Disco: blueprint for a future society

Good article on disco by Paul Lester in the Guardian this week:

'For Steven Collazo, the musical director of Odyssey, disco was a time of tensions: between musicianship and mechanisation, between what he calls the "plastic clubs" that played commercial disco and the underground where the harder stuff got aired, and between the latent violence of mainstream hetero discos and the carefree exuberance he witnessed on the gay scene that helped spawn the movement .

"I learned at the 'plastic clubs' to never raise my arms above the imaginary homosexual line, ie above the eyebrows, otherwise the sphincter police would arrest you," says Collazo. But he's got a serious point. "I'm not gay, but I remember one amazing night when I was 18, going to this huge gay club in New York called the Paradise Garage. It was almost like a blueprint for a future society, devoid of social or sexual barriers in an atmosphere of total abandon. I'll never forget that night."

From 'Can you feel the force?' by Paul Lester, Guardian, 23 February 2007.