Below are interviews conducted by two of the students. The interviewees, Ralph Broth and Marco Arniotes, are both reminiscing the Disco Ages through their perspective and providing the viewers with the ‘real deal’. 

Interview with Ralph Broth〈 〉

Date: May 5, 2014

Shimon: Hello, Ralph. Thank you for letting me interview you today.

Ralph: My pleasure, Shimon.

Shimon: Well the first question I wanted to ask you was what time period you considered the Disco era to be?

Ralph: The Disco era was at its height from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

Shimon: What would you consider were the markers of the Disco era? How did the night scene change?

Ralph: During the period new discoteques popped up all over the place. Young people mainly in their 20s through their late 30s began coming to the discoteques. Regular bars also started playing disco songs. In between the disco songs they would play some slow dances.

Shimon: Did you like disco music and disco dancing?

Ralph: It was alright. I didn’t really know how to dance disco, so I used to do the twist with a chacha move. The disco dance was more like a new lindyhop.

Shimon: What were some of the more famous discotheques?

Ralph: Probably the most famous place was Studio 54, in Manhattan which was on 54th street between 8 Avenue and the block before. There was also the Cheetah Club near Times Square. There was also the Rose-Ann Ballroom which turned into a disco place, now it closed already.

Shimon: What was the most famous disco song?

Ralph: Well the most famous song I remember was by Gloria Gaynor. I can’t remember the name of the song, but the lyrics were “Ain’t gonna boogie no more.”

Shimon: What kind of music did clubs play before disco?

Ralph: Places played Latin music and American Rock ‘n Roll places started playing disco music, because those were the hit songs of the era.

Shimon: Were there any bad memories you have of the disco era?

Ralph: There were a lot of drugs, and people starting trying to do drugs in discotheques, especially in the big discoteques. The big nightclubs even had people in the bathroom who were there to make sure that people didn’t try to smoke pot in the bathroom. All the fancy places had someone in the bathroom. Also, there were some shootings in nightclubs that took place. Even the Copacabana put up metal detectors.

Shimon: What was the most memorable part of the disco era in your mind?

Ralph: It drew people that never went to nightclubs before. It was a new fad and it sounded different. People were drawn to the disco scene. Even places on the periphery became famous. For example, there was a place, a nightclub on 62nd street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn where they taped “Saturday Night Fever.” But by the time they filmed the movie, disco was going on for years.

Shimon: Thank you Ralph for sharing your memories of the disco era.

Ralph: My pleasure.

Phone Interview with Marco Arniotes〈 〉

Ruby Cabuya
May 12, 2014

Marco Arniotes is a first generation American-born Greek who was a teenager during the “disco era”. During this period of time in the late 1970s to 1980s, the streets were alive with disco culture and everyone wanted something to do with it. “It was a decade long era, no one had ever seen a trend last so long.”  As a young man growing up in Brooklyn, Marco spent his down time going to discotheques and nightclubs all over the city, even venturing to some neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. He names some of the clubs that were popular around the time, such as Studio 54, The Odyssey in Brooklyn (where Saturday Night Live was filmed), The Limelight, The Cave in Staten Island, and a few other small clubs in the city and in Queens which their names have escaped him. He says that even the small bars had DJs spinning records; a venue did not have to be a club in order to play disco music. Bars and nightclubs served the same purpose at the time: to bring disco to the people. “The drinking age was 18, so that means by 16 you could get into clubs.” But going to bars at the time were not about the drinking; they were for the disco! These places made disco readily available to the people, therefore those who grew up in the disco era were completely immersed in it.

“I’d say about 90% of New York City at the time was disco. There were a few cross-overs to rock-n-roll, even punk, and hip-hop was just beginning, but I’d say that pretty much everyone was into disco.”

Marco associates the disco culture with the fads of the time, such as shirts with collars, big gold chains, tattoos of Christ’s head, bell bottom pants and “marshmallow shoes”. He tells me a couple of stories of him and his buddies drinking “seven & sevens”, trying not to spill them on their Jordache jeans … whatever any of those may be. He laughs and says, “Oh man, what a time to grow up in.” What he doesn’t really talk about is the music of disco – what started the trends in the first place. Disco was not about live music; it was about tweaking already recorded music and adding new parts to it, especially parts to the music that made it danceable. Live disco acts weren’t a “thing” per se, rather new tracks by famous disco artists like Donna Summer, the Queen of Disco, Blondie, the Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, and more were played on vinyl records and spun and tweaked on someone’s turntables. The music’s sole purpose was to make the listeners dance to its beats, and as long as everyone was dancing, the music was considered good. No one took the time to sit and listen to the music because they were so busy getting caught up in the culture and dancing the night away.

The disco era was “like the rebirth of the 50s; there was a lot of dancing, singing, hopping around, it was a great era.” The culture of the youth of New York City was being revived by this new type of dance music, and people were taking it all in. There wasn’t a hint of dullness in disco; I could hear the excitement in Marco’s voice as he reminisces his younger days in disco. Disco was more of an attitude than anything, and New York City was all about it.

The Bee Gees〈

The Bee Gees is a music group founded in 1958 and consisted of three brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb. By the end of their career, The Bee Gees sold upwards 120 million records and were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 1997.

The Gibb family lived in Manchester, England up to the late 50s but moved to Queensland, Australia where the three brothers began their music careers.

In the late 60s to early 70s their main genre was rock and roll but by the late70s they changed to disco.