Really, I'm not trying to fill this space with all the bad music I can find.
It's just...Some of this conjures memories, whether I want it to or not. The disco wave started earlier in the seventies, but it took awhile to hit small Midwestern towns. I was in junior high when Saturday Night Fever opened, and for some time after that, Top 40 radio was flooded with non-stop disco. The perception among most hardcore rock & rollers that the music sucked in all its forms was not entirely accurate--some of it (Donna Summer's I Feel Love, for instance, or Chic's Le Freak) holds up quite nicely, and it was far more influential than most of its detractors could ever have imagined.
Egads, though, it produced some terrible records. Most of the worst came as the music moved further away from its roots in American R&B, when dozens of foreign-born schlockmeisters of indeterminate ethnicity jockeyed to be the next Giorgio Moroder. Jacques Morali, mastermind of The Village People, was one of the most commercially successful, but for pure, uncut Eurotrash exploitation of a popular fad, nothing can top Patrick Hernandez's Born To Be Alive, easily one of the worst things ever to receive North American airplay. The lifeless, by-the-numbers production and the English-as-a-third-language lyrics are bad enough, but it's Hernandez's actively irritating vocals that really make this the essence of suck. I've hated, hated, hated this song since 1979, but thank God I never saw this promo clip back then. It probably would have sent me over the edge. As soon as he turns his head to the camera, you'll want to punch that smug little expression right off his face.
