From Local Scenes to Mainstream Saturation
While New York City remained the most important center for private parties and discotheques throughout the 1970s, other intense scenes also developed in Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Toronto and cities in Europe and Asia. Moreover, when the network of dance venues continued to expand during the economic slowdown that followed the oil crisis of 1973, commentators noted how the discotheques provided good value for money compared to the cost of going to see live music. As a result, during 1977 and 1978, three significant discotheques- Studio 54 (the most widely known); New York, New York; and Xenon-opened in midtown Manhattan. Below is a documentary about Studio 54's nearly three-year existence from April 19, 1977 to February 1980.
Studio 54 | Behind The Scenes Documentary [ 00:00-00:00 ]
Together with more general interest features about disco culture, these venues appeared regularly in New York's tabloid newspapers. They notoriously competed over set designs, lighting systems, door queues, and, most notably, the number of celebrities they could count as their clients. Nevertheless, some thoughtful pieces discussed how disco foregrounded novel ways of producing music and experiencing the body.
Far from being confined to urban centers, disco culture also expanded rapidly in suburban areas, where a somewhat similar version of the Loft/Sanctuary format took hold because a) ex-restaurants housed venues, b) DJs had less autonomy, and c) couples dancing was re-popularized in the form of the hustle. Nevertheless, suburban disco culture acquired an unexpectedly high profile when RSO released the film Saturday Night Fever, based on Nik Cohn's partly fictional account of Brooklyn discotheque culture for New York Magazine.
Saturday Night Fever featuring John Travolta and music by the Bee Gees
The film was released at the end of 1977. It generated the second-highest box office takings of all time (behind Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather) and record-breaking album sales (thirty million copies). Starring John Travolta as the working-class Italian American shop-worker/dancer Tony Manero and with a soundtrack dominated by the Bee Gees, the film portrayed disco as both White and heterosexual, contributing to the rapid popularization of the culture during 1978. Although it was less commercially successful, the Casablanca film Thank God It's Friday helped disco consolidate its growth, as did the annual Disco Forum organized by Billboard magazine.
