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It's a shame this isn't the top comment, because it's a lot more interesting than Ishkur's smartassery and all the across-the-pond sniping.

There used to be a great website called Deep House Page which archived loads of Hot Mix 5 mixes, and you could really hear just how diverse that early era of post-disco dance music was, before it even got pigeonholed into "house" or "techno" and the myriad of subgenres that came since. Sadly the page has disappeared, and I'm not sure where to find the mixes now.

Meanwhile, in parallel, people in other countries were experimenting with synthesizers and unconventional composition too. I remember finding mixtapes of an obscure Australian band called Hugo Klang (https://hugoklang.bandcamp.com/) who were doing techno-y stuff with the 303 a few years before Phuture put together their seminal tune.

Without a doubt the big names that everyone remembers as the progenitors were hugely influential. Already in the 90s people were writing articles that started out exactly like this one, so we're already a full generation into the myth. But it's still interesting to go digging and find all the other stuff that surely played a part in influencing all the other people whose stories never got written up.

I have all the dhp mp3s archived somewhere if you want one

I find Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat intriguing (1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUqnPYwoiF4

Seems there was a lot of parallel invention and cross pollination.

Histories of techno always leave out some of my favorites from the early 2000s Adam Beyer / Drumcode era of fast maximalist techno—Zenit records for instance

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPN0gicPJTTUJVhVMzCne... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOfuXwU6GoQ

And I was surprised they mentioned Surgeon and Regis, but not their Downwards Records

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBilbhSIIhgKbRezA7RoO...

I grew up with Drumcode. It was quite common with forest raves here in Sweden, basically a huge sound system in some remote place and people dancing over night. And at one point there were also some organisers who rented a whole cruise liner, with people like Adam Beyer and Thomas Krome DJ’ing. My favourites include: surgeon, headroom, the advent, invexis, chris liebing, planetary assault systems, mark broom, pounding grooves and richie hawtin. Then I fell into the rabbit hole of more experimental music such as autechre and have been stuck there ever since

Drumcode is still going strong and Beyer does a weekly podcast, which is excellent (and supports RSS too). I still love that sound even though I'm now far too old to have the stamina to party like I did in the 90s/00s.

IDM has also been a huge love of my life. I'm not sure I could pick a favourite out of techno or IDM though. But Drumcode Radio is certainly good music to run to.

Slam did a rather nice podcast that sat somewhere between techno and experimental. I don't know if their podcast is still going but their RSS feed has certainly stopped :(

Drumcode has become the EDM festival gateway to many people and has earned the nickname "business techno". Gently bobbing along at 125-128 with predictable buildups/breakdowns and is very "FX friendly" on the mixer.

Aside from the beat rate, what you've described there could equally apply to all genres of dance music. Almost every track follows the same rules phrasing and has a 4/4 time signature (often with really accented four-to-the-floor kicks or percussion). The predictable buildups and breakdowns are a feature: most people can't dance to something they can't follow. Just look at how differently people dance to IDM (it's not uncommon to see a mosh pit at some gigs). That said, even IDM has a good few tracks with a predictable phrasings to them too.

Sure, some genres are more predictable than others (hardhouse, for example, is effectively the "painting by numbers" equivalent of EDM) but as a retired DJ who used to mix on 3+ decks and throw in the odd non 4/4 track too (typically 3/4 but I had some more esoteric records too), I can't think of many tracks from many genres that were particularly hard to DJ.

...well there was this one track that was difficult, not because of the phrasing nor time signature, but because the producer decided to fade in the start of the track. Very unhelpful that!

What I've written here also applies to a significant amount of rock and it's various sub-genres too.

As for the "FX friendly on the mixer", that's been technos style since the 90s. It's nothing new and certainly not anything specific to Drumcode. Richie Hawtin even released a compilation album called "Decks, EFX & 909" in 1999 and his style is very different to Adam Beyer's. In the early 00s Misstress Barbara wrote in a cover sleeve on one of her mixes about how her sets were about creating new compositions live using 3 decks, heavy EQing and effects. Her style also differed massively from Drumcode.

Source: retired DJ and producer. Not a household name but played a few gigs in and around London. Mostly techno but with house, electro, breaks, EBM, rock, metal, industrial and pretty much anything else thrown in that had the right vibe to it.

It's funny because I guess I'm old but that kind of stuff feels sort of like the "end of the road" for techno and not part of the history, more of the end of the history.

