Prom 2: 'Everybody Dance! The Sound of Disco', BBC CO, Bartholomew-Poyser

[bluestateprommer]

Saturday 20 July 2024
19:30
Royal Albert Hall

The Trammps: "Disco Inferno" (first performance at The Proms)
Chic: "Le Freak" / "Everybody Dance" (medley; first performance at The Proms)
Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers: "I'm Coming Out" (first performance at The Proms)
Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell: "Native New Yorker" (first performance at The Proms)
Boney M.: "Rasputin" / "Daddy Cool" (medley; first performance at The Proms)
Heatwave: "Boogie Nights" (first performance at The Proms)
Walter Murphy: "Rhapsody in Blue" (first performance at The Proms)
Dokken: "Turn on the Action" (first performance at The Proms)
Ronnie James and Vincent Montana, Jr.: "Runaway" (first performance at The Proms)
Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris: "I Will Survive" / Clifton Davis: "Never Can Say Goodbye" (medley; first performance at The Proms)
Cheryl Lynn: "Got To Be Real" (first performance at The Proms)

Interval

Walter Murphy: "A Fifth of Beethoven" (first performance at The Proms)
C. J. & Co.: "Devil's Gun" (first performance at The Proms)
Donna Summer: "Hot Stuff" (first performance at The Proms)
Ray Dorset: "Feels Like I'm In Love" (first performance at The Proms)
Freddie Perren and Keni St. Lewis: "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" (first performance at The Proms)
Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson: "The Boss" (first performance at The Proms)
The Bee Gees: "If I Can't Have You" (first performance at The Proms)
David Shire: "Manhattan Skyline" (first performance at The Proms)
James Wirrick and Sylvester: "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" (first performance at The Proms)
The Hues Corporation: "Rock The Boat" (first performance at The Proms)
Gerald Jackson and Peter Jackson: "Turn The Beat Around" (first performance at The Proms)
The Bee Gees: "Night Fever" (first performance at The Proms)
Donna Summer: "Last Dance" (first performance at The Proms)

Vanessa Haynes, vocalist
Vula Malinga, vocalist
Cedric Neal, vocalist (Proms debut artist)
Elisabeth Troy, vocalist (Proms debut artist)

BBC Concert Orchestra
Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, conductor (Proms debut artist)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ep39hn

Additional broadcast notes:
(a) Recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 2

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-24/prom-2/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00214c1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022n89

[Serial_Apologist]

Disco had to be the most stultified generic musical fashion ever to be inflicted on humankind. To even think that the Proms should be celebrating it..........................

[bluestateprommer]

From a sociological perspective, this NYT review of a recent PBS TV documentary on disco might provide some context on why a Prom should be given over to it, even if the Proms planners didn't necessarily have this in mind:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/arts/television/the-war-on-disco-pbs.html?

Plus, if nothing else, compared to rap and hip-hop, at least IMVHO, disco has a much more optimistic vibe, as well as far better tunes.

[Pulcinella]

Anyone putting their dancing shoes on?
We're not.
And what's potentially even worse (imho) is the interval 'feature':

INTERVAL: The Listening Service - Flares and big collars at the ready as Tom Service asks: what makes music D-I-S-C-O? He talks to Chic legend Nile Rodgers – whose career has spanned from early work with The Honeydrippers to Daft Punk via David Bowie – and finds out from tonight’s conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser exactly how disco made it to the Royal Albert Hall.

Indeed: how, exactly?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Disco had to be the most stultified generic musical fashion ever to be inflicted on humankind. To even think that the Proms should be celebrating it..........................

Yes awful. Good thing you didn’t hear Tom Service this morning looking at the links between the genre and Telemann and Rossini complete with Donna Summer. What utter nonsense it was.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Anyone putting their dancing shoes on?
We're not.
And what's potentially even worse (imho) is the interval 'feature':

INTERVAL: The Listening Service - Flares and big collars at the ready as Tom Service asks: what makes music D-I-S-C-O? He talks to Chic legend Nile Rodgers – whose career has spanned from early work with The Honeydrippers to Daft Punk via David Bowie – and finds out from tonight’s conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser exactly how disco made it to the Royal Albert Hall.

