Disco is back, apparently – and who am I to argue?
Was there ever a musical movement so generally reviled by the critics yet loved by the fans? I was never too swayed by the puritan brigade, and managed to catch Chic and Sister Sledge in their London visits – the acceptable face of disco, I suppose, but still deeply suspect and shallow and commercial compared to the earnest spittle-flecked shouting of the punks.
The nearest the Times article comes to an explanation for this suppoosed revival is that people want to listen to escapist music in hard times – "When the world is burning, the glitterball starts turning". I don't know. In a sense disco never really went away – and then again there was perhaps a feeling that, with its strong gay following, it was too closely associated with those heady and hedonistic pre-Aids times.
Still, great music always comes back round. I've already sung, as it were, the praises of Donna Summer here. What I didn't know was that she's still around and still going strong. This is from 2004:
Her voice is stronger than ever – and she even looks like she's having a good time: a trick she never managed in the old days, when it always seemed to me like she'd have preferred to be singing something, well, a bit classier.
Add a supremely tasteful, not to say elegant, dance routine, and really, it doesn't get any better….
Mick Hartley 
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