I liked some of it at the time -- I have some of the Code Red Adam Beyer stuff on coloured red vinyl somewhere -- but it's a bit soul-less and monolithic. A very white middle class European straightlaced "thump thump thump" interpretation of the genre.

The stuff from Europe in the late 90s and early 2000s that I loved the most that got left out of the "techno history" was the "No Future" / Scandinavian Records school -- Neil Landstrumm, Cristian Vogel, Dave Tarrida, etc. really wonky wonk stuff, very creative. That's what I was playing back then.

> I liked some of it at the time -- I have some of the Code Red Adam Beyer stuff on coloured red vinyl somewhere -- but it's a bit soul-less and monolithic. A very white middle class European straightlaced "thump thump thump" interpretation of the genre.

I've got a couple of those records and I can tell you that Adam Beyer and Drumcode still sound like that today, they've really nailed that "far duller than it sounds" sub-genre of techno.

> The stuff from Europe in the late 90s and early 2000s that I loved the most that got left out of the "techno history" was the "No Future" / Scandinavian Records school -- Neil Landstrumm, Cristian Vogel, Dave Tarrida, etc. really wonky wonk stuff, very creative. That's what I was playing back then.

I managed to see Landstrumm play two days before the start of lockdown last March as part of the 20 Years of Don't evening at the Bangface Weekender, how's that for good timing? :)

https://bangface.com/weekender2020/lineup/

I was going out to a lot of squat parties that played it in the 00s when there was tons of it coming out of London from labels like Don't, Yolk, Chancer, Victim and 4x4 Recordings, and also went to Jerome Hill's Uglyfunk night regularly (it's still going in fact but I've not made it there recently). Mark Hawkins was probably my favourite producer followed by Jerome Hill and Michael Forshaw.

Nice man.

I've only managed to see Landstrumm twice, cuz of being on this side of the pond. Once in the early 2000s he DJ'd along with DJ Hell at a local club, and actually he was quite competent on the vinyl (more than Hell was) and he played a lot of Chicago and Detroit classics. It was a good night if I recall.

The other time was actually very recent (2019), someone I know locally knows him personally and brought him over into my local small Ontario city to play live. Small gig, maybe 50 people there. Even got to shake his hand and say hi.

Def. one of my favourite musicians in the genre.

I also saw him as Crystal Distortion back in the mid-00s at Uglyfunk and as himself in the early 10s, so that's only one more time than you :)

I'm a big fan of Detroit ghetto-tech like DJ Godfather, and have a similar problem of it only existing on the other side of the Atlantic... The weekender I mentioned has had at least one of the top DJs over every other year or so over the last decade which is amazing, because otherwise I've been out to see it played three times in the past two decades, so I feel your pain :)

I believe I saw Godfather and some others in that vein at the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival back in 2000. Maybe in 2001.

Sweet little Canadian me was ... shocked ... by the way people uh, danced to that stuff.

Hah, I bet, watching people dancing to it in Boiler Room videos is different enough from what I'm used to, and that's got to be a lot tamer than you'd see somewhere without cameras filming the entire thing!

The first time I saw this clip it was amazing how distant it was from everything I've experienced since going to my first club in 1995 - and the video is from closer to 1995 than 1995 is to today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EarSRa19sZc

I've seen Model 500 and wasn't impressed to be honest, but then again electro isn't my thing at all so that's more about me lol, my friends enjoyed it a lot :)

Electro was my thing back then. But I think I'd tire of a whole gig of just Model 500.

The DEMF dancefloor vibe while the booty stuff was playing was... raunchy. Like full on grinding, ass rubbing, etc. Didn't see that stuff at clubs here. The rave/club/techno scene back then here was pretty androgynous and public displays of affection would have been very gauche. Not so in Detroit at certain gigs

First time I saw DJ Godfather they had DJ Stingray play before him and I enjoyed that style of modern harder electro a lot more, if only because the production was so much better :)

The scene here was neither androgynous nor restrained in the public displaying of affection - but overtly sexual displays were very much in the minority and stood out, probably because British people loved being able to shed our passively-aggressive polite and emotionally stunted personas for an evening by consuming large amounts of pills and just wanting to dance and hug people ;)

I've seen some full-on stuff at squat parties though. Ecstasy and alcohol can make people completely lose their inhibitions lol.

