Free | 23/6
Posted: 2/16/2012
'Disco deals with black, white, gay, atraight. We are spinning basic black music, with some great White producers as well. Most of the spinners and promotion people are gay... Let's wake up, we can see the party, we can hear the music. We can enjoy each other having a good time. Join in on the fun, let yourself gooooo!'
--1979 Newsletter for the Greater Pittsburgh Record Pool.The 1970s in Pittsburgh are remembered with muscular pride as a decade when the National Football League and Major League Baseball were ruled by teams from the Steel City. When the city wasn't at work, it was gazing out at working class heroes like Jack Lambert and Willie Stargell who were sacking and slugging Three Rivers Stadium into ecstasy. But the hardworking people of Pittsburgh did a lot more than just sing and clap their hands to Sister Sledge's disco classic 'We Are Family.' When the lights went down, they got up and danced. And when they were dancing, there was a good chance that the man spinning records had the all-to-appropriate last name of Kicks. His first name was Terry. Popular memory associates disco music with New York City and celebrity-drenched clubs like Studio 54 or underground spots like the Paradise Garage. While there might not have been puddles of celebrities soaking the city's dance floors in the '70s, Terry Kicks, along with DJs such as Gene Molnar, Lizz Jankowski, Rick Jankowski, Bruce Harr, Michael John, and Bob Shorthouse, among others, presided over a disco music scene that was every bit as electric as what was going on elsewhere. It wasn't just at Three Rivers Stadium that people chanted 'We Are Family,' it was also in the clusters of nightclubs glittering throughout the Mon Valley.
Terry Kicks first learned the art of spinning from his father, George. During World War II, Kicks Sr. was stationed in the Philippines. Terry believes that when his father returned to the family's home in