Disco Literature

 

Published by Rolling Stone Books in 1976

Which is pretty quick off tbe mark

Abe Peck was a serious journalist, whose pedigree included stints on the Underground press of the Sixties

What I like about this book is how different its perspective is from the disco scholarship of recent decades

The culture’s historical origins are in there but mostly it is about disco as a mass phenomenon - discotheques not just in New York, San Francisco and Miami but in towns all across America - and the world, as the global reports included show.

And it is a distinctly cheesy subculture - all about learning dance steps, dancing in formation, singles bars, glitzy escapism, tacky clothes.

Basically there is a refreshing dearth in Dancing Madness on the Record Pool or what was played on April 12 1978 at the Loft.

Peck’s book precedes by a few years Albert Goldman’s Disco, which is a slumming highbrow’s quasi-anthropological take on disco - the word Dionysian crops up, the fascination for Doors fan Goldman is “dancing madness”, the insanity and excess of disco as craze -  but the book is well researched and thorough. Enjoyable to read precisely because of the gap between his windy locutions  and the vulgar vernacular decadence of what he is documenting.

More images from Dancing Madness.