What sucks more than disco? Cute nostalgic stories about Disco Demolition Day. Associate Music editor Areif Sless-Kitain and I were similarly alarmed by recent stories commemorating Chicago’s 1979 Disco Demolition Day. Two publications that should be in the business of unpacking the cultural relevancy of such a heated moment chose instead to deliver straightforward rock and sports nostalgia pieces. While covering Chicago dance music for several years, I learned that in many minds in Chicago, Disco Demolition left scars that a hundred journalists’ white-washings can’t bleach out.
To put it more bluntly: Chicago’s black community and its gay community—not to mention its DJ community—has a different memory of Disco Demolition Day. For many, Disco Demolition Day was an ugly effort to stomp out a misunderstood culture. But on its 30th anniversary, DDD has been tidied up, well, a bit too much.
This week, with the 30th anniversary of the July 12, 1979, event coming up, media and blog attention has returned to DDD—with participants gleefully recounting the chaos during Steve Dahl’s publicity stunt during a Sox double-header. Dahl takes the line that he was reacting to his FM station’s embrace of a disco format, a music he hated—and against disco clubs that were supposedly inaccessible for regular guys. That may have been true.
But in effect, Disco Demolition looked like a chance for some powerful members of the local media and business community to gather followers to blow up records and vent their hate for a music and culture that just happened to be a commercially potent outgrowth of black and gay culture. Even as a schoolkid on the East Coast, I knew that disco was strongly associated with the lifestyles led in San Francisco and New York City. We’re talking about an era when the Village People might be special guests on The Love Boat. If you get the feeling that DDD was an uneasy assault on urban culture’s increasing mainstream relevance—I’d have to say you’re on to something. Disco had been so popular in part because it was interactive and social—not because it was class exclusive.
The New York Times reflects on the episode as a strange chapter in baseball promotion. Brian Costello’s story in The Chicago Reader is a quaint slice of nostalgia with great period photos. There’s a longing there for the carefree slacker ’70s when pot-smoking kids seemed to briefly rule the universe—Dazed & Confused forever. I’m sure DDD was a wonderful little night of partying amid simmering violence and destruction and a little baseball. But it’s light on cultural context and devoid of uneasiness about race and culture. I’d have preferred some column inches to explore different viewpoints. There are numerous stories online less naive, many alluding to period critics’ charges of racism and homophobia around Disco Demolition but no stories I see that properly refute those charges. Why not interrogate them? Costello’s enthusiastically rockist slant on history takes easy shots at the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever—fine—any music historian can tell you that SNF was cashing in on a trend that had already peaked only to make the style huger than it had been. This was, in part, because SNF was about a regular guy who loved to dance—which a script adapted from a magazine article about mod dancing, in fact.
Disco Demolition Day has never been forgotten—especially not by the music’s fans. And there’s actually a nice bookend to DDD. Primarily black Chicago producers never forgot it as they laid the foundation for a whole new genre of music a few years later called house. Note to Steve Dahl: It’s a lot easier to blow up a record than to make one to which people will dance. It’s also worth noting that the stadium was trashed again a month later at a Foghat/Beach Boys concert—which suggests that punters’ beef wasn’t so much with disco as with popular music or just being treated like cattle at stadiums.
The irony of course is that by 1979, disco as a musical form had already run its course, changed rock and proved immensely popular with white audiences. If I have any sympathies with DDD, it’s that disco eventually turned into a very silly marketing term attached to all kinds of bullshit, so it was easy for one to be ignorant of its roots. But rock’s embrace of disco wasn’t simply a matter of crass commercialism. Rock acts were hanging out in New York clubs and picking up the rhythms—and writing about downtown club culture’s polysexual and multi-racial social context. From Rod Stewart to punk rockers, disco had a dramatic effect on music from the ground up. Some still feel that disco actually produced some of the best music Queen and the Clash ever made—it forced those acts to challenge themselves rhythmically and turned on an audience that couldn’t take heavy doses of either’s guitar-driven bombast. The Talking Heads and New York’s arty punk scene would have gone nowhere without disco.
So, in musical terms, disco had already done just about all it was going to do by mid-1979. The sophisticated rhythms of disco went on to be the building blocks of the careers of Michael Jackson and a fair portion of the electronic-aided acts of the ’80s. ’80s hard rock, on the other hand, eventually slipped into a dire rut that was more shamelessly commercial and blatantly cheesy than disco had ever thought to be—hello, Whitesnake.
There are tiny traces online of alternative viewpoints on DDD from New City, for example. The Reader story also echoes a piece from issue #37 of the print zine Roctober, Winter 2003 on Disco Demolition Night which concedes that disco had grown from a black/gay subculture and that its uplifting and positive aspects were generally lost on white male rock fans—but falls short of indicting DDD as anything more drunken teenage thuggy behavior—which it was.
