two years, so that would mean the end of 2009 before the current recession ends. Stock prices will turn up about six months before the end of the recession.
Disco had more staying power--it lasted a full six years (from 1973 to 1979). So Disco should die again by early 2015. By then, my 401k might have recovered.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Disco is Back
My friend Bob lives in Los Angeles in a weird masochistic experiment to see how long a libertarian can survive the Hollywood concrete jungle. Bob writes:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I still support the message from Stripes:
A t-shirt that says "Death Before Disco".
If Disco will displace Rap, I'm all for it.
bob, Rap isn't really what you're against, I'd bet -- "Gangsta Rap" is a subgenre which is more likely the issue, and/or a lot of what is referred to as "Hip-Hop culture" -- with Hip-Hop being a subgenre of Rap, too.
Further, Disco was strongly associated with excessive cocaine abuse and cheap sex... do you really think we want those to come back, either? Especially since they probably won't do so without bringing the violence problems of Rap with them?
Disco was vapid. It's dance music, and only dance music. It's boring if you're not in a place to dance. It's like Ambient without the relaxing element.
If you want Disco, just go listen to Techno, that's what it morphed into by melding somewhat with New Wave synth-pop instrumentation.
The only good thing Disco did was to clear out the brain-dead poppish dreck that R&R had mired itself in starting around 1971, which cleared the way for New Wave. Much like the "girl groups" of the early sixties, which cleared the way for thee British Invasion, and, indeed, early 90s rap did for the Seattle Sound.
I'm curious if there is going to be a fourth such sequence, since the existing "radio-push" mechanism has mostly gotten broken by p2p and the internet, so we aren't all stuck with the decisions of ad execs at radio stations and of the brain-deads at record companies. I don't think so, offhand, but I'm not certain of that.
Post a Comment