My first experience with disco was a familiar one for a kid in the ’90′s:  dancing my heart out to the YMCA at my cousin’s bar mitzvah in the hopes that someone would kiss me on the mouth. Needless to say, that didn’t work; disco, however, lives on in all its schlocky glory. As the genre ages, forgotten, underappreciated geniuses emerge and enrich the music of that very wild era. The history continues to deepen and influence other genres that emerged and we all can more fully appreciate the freaky sound of the 70′s.

Mainstream but still brilliant is the super sweet band Chic. Best known for their endlessly catchy classic, Le Freak, these guys boiled down disco to its roots and made it sharper and smarter.

I’m not completely confident that you could classify Klaus Nomi as disco, but his otherworldly mash-up of electronic music, opera, performance art and alien stylings is just as glamorous, dance-y and groundbreaking. If you haven’t seen the excellent documentary about Nomi’s tragic and brilliant life, The Nomi Song, I highly recommend it.

Also disco-esque is the equally brilliant and tragically underrated Arthur Russell. A former lover of Allen Ginsberg, Russell pioneered the downtown experimental New York music scene in the 70′s as director of music programming at infamous performance space The Kitchen. The prolific musician left behind 1,000 unfinished tapes when he tragically died of AIDS in 1992. Like Nomi, there is a fabulous documentary of Russell’s life, Wild Combination.

Long live disco, especially the genre’s most obscure and bizarre gems.