A COMPLETE INTRODUCTION TO DISCO

Release Date: September 20th 2010

Label: Universal Music

Cat No: 5328514

Format: 4CD Hardcover book / Digital

For many it's impossible to imagine a time when disco wasn't dressed up in a white designer suit with gold chains and a medallion around its neck. After the 'Saturday Night Fever' film and soundtrack went stratospheric in 1978 such was the impact of the genre on music it seemed that the only way established rock acts like Blondie, The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart could keep up was to "go disco", too. Before long the backlash began, culminating in a riotous 'disco demolition night' in Chicago's Comiskey Park during a White Sox game when hundreds of disco records were blown up. The event resulted in several injuries and the demonization of the genre, which was apparently pronounced 'dead' in 1980.

But the rock reactionaries were to be proved wrong - we now know that disco lived on, in just about every permutation of dance and pop music since those heady, hedonistic dancing days of the 1970s. For the first time, Universal Music Catalogue's 4-CD set 'The Complete Introduction To Disco' takes a chronological, decade-long journey tracing the metamorphosis and development of the genre from its roots in soul, funk and Motown into a form that effortlessly absorbed European electronica, Latin percussion, big bands, African grooves, thumping beats and gospel-influenced vocals. Indeed, once the disco scene was set – first in New York City before making waves all over the world - the 1970s period gave birth to modern clubland as we would recognise it today. It would be disco music that would, for the first time ever, soundtrack the coming together of a melting pot of sexes, races and sexualities…one nation under a disco groove.

Beautifully packaged and compiled in consultation with those at the centre of the storm at the time, and after exhaustive research into club DJ playlists and DJ charts, 'The Complete Introduction To Disco' throws the spotlight on disco's groundbreaking producers, vocalists, DJs and house bands, many of whom provide quotes and anecdotes for the set's detailed sleevenotes. It contains the landmark records from the time – such as Diana Ross's 'Love Hangover' and Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' – alongside overlooked classics that lit up the dance floors of the 1970s. Choc-full of some of the most musically adventurous and life-affirming music ever made, it's both a serious attempt to rescue the genre from those white suit and medallion connotations AND the box set you can dance to.

Yowsah!

A COMPLETE INTRODUCTION TO DISCO: 1970 - 1980

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