I totally agree for 90, even 99% of the tracks from that era, but there are some serious gems in there. I really enjoy the Youtube account "TECHNO" for finding some of it. A few producers that stood out to me: Kobaya, Rino Cerrone, Samuel L. Session, Leandro Gamez, G-Force, Tomie Nevada, Headroom, Gaetano Parisio, Damon Wild & Echoplex (slightly difference scene), Ade Fenton ... and many others less famous and with fewer releases.

Adam Beyer's tracks himself and most of the stuff on Drumcode from any era though is totally boring, I agree. And we can also agree the Neil Landstrumm and Cristian Vogel (I'd argue early Villalobos too) are the height of the end of techno history.

Quite possibly I just like this stuff because it reminds me of video game soundtracks from the era.

Damon Wild, that's good stuff.

Here, crack a cool one and breathe this in, for a little while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFY8GK5PAA

Did exactly as you said. Fantastic.

That whole movement was kinda self contained. Early 2000s Central Europe.

There's a party drug contribution that's really instrumental to these movements. I have been thinking of how to do a musical taxonomy by narcotic, but it's hard to do without making everyone sound like a junkie.

New Beat and MDMA, Disco and cocaine, freeform Jazz and heroine, etc. (I'm a big fan of all of these btw, and could likely make you want to "delete my number" talking about them. But pretending like Gino Soccio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhAPoip5YeQ) or Tantra (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyqkePY6FKY) or the partiers listening were sober is personally, not very plausible. Sure, I'm sober, but I'm an outlier)

The big theory here is the genres that seem to compactly come and go in a few years, seem to have a high degree of self similarity in releases (take reggae or psytrance for example), and seem to be popular with the party kids might be heavily linked to a particular single or set of narcotics.

Take happy hardcore for example. Thousands of tracks, labels, artists, a huge culture and scene behind it, of well, to be honest, a bunch of teenagers on drugs. Take psychedelic rock and LSD.

Again, this is a really touchy subject but I kinda think drumcore is in that camp. It follows the same chronological and social patterns and seems to fall in the same circles.

I'm not a drug user but I've been to enough parties to know there's certainly a different prevalence in different circles. It's even more difficult because you know, it's all technically illegal so people aren't entirely forthcoming and people don't tend to leave great documentation of illegal substance use around for future historian study.

Maybe a cross comparison with police arrest reports would be as authoritative as we can get? Even that is tough though because in all the hundreds of underground raves I went to in my teens and twenties in california, police arresting people happened at I believe zero. So that sample size is extremely small.

And even then, everything usually gets consumed rather immediately and if they bust a dealer what they're finding are the unsold inventory so even that's not a good metric, the "empty shelves" are the important ones.

Yea, that Swedish techno and its offshoots ... it was/is amphetamine music. That's my jerky opinion anyways.

Boom-tss, boom-ts, fist pump

oh that makes sense. I forgot about meth.

Mostly it's me not understanding why so many people are captivated, excited and enthralled by something that sounds so caustic and abrasive.

It's admittedly extremely arrogant for me to say "well they must be on drugs because ahem, I am perfect." but you see parties starting at around midnight and going until 4pm the next day, there's something up with that.

To be fair a lot of the stuff I mentioned was from Spain and Belgium, more so than Sweden, but I loved your post! Completely agree.

Great song picks. Absolutely agree. Hell, the article even largely omits the massive influence of house on techno in general, as most of these narratives seem to do.

As a result, many people seem to think techno preceded house. But taking the view that Juan Atkins' early 80s work was basically electro and not yet really "techno", it's pretty clear that house was already quite prevalent prior to techno becoming a distinct genre.

And even then, early 80s italo-disco was leagues ahead of house in terms of production quality... a few of my personal favorites:

Charlie - "Spacer Woman" (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZDPCjEoIMI

Klapto - "Mister Game" (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUVg-HCjEE

Mr Flagio - "Take a Chance" (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDV_dBYp4h0

Fun Fun - "Happy Station" (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb5B1C5PFVo

Meanwhile on the house side we have debatable-first-house-record Jesse Saunders "On and On" (1984) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUeMFG4wjJw. Although my personal favorite under-appreciated proto-house pick would actually be from nyc, Boyd Jarvis "The Music Got Me" (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYfG8tcEl3E.

These articles always mention "Shari Vari" since it's so early (1981) and influential (and still good!) but I always find it odd that they omit so many great tracks from the next few years.

