Yeah! Good times, eh? Disco down, baby!

TG

Then they changed it and dropped Star.
The Palace was still a stupid name.
At least it was off campus.

I was propositioned by a BYU wide receiver at The Palace. Cupcake activities... I told him to go have another drink. Lavell's righteous athletes at the Lord's University... busy, busy boys.

. . . in a strip-mall parking lot.

When it opened, it had very little sound insulation.

I SAID IT HAD VERY LITTLE SOUND INSULATION!!

But it was the coolest spot that Provo had got.

You must have studied at the library until Hawaii Five-O music began ramping up... Jack Lord? And his unmovable Gumby hair-do, ready to fight crime, in Hawaii.

Americana, funny, almost a coffee drink, Americano, & Sofia Loren song. Provo-so Cosmopolitan =)

steve benson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> But it was the coolest spot that Provo had got.

(Unless a guy had a YBU co ed girl friend that would give him head, and then any place where that could happen -which was not Star Palace, suddenly trumped Star Palace)


Coolest spot in Provo at the time -in a certain way that pretty much defines that situation.

Are you sure he was a wide receiver? They don't normally make forward passes...

Initials or it didn't happen. lol

hahaha... I don't remember his name, just that he was a transfer from USC.

Aah, Cali Mormon...nuff said. Was he fast?

Hahaha... Next question will be, "Did he have good hands?"

We only danced. I wouldn't go out with him. He was clearly already in love, with himself.

Geez, I'm just that obvious aren't I? Well, you must be an excellent hoofer if he made his move after a few dances. Those were the days;)

I was the only spot Provo had....along with Squaw Peak.

Where even girls picked up boys

My brother met his eternal companion there when she asked him to dance. I suppose there are worse ways to meet, maybe.

Those were the days my friend,
we thought they'd never end,
we'd sing and dance new wave,
and "almost" get laid.

Sometimes more than almost!

;-)

Was that the big ol' disco on 9th E somewhere?

My dim little brain kinda remembers a place like that, but the name don't ring a bell...

"Before becoming the Star Palace in 1978, the building on 900 East was used for a bowling alley, ice rink and roller rink. From 1978 to 1980 the club flourished as Utah County's hottest singles spot. Many Utah County couples had their first dance at the Star Palace."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deseretnews.com%2Farticle%2F456158%2FDANCE-CLUB-HUNTS-FOR-NEW-HOME.html%3Fpg%3Dall&ei=5GAUVdOJDMaoNuDwg9gL&usg=AFQjCNHxs5GUcPcA_7NvPaHWcIaRuC2cCg&bvm=bv.89217033,d.eXY
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"[The band] Paradox (circa 1981) playing at the Star Palace. Left to right: Kim Rawlings (guitar), Dave Ewing (drums), Kerri Cotant (lead singer), Cory Jensen(guitar)."

http://www.utahvalleyrockers.com/000/2/2/6/19622/userfiles/image/Paraxox_star_palace.jpg

Hw the band Paradox sounded back then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2tsrJDoXDo&feature=youtu.be
_____



“Star Palace Celebrates Grand Opening: Disco is not new to Provo, but the Star Palace is. From the quadraphonic sound system and first lighted dance floor at Uncle Marios, to the 110 speakers, 7 individually lighted dance floors, and 1 million dollar light show at the Star Palace, disco has come a long way, especially in Provo. With national coverage on the three major networks, in Newsweek, Time, and Rolling Stone magazines, the Star Palace Discotheque, with the world ' s largest indoor lighted dance floor, celebrated its grand opening in Provo, October 13. KEYY searchlights lit up the sky welcoming thousands of people to the Palace opening night. Brimming to capacity with 2,500 people inside, about half that many were turned away. 'We waited for a few hours and never did get in,] said Erin Combs, a BYU student attending opening night. 'It's a great place!' said Juli Measom, 'but it's just like everything else in mik."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CF0QFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.e-yearbook.com%2Fyearbooks%2FBrigham_Young_University_Banyan_Yearbook%2F1979%2FPage_84.html&ei=5GAUVdOJDMaoNuDwg9gL&usg=AFQjCNG0o7i-e6flbv0Q-6j4ZABnUpX6WA&bvm=bv.89217033,d.eXY
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Utah Valley Rock Bands, back in the day:

http://www.utahvalleyrockers.com/class_profile.cfm?member_id=4492277
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Next to the Star Palace was "Stan's':

