Sukhumvit Psycho

I guess if you read this blog you know what a Go-Go bar is, but why do we call them Go-Go bars or A Gogo Bars? Where does this name come from? I bet you don’t know.

On their February monthly column, Bangkok Eyes have a selection of some of their best stories published during the last 10 years (Bangkok Eyes is turning 10 this year), and one of these stories, published in 2006, is about the origins of the name ‘Go-Go bar’.

Interesting read.

Excerpts:

During World War II in France, the resistance managed to find time for recreation despite the German occupation.   They would slip away to secret “libraries” – libraries that kept jazz recordings and the like, and listen to their hearts’ content.   (The Nazi occupation took a particularly dim view of jazz music, convinced that as it had “black” roots, it must be degenerate.)   And to keep from drawing attention to themselves, these clandestine private clubs were called: “record libraries”, or in French, “discotheques”.

In a seemingly unrelated event, shortly after the war ended, in early 1947, Compton MacKenzie published a book titled Whisky Galore about an ocean freighter with 10,000 cases of whisky that was wrecked near a booze-starved island during World War II.   It was made into a movie called, “A Tight Little Island”, but when the film was released in France, they reverted to the direct translation of the novel’s original title: it became “Whiskey A Gogo”.   (The exact translation of ‘A Gogo’ or ‘Au Gogo’ is ‘galore’, – most likely from Old French gogue. or en gogue; meaning ‘merriment’.)

After the war’s end (the real war, not the movie), these nightclubs, these ‘discotheques’ became ever more popular – all the while maintaining that wartime underground mystique.   But with money in short supply, the nightclubs would continue to entertain with recorded music most of the time, and, rarely, when they could afford it, with a live band.   These smallish almost-private nightclubs were the sort where the patrons put their names on their own bottles of cognac, returning regularly to join their “in crowd”.   This was the beginning of Paris’ own ‘La Dolce Vita’ era.   Before the end of the year (1947), one such new Night Entertainment Venue opened in Paris, and, inspired by the movie, called itself Whiskey A Gogo.   As the Nazis had been driven from the land, dancing returned, and an increasing number of these French nightclubs also provided for customer dancing, albeit the dance floors remained small and personal.

The Whiskey A Gogo enjoyed great success, and in 1960 it revitalized and marketed the wartime term “Discotheque” – and, well, I think we can lay the blame for the ‘Disco Revolution’ directly at their feet.   They are credited not only with opening the first modern Discotheque, they are also credited for redefining it; now meaning “a nightclub where the featured entertainment is dancing to recorded music (rather than an on-stage band)”.   It was then that the ‘Discotheque’ moved away from the small, more private word-of-mouth ‘record library’ style nightclub to something grander, generally advertised to the public, with a larger, dominating dance floor.   So great was it’s success, it generated myriad imitators (Cafe A-Gogo, etc), and many other “Whiskey A Gogo’s” around the world – the name eventually being franchised.

Read the full article here. 

—

Note: based on SP’s observation, tourists and bar customers use the words ‘Go-Go bar‘ more often, but the bar owners usually name their bars ‘A Gogo‘: Babydolls A Gogo, Alcatraz A Gogo, Badabing A Gogo, etc. Also, it seems like people in Bangkok are using ‘Go-Go bar‘ more, while in Pattaya they talk about ‘A Gogo bar‘.

The girls dancing in the bars are usually called Go-Go dancers.

All Bangkok Go-Go bars are listed here.

And Pattaya A Gogo bars can be found here.

Related posts:

1. Beach Club A-gogo, Soi 15, Walking Street, Pattaya