These are all nice and currently somewhat famous as much as tracks from that era go.

The question here, and most of this stems from the deephousepage reference elsewhere in this thread, is that in the actual 80s tape recordings (I've got an archive of most of them) from say WBMX or WBLS or any contemporary first hand accounts, I don't see these tracks playing prominently.

The more heavily played are things we may find less interesting today such as Pamala Stanley - Coming Out Of Hiding https://youtube.com/watch?v=M6G8dKgsEG0 ... catchy 80s pop, ok. You listen to the old recordings and this song comes up frequently. Also Bobby Orlando's dozen songs that all sound the same come up a lot (the flirts, divine, ronnie griffith, i spies) probably because their similarity in bpm and key made them versatile toys for the 80s dj.

Our perception of the past through the lens that the modern world "as a context" creates defines a narrative that we impose on the events.

I'm interested in I guess two things here. From simplest to hardest

1. What's the perceived reality of who heard/influenced what and why do we tell ourselves that

2. What's the actual reality and where's the evidence?

We have the mighty Memex machine at our fingertips and can immediately call up forgotten songs from far off lands with a few twitches of our fingertips. A Japanese synthesizer album from the 70s, a bollywood orchestration from the 60s and say a funk song from the Bronx in 1971, immediately recognize a through line and claim "aha, these are connected". But how would this fiction be possible in "before the internet" days? Records traveled, ok, Goa beach parties were real, sure. But I want to be careful in trying to remove my "person of the future" context in trying to understand the past

For instance, there's a bunch of Mexican knockoffs of italo disco tracks in the 80s and they could get away with it because Italy and Mexico are far away from each other.

I wrote an article about this 4 years ago, let me quote it:

The 1987 Mexico release Trebol ‎– TI - 71161, produced by J. Brenner of Mannequin, "Boom Bam" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqLt7SwaN90

is a nearly 100% knock-off of the 1986 Italian release SQ 87504, produced by Miki Chieregato and Roberto Turatti, of Paul Lekakis, "Boom Boom": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ovsnO7Akg

So yeah, that's an example of the context warp.

Now given that, who actually heard and owned what and how it happened is tough. Famous people know how important origin stories are and so they tend to not be great self documentarians. It makes the whole thing tricky especially since not very many people take this as obsessively as I do so the records are continually destroyed and altered

No music style appeared out of nowhere. So it will always be hard to pinpoint where things started. Maybe it is even impossible.

I always have a mixed feeling about music style classifications. It shifts focus from the music to discussions about what style a piece of music is.

Maybe techno originated from rhytmic tribe music. Who knows. Personally I don't care.

The classification limits the perception like the Himbu color experiment.

That's why these early pre-language explorations are great.

Luckily there's a lot of independent artists these days that are exploring things and refusing to label them with an abstract genre.

We need our modern John Cages to feel empowered. I think it's important.

I was one of those independent artists and frankly it was sometimes a lot harder to get booked in the early to mid 00s because people started to identify themselves with those labels. The techno crowd were generally more open minded but outside of that things would often get ridiculously pigeon-holed.

>Take the intro to 1983's Hypnotic Tango by My Mine for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6EbVwOumlE

It's like a better version of Sven Vath's Electric Salsa.

BTW the link for Manuel Göttsching E2-E4 is the wrong one (duplicate of Hyponotic Tango). Here is the right link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys0HyevZpQg

Yeah fixed it. I wrote that on my cell phone sitting in my driveway.

Also if you like that please check out his 1975 release "Inventions for Electric Guitar".

I can't praise this one enough

https://youtu.be/khejrbgdc4w

I liked the e2 e4 album so much I drained my car battery listening to it and now I need to buy a new one.

he's still around, pretty approachable https://www.facebook.com/manuel.gottsching

> Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY)

From the YT description:

"As stated below by Jerry Calliste Jr., this video is not and original version of Hashim - Al Naafiysh (The Soul). Probably it was made for the purposes of one of the UK television programs, like " The Tube", during the early 80's. This recording is one of the first hip hop stories to be seen and published on the British Television. The track "Al Naafiysh (The Soul), was originally used for this video, added by unknown author or crew which worked on the video, as the only thing that was known so far, was Geoff Stern, the director."

One clue to this is that there isn't anyone smoking in the video, and the tube windows have a "no smoking" roundel. The smoking ban on the London Underground came in on the 9th July 1984.

