The other day I was listening to a CD in the car. It was the Bee Gees  and other disco from the late '70s and early '80s. Even though I should have been dancing, the songs told me, I had to drive. So I started thinking, which is what I do and what makes these posts so memorable. (Alright already!)

Disco  was the combustion of three important historic ingredients: dancing, Watergate  and the music biz. Dancing returned to rock 'n' roll after the egotistical '60s had destroyed it. Rock 'n' roll was all about dancing at the beginning, with the Big Bopper , the Killer  and The King . Later, during the British Invasion , dance clubs played rock 'n' roll as hipsters jerked and frugged . The late '60s put that on hold as young people focused on consciousness raising, festivals and fashion.

Altamont  revealed the limitations of the Age of Aquarius, as Kent State  revealed the determination of leaders to continue the Vietnam war. After Watergate, many people tuned out public affairs, tired of scandal and violence. The rock 'n' roll generation retreated to the original fun of the art form: concerts and dancing. Meanwhile, soul music had reached its political and artistic heights in the '60s. While artists sang about contemporary themes, the music never lost its mission to make people dance. The sound kept changing with fresh artists and producers who found new ways to mix in scads of musical elements and effects. The more that was produced into a song, pulsing dance rhythms had to be more prominent. Combined with multi-vocal traditions from doo-wop  days, the result was those smooth but funky records of the '70s.

Producers had fat new technology available, kids were buying records in huge quantities, and people were dancing to rock ' n' roll instead of taking over office buildings . Everybody in the music business was looking for a place to mix it all together and make a fortune. The Gibb brothers, who had enjoyed some success a decade before with British Invasion ballads, were experimenting with new pop mixes that would get AM airplay and get on the playlists at dance clubs. They scored an independent film that featured a rising TV star and was about the emerging new dance club culture.

It was called "Saturday Night Fever,"  and the Gibbs produced the soundtrack featuring their own songs and those of several other artists. The movie was an instant hit, thanks to John Travolta  as star, but the soundtrack  was bigger. After the two debuted in winter 1977, the airwaves were saturated for another few years with disco and the Bee Gees' song-making juggernaut.

By the early '80s, many people had had enough, and disco got a terminal reputation as stupid and greedy, produced in seconds by non-artists in sound factories. Fair enough—too much of anything is not good (like '60s self-importance, maybe?). But it was a real force for a few years. It was happening.

Listening to some of these songs 30 years later, in the self-containment of a Toyota on the freeway, I got a momentary different vibe. A lot of work went into disco—the instruments and voices were usually real people—and good songs are good songs. Disco was dumb, sure. So were hair metal bands in the '80s  and white shoe-wearing fakes in the '50s. Don't sweat disco, my friends. It's just history anymore.