In the ongoing repeats repeats repeats approach that is the Beeb’s current music programming they can occasionally still knock it out of the park. Disco: Sound of the Revolution is a three-parter tracing the rise and fall of one of the sounds of the seventies. Like all such programmes it sets out why said sound has been criminally under-appreciated and why said sound was more important than you ever thought.

Episode One in particular is one of the most insightful and entertaining hours of music television I’ve seen in many a year. The makers have rounded many of those who were involved in the New York gay club scene of the late sixties, the ground zero of disco as it evolved from soul and funk. Because this is music that grew out of dancing at clubs – and the footage of The Loft or The Gallery is wonderful. It roots disco in two wider social developments: the post-Stonewall emergence of clubs where same-sex dancing was allowed, and the catastrophic state of New York itself, which meant that there were abandoned buildings that could be repurposed as clubs. Uptown black promoters were using just about anywhere people could meet as discos: » Continue Reading.