The Afro wig. The mirror ball. Platform heels. A pair of lurid flares. The enduring iconography of the mass-market disco era might seem laughable now, but to reduce such a revolutionary social force, and creative musical explosion to a few items of fashion tat would be very short-sighted indeed. As has happened with many other musical forms, the ...
the Wurlitzer. Fender Rhodes Most influential in the 1970s, the ‘Rhodes’ helped define the sound of jazz-funk and jazz-fusion, and was played by many soul, funk and disco artists. Harold Rhodes developed his Army Air Corps Piano from old bits salvaged from B-17 bombers. Using no electrics at all, he achieved a compact portable piano by using ...
from a pair of bongo-like drums fitted with electronic transducers. This groundbreaking instrument suffered from a poor reputation due to the overuse of its synthetic, decaying-pitch tom-tom sounds in disco tracks of the era. Simmons SDSV The first full, true electronic drum kit was the Simmons SDSV (SDS5), produced in 1982. The SDSV consisted of a sound module that ...
could create very rich, multi-layered textures, with the help of skilled record producers, such as Phil Spector. In styles such as rhythm and blues, funk and disco, extra musicians were often included to add richness. These included string sections (usually violins), horn sections (wind and brass instruments such as trumpet, saxophone and trombone) and groups ...
records, the practice has become a hugely popular one, despite being frequently maligned and misunderstood. As DJ culture evolved through northern soul, funk and reggae and towards disco, the art of DJing came to be about communicating with a roomful of people through music. With a box of records to play, a DJ would endeavour to ...
Like so many of black America’s most enduring musical genres, hip hop was born out of invention. When, as the 1970s came to a close, a combination of disco and big record company involvement had diluted funk and soul to the extent that it had become boring to go out to a club on a Saturday night, something rumbled out of New ...
Country And Western Music from the same year, established soul as an album-selling genre. James Brown, of course, was key in turning soul music into funk and disco, and through his ability to make African-derived rhythm into a complex but universally understood musical language, he had the most profound influence upon hip hop and all subsequent ...
Your Love On Me’ and ‘One Of Us’ (1981). They played another world tour in 1979 including America where they were never as successful, although they had several big disco hits. When Andersson and Lyngstad filed for divorce in 1981 it was obvious that success was coming at a personal cost. Some of the later hits alluded to that. The ...
with the rock audience. King’s popularity remained strong until the late 1970s, which was an especially difficult time for blues, as arena rock captured the commercial airwaves and disco claimed clubs that had patronized live music. However, thanks to an association he made with a young guitarist and fan named Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Austin, Texas ...
hooked up with singer Bon Scott and subsequently signed a deal with Atlantic Records, releasing their debut, High Voltage, in 1975. In contrast to the glam-rock and disco sounds that were popular in the mid-1970s, AC/DC pounded out no-nonsense three-chord rock with a good-time message, thus setting the band apart from the crowd. Although there were ...
The undisputed Queen of Soul since the title was first applied to her in the late 1960s, Aretha Franklin has been hailed as the greatest soul diva of all time. Possessing a voice of power and passion (and an underrated talent on the piano) she has turned her attention to everything from pop through jazz to classical; but with a ...
Stuart (vocals, guitar), Roger Ball (keyboards) and Robbie McIntosh (drums) topped the US charts in 1975 with the album AWB and single ‘Pick Up The Pieces’. After dabbling in disco with ‘Let’s Go Round Again’, a British hit in 1980, the band went on hiatus in the mid-1980s, reforming in 1989. Styles & Forms | Seventies | Rock ...
‘Spanish Harlem’, and co-wrote the follow-up, ‘Stand By Me’, a US top 5 hit and his meal-ticket recording. King escaped the revival circuit in 1975 with a surprise US disco hit ‘Supernatural Thing’ and collaborated on the Average White Band’s 1977 LP Benny And Us. The 1987 film Stand By Me sent the song of the same name to UK ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1974–82, 1997–present) An internationally popular New York outfit emerging from the city’s thriving new wave scene of the mid-to late 1970s, Blondie’s founders were Debbie Harry (vocals) and Chris Stein (guitar), with an eventual supporting cast of Clem Burke (drums), Nigel Harrison (bass), Jimmy Destri (keyboards) and Frank Infante (guitar). More pop-oriented than their contemporaries and ...
(Vocals, b. 1984) Scottish DJ Harris (real name Adam Wiles) made a big wave in British disco in the latter half of the Noughties, filling club dancefloors with tracks like ‘Acceptable In The 80s’ and ‘Dance Wiv Me’ – his collaboration with Dizzee Rascal. He courts controversy, voicing his opinions via social network site Twitter, but his ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.