Dance on your knees

I lived through the disco revolution, but I wasn't old enough to boogie much. I was 6 when Saturday Night Fever hit the screens in 1977, and although I loved the music -- the movie soundtrack was the first record I bought that wasn't called something like 30 Great Kids Songs! -- the disco ephemera I consumed came not from coked-out dance clubs but rather from pop culture outlets that were rather more kid-friendly. I'm thinking of the roller disco fad, the LP Sesame Street Fever, and movies like the 1979 comedy Love at First Bite, which has a memorable scene in which a vampire George Hamilton dances to Alicia Bridges' transporting disco classic "I Love the Nightlife."

But then there were tracks like the 1976 novelty hit "Disco Duck (Part 1)" by the DJ Rick Dees. The song, about a clubgoer transformed into a waterfowl, has adult themes -- animal lust, club dancing -- and even that premise seems altogether druggy. But how could kids not love the song too? I did. It's performed by a man doing a passable impression of Donald Duck.

After that, it was all but inevitable that KISS and Fred Astaire would put out disco records. And then the whole thing was over.