Why Disco (And Not House?)
Something's been bugging me. When I heard Ultra Nate's FREE, I went and told all my non-house friends, "Peep this, forget what ya heard, FREE is gonna be the next big thing." What happened? Nuthin!
Huh? Free was huge that summer...one of the best selling singles in Strictly Rhythm's history, or so says Davey Gold in their promotion dept. Ok it did not get major radio support but KTU was all over it weren't they?? I think Power 96 in Miami was big on it for a hot minute too. That song proved that dance clubs, djs and record pools can still break records without radio.
While I acknowledge America's homophobic tendencies, I refuse to accept that reasoning that house hasn't caught on stateside solely due to homophobia. What is it then? Why did Disco catch? (And more importantly, HOW did it catch on to the mainstream?) Disco was underground pretty much through the mid 70s and thanks to Hollywood, John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever, the whole disco movement was thrown into the mainstream spotlight making the club scene "cool." Once guys figured it was cool and they might get laid, the lines into the clubs got longer, polyester was the fabric of the day and everyone was a star.
Why did Rap catch? (And even more importantly, HOW did it catch on to be used in Mickey D's commercials). Same thing, once guys figured out it was "macho" which of course also equals cool, then it was ok to emulate this thing coming from the streets. Rap and hip hop have always been male-dominated and while more females have entered recently, as long as thousands of teenagers can act and look like their idols, you are going to have a following.
Based upon the answers from above, how can HOUSE "catch" the mainstream? Yeah, don't gimme the same ol' answer, RADIO PLAY. We know that, but the question is, something needs to happen for it to get radio play. That quality is there (look at productions by DeepSwing, 95 North, Tommy Musto, etc.) The distribution is there (the 'net is a great leveller).
First, a lot of dance and house singles are not categorized correctly and I bet a lot of compilations might end up with higher numbers attributed to rock and hip hop and other genres. A lot of people think it doesn't matter so why fix it. I don't think we have an accurate counting system.
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