Saturday Night Forever

by Alan Jones, Jussi Kantonen

If all disco means to you is records like 'I Will Survive' and 'YMCA', tacky fashions and glitter eyeshadow, this book will be a real revelation. For Alan Jones and Jussi Kantonen, disco was an essential soundtrack to their lives. They loved its total hedonistic excess, its drive, its punch and its sweet, catchy melodies. For every chart hit that pounded into the public's consciousness, countless other better tracks were causing hair-raising highs on dance floors where Alan and Jussi and thousands of aficionados like them were strutting their funky stuff.





Disco started in obscure underground clubs as a glamour-filled reaction to the plodding, self-indulgent rock music of the late '60s and really took off in the excitement-parched early '70s. Created by people marginalised by their colour (black), race (Latino), sexuality (gay) or class (working), the music and its attendant lifestyle inevitably became watered down and distorted once it slipped from the control of small independent labels and became a worldwide craze. The massive popularity of films such as Saturday Night Fever and the accompanying Bee Gees soundtrack led people to believe that this was disco. But the authors, by exploring such diverse strands as Eurodisco and roller disco, gay disco, and disco fashions, drugs and clubs, show this to be untrue, and instead uncover the magical, multi-layered genre in all its shining, strobe-lit glory. They believe in mirror balls.

Genres: Music

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 1999

About the author

Alan Jones is a film critic, broadcaster and reporter on the horror and fantasy genres and has travelled the world to report on movies in production. His first assignment was the original Star Wars in 1977, after which he became London correspondent for Cinefantastique magazine (1977–2002) and reviewed for British magazine Starburst from 1980 until 2008.

A film critic for Film Review and Radio Times, he has made contributions to the Radio Times Guide to Films, The Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction and Halliwell's Film Guide, After stints co-presenting the legendary Shock Around The Clock festival in London, and Fantasm at the National Film Theatre, Jones is now a leading figure and co-curator of London FrightFest Film Festival.

Reviews

[Hex75 · Rating 3 out of 5]

libro divertente, con qualche inesattezza e sopratutto qualche somiglianza con "disco days" di gavin compton: intere pagine sembrano proprio uguali!
chi ha preso da chi?

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun book that's also easy to read. Lovely companion to Peter Shapiro's Turn the Beat Around.

[Max Renn · Rating 4 out of 5]

the introduction to this book tells of its origins. a book editor in the close confines of an automobile listening to two disco enthusiast friends in full blown hardcore otaku mode... and it is from this danger-ridden starting point that this book finds both its infectious appeal and its structural flaws.

i didnt like this book at first. i found it unfocused and a bit shallow, content to jump around from thought to nostalgia without really saying anything but after a while this fractured conversational tone accretes into something substantial and effervescent, quite suitable to the subject, which deserves more and better thought than it typically receives, especially from a socio-political perspective. without sacrificing respect for disco's greatest human achievement which is the sheer uninhibited joy of the spiritual pleasures of the neon-blitzed dance floor.

but in the final analysis where this book really succeeds is as an invaluable gift from some clued-up lovers to the rest of us. an invaluable collection of well-curated hard data. a guide into the sensual heart of a vanished subterranean for those that think they might remember love.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't going to admit to buying and reading this book in public but I have to say that Jones did an amazing job of portraying the global cultural impact of disco. There were not only some great reminders of songs I'd forgotten but an incredible birth-to-death synopsis of the era. If you lived & loved the disco era, it's worth the read!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It skimmed the surface more than delved in....but it was interesting as a starter and fun (which is what I needed), plus it made me check out a number of disco tracks as a result.