TV satirist Oliver Kalkofe remembers the 1970s in West Germany as an “extremely dull time”. “The 70s were the most colourless decade. Before that there was flower power and the hippie era. But in the mid-70s the predominant colours were brown in all its facets and grey,” said the 58-year-old Berliner in an interview with dpa on the 50th anniversary of disco music, which began in the summer of 1974.
“I’m really enjoying watching old episodes of ‘Detective Rockford’ or ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. You see all the shades of brown and then a bit of muted green and olive tones and grey, brown, grey, olive. And if it was going to be funky, maybe a bit of orange, a little shock colour in between. But otherwise it was all dull,” said Kalkhofe. “It didn’t get colourful again until the 80s and that’s why disco was so popular. It was colourful then, you had a glitter ball that reflected all the colours on the wall.”
Disco is “a really dazzling trash pearl in human history that has developed there.” By that he means danceable pop music in general. “But this phenomenon of disco, the kind with colorful lights. It was actually a kind of dance carnival at the time.”
Disco a way of posing
Kalkofe looks back: “The collars and the flared trousers – everything got bigger and wider and everyone wanted more power and to show how cool they were.” It was a way of posing in front of others to impress others and have fun. “I thought it was a great time. Not a time that I actively helped to shape. I experienced it, but I didn’t take an active part in it. I just wasn’t the type for it – purely physically. But of course I saw it and always looked at it with a certain ironic distance because I knew I didn’t belong there. And I also knew that I didn’t want to belong there. But I always looked at it with great fascination.”
He also created a monument to disco in his trash film festival “#SchleFaZ – The worst films of all time”. The 125th “#Schlefaz film” was “Disco Godfather” (German title “Heroes of the Night”). “That was awesome, it was a blaxploitation disco film, but it failed.” The term blaxploitation stands for older cheap productions with African-American heroes. “It came a bit too late and that’s why it was a total flop. It had everything from black power to action and disco to drug thrillers, it was mega.” The film series “#SchleFaZ” recently moved from Tele 5 to Nitro.
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