National Disco Day.

 National Disco Day.

Now where did that one come from? We had no idea of its existence and if we hadn't been told then we'd have been convinced that somebody had been pulling our leg or just making it up as they went along. In fact it does sound like some barely believable invention or perhaps something that had been dreamt up by some party- going type who loves to remember the good, old days. But then every day is a good one. It does feel like some nostalgic throwback to when our generation just danced the night away.

Today folks it's National Disco Day. You knew that anyway, didn't you? It had to be National Disco Day because a vast majority of the world were recovering from the exertions of a Saturday night when everybody boogied on down and strutted their funky stuff until the point of complete exhaustion. So on the following Sunday morning we all tried to imitate John Travolta and just slung our jacket over our shoulder before embarking on a dizzy sequence of hip swaying and indulging in those slinky body popping movements and whatever your interpretation of disco music was.

Suffice it to say that in the summer of 1977, eminent film producer and impresario par excellence Robert Stigwood came up with the brilliant idea of marrying the music of the time with the disco floors of New York, Los Angeles and California and coming up with the perfect fusion of American funk, the mainstream sound of soul and mixing the whole pot pourri with some of the most delightful music ever heard or seen.

For those who had been subjected to the overbearing, aggressive and disturbingly anarchic sound of punk, this was the perfect antidote to the late 1970s period of pogo dancing with men and women wearing black leather coats and safety pins attached to their noses. It was a wild, uncontrollable, faintly annoying tempo and beat although for those who followed the likes of the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Undertones and Sham 69 maybe it was an acceptable reminder of music's constant evolution.

But essentially disco music was a triumph of the human soul, a celebration of cool, Manhattan soul, an expression of dance with few inhibitions and no boundaries. Meanwhile Stigwood was busily working away at his most ambitious project of all. Saturday Night Fever, starring the hitherto unheard of John Travolta and now the sadly missed Olivia Newton John, was electrifyingly stunning. None of us could have anticipated that it would become the greatest cinema phenomenon of the summer of 1977. Saturday Night Fever broke all box office records and it was the most attractive adornment to any film archive in years to come.

We waited patiently outside the Barkingside Odeon cinema and the queues snaked all the way around the local high street, teenagers naturally bubbling over with excitement but not really sure what to expect. We'd bought the Saturday Night Fever album and could hardly wait to place it on our record turntable for our further delectation. It was vinyl gold and every track on the album had lived up to all of our expectations.

The Tramps Disco Inferno was a pulsating metaphor for disco music as a specific genre while Yvonne Elliman's equally as uplifting If I Can't Have You defined the structure of disco music. But then we discovered a group of men in sparkly baseball jackets who were born in England but grew up in the Australian outback. The Bee Gees were high falsetto, high pitched and unmistakably soulful. The hits tumbled from the conveyor belt like jars of honey. After years of striving and struggling to make themselves heard with songs like Words during the 1960s and Massachusetts, the Bee Gees were now firmly on the radar of the disco scene that galvanised us to the point of a musical fever pitch.

There were in no particular order Staying Alive, the soundtrack Saturday Night Fever, You Should Be Dancing and the more romantic How Deep Is Your Love. As both a collective and successful franchise these were songs for the ages, the tunes we simply couldn't get out of our heads. We will always remember Saturday Night Fever because it also spawned an artistic gallery of soul practitioners with a lovely feeling for  good time vibes. In turn  that would now take disco music into a whole new dimension.

There were the Detroit Spinners, the Whispers, Tavares, the Stylistics, the evergreen Temptations who were strictly Motown but nobody would ever have objected to their presence. There was the peerless genius of Stevie Wonder, a child prodigy who had learnt all of the finer nuances of the harmonica by the age of 12. Of course Stevie could appeal to the girls and guys who would fill the floors of the remarkable American pop music show Soul Train and the sense of something like a dramatic change was underway.

But now a crystal ball on the ceiling was spinning and a spectacular riot of colour had now flashed away almost incessantly for the entire 1970s decade. And then there was Earth, Wind and Fire, a group so superlatively brilliant that whenever a retro night club dropped the vinyl on the two decks, you were aware that something sensational had gripped the disco floors of the world. September, Fantasy, Boogie Wonderland and In the Stone were so infectiously danceable that many of us thought we had yet to hear anything better.

Sadly, the era of the disco floor is no longer as relevant and accessible as it used to be and Tramps and Stringfellows are no more than some historical music footnote. London is still a  melting pot for soul singers like Gregory Porter but the aforesaid disco pioneers are no longer the force they used to be. It could go down as one of the most memorable styles of music but as Herbie Hancock's ground breaking synths in You Betta Your Love fade from the thumping speakers, you recall the distinctive disco rhythms that we knew so well and wanted to continue for ever. Happy National Disco Day everybody.