Yep. Not an original video at all. It's still great.

These days sometimes the artist makes a video for an old song. For instance, Earlene Bentley made a video for "Caught In The Act" 23 years after she released it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55KOBCgv7f4

It's not exactly common, but it's interesting to see it what it happens. (her "big" hit btw, in the early 80s, in specifically gay clubs was "The Boys Come To Town" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0fBil_4dU) ... it has that 80s hard driving orchestration ... pretty nice. The instrumentals are occasionally sampled on this one, about as much as Two Tons o' Fun are. It's always nice to overhear the latest pop song and be like "oh look, there's Barbara Roy's instrumentals from If you want me still living on". (https://youtu.be/lOCMRk8Nex4?t=272 for the uninitiated)

I was really confused when I bought a Cybotron record in the 2010s expecting to hear canonical techno. It's totally just electro!

Newcleus is fully sick though. I dunno if people overlook them as a gimmick or what, but the first album is just track after absolute track.

To be honest I think after the rise of gangsta rap and miami bass, the whole era kinda got discarded: whodini, mantronix, man parrish, egyptian lover, grandmaster flash. Actually you could probably say the writing was on the wall after the decline of the party rockers in 1983-84 (epitomized by the Busy Bee Starski/Kool Moe D battle from 1981). Afrika Bambaataa is still occasionally releasing btw. 2017: https://youtu.be/sOx7VeHPIJY - if you were hoping for a more faithful traditional electro, check out this label instead https://dominanceelectricity.bandcamp.com/

The current narrative still discards it as if big hits like Freeez's IOU and Alexander Robotnick's Problèmes d'amour wasn't influential when that style mutated just a tad a year or two later and called itself techno.

Speaking of Cybotron and electro check out Nitro Delux "Journey to Cybotron Transform" off Cutting Records (1986)

Just out of curiosity: What do you mean by New Wave in this context? When I hear new wave I think of acts such as Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran. But are they related to techno?

Yeah, absolutely. You're just a few steps away with a lot of Duran Duran (Rio era) and records like Night Move's Transdance arguably gets there.

I mean heck, take Polices Synchronicity part 1, https://youtu.be/Si5CSpUCDGY. If someone told me that was how an album by underworld or say sasha started from 1999, I'd believe it, swap the vocals and the physical drums with some synths and it's basically done

I feel no-wave also might have been influential. ESG could easily be read as proto-techno in this context. 'Erase You' and 'Dance' have that same kind of reductionist, tribal sensibility.

Their track "Moody (Spaced Out)" shares a strange similarity with Atmosfears "Dancing in Outer Space". I'm sure it's independent, it just made me think of it right away

Both great tracks! You ever see the criminally underrated film 'Vampire's Kiss' with Nicholas Cage? Features ESG playing that song live in a club.

In the UK in the late 70's, New Wave was just post-punk without the vomit.

Agree. It's always such a 'just so' with these kinds of articles about Detroit techno. That being said, I think Kraftwerk is actually a little underrated in their influence. I know that probably seems hard to believe given the praise they got, but there was something about the spectre of 4 white robo-mannequins that triggered some latent afro-futurist impulse that, for me, goes back to Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane.

Daft Punk is the biggest electronic group in recent memory and wouldn't exist without Kraftwerk (and italo-disco).

Similarly, Underworld of "Born Slippy NUXX" fame in the '90s, are indebted to Kraftwerk (and Brian Eno) as well.

Also strange that "I Feel Love" isn't mentioned. I thought this was the first real electronic dance music song. There was other "electronic music" but "I Feel Love" was strictly for dancing, which was new. "Supernature" is mentioned here, but AFAIK, that was released after "I Feel Love" and is pretty derivative.

Thanks for bringing this. This article basically looks at what beatports has to propose but it just totally forgets so many things that it's not even funny. What about "pop corn" too ?

To be fair, it'd need to be a book to cover everything and they include quite a lot here.

I don't think popcorn is part of it to be honest. It's some adjacent siderail of groups like Mannheim Steamroller or BBC Radiophonic (eg Delia Derbyshire/Dr Who theme) or for that matter, video game music.

Check out the "Soothing Sounds for Baby" album by Raymond Scott (1962) for an early example of this.

