Discomania 2000 OR Why Not Disco? Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. These lines from the middle of a song by Anita Ward should be sufficient for you to guess the title; that is if you ever listened to disco music in the '70s. "The night is young and full of possibilities Well come on and let yourself be free My love for you, so long than I've been savin' Tonight was made for me and you You can..." What did former school teacher, Anita Ward, say that you could do in her million-selling hit single in 1979?

Answer: Ring My Bell

While Anita herself did not even like the song, since she actually preferred to sing ballads, it reached the number one slot in the U.S., Canada and in the U.K. in 1979.

Anita was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1956, and began singing at the ripe old age of two!

On New Year's Eve of 2002, Anita hosted a show in Times Square in New York City and over 50,000 people helped her out on the song by ringing bells all at the same time as she sang "Ring My Bell" a capella!

2. LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born in Boston; went to New York just a few weeks before graduating high school, and later moved to Germany and then on to Austria, performing all along the way. While performing in the musical "Godspell", she used the name "Gayn Pierre", and became fluent in German, singing many of her songs in that language. Who was this disco diva that brought us such hits as "Love To Love You Baby", "Hot Stuff" and "On The Radio"?

Answer: Donna Summer

While in Germany, Donna met and married the man who later provided her with her stage name, Summer. Helmuth Sommer gave her his surname, and later Donna changed it to the English version of the name, "Summer".

At age 63, Donna Summer died of non-smoking related lung cancer on May 17, 2012 in Naples, Florida. She believed that she had developed the cancer from inhaling the dust cloud that formed after the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks in New York. She is buried in Nashville, Tennessee.

3. "Went to a party the other night All the ladies were treating me right Moving my feet to the disco beat How in the world could I keep my seat All of a sudden I began to change I was on the dance floor acting strange Flapping my arms I began to cluck Look at me...I'm the - " What was Rick Dees claiming to be?

Answer: Disco Duck

A novelty song from the disco era, "Disco Duck" was performed by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots in 1976. The recording sold over six MILLION copies!
(I know - hard to believe!)

Rick stated that the song "Disco Duck" was based on another novelty song called simply, "The Duck", which had been recorded by Jackie Lee in 1965.

4. This music artist was born in 1949 and after the age of 11, grew up in a public housing project in New Jersey. She wrote an autobiography that shares the same name as her biggest hit recording. Her tunes "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "Reach Out, I'll Be There" also did very well on the charts, but "I Will Survive" is the one considered by most to be her 'signature' song. Who is this extremely talented musician who eventually left the disco craze behind, and by 2012 was recording Contemporary Christian music?

Answer: Gloria Gaynor

"I Will Survive" was released in 1978, at the height of "disco fever". The song was unique for the time because in the song Gloria Gaynor had no back-up singers, quite unlike most other disco-era music. It reached the number one position on Billboard's Hot 100 charts in 1979.

5. Alicia Bridges learned to play the guitar at the age of ten, and by the time she was 12 years old had her own radio program, called appropriately enough, "The Alicia Bridges Show". This North Carolina native also had a song in the disco era that landed at the number five slot on Billboard's Hot 100 list. From the lyrics posted below, can you identify this hit that she also helped to write? "Please don't talk about love tonight. Please don't talk about sweet love. Please don't talk about being true and all the trouble we've been through. Ah, please don't talk about all of the plans we had for fixin' this broken romance. I want to go where the people dance. I want some action ... I want to live! Ac-tion ... I got so much to give. I want to give it. I want to get some too."

Answer: I Love The Nightlife

"I Love The Nightlife", released in 1978, was a hugely popular hit for Alicia Bridges.

"Body Heat" was another of Alicia Bridges hits, but "Le Freak" was a disco hit by the group Chic, while "YMCA" was done by the Village People.

6. No discussion of the disco era would be complete without mentioning the work of the Bee Gees. Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb formed the easily recognizable sound of what most of us remember as disco music. In what year were the Bee Gees founded?

Answer: 1959

The Bee-Gees were officially founded as a group in 1959.
Bill Gates, a disc-jockey and Bill Goode, a racetrack promoter, provided the name Bee-Gees for the group of young brothers that had previously been known as "The Rattlesnakes" and as "Wee Johnny Hayes & the Bluecats". The story goes that Bill Gates renamed them the "Bee Gees" after his and Bill Goode's initials; and not as an acronym for the "Brothers Gibb", as many people have believed.

