When we danced
Where was I in 1975? At a guess, I was on the dance floor, at GJs, and doing a pretty tame version of The Bump. There, my confession. I knew what it meant, to be involved in the disco era. At a local level, to be sure. No aspirations to visit Studio 54. My wardrobe featured a pair of brown corduroy coveralls. No shoes that could be construed as a desire to be taller. I was just doing what everyone else did.
I recently watched a Canadian documentary on the history of disco, and I now understand why the whole movement had to disappear. We were taking things way too seriously, and the deities of fashion and common sense gave the pendulum that little, required correction. Not exactly a “bump”, but close. The program featured a large list of familiar hits (we called them hits, but history might be less kind).
Nothing lasts forever; GJs closed, years ago. The albums have long since gone to landfill. Only the memories, of waiting for the right tune to convince someone else to join me on “the floor”, because dancing alone was not cool. Sure, neither were any of the moves that we copied from TV, but this was an intensely social scene. Why else would we wait in that confounded lineup for hours, when we could have been studying?
I’m glad that someone took the time to record that period, when records were so important (you see what I did there, right?). It took better than thirty years, but Peter Keleghan and friends convinced various levels of Canadian media to play along with their inside joke: the secret disco revolution aka a movement to control the world? Right.
