To our DJs
To our Mobile Discos

DJs: In the early 1900s an ex-college student from Eton, Christopher Reynolds Stone approached the BBC with his idea for a record programme... which the BBC dismissed. However he finally convinced them and on the 7th July 1927 started playing records on air. He became the fisrt DJ in the United Kingdom... and probably in the world.

It is American commentator Walter Winchell who coined the term "disc jockey" (the combination of "disc", referring to the disc records, and "jockey", which is an operator of a machine) as a description of what Martin Block was doing. In 1935, while his audience at WNEW in New York (now information outlet WBBR) was awaiting developments in the Lindbergh kidnapping, Block played records and created the illusion that he was broadcasting from a ballroom, with the nation’s top dance bands performing live. The show, which he called the Make Believe Ballroom, was an instant hit and lasted on WNEW into the late 1980s.

Hence the term disc jockey was first used to describe radio announcers who would introduce and play popular gramophone records. These records, also called discs by those in the industry, were jockeyed by the radio announcers, hence the name disc jockey, which was soon shortened to DJs or deejays.

Disco: Disco refers to both the dance music and the nightclubs that became popular after the 1977 release of the movie Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees, Village People, Donna Summer, and Gloria Gaynor were among the top music acts whose recordings were danced to in discos (or discothèques). The most important American disco was Studio 54 in New York, which attracted a glamorous clientele that included movie stars, artists, and "Eurotrash" and spawned a generation whose drug of choice was cocaine. Disco also incorporated such fashions as platform shoes and white leisure suits for men.

Elements of disco music appear on records from as far back as the early 1970s such as 1971's Theme From Shaft by Isaac Hayes. In general, the first disco songs were released in 1973, although many consider Manu Dibango's 1972 "Soul Makossa" the first disco record. A September 13, 1973 Rolling Stone Magazine article ("Discotheque Rock '72: Paaaaarty!" by Vince Aletti about the New York nightclub scene is considered to be the first to use the terminology "disco."

Initially, most disco songs catered to a nightclub/dancing audience only, rather than general audiences such as radio listeners, but there are many aspects proving opposite tendencies as well; popular radio-hits were being played in discothèques, as long as they had an easy to follow rhythmic bass-pattern close to 120 BPM (beats per minute). Most 1970s Disco genre songs had a distinctive four/four bass drum beat.