To put Popcorn in comparison to what would be on the techno track at that time, look at Hugo Montenegro's Moog album, released the same year. His MacArthur Park rendition I would argue is a closer direct ancestor to techno being in the pursuit of electronic dance. Direct link https://youtu.be/eNM6187cznE

There's certainly "bridges" between the worlds like the 1979 Automat album https://youtu.be/w7nQHBiv_u0 or the Droids "Star Peace" but synth and techno are kinda like the catholics and eastern orthodox, they split off a long time ago and kinda have their own worlds.

yeah, now that you put some context around it, I understand I was a bit off. Thx :-)

They try to be as concise as possible.

For example, they completely missed out Front 242, Nitzer Ebb. However they at least mention the genre, EBM.

And to be honest: what is techno else than Tallas invention in a record store? Frontpage magazine? So many things left out, but who cares? You either witnessed parts of the 90th or not. ;)

I never understood my parents fondness for Woodstock and how an e guitar could be the center of a "sound revolution". Around 30 years later, I really understand them: Dorian Gray, Loveparade, 303. ;)

> They try to be as concise as possible.

Calling it the "definitive history of techno" and then trying to be as concise as possible seems a bit presumptuous to me, though...

They actually did mention Nitzer Ebb if you do a ctrl-F. Yes, very cool techno-ish, minimal seminal music. Ritchie Hawtin used to spin Murderous into his sets.

Recently there was a cool documentary about Wax Trax records called Industrial Accident. Worth seeing. Interviews with Front 242, Ministry, Revolting Cocks, KMFDM, Thrill Kill Kult, Trent Reznor, Frontline Assembly, etc.

Any reference about that documentary ? The rev's, FLA, 242, all my not so youth :-)

Another vote for that documentary, it's absolutely a joy. Not streaming for free anywhere, but worth the cost: http://www.waxtraxfilms.com/

I think my main contention can be illustrated by trying to discover where Disco comes from. I was looking for this kind of shoestring style story for years.

Then I gave up trying to construct it. The reality is it's a bunch of things smashed together like pressing all the buttons at the soda fountain at once. That's what happened.

That's where techno came from as well.

Sometimes the narratives are super clean, like rappers delight for rap (there's pre rappers delight style rap records, but under like a dozen or so) or the amen break and dnb or the configuration of the swing drum kit for swing music or house music proper being "the stuff knuckles plays" in Chicago.

But a few styles are inherently messy with no clean lines. Rock, Disco and Techno are three

Rock is especially super messy, here's Meade Lux Lewis in 1927 for instance, https://youtu.be/tDuLezFRMNU swap the piano with a guitar and you have 50s rock

Thanks for your great contributions in this thread.

Can you please help me understand "rock is super messy"? The traditional narrative is "rock was mostly derived from blues (+ some other influences)" but the counter(?)example you provided is a classic 12 bar blues.

Do you have some messier examples? Or did I miss your point?

The book, The Seventh Stream, by Phil Ennis is a good resource to understand the origins of rock. It is a lot more complicated than just the blues.

> I think my main contention can be illustrated by trying to discover where Disco comes from.

Isn't the concise answer Philadelphia? :) Partially joking, I know this is an oversimplification.

In any case, this interview with Earl Young from The Trammps, discussing the origin of four-on-the-floor, is pure gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsf51_a1ceI

That's a great video! I have never seen it. Thanks!

The thing that complicates it is four on the floor has lots of predated "almost but ok, not quite exactly" versions. Such as in Brazilian pop, take Participação from 1971: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DP6hRt9xvw ... those percussion aren't far away from late-70s orchestral disco. Almost same BPM.

This drum style kinda came out of everywhere. Here it is in Pakistan also in 1971 for instance, Runa Laila, Rushdi, Shaukat Ali Khan & Munir - We Don´t Care, starts around 1 minute in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9uYjpkTkNo ... that's the 73 columbia release pictured in youtube, not the original 71 odeon one.

Here you can get it in part of this 1971 Phillipines release by Dakila as well during the chorus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUKDKXSA2-8

Or what about Sophy, from Puerto Rico also in 1971: No Quiero Que Te Vayas ... a very slight change in the drums and you get disco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bhdOpVs9hU ... this one-step-away stuff was common, here's Polish artist Halina Frackowiak - Do końca świata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgrUUfXesdM or ピンキーグッド・バイ from 1972: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeRtlpY96B0 ... ok that last one was just for fun.

Anyway, I've been trying to compile this narrative for a long time ... all the soda flavors at once smashed together. That's all I can come up with.