Discos were not confined to the 1970s. They still run now. In fact I was
out
on one handling the lighting and visualizations for a friend, just this
last
Saturday night gone ...

ha, ****ing europeans- disco, puma tracksuits, techno and communistm.


You *do* have an odd view of what it's like here ! Mobile discos did indeed
originate in the 70s, but have continued un-interupted ever since. They are
used for dances, in pubs, for birthday parties, weddings - all sorts of
things. The one that I was working at on Saturday, was a charity gig raising
money for cancer research. The technology has moved on over the years. When
I was first involved in the 70s, it was a pair of modified phono decks, a
preamp with a cross fader if you were lucky, a power amp, and a couple of
home-made cabs with the biggest speakers you could afford. Light shows were
done using modified slide projectors, home made colour wheels, made on the
fly likwid lite slides, and light columns made with Philips Photoflood
lamps. The music side of things gave way to twin CD decks, and the lighting
moved on to custom made pattern projectors using sound control to drive
rotating mirrors and dichroic filters. The music side is now all handled on
computer with custom pro software that looks after playlists, cross-fading,
inserting requests and storing the entire library. My friend has close to
8000 tracks on his setup. Lighting is now very complex, employing DMX and
sound controlled projectors, most of which are LED based, DMX and sound
controlled laser effects units, and computer generated 'visualisations',
which are math based music-synced patterns, fed to a video projector.

Puma tracksuits ? You don't see too many of them any more, not even on the
chaviest chavs ... :-)

Techno ? Not really that big here any more. It came from America originally
anyway.

Communism ? Not too much of that in most of Europe any more, either.

Arfa