Indeed: how, exactly?

see above . I can’t be bothered to expand . It would annoy you and exasperate me .

[eighthobstruction]

....I thought if they really really wanted to punish those Stop Oil protesters they might have sent them to this prom....

[teamsaint]

....I thought if they really really wanted to punish those Stop Oil protesters they might have sent them to this prom....

That's what Mama Used to Say

[eighthobstruction]

....Yes I've watched several doc's on BBC4 recently....crossover black music to mainstream being the sociological 10/10....but I'm afraid I can't get out of my mind an image that occurred to me - Trump during the 80's at Studio 59, dancing in the cage....

[Ein Heldenleben]

Hate to say it , although I don’t like much of the music I am enjoying the outstanding talents of some excellent session musicians . I can’t work out who is BBC concert Orchestra and who is big band but in particular there has been some outstanding tenor and alto sax playing , high note trumpet and electric bass. The disco version of Rhapsody in Blue was virtuosic in the extreme. The only disco track of musical interest so far was Native New Yorker which with its realistic lyrics is the disco equivalent of Wintereise as in reality discos are largely about failure rather joy.

I wonder if they’ll do the BeeGees Beethoven 5 ? - it might just be better than last night’s .

[Serial_Apologist]

....Yes I've watched several doc's on BBC4 recently....crossover black music to mainstream being the sociological 10/10....but I'm afraid I can't get out of my mind an image that occurred to me - Trump during the 80's at Studio 59, dancing in the cage....

It was at that point that I finally and definitively decided my opinion of Bowie. The David one. Seems like the logical end product to what radical black musical circles Stateside had argued when they charged white cultural appropriation.

[burning dog]

I won't be listening to a Disco Prom, any more than I'd listen to Eric Dolphy arranged for a Palm Court Orchestra arranged in the style of Ketelbey, but I think there has been at lot worse POP music than Disco inflicted on the public.

Stevie Wonder said there was a Disco CRAZE -- far too much of it was produced in a short space of time for quality control. I think he has a point

The most extreme hostility was from american rock fans who lumped it in with all black popular styles.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/19/disco-demolition-the-night-they-tried-to-crush-black-music

"Lawrence realised something wasn’t right: people weren’t just turning up with disco records, but anything made by a black artist. “I said to my boss: ‘Hey, a lot of these records they’re bringing in aren’t disco – they’re R&B, they’re funk. Should I make them go home and get a real disco record?’ He said no: if they brought a record, take it, they get a ticket.” He laughs. “I want to say maybe the person bringing the record just made a mistake. But given the amount of mistakes I witnessed, why weren’t there any Air Supply or Cheap Trick records in the bins? No Carpenters records – they weren’t rock’n’roll, right? It was just disco records and black records in the dumpster.”"


"people like Steve Dahl, for whom disco represented a sort of emasculation: you couldn’t wear a scruffy T-shirt and jeans, you had to get dressed up and, worst of all, your girlfriend or wife expected you to humiliate yourself by fucking dancing."

[french frank]

Rather in the manner of the High Court judge, I was on the verge of asking: "What is disco?" But rather than show my ignorance I resorted to Wikipedia, and to my surprise I found, at a quick calculation, there's more than twice as much to be said about Disco than about WA Mozart.

[richardfinegold]

At the time disco took off I had largely abandoned popular music in my listening but I never understood the furore that “Classic Rock” aficionados had against it

[burning dog]

At the time disco took off I had largely abandoned popular music in my listening but I never understood the furore that “Classic Rock” aficionados had against it

Some it was just a thirty year old saying "Groan....the kids of today! " The rest is possibly what is suggested in what I posted earlier.




"you couldn’t wear a scruffy T-shirt and jeans, you had to get dressed up and, worst of all, your girlfriend or wife expected you to humiliate yourself by fucking dancing."