"Shakes at Stan's . . . It was my personal favorite from their varied menu. Robes always ordered black raspberry. We were such creatures of habit. Stan's also sold burgers, hot dogs, fries, and the like, but we mostly frequented it for half-price milk shakes on Monday nights. We considered a trip to Stan's our own little family home evening, and we went every Monday night! Stan's was on 900 East, across the street from Smith's Food King and next door to the Star Palace."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFYQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmagazine.byu.edu%2F%3Fact%3Dview%26a%3D1366&ei=5GAUVdOJDMaoNuDwg9gL&usg=AFQjCNHtxF5m03Gxvx1D-txcOwfEOZX73g&bvm=bv.89217033,d.eXY
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"One of the city's oldest dance clubs could be back in business, despite the protests of many residents and area businesses. . . .

"For more than a decade, the Palace operated out of a building on 900 East and was a nighttime gathering place for Brigham Young University students. Started as a discotheque in 1978, the club (then known as the Star Palace) began struggling when the disco era faded. . . .

"Police statistics show officers frequently responded to calls at the club's former location. To meet parking requirements, the club would have to use street parking and parking lots of nearby businesses and agencies."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deseretnews.com%2Farticle%2F513938%2FDANCE-CLUB-MAY-KICK-UP-ITS-HEELS-IN-PROVO-AGAIN.html%3Fpg%3Dall&ei=5GAUVdOJDMaoNuDwg9gL&usg=AFQjCNEcudGBeTOsFzsjw0iGI26iImhq9g&bvm=bv.89217033,d.eXY



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2015 04:15PM by steve benson.

i was a fan of their "new wave nights" around 1982 or thereabouts. great fun.

The bishop told us never to go to that den of iniquity...so we did!

I remember the Star Palace well. I had just graduated from another college out of state and my wife (now ex) and I had relocated to Orem for work.

She loved to dance and the Star Palace was the only place in Utah county you could dance at the time. As a convert, she hadn't bought into the whole garment thing and would leave them home in favor of a short skirt or one with thigh-high slits in it. Yeah, she had great legs so I certainly didn't discourage it. I loved her garmnet optional attitude at the beginning of our marriage, but sadly, that changed. So I have fond memories of the Star Palace.

The Star Palace. What a grossly overpriced pretentious crap hole.


There is a new club in Provo, the Madison Club. It has dancing, but it ain't much like the old Star Palace which had to be one of the phoniest places in the universe. There is nothing pretentious about the Madison club. People go there to party and they are not pretending that they are there for any other reasons.

" . . . there for any other reasons."

Say what?

Yo, dude. This was Provo, back in the day. Kids went to the local hangouts in the hug-and-tug of their own little pretend personal worlds for all kinds of reasons--and kids today are no different. Don't pretend that they are. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2015 04:29PM by steve benson.

You are correct about the concentrated mental warp (mental illness) that existed in Provo, and still exists in Provo for that matter, centered on the BYU campus.


It was funny..... and sickening..... observing people (BYU students) trying to be temporarily worldly and personally gratified while also trying to maintain some degree of MORmON holiness so as not to have some permanent taint on their personal righteousness (you know when they had to show up for MORmON church service a few hour later) while at the phony festival Star Palace. Talk about conflicted. There were tons of pretending / phoniness going on in both directions ( MORmON holiness attempting to mix and clashing with worldly assertiveness) at the same time at Star Palace. Leave it to MORmONISM and it's bottled up libido backlash to create such a display of schizophrenia and mental illness.

Not very much pretending currently going on at the Madison club in Provo. Probably not very many BYU students going in there either. There was nothing like the Madison club in Provo in the Star palace era you spoke of, and I will not be phony enough to try to pretend that there was.


If you have seen what happens on the dance floor at the Madison club, as in other metro areas, then you would know that it is distinctly different than what was going on in the Star Palace. People going to the Star Palace might have had wild fantasies about doing what goes on at the Madison club - fantasies that they would never admit to! because it would invoke the previously mentioned permanent taint on the personal aspirations of MORmON holiness. The people at the Madison club are just doing it, what ever they want, and they do not much care what any one else thinks.

No doubt that BYU students/ MORmON kids still have a lot of pretending going on. However the kids of today are MUCH different than when I was growing up, and / or when you or I were at the soul sucking life draining zest quenching MORmON bubble black hole of BYU. If you had seen the way they dance at the Madison club then you would feel silly trying to say that things are the basically the same, especially in Provo, if not Prov-Mo.


