🎸 Kiss, Disco, and the Night Rock Went Dancing (Part 1)

The Twelve Inch 180 : I Was Made For Loving You (Kiss) Part 1

Rock and disco always had an uneasy relationship. In the second half of the seventies, Saturday Night Fever turned disco into a global phenomenon and a $4 billion industry. Everyone jumped on board.

By 1977, no one could dismiss disco as a fad anymore. Every major artist started adding disco touches to their sound. Some flirted with it. Others went all in. And then came one of the strangest twists of all: KISS releasing a disco anthem in 1979.

Why would the leather-clad, face-painted rock gods do that? And what role did their record company Casablanca play, a label that had bet its entire future on disco?

Kiss and Casablanca are an interesting duality. Without Casablanca, KISS would never have reached such great heights, while KISS pretty much saved Casablanca from imminent disaster. So this week’s Twelve Inch is an interesting prelude to the story of Casablanca Records and it’s founder: the enigmatic Neil Bogaert. The first episode of that story will arrive shortly (as explained in my e…