Lizzie Violet

While I was performing my ode to disco “Oogie Inferno” I realized that disco is truly the music of revolution – it was pop music that fearlessly opted to ignore the macho stance of rock’n’roll, c&w and even r&b. When the ‘disco sucks’ movement was burning Bee Gees albums before baseball games it seems like a futile gesture – today I realized that what the statement really was/is ‘disco sucks cock.’

As I read I saw the ode as a protest piece and that charged it with a different energy. Protest songs are usually strident and angry, this piece isn’t. Like much of disco music it extolled the sheer joy of dance, of being alive – which in a culture that sees pessimism as realistic and that pleasure is shallow plus its its intrenched sexophobia, disco joy is a subtle defiance. While protest music (& most r’n’r)  is heterosexist in…