Did Disco Duck Kill Off Disco?
The first band I ever played in was back in 1976, and it was called "Gypsy."
It was put together by three guys graduating high school, led by Anthony M, who was a musical genius at that age, but none of us knew it at the time. (He went on to play bass for Buddy Rich)
Anthony was part of a three piece progressive band that freaking rocked. But they couldn't get any gigs, being so young, so Anthony asked me, a trumpet player and another sax player from our high school if we wanted to join a band. We weren't very good at the time, but we could read music and Anthony, by ear, charted out all the horn parts.
We recruited the trumpet player's cousin, who had a tremendous voice but was very shy to be the lead singer. And so we were born. We lasted a couple of years and then we all moved on.
To this day I still enjoy songs from that era because of the great melodies and grooves which were fun and exciting. But it didn't take long for disco to start parodying itself.
I remember hearing Disco Duck for the first time and I said to myself, what the f*ck was that?" I knew it was a parody song, but a lot of people took it seriously.
DD came out in 76' and it was only a few years later that a Chicago disc jockey got behind a crazy promotion called Disco Demolition Night, at Comiskey Park and that was the beginning of the end.