Where Do You Go When The Music Stops?

 So as it turns out Disco, in spite of all kinds of suggestions to the contrary, does not suck. 

Back in ths Spring and Summer of 1977, it seemed that the country that had only a year ago banded together to celebrate the Bicentennial was on the brink of being torn apart. The two factions were those who were enthralled with things disco, and those who wished it death. 

Pop music had brought us all to the brink. As for myself, I was firmly in the anti-disco camp. Not because I had any particular stored hate for this genre. On the contrary: I owned my share of records that could have been construed as disco. The kid down the street who was our acknowledged arbiter of taste had us all make a trip to the record department of K-Mart where we each bought a 45 RPM single of one of the hits that was currently being played ad nauseum on the local AM station. I believe he had first pick, and so he selected the biggest hit, KC and the Sunshine Band's "That's The Way I Like It." I was shoved in the direction of Siver Connection's "Fly Robin Fly." These purchases were made in the summer of 1975. By the summer of 77, we were on a collision course with what would be the high water mark of the disco experience: the release of Saturday Night Fever. 

But in that summer before the winter of my disco-ntent, I was finally going to get off the nerd bench and was going to go out to the big ninth grade dance. Having never made this kind of commitment to a social life prior to this, it became apparent that I was going to need a change of wardrobe. T-shirt and jeans was not going to cut it. My mother took me shopping. I got new shoes, new pants, and a shirt. 

Let me pause here to explain: This shirt was made entirely of man-made fibers. It had stripes. And it shone. It was a disco shirt. Not too terribly different from the ones that Tony Manero would wear as he took control of the dance floor of the 2001 Odyssey disco. It was mine, and I would wear it to the last dance of my junior high career. 

There is an episode of Judd Apatow's Freaks and Geeks in which Sam Weir buys himself a Parisian Night Suit. If you have not availed yourself of any or all of this TV series, if you are ever interested in what life was like for me and many of my compatriots this is a window unto that world. I lived a very similar experience to young Sam, and without spoiling anything, I can tell you that my own mild disco period ended somewhat abruptly after that night in rayon. 

It was easy for me to jettison my disco 45s. It was much easier for me to support the T-shrit and jeans aesthetic of rock, riding the cusp of the wave that would become Punk. 

But even that was too committtal for me. Punk Rock was the other side of the musical and cultural trough, but I couldn't fully embrace that either. I could, however, get completely into trashing what had been a minor fixation of mine just two years before. 

Now I'm nearly fifty years away from that summer. Elvis died and the Sex Pistols broke up within months of one another in 1977. I can now listen to Bee Gees and even Silver Convention without flinching. 

I have no idea what happened to that shirt. But I do not miss that. That shirt sucks.