PDF Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco by Peter Shapiro ISBN 9780571359820

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. As a genre, disco radically re-defined 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 such as Chic, Sylvester, Donna Summer and Frank Grasso, Turn the Beat Around illustrates why and how disco changed the face of popular culture forever.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to everyone involved in this project, whether by providing inspiration, granting interviews, helping me chase down leads, or feeding my vinyl jones: Nile Rodgers, Sooze Plunkett-Green, Bob George, Danny Wang, Danny Krivit, Michael “Lucky Strike” Corral, Tom Moulton, Ian Levine, Daniele Baldelli, Cherry Vanilla, Vicki Wickham, Barry Lederer, Bob Blank, Quinton Scott, Toni Rosano, Drew Daniels, Martin Schmidt, Dan Selzer, Chris at Dfiledamerica, Jeff Chang, David Toop, Sasha Frere- Jones, Mike Rubin, Dave Tompkins, Philip Sherburne, Rob Michaels, $mall ¢hange, Jonathan Buckley, and Mark Ellingham. Sections of this book have appeared in different form in The Wire, and I’d like to thank my editors there (Tony Herrington, Rob Young, and Chris Bohn) for allowing my theoretical ramblings on disco to appear in such an august journal.

Thanks to my agent, David Smith, and my editors, Denise Oswald and Lee Brackstone. Extra special thanks to my wife, Rachael, for putting up with my ridiculously late nights and the creeping monster that is my record collection; for cracking the whip; and for giving me never-ending amounts of support.