ABSTRACT
The fear and loathing of disco seemed to result from the music industry's determination to force an unwilling contact between the underground and mainstream in the name of a "crossover" that, it turned out, only succeeded in crossing out the flavors most valued by those in the know, while failing to rid itself entirely of that odor most noxious to outsiders: the pungency of gender, racial, and sexual difference. The vicissitudes of sexuality and gender in the 1970s are only the backdrop to Lawrence's narrative, but they also intersect in various ways with his leitmotif of "love". The artificial, machinic, and/or technological operates within popular music cultures, as Lawrence notes, as ambivalent icons of capitalism, whiteness, and homosexuality. Defenders of disco, from Richard Dyer to Brian Currid, have sought to reclaim these derogatory labels as generating a specifically queer difference.