After migrating to Queensland Australia from Manchester, England, the three oldest Gibb brothers continued pursuing a singing career that they had begun in the early 1950s. As their career progressed, they seemed to be intent on constantly reinventing themselves and their sound, providing the impetus that propelled them to stardom during the disco era and beyond.

Theirs was a family just chock full of singers! At one time, their sister, Lesley, had sang with them when Robin had temporarily left the group, and their younger brother, Andy, had hits of his own in the mid-1970s.

7. "Fly Robin Fly" was the only song to make it to the number one slot in both the U.S. and Canada that had a total of only SIX words in the whole song! A German group, who shall momentarily remain nameless, had this hit with the lyrics, "Fly robin fly; up, up to the sky". Go ahead; count 'em. (Don't count fly or up twice; these are merely repeats.) Who was this group that released this tune in 1975 and actually won a Grammy Award for it in 1976?

Answer: Silver Convention

Originally entitled "Run Rabbit Run", it was sung by a group that had also previously been known as Silver Bird Convention and simply as Silver Bird.

Apparently they just LOVED producing six word hits. Their next hit was entitled "Get Up And Boogie", which landed at the number one spot, but only made it to number two in the U.S.

The lyrics to that one were: "Get up and boogie; that's right".

Both songs were amazingly profound and brilliant in their simplicity.
(Can you sense the sarcasm dripping out of the corners of my mouth?)

8. All right! Just what you've been waiting for! More lyrics... What group had their first really BIG HIT, with "Waterloo" in 1974? "My, my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way The history book on the shelf Is always repeating itself Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war Waterloo - Promise to love you for ever more Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo"

Answer: ABBA

The hit single, "Waterloo" by ABBA reached the number six slot on the U.S. charts, but fared much better in various other countries, both within the boundaries of the European continent and beyond. In the group's native Sweden, it reached the number three slot, and did just as well in Austria, France, Netherlands, Spain. It received a number one rating on charts in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Ireland, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland and the U.K.

"Waterloo" also achieved a placement in the Top Ten in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and in Rhodesia.

(It was the only Eurovision song to reach the Top Ten in nearly 20 countries!)

9. In 1978, "Boogie Oogie Oogie" had a three week success on the U.S. Billboard Charts. What group who had based their name on a song by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass was responsible for this dance tune of the disco era?

Answer: A Taste Of Honey

While all these song titles were made popular by Herb Alpert, it was the name "A Taste Of Honey" that the musicians decided to use for their band's name. The song "Boogie Oogie Oogie" stayed at the number one position on the Billboard charts for three weeks in 1978. The group A Taste Of Honey was from Los Angeles, California. The song topped two million copies sold and earned them a Grammy Award in 1979.

The song's opening lyrics:

"If you're thinkin' you're too cool to boogie
Boy oh boy have I got news for you
Everybody here tonight must boogie
Let me tell ya' you are no exception to the rule

Get on up on the floor
Cuz we're gonna boogie oogie oogie
Till you just can't boogie no more (boogie)
Boogie no more
You can't boogie no more (boogie)
Boogie no more, listen to the music"

10. What young lady, who was born and raised in Hawaii, and who in 1971 sang "I Don't Know How To Love Him" in the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar" later had a disco hit with "If I Can't Have You" in 1978?

Answer: Yvonne Elliman

Yvonne Elliman sang for four years in the original cast of "Jesus Christ Superstar". Her singing career started in 1969, after she had relocated to London, England. She was was considered an unknown when she was "found" by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, the producers of the rock opera, and subsequently she was asked to sing the parts of Mary Magdalene.

She later moved to New York and was engaged as a backup singer for Eric Clapton on his hit song "I Shot The Sheriff" in 1974. Barry and Robin Gibb (of Bee Gees fame) had written the song "Love Me" for her, and in 1977 "How Deep Is Your Love" for her as well. Robert Stigwood, the president of RSO records, had other ideas however; he wanted the Bee Gees to sing the song, so they did.

They also recorded a version of "If I Can't Have You"; recording it on the B side of "Stayin' Alive". Yvonne sang the song as well, for the movie "Saturday Night Fever" and it became a number one hit for her in 1978.

Source: Author logcrawler

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Back in the 1970s I used to love to dance at the two disco clubs named in the title of the quiz. Let's see if you remember any of these dance tunes that date from the '70s! (Wikipedia and artist's official websites were used as sources of information)

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