Dancehalls, Glitterballs and DJs
From the Pleasure Garden to the Discotheque
By (author) Bruce Lindsay
Hardback (Published)
(July 2025)
ISBN: 9781800505971
6.14 x 9.21 inches
Price: $47.95
In stock
The history of disco and its predecessors is often portrayed as one of glamour and excess. Dancehalls, Glitterballs and DJs expands this history, to encompass tatty but much-loved provincial dancehalls, mobile DJs with home-made light shows and rusty vans, one-hit-wonders on the chicken-in-a-basket circuit, and nights out with Jane Austen.
The history of disco and its predecessors is often portrayed as one of glamour and excess. Dancehalls, Glitterballs and DJs expands this history, to encompass tatty but much-loved provincial dancehalls, mobile DJs with home-made light shows and rusty vans, one-hit-wonders on the chicken-in-a-basket circuit, and nights out with Jane Austen. It’s a vital, fun-packed history of a cultural movement that, despite the vagaries of fashion, remains part of the entertainment scene today. Dancehalls, Glitterballs and DJs begins in Georgian Britain’s Assembly Rooms and Pleasure Gardens, then moves through the vulgar activities in the penny gaffes, the arrival of the first gramophone and disc jockey, the Jazz Age, the swing-era dance bands, and the post-war ascendency of recorded music and the discotheque. It then explores the dance music scene that spread across Britain’s towns and cities, when teens and twenty-somethings danced where glamour meant no denim, no trainers–a world epitomised by the disco music boom of the 1970s. The story closes at the end of the ’70s, when mainstream culture did much to turn disco from a cutting-edge movement to something of a laughing stock among trendsetters and popular music fans. The book ends by appraising disco’s place in the entertainment scene of the 2020s, where classics of the genre are as popular as ever.
- By (author) Bruce Lindsay
Other Titles in this Series
Two Bold Singermen and the English Folk Revival
The Lives, Song Traditions and Legacies of Sam Larner and Harry Cox
The Ultimate Guide to Great Reggae
The Complete Story of Reggae Told through its Greatest Songs, Famous and Forgotten
Similar Books
Jüdische Musikerziehung im Preußen des 19. Jahrhunderts
Gesangunterricht an jüdischen Reformschulen als Facette bürgerlicher Akkulturation
Volume 21
Künstlervertragsmodelle in der Musikwirtschaft
Rechtliche Grenzen der künstlerbezogenen Nebenrechteverwertung im Erlös-, Vermittlungs-, Options- und Leistungsmodell
Luigi Dallapiccola between Politics, Text and Musical Thought
With an Appendix of New Sources
Volume 11
Of Signs and Sounds
Musical Interpretation and Performance from the 19th to the 21st Century
Volume 58
