Disco Fever on the Rise at Area Clubs

The Vietnam War ended in the ‘70s; so much for the good news. Otherwise, the decade was pretty sorry, giving us among other things smile buttons, bad TV, bad clothes, bad hair and even worse music--personified by the dreaded disco. Yet nostalgia, even really dumb nostalgia--the longing for the good ol’ days that probably never existed anyway--is reborn with each generation.

So who would want to recapture the vapid mindlessness of the dopey disco days? As it turns out, a lot of people. “Disco sucks” proclaimed a zillion bumper stickers in the early ‘80s. “Disco pays,” says a growing number of club owners in the ‘90s.

Tonight, for the first time at The Rock in Canoga Park, bushels of disco maniacs will sweat to the oldies as provided by La Freak, who sashayed out of that polyester time warp and somehow tripped over a Village People lunch box. Meanwhile, north on the Ventura Freeway, a few miles away in Thousand Oaks, Stargate will be packed to its well-lit rafters as Disco Inferno gets those moneymakers moving.

And that’s just the tip of the plastic gold chain. Disco Inferno reheats the dance floor Sunday night at Aftershock in Studio City while La Freak inflames Prime Time in Canyon Country, and Disco Inferno does it again Wednesday night at FM Station in North Hollywood.

Under the Perfect World Entertainment umbrella (doubtlessly black plastic), there now are seven such bands and each of them plays a lot. In the late ‘80s, they were a single band from the San Fernando Valley called Roxanne. Things weren’t really working out until, as a joke, they donned some silly clothes and became the Boogie Knights. Since then, their success has spawned the Polyester Pimps, Grooveline, Disco Inferno, the Afro-Disiacs, Bootie Quake and, the newest one, La Freak.

Somewhere the Bee Gees, the Village People and Donna Summer are smiling, but none wider than Boogie bigwig Jamie Brown, who was lead singer in the original band and now runs the enterprise. The original Boogie Knights are still together (with a different singer) and playing in Las Vegas. Brown now sings only when he wants to.

“I’m chained to my phone these days,” said Brown, during a recent phone interview from his home in Valencia.

“The musicians are all interchangeable. We know 55 or 60 songs, but we can’t play all those in one night. I get musicians when they come up to me at a gig or from friends of friends. Right now, I’m looking for a drummer. It always seems to be drummers and bass players.”

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Thus, a different band doing the same set at a different place seemingly every night of the week has booties shaking from sea to quaking sea--from as far south as San Diego to as far north as Seattle and as far east as Chicago, and there’s even talk of doing gigs on Broadway in New York. Brown, on the verge of becoming a tycoon, isn’t squawking.

“People always ask me, ‘How long will it last? When’s it gonna end?’ Well, right now, I’m probably doing six times the business I was doing a year ago. We play in places like Las Vegas and Hollywood where there are a lot of tourists, and we end up making a lot of contacts, and it just keeps growing. During the recent KROQ Acoustic Christmas Concert, the Boogie Knights were surprise guests, and I hear they stole the show.”

If the used-record bin is the final resting place of Steppenwolf albums, then the thrift store is the end of the line for polyester, a mainstay of the Boogie Knights. When they play, they dress to impress: platform shoes, scary bell bottoms, ugly shirts, gold chains, stick-on hairy chests, and Afro wigs.

“Before our first gig, we went to Pic ‘N’ Save in Victorville and bought Elvis jumpsuit Halloween costumes for four bucks each,” said Brown. “They were so big, even the fat Elvis could’ve fit into them. Now, we get a lot of our stuff at this place in North Hollywood called Junk for Joy. They have the real ‘70s stuff, brand-new stuff, that’s been stored in a warehouse somewhere.”

Aftershock on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City is just the sort of place to show off your night moves or your latest purchase from any of the zillion thrift stores on Ventura Boulevard. It’s Sunday night, “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons” are over, you have no job--or not one you care about--on Monday, so why not?

Disco madness has been sweeping through the Aftershock for almost two months now. This is a Disco Inferno gig, but Bootie Quake--same thing, different name--will be sitting in tonight. Over 1,300 people packed the place the Sunday before President’s Day, shaking the place more than a cobra mambo contest.

“This place will be going off by 10:30,” said the prophetic waitress, referring to the band that wasn’t there yet. “A few weeks ago, the line went clear down the street to Bally’s.”

Several score of Aftershock women, so perfect the only reason they’d set foot in Bally’s would be to laugh at everyone else, waltzed past in some sort of endless orbital ritual.

Despite all the mingling, the huge parquet dance floor remained mostly empty while the place began to fill up and business boomed at the one long bar and all the little ones, too.

At last Bootie Quake appeared in the flesh, mindless entertainment at its loudest and most blank--four skinny guys in scary pants, providing a home for the hideous shirts moms inflicted on their kids during a long, tasteless decade. As the band cranked up an old KC & the Sunshine Band tune, “Get Down Tonight,” the singer reduced the scene to the basics: “I wanna see some booties wigglin’!”

And he did. All the songs were as relentless as they were simple, and everyone seemed to know the words. At these shows, one can bet on tight musicianship and on hearing “I Will Survive,” “Play That Funky Music,” “YMCA,” “We Are Family” and the like. There were no disco haters in Studio City on Sunday night.

Wes Seay, an independent promoter in charge of the Aftershock gig, remembers the old days.

“About four or five years ago, I had the Boogie Knights at Sergio’s [now Yucatan Cantina] in Westlake. Then we had them at Pelican’s Retreat in Calabasas. I remember the first gig--they had 48 people. I started passing out fliers, about 20,000 a week, and later, they were drawing 1,300.”

“I dunno what it is,” said Brown. “I think people just like to dance and we provide a good beat to dance to with a sense of humor. Even if you can’t dance, you can dance to the Boogie Knights. Everyone--all ages--comes to see us, even people with fake IDs that shouldn’t be there.”

All this disco is thriving on nights other than Friday and Saturday, nights that have historically made owners go gray or go broke.

“That’s the cool thing about all this,” said Brown. “Most clubs don’t need help on Friday and Saturday nights. But we know we’ll do fine on whatever night. Disco is the answer.”

What was the question again? Oh yeah, so just how far will these retro revivals carry us? Rockabilly from the ‘50s has a limited appeal, because you can find only a limited number of guys who want to comb their ducktails and worry about their blue suede shoes.

What about a ‘60s retro scheme? Actually we had that, it was any Grateful Dead concert. But without Jerry Garcia, the Dead died, though there are plenty of Deadhead-friendly replacements. Can a punk revival be far down the road? In 20 years, will there be punks with Mohawks in wheelchairs lip-syncing Fear songs? Scary.

“Yeah, disco sucked. A lot of people hated it, but a lot of people liked it, too. And now a lot of people still like it, and a lot of people still hate it,” said Brown. “If anything, the ‘90s suck.”

DETAILS

Where and when to shake your bootie: All of these bands start about 10 p.m. and will cost you about $5, less if you’re earlier.

* TONIGHT: La Freak at The Rock, 7230 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park, (818) 347-7668; Disco Inferno at Stargate, 130 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks, (805) 496-3755.

* SUNDAY: Disco Inferno at Aftershock, 11345 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 752-9833; La Freak at Prime Time, 27125 Cedar Highway, Canyon Country, (805) 251-8554.

* WEDNESDAY: Disco Inferno at FM Station, 11700 Victory Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 769-2220