See Hear Podcast - Saturday Night Fever

Disco music had been a thing from the early 70s on, but not so much in the mainstream. Parts of the African-American, Latino and gay communities had been cherishing the music as an event - going out to dance in discotheques was the thing. There's are books that go through the history of disco music and what put that music underground. Some of the music became top forty success stories, but disco really exploded in 1977 thanks to a movie featuring a TV actor and songs by a group past their glory days. Welcome to episode 108 of See Hear Podcast. Robert Stigwood bought the film rights to a fictitious article by Nik Cohn called “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”. He invested $3.5M into making the film, and made sure his act The Bee Gees were going to be featured on the soundtrack. John Travolta in between Welcome Back Kotter seasons starred as a young working class man from Brooklyn who hates his job and home life, and only finds solace when dancing at the 2001 Odyssey Discotheque. The film is a great character study of what drives people and their self esteem. Kerry, Tim and I welcome first-time guest to the show, Dan Fisher. Dan has started a great new podcast called Let's Talk Ten where he and guests run off lists about all manner things devoted to pop culture. I invited him to our virtual table and Saturday Night Fever was his pick.....it triggered a great discussion, although as Frank Santopadre would say, we barely scratched the surface. The film has so many thematic elements to riff on. We cover some of those, but we also look at disco as a phenomenon (and how it influenced Chasidic music and Joe Raposo), 70s Hollywood movie anti-heroes, the violent backlash to disco music, and aspiring for something better in life. A warning: I sing – twice. We're grateful that Dan came to us with this pick and was such an active participant in the episode. It won't be his last time with us. You should search for him on Facebook to follow his “Rank 'Em” posts (explained at the start of the episode), and you can find Let's Talk Ten at https://letstalktenpodcast.buzzsprout.com/ or whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Also, we're giving a shout out to fellow Pantheon Podcasters Bruce and Ryan over at Prisoners of Rock and Roll. Their latest episode is called Does Disco Suck? It will make a good companion piece to ours. Catch it at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/does-disco-suck/id1534602232?i=1000625127339 Canned Heat might have meant it differently, but the message is the same: Don't forget to boogie. If you’ve been enjoying the show, please consider giving us a favourable review on iTunes and let your friends know that our show exists. If you don't enjoy the show, tell your adversaries to tune in. We don't care who listens..... See Hear is proudly part of the Pantheon Network of music podcasts. Check out all the other wonderful shows at http://pantheonpodcasts.com. Send us feedback via email at [email protected] Join the Facebook group at http://facebook.com/groups/seehearpodcast Check out the Instagram page at www.instagram.com/seehearpodcast/?hl=en You can download the show by searching for See Hear on whatever podcast app you favour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices