70’s Song of
the week
“Boogie Shoes” by
K.C. and the Sunshine Band (1975)
Some say Disco was spawned because the Nazi’s banned
jazz. The next best thing was to develop clubs where they played records. The
first ‘discotheques’ sprung up in WWII and continued after in clubs like
the ‘Whisky a Go-Go” in Paris. The ultra chic set did not have exclusivity to
this trend for long.
The seedy ‘Peppermint Club’ in New York spawned the
short-lived dance craze ‘The Twist”. The culture of this was embedded in the
teenagers who would drive the commercial direction of music. The Beatles would
swoop in to NA in 1964 and no one cared about their ‘Twist” records anymore
which had every variation you can imagine by this point.
There was something slightly Victorian about the new
dance crazes though – you danced alone. There was no contact with the other person.
Sock-hops and record parties in the sixties were somehow made safer to
on-looking adults because of this.