But all one has to do is hit a club or spin some Hercules and Love Affair to catch the vibe—disco, slightly more than Grand Funk Railroad, has come back pretty strong. But I prefer to live in a world where I can dig both.
The Disco Demolition Day documentary DVD is $25. Smashing one up is free.
Good stuff.
There’s actually an interesting discussion about this very subject happening in the comments section of the Reader photo essay: http://www.chicagoreader.com/disco_demolition_night/index.php?cAction=showcomments#comments
I hear you re: the Reader piece. It is what it is–kind of a “you were there” snapshot–and you’re right, it makes no substantive effort to address the bigger racial issues. Costello is a rocker to his core, no question about that, and on top of that he was writing about a photo exhibit. (Disclosure: I work at the Reader, but I wasn’t involved with Costello’s story. I’ve edited him on other occasions, though.)
However I think it’s unfair to complain that Costello takes “easy shots” at the shittiest aspects of the disco trend, as though he doesn’t know that’s exactly what he’s doing–he’s talking about why so many people, right or wrong, thought disco was shitty! Disco Demolition Day didn’t happen because Chicagoans hated New York nightclub music, which most of them had never heard–it happened because they hated the post-peak drivel you refer to as “all kinds of bullshit.”
I mean, I’m not sure it makes sense to say that DDD was “an ugly effort to stomp out a misunderstood culture” when you also say that “by 1979, disco as a musical form had already run its course.” It’d be a little late to stomp anything out by then, right? I think disco was attracting a backlash precisely because it had run its course. It was everywhere, and it was producing a lot of debased crap (most of it by white people). For Christ’s sake, you could buy a disco record by Donald Duck!
Anyhow. I’m not saying that there weren’t racial or cultural implications to Disco Demolition. I guess the point I’m making is that I don’t think those issues were *the* story. They were part of it, but not the biggest part.
PS: Man oh man but I can’t get on board with the bit about Queen and the Clash making their best music under the influence of disco. The best thing about Queen is the guitar-driven bombast!
Totally with you on Talking Heads though.
LOL! That’s a funny article. This is more over the top than “there’s a commie under every bed” mini-tomes.
As a “a schoolkid on the East Coast” you have no understanding of or respect for OUR culture - South Side of Chicago culture. You don’t like us? Fine. We’re not sophisticated enough for you? Fine. But you are deluded if you think gay/black/ whatever culure is any more valid than ours. We hated the music. We didn’t hate you. Stop whining.
dm60462, Long hair and 70s rock wasn’t exclusive to the Midwest—I lived it and liked it too. In the post above, I never assigned any more value to one culture than another—just tried to provide an explanation of what I thought was missing from another story. I like to think I appreciate good music with a consciousness about its origin and context. Thanks very much for commenting.
PHLP, very thoughtful comment—Queen doth rock. I tried to wrap up my concerns in the comment below which I’ll also post at the Reader.
It is easy to dismiss DDD as a bunch of kids goofing off, getting high and having fun—because certainly, that’s mainly what it was. That’s obvious. I’m cool with that. But as anyone following music culture knows almost every big change in pop or rock involves a bunch of kids goofing off… With guitars, drums, keyboards, mikes, dance steps or even records… or, in this case, broken ones. I’m not saying the teens at Comiskey were conscious about race, just that the disco sucks backlash carried a lot of baggage about race and culture with it. It says a lot about American culture at the time.
For any music critic or serious fan, disco at this point in history cants be dismissed as a passing fad—that’s an old trope that’s never held water. It was obviously a legitimate musical form with social and culturally positive aspects and influence that’s lasted far beyond the ’70s. The idea that rock mixing with disco was a failure artistically and commercially is patently false. Blondie, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones and legions of others picked it up and produced music that can still set the dancefloor on fire. Others like KISS faked it. Its influence is as lasting as that of hard rock.
The Reader article has the focus of a visual arts story and therefore leaves itself open to criticism for ignoring a larger story about what Disco Demolition meant to fans of disco or minorities that called that music their own.
Had discos boom gone on too long? Probably but the DDD wasn’t about embracing new music it was about rejecting it for hard rock or something like which had been around for ten years already and was still packing stadiums and radio playlists. If there was a point being made at DDD and I’m not sure there was it was that we prefer male oriented monoculture to a pluralistic culture. Decadent individualism but not for everyone.
