Product Description

Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a blaze of poppers, strobe lights, tight trousers, hysterical diva vocals and synthesized beats in the late sixties. Drawing on the music of Sly Stone and Parliament- Funkadelic, and the ethos of pleasure-is-politics, disco was the first musical form to explore the relationship between the machine and the body, and consequently became the progenitor of house, hip hop and techno. As such, and as a genre, disco radically redefined the sensibility of the seventies to the extent where reactionary rockers felt the need to launch a paranoid 'Disco Sucks' campaign at the end of the decade. Featuring artists like Chic, Sylvester, Donna Summer, Larry Levan and Frank Grasso, as well as a discussion of the clubs and labels that defined the period, Turn the Beat Around illustrates how and why disco changed the face of popular culture for ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #396917 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 302 pages

Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster, authors of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
Excellent. Leaves no doubt that disco lives at the heart of recent music history.

Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop, Won't Stop
Riveting, powerful, and essential.

About the Author
Peter Shapiro writes for The Wire and lives in New York. Turn the Beat Around is his first book.

Customer Reviews

Good but opinionated
A fair addition to "Love Saves the Day" and "Last Night A DJ Saves My Life", especially in giving credit to some of the major artists such as Kid Creole aka August Darnell; or shedding light (however perfunctory) on the glorious obscurities such as Ozo... On the minus side, however, is that the author suffers from the typical muso disease of opinionating whether anyone actually cares or not. Whereas disco history welcomes more people who take a more analytical attitude, it definitely doesn't need pseudointellectual smartarsing which forgets the sheer joy (which indeed might revel in corniness as well, if need be). Shapiro's contempt for the likes of Patrick Juvet and Dennis Parker is plain silly - they might not have been the greatest singers in the world music history but that's just not the point; they had splendid tunes with catchy arrangements and if Shapiro is unable to enjoy them, it's only due to his snobbishness. All in all, quite an enjoyable read, though.