Disco – Spinning The Story
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Documentary: B-
There was one “critic” who was a supposed music expert who
tried to write off Chic as just a minor pop dance act of no importance, which
reminded me once again about the incredibly huge amount of ignorance over Chic
and of the Disco era in general. Though
it was not always a paradise of enduring music, Disco had a few choice acts
like Chic with music that has turned out to be some of the most enduring of the
20th century. Disco -
Spinning The Story (2005) is a somewhat ambitious, yet too short (at under
70 minutes) attempt to recapture the era and what it really meant. However, there are some key research
problems.
Though it is successful at times and as many of the key
songs were licensed as possible, this is simply not enough time to really
explore the era and some key songs are missed. The Bee Gees importance is actually too abbreviated, more about
Chic would have helped, a few items about Donna Summer are skipped, Diana Ross
is missed altogether, ABBA is ignored, how Blondie survived nonstop from Disco
to New Wave is missed, Cher’s presence is ignored despite KISS being
acknowledged, the discussion of Motown forgets The Commodores, plus none of the
TV series and only some of the feature films linked to Disco are
discussed.
Gloria Gaynor is the host and claims her two songs
bookended the era. Her remake of The
Jackson Five’s Never Can Say Goodbye might have been one of the first
records of the era in 1974, but her 1979 chart-topper I Will Survive was
not the last. Songs like Hot Stuff
and Bad Girls by Donna Summer had not peaked yet, while Anita Ward’s Ring
My Bell, Summer’s No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) duet with Barbra
Streisand and Good Times by Chic all came afterwards, so that is very
inaccurate. My Sharona by The
Knack is ignored as the official Pop end of the era, as it is always recognized
as being. The statement that all Punk
acts went Disco is also inaccurate.
You still get some good interviews, including with Nile
Rogers, Mike Chapman, key producer of the era Tom Moulton, Smokie Robinson,
Earl Young of The Trammps, Michael Paoletta of Billboard Magazine, Kurtis Blow,
former Capitol Records President Rupert Perry, Thelma Houston and Giorgio Moroder. “Funk for rich folks” is interviewee George
Clinton’s apt observation of what Disco was, though this was limited, as the
Disco Sucks movement proved. “As long
as you don’t hurt anybody, you can do what you want to do” is an ironic
observation by Village People member Randy Jones as compared to what happened
at Chicago’s Cominsky Park when any good will was attacked by an orchestrated
baseball half-time vinyl-record-smashing, breaking and burning fiasco that
would have made the Klu Klux Klan happy.
Post 9/11/01, it reminds us of what The Taliban and similar
dictatorships were doing to people in stadiums. It is the culminations of these parts that make the program worth
watching, despite all the noted limits.
The 1.33 X 1 full frame image is composed of various
quality images, including black and white film footage, movie trailer footage,
TV promos, variety/talk show footage, the new videotaped interviews, parts of
the “Disco Step-By-Step” series, some cut-out video tricks, a bunch of stills
that are usually of albums and singles, and even stills being panned by the
camera. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is of a
weak stereo at best, but at least more of the original music is here than in
most such Passport releases, some of which totally lack the music of the subject! There are also extras, including three
interview snippets that should have been kept in the body of the documentary
and full-length video of Gaynor’s two big hits. Though we have seen coverage about Disco recently that was good
and smart, even catching some things this program does not, Disco - Spinning
The Story is key enough to still see about a key era of music that has yet
to be recognized for what it really is and what it really achieved.
- Nicholas Sheffo
