Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture Reprint Edition
Author(s): Alice Echols (Author)
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: March 21, 2011
Edition: Reprint
Language: English
Print length: 368 pages
ISBN-10: 9780393338911
ISBN-13: 9780393338911
Book Description
“A thumping good read.” ―The Atlantic
In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the question, “Do you wanna dance?” became divisive, even explosive. What about this music made it such hot stuff? In her incisive history, Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco transformed popular music, propelling it into new sonic territory and influencing rap, techno, and trance. This account probes the complex relationship between disco and the era’s major movements: gay liberation, feminism, and the black freedom struggle. You won’t say “disco sucks” again as disco pumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.
20 black-and-white photographs
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Engrossing…Hot Stuff is not just about disco; it reexamines the ’70s as a decade of revolution.” ― James Gavin, New York Times
“
Hot Stuff is a thoroughly researched, scholarly credible and fiercely entertaining dissection of disco’s origins and influence…An endearing platform―with matching shoes―to the music we can’t and shouldn’t forget.” ― Warren Pederson, San Francisco Chronicle
“An alternate account of those hazy-crazy yesteryears that’s ultimately indispensable.” ―
Smith Galtney, Time Out
“A quietly dazzling history…
Hot Stuff is the result of a lifetime of thinking deeply about the music and its influence.” ― Peter Terzian, Los Angeles Times
“Exhilarating, perceptive…an important work of cultural and musical resuscitation, written with a scholar’s acumen but a fan’s ardor.” ―
Melissa Anderson, Newsday
“Remarkable…Carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject.” ―
Christine Stansell, author of The Feminist Promise
“Echols aims for―and thoroughly achieves―a range of higher cultural insights…Revelatory.” ―
Publishers Weekly
“A well-researched, culturally sensitive time capsule.” ―
Kirkus Reviews
“[An] entertaining and convincing reclamation of what was once Western culture’s most reviled music…It’s a scholarly read powered by the thump-thump of Giorgio Moroder’s synths; you’ll find yourself humming
Ring My Bell and searching YouTube for evidence of Sylvester’s fabulosity.” ― Evelyn McDonnell, Miami Herald
From the Back Cover
“Echols’s love of music, her acumen about popular culture, and her gifts as a leading cultural historian come together in this remarkable book. The book is fascinating, carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject.”-Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns”Hot Stuff describes the book as well as its subject: a thoughtful and sophisticated treatment of a significant but much-maligned music.”-Tim Taylor, professor, Departments of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, UCLA”Echols aims for-and thoroughly achieves-a range of higher cultural insights. . . . Using encyclopedic knowledge of the eras’ biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a ‘central role’ in broadening the contours of ‘blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality’ in America. . . . Revelatory.”-Publishers Weekly”Without question, Alice Echols is one of America’s best cultural critics working the beat between popular and academic cultures. With characteristic stylistic verve and scholarly acumen, Echols trolls the edges of our culture’s underbelly to discern its central place in politics and economics. In Hot Stuff, she finds disco to be crucial for understanding what happened in 1970s America. Thus invariably, Echols provides a surprising take on familiar scenes by pointing out potholes and pitfalls of late twentieth-century American culture, exploring regions of experience previously overlooked or discounted. Her deepimmersion in the subjects of her research, thorough oral histories, and extensive archival investigation flesh out her absolutely original critical insights.”-Paula Rabinowitz, author of Black & White & Noir
About the Author
Alice Echols is Barbra Streisand Professor of contemporary gender studies and professor of history at the University of Southern California. A former disco deejay, she is the author of four books including Hot Stuff and the acclaimed biography of Janis Joplin, Scars of Sweet Paradise.
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