🇨🇦 It’s CanCon Month!
And we’ve been doing things a bit differently the past few weeks.
Instead of zooming in exclusively on the song from this week’s A-Side, the B-Sides will tell the bigger story of Disco and Canada, but also Canada and Disco. Two different, but closely connected and equally fascinating stories.
The A-Sides provided the records that guided us through that history. Each week’s featured song illustrates something happening in the bigger story we’re exploring here.
In other words, the A-Side gives us the record.
The B-Side takes us down the rabbit hole. 😁
But before we continue, if you wonder why I deactivate the AI scanning tool? Click here
Last week we left Montréal at the absolute peak of disco.
The clubs were packed. The twelve-inch economy was booming. Record pools had become part of the machinery. American DJs were travelling north to hear records they couldn’t find in New York. And then came Saturday Night Fever.By August 1978 it had sold a million copies in Canada.
Everybody wanted disco.
Which, as I hinted last week, was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened. Something changes when a subculture suddenly becomes everybody’s culture.
Our central guest in this series, Lime Light dj Robert Ouimet had one very simple way of describing that change.
Everybody bought a white suit.
Everybody Owns a White Suit
One of the fun details I encountered in my research was that before Saturday Night Fever, people already dressed up to go to the Lime Light. Actually, “dressed up” may be putting it mildly.
Ouimet remembers:
Transparent plastic, naked underneath, bird cage on the head.
Your move, John Travolta. 😁
What I love about that image is how individual it is. People weren’t dressing according to some established disco uniform because there wasn’t one yet. The nightclub was theatre. You invented yourself for the evening.
And then Saturday Night Fever happened.