I recently went to see Chubby Checker in Wendover. He performed one of his songs that was associated with a dance that had been banned in the 1960's "because it was too provocative ....as in too nasty". Chubby paused and then laughed/ scoffed, then noted: "Have you seen what they do now ? It was nothing compared to whats going on now. Not even close. Everything they do now on the dance floor is nasty, really nasty." As in not just alluding to and longing for some watered down form of nasty that was going on at the BYU student phony o rama pretender festival that was the Star Palace scene.

Yah, I get it. Realizing that the MORmON phony festival at the Star Palace was the apex of a person's cutting loose in the prime of their abjectly MORmON controled life is a real downer, especially when a person sees what young people do (and totally get away with) today when they feel like expressing / gratifying themselves..... or realizes what others ( "non members" ) were really doing in the 60's and 70's) In fact, a person can begin to feel like they were robbed..... or even raped..... by the dictatorial MORmON religion. Perhaps BYU standards is monitoring the attendance at the Madison club. In the context of maintaining YBU MORmON standards they certainly should.

However, a BYU student who went to the Star Palace back in the day can take solace in one thing, one quasi redeeming superlative that they can hold close and dear to their heart to lift them up, which is that the mind warping soul sucking life depleting phoniness generated in the cauldron of concentrated MORmONISM at BYU and then catalyzed by the dash of rather meek worldliness that Star Palace interjected into the situation will NEVER be exceeded. It will NEVER be topped. It is the kind of mental torture that will never be seen again, and those that were subjected to it are distinguished above (or below) all others in some strange way. So, there is the foundation for some rather twisted bragging rights. Somehow, an individual's appetite / need for sex is both dramatically dampened and accentuated when they are subjected to the mind rape ( mind fuck) of the YBU experience. The Star Palace was hardly an outlet, even if it was considered outrageously personally gratuitous and rebellious in a MORmON YBU context because the people that would attended there were not spending their energy in a far more appropriate and officially approved way of breeding up more new MORmON members in a secret handshake based MORmON temple marriage, BUT it was all that single YBU'ers had/ were allowed at the time, So if there is a latent lingering longing for the Star Palace that persists in a YBU student (victim) from that pathological set up of that era, it is understandable..... however lamentable. At this point, I just have the lament, not the longing for the YBU experience, and I see that as an improvement in my ex MORmON mental health, even as a drive up 900 East in Provo-Mo, especially past the MTC, especially on a Sunday, is like a replay of a still incomprehensible descent into MORmONISM /Hell for me. I might have some longing for that lost 20 something person that had to go through all that CRAP at the insistence of others back then. I long to tell him that he really does not have to go through all of that MORmON inflicted CRAP/damage, but that does not mean that I am longing for that damage, and I make it a point to NOT get confused between the two concepts of that issue. There is a grand liberating defiance in feeling that I would have had a splendid life even with out all of the MORmON *inspiration*..... instruction.... guidance.... meddling ..... interference..... opposition..... contrived travail that they would like to claim was really a blessing for me AND that makes them feel so entitled to hijack my life. It IS my life, NOT theirs, and I really do not need and would not miss MORmONISM in any way, including the ultra lame Star Palace, or the YBU student that became my bride that I met at some place other than YBU that turned out to be such a horrendous disaster for a mate. With that in mind, MORmONISM can shove itself, including ditsy little Star Palace and everything else, right up its own MORmON ass until it completely dis appears, because I know that I would have been better off and the world would be better off with out MORmONISM. Life is better with out MORmONISM, even with out Star Palace.


That is the "what" that I am saying, and I am very comfortable with it.

When I arrived in Provo from LA in 1970, I was immediately befriended by the mountains to the east. Within a month, I had discovered the clubs in Park City. I loved the music and the atmosphere. I remember there were some great folk/rock music performers in those clubs. I was frequently hanging out at places like the Claim Jumper Hotel.

Eventually some other guy whimsically named John Denver put to music the feelings I had toward the mountains I loved.

I guess I kinda missed the disco stuff because I was wandering the Rockies on the weekend, discovering little pockets of beauty and music that stirred my soul.

I miss those days-and nights-in the Rocky Mountains in the 70's.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2015 06:14PM by csuprovograd.