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the pumping music and suavely choreographed dance scenes levitated the corny, follow-your- dreams
plot. And the soundtrack album was cleverly split between the Bee Gees satiny, sanitized grooves and
compelling, authentic disco classics such as the Trammps  Disco Inferno. Saturday Night Fever
perfectly defined a musical movement, and millions of middle Americans couldn t resist hustling on
board. Undeservedly, perhaps, the Bee Gees were recast as disco s blowdried Chubby Checkers.
Of course, one sequence from the film will live forever in pop s collective unconscious: John
Travolta in his white suit, looking magnetic, dancing by himself. Disco was a solo turn by definition,
albeit performed in a group setting. The sublimated sexual motion of an old-fashioned teenage slow
dance would be utterly superfluous in a modern 1970s discotheque.
Eventually selling more than thirty million copies, the Saturday Night Fever album spent twenty-
four weeks at number one in 1977 and 1978. The marketing campaign, masterminded by veteran
record man Al Coury, connected like none previous. In December 1977, half a million copies of
Saturday Night Fever shipped all at once. Movie trailers that prominently featured songs were shown
in theaters, a prime example of crossover marketing. Four singles were released simultaneously, and
each wound up in the Top 10 at the same time (equaling the Beatles British invasion coup). Yet these
record companies soon would come to rue this kind of oversaturation.
At first, the flush of success was contagious. Explains WBLS DJ Frankie Crocker in 1979,  Disco
is definitely replacing rock . . . rock is no more important than Dixieland jazz in New York City right
now. Nationwide chains of Saturday Night Fever style nightclubs opened. Radio stations adopted
disco formats reluctantly. Before the bust, ads for a line of Studio 54 blue jeans appeared. A
Broadway musical titled Got Tu Go Disco, budgeted at half a million 1979 dollars, mercifully went
belly-up. Recording artists lined up to remake themselves as dance mavens. Some of these
conversions were suspect, to say the least. Rod Stewart, the Beach Boys, Cher, Dolly Parton, Shirley
Bassey, Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Englebert Humperdinck, Helen Reddy, Herbie Mann, and
Ethel Merman all released nominal disco records. Country veteran Porter Wagonner announced (or
was it a threat?) that he might record a disco version of  The Star-Spangled Banner. Somehow the
quacking  Disco Duck sold four million copies, but most of these unlikely crossover hits bombed.
The campy carrying-on of the costumed Village People  however charming in their self-deprecating
humor became synonymous with disco itself. Their success branded the genre a musical joke. And
no matter how funny it is, any joke has a severely limited shelf life.
The Roman-candle flameout of Casablanca Records, the home of Donna Summer, the Village
People, and KISS dramatically illuminates the commercial crash-and-burn of disco itself.
Casablanca s founder, the late Neil Bogart, rode the rocket; in his time, he had become disco s
reigning mogul.
Bogart (née Bogatz) was a consummate striver. Prescient enough to sign Donna Summer after
hearing  Love to Love You Baby in Europe, Bogart insisted on releasing the radically long version of
the song. He also instituted the play-fast-and-loose business strategy that eventually spelled doom for
disco. Still, those giddying highs must ve had breathtaking peaks. At first, the numbers surely were
intoxicating. In 1978, Bogart s Casablanca and Stigwood s RSO combined sold $300 million worth of
records for the joint owner, Germany s Polygram.
Bogart s career path began in Philadelphia, at the Cameo- Parkway label; his connection to Dick
Clark and the Philly teen-idol scene runs deep. He honed his chops at Buddah Records, the late sixties
home of bubblegum music. Buddah s preteen pop is an eerie prediction of disco in some ways:
conceived by producers and studio musicians, assigned to bland or anonymous performers,
relentlessly promoted.
Before disco, the foundation of Bogart s empire was built on the cartoon-rock of Kiss, the loony
funk of Parliament, and a flukey LP of Tonight Show comedy routines. Not surprisingly, Donna
Summer s breakout success saved Casablanca from crumbling. Doubling its bet on disco, the German
conglomerate Polygram purchased a half stake in Casablanca in 1977. (Polygram had owned a piece of
RSO since 1975.) The influx of money, however, only served to justify the questionable practices at
Casablanca.
One favored Bogart ploy was overshipping that is, sending out many more copies of a record
than the market demanded, logging them as sales and notching up another platinum hit. The only
problem was in returns: since there was no limit on the number of unsold records a store could send
back for a full refund, retailers would accept any size shipment.
The Casablanca roster included the Village People, but the label also signed dozens of other artists
whose records, in the words of one ex-employee,  shipped gold and returned platinum. On top of
general overspending and mismanagement, amid rumors of rampant drug use, Bogart made gigantic
miscalculations that undermined even his surefire successes. Releasing four solo albums by members
of Kiss in 1979 didn t exactly turn the tide. Casablanca went under a few years later, an overdose
victim of disco-era indulgence.
Casablanca was merely the most extreme example. All of the major labels had an overly generous [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]