See Hear Podcast Episode 108 - Saturday Night Fever

Disco music had been a thing from the early 70s on, but not so much
in the mainstream. Parts of the African-American, Latino and gay
communities had been cherishing the music as an event - going out
to dance in discotheques was the thing. There's are books that go
through the history of disco music and what put that music
underground. Some of the music became top forty success stories,
but disco really exploded in 1977 thanks to a movie featuring a TV
actor and songs by a group past their glory days. Welcome to
episode 108 of See Hear Podcast. Robert Stigwood bought the film
rights to a fictitious article by Nik Cohn called “Tribal Rites of
the New Saturday Night”. He invested $3.5M into making the film,
and made sure his act The Bee Gees were going to be featured on the
soundtrack. John Travolta in between Welcome Back Kotter seasons
starred as a young working class man from Brooklyn who hates his
job and home life, and only finds solace when dancing at the 2001
Odyssey Discotheque. The film is a great character study of what
drives people and their self esteem. Kerry, Tim and I welcome
first-time guest to the show, Dan Fisher. Dan has started a great
new podcast called Let's Talk Ten where he and guests run off lists
about all manner things devoted to pop culture. I invited him to
our virtual table and Saturday Night Fever was his pick.....it
triggered a great discussion, although as Frank Santopadre would
say, we barely scratched the surface. The film has so many thematic
elements to riff on. We cover some of those, but we also look at
disco as a phenomenon (and how it influenced Chasidic music and Joe
Raposo), 70s Hollywood movie anti-heroes, the violent backlash to
disco music, and aspiring for something better in life. A warning:
I sing – twice. We're grateful that Dan came to us with this pick
and was such an active participant in the episode. It won't be his
last time with us. You should search for him on Facebook to follow
his “Rank 'Em” posts (explained at the start of the episode), and
you can find Let's Talk Ten at
https://letstalktenpodcast.buzzsprout.com/ or whatever app you use
to listen to podcasts. Also, we're giving a shout out to fellow
Pantheon Podcasters Bruce and Ryan over at Prisoners of Rock and
Roll. Their latest episode is called Does Disco Suck? It will make
a good companion piece to ours. Catch it at
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/does-disco-suck/id1534602232?i=1000625127339
Canned Heat might have meant it differently, but the message is the
same: Don't forget to boogie. If you’ve been enjoying the show,
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