The increasing popularity of the music made larger venues possible, and in turn, the larger clubs and clubs outside Manhattan began to compete for bookings with funds that the smaller clubs could not match. The combination of empty industrial real estate and eager rock dancers spread new-wave bookings across Manhattan, and as the music gained popularity, discos across the country converted to livemusic-and-rock-dancing policies. For a while, the Mudd Club was as exclusive as Studio 54, and because the combination of new bands and ''rock disco'' was such a winner, similar clubs began popping up. The current dance-club era was ushered in when Hurrah, an uptown discotheque, started playing new-wave dance music in 1978 around the same time, the Mudd Club opened with a similar policy downtown.īoth clubs presented live bands -the Mudd Club also had performance art and other events - and lured crowds who could not bring themselves to sit through a show at CBGB, the Bowery bar that gave punk its first visibility.
With elaborate light-andsound systems and an aura of private-club exclusivity, disco became a high-society pastime such at places as Studio 54.īut just as disco reached the commercial mainstream, punk and newwave rock rediscovered a hard, danceable beat. Inevitably, the music began to reach a wider public, and disco dancing turned into a full-fledged fad. Soon, record companies noticed they had hit records without radio play, and along with other fashion watchers, they began to pay attention to the emerging disco underground. The disco music of the 70's took shape when a white minority picked up black dance music as inexpensive entertainment at semiprivate parties. But after a brief multimedia fling in the psychedelic heyday of the Electric Circus, discotheques waned as rock grew ''progressive'' and less danceable.
The 60's, New York's first discotheque era, paralleled the rise of rock as America's dominant popular music all of a sudden, jetsetters were learning to do the frug and the monkey at places such as Arthur and Ondine.
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