As I took pains to explain disco was an easy target in its novelty but I hardly think that music fans had forgotten it was something of a black genre. Donna Summer, Michael Jackson and Gloria Gaynor had played on TV. KC might been white but his Sunshine Band wasn’t. Disco was obviously multi-racial. Did this make white kids in the suburbs uncomfortable? For some it didn’t matter obviously, they bought the records in droves.
Disco however crappy it became was as much about a liberating experience as the hard rock my long-haired older, stoner buddies in Virginia and family in Cleveland worshiped. But arbiters of culture/self-promoters such as Dahl completely missed that and as a result we got DDD. It wasn’t a Nazi rally, it was a bunch of kids smashing up records. Is that cultural significant? It’s gotta be—we’re still talking about it.
That Chicago with its own history of racial divide has such an episode in its distant history isn’t shocking to me. What’s shocking is that no major paper or media outlet has chosen this anniversary to check in on Disco Demolition’s uglier side or its cultural significance.
Costello’s article is fine on its own terms but for disco fans, anyone left out of DDD or anyone who takes American culture seriously it doesn’t pass muster.
These are basically kids who are drunk and stoned and wanted to have a good time. Nothing more nothing less.
DISCO STILL AND WILL ALWAYS SUCK.
Another conspiracy theorist!
Please.
Until now, I never heard of disco being Black or Gay music. In fact I owned several disco records but was caught up in the fun of blowing stuff up!
It’s really funny how DEFENSIVE a lot of this disco-haters are about all of this stuff a good 30 years later.
As a black kid that just liked all kinds of music back then, I can tell you first hand that a lot of the disco hatred was racially driven. I can’t count the number of times I would go to a rock show back then and some drunk asshole would get in my face screaming “DISCO SUCKS!” It didn’t matter that I was generally wearing a Cheap Trick shirt (by fave band as a kid) or the call letters of whichever local rock FM station was tickling my fancy at the time.
OK, fine, disco ’sucks.’ but what does that have to do with ME? Oh, right–as a ‘black’ person, I represent all that is disco. How dumb of me to forget.
I can only imagine how it would have been if I were gay, too.
I don’t think anyone’s culture is any more or less valid than another. But for those that are ignoring the fact that it was often used as an easy way to target blacks and gays is just ignoring the truth and lying to themselves.
And for the record. ‘disco’ bands like Earth Wind & Fire and Chic could play circles around many of the biggest rock bands of the day. Hell, Queen ripped Chic off BIG TIME for “Another One Bites the Dust.”
You don’t have to like the music, but leave those us that had/have nothing to do with it out of your purview. Please and thank you.
>> As a black kid that just liked all kinds of music back then, I can tell you first hand that a lot of the disco hatred was racially driven <<
Horseshit!
What’s worse than cute nostalgic stories about Disco Demolition Day?
Time Out Chicago. What was your cover story this week? “Top 5 Summer Places to Eat Pad Thai While Getting A Pedicure While Thinking About Shopping for Vibrators While on the Verge of Sexting Between Chocotinis?”
Are you allowed to ever even think of digging deep? On anything?
It’s kinda rich: TOC discussing what’s missing from other papers (especially the Reader). You bastards don’t give your writers the space to discuss anything requiring careful thought and reflection, and you know it. Had DD been mentioned in TOC, you would have just thrown it into some ADHD-catered charticle called “Top 5 Wackiest Sports Pranks Ever!” And you know it!
What’s really funny about this story is the end result. Just go to ANY major sports event and play ‘YMCA’ by Village People and see all those people sing and dance along.
So, to all the ‘Disco Sucks’ supporters, who really won the battle?
I wasn’t there. I didn’t even live in the US at the time. But with the recent disco resurgence in dance music, I’ve been doing some reading about it and I’ve only discovered recently how disco was born, musically, out of hard funk and, socially, out of the black and gay scene. (I know that’s a pretty crude summary, it’s just for context). That said, I can’t help but be a bit skeptical of the viewpoints of those who are pinning all this racism and homophobia on these white stoner kids. The reason? Because America was (and still is, really) such a segregated country! I really doubt that the stoner rock kids were even AWARE that a gay or black music scene even EXISTED, and you can’t fault them for rebelling against the corny style disco had become once it became mainstream. Keep in mind that the ‘face’ of mainstream disco in the late 70s was white and hetero: J Travolta.
This is not to say that any honest discussion about the disco-burnout of the late 70s shouldn’t include an honest assessment of disco’s roots, but to paint the DDD as being primarily driven by racism and homophobia seems a bit ridiculous
Thanks so much for the comments.
Some more food for thought as far as the context of the late ’70s.
Disco topping the charts in 1979 was largely from black artists. Chic, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Anita Ward and Amii Stewart all had number one singles that year. Rod Stewart and Blondie also had