The 70s were dying. But from the ashes of disco and its druggy debacuh rose, like a phoenix, a fabulous television show called Solid Gold. And the 80s were born.

The show beamed into homes like a stealthy Trojan Horse, full of twitchy-bitchy sexuality, along with studly helpings of man-ass wiggling for the camera.

It was genius! And the surprise of it all was that neither Aaron Spelling nor Allan Carr had anything to do with this primetime hit: The show ran for nine years!

Solid Gold gave birth to a phenomena we now call Porn Creep — in which pornographic titillation is sneaked into the living room in such small, incremental ways that everyone gets a glow-on and grandma doesn’t have a heart attack.

Grannies and kids loved Solid Gold. Aerobic enthusiasts, invalids, gays — and particularly straight guys. Suddenly everyone could watch together unapologetically without a twinge of anxiety. Pupils dilated with the joy of near-nude gyrations and grindings — week after week, hit after hit.

Solid Gold had a revolving door of hosts: Dionne Warwick, Marilyn McCoo, Andy Gibb and Rex Smith (left). But what remained consistent was the format: A well-known radio DJ would announce the week’s top 10 songs and then the Solid Gold Dancers would burst onto the stage and perform near-porn interpretations of each hit. The show prefigured the decade’s biggest movie success, Flashdance, by three years.

The stylistic requirements for the dancers were consistent too: Super-toned muscles wrapped taught in shiny spandex. Teased, post-coital hair-sculptures on the women, and blow-dried domes on the guys.

The Solid Gold Dancers were involved in every millisecond of airtime, shimmying and thrashing in tandem with such incongruous musical guests as Stevie Nicks, Rick Springfield, and, of all people, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics. Even the host’s teleprompted patter was accompanied by the dancers somewhere on the sidelines undulating in place. And all at once, at a moment’s notice, they would erupt and command the stage in a wild bout of Frugging.

Subtle nuance didn’t exist for the Solid Gold Dancers. And yet, in typical 80’s pretense, there were allusions to art. And this, as much as the exposed flesh and gigantic hair, is what made the show so porn-ready.

The stage might be lit somberly for a sad love song, and the dancer might feign sleep to mirror a lyric that included the world “dreaming.” But these were throw-away gestures. The way softcore pulp novels would have, say, an epigram by Alfred Kinsey on the cover to lend gravitas.

The Solid Gold Dancers set off nerve-buzzing, high-octane Vegas thrills. The Solid Gold cameras were aggressive and Hitchcockian with their voyeuristic eye, following the dancers tightly, intimately, so that the giant closeups on the TV screen made us feel that each dancer was there — just for us. Every lunge, every spin, every backward thrust of the head radiated “S-E-X!”.

Even mopey songs about unrequited love would be danced as if sex had triumphed. I can recall watching the show with a mix of gay and straight friends, mocking a particularly outrageous dance routine while sensing my hips grinding side to side in the chair. So contagious were the show’s frenzied, upbeat numbers, I just couldn’t help myself.

Television shows that feature sex-orgy dancing are extinct today. Sure, there’s Dancing With The Stars, but there’s something dick-wilting about watching Tucker Carlson or Jerry Springer cha-cha with a Latin beauty. Dancing With the Stars seems an aberrant outgrowth of our current political winter, reflecting the crazy and puritanical FCC standards that shun any show of fun-loving flesh. Could this be the end of Porn Creep — at least on network TV? Try to imagine the Solid Gold Dancers undulating in place at a Bush inaugural party, and you’ll see what I mean.

Even MTV no longer broadcasts music videos the way they used to, and the videos they show do not feature dancing. If you want to find what’s left of the raunchy Solid Gold esprit, you’ll need to look for pole dancers in strip clubs and whatever remains of the Chippendales.

Today’s lap dancers and go-go boys were raised on Solid Gold — or at least Solid Gold reruns. We salute them for preserving the tradition and carrying the flame of Porn Creep Dancing forward. And we thank our lucky stars for YouTube where we can watch the show’s best segments over and over … and over and over … again. Once more we relive all the jiggling, all the sparkle that never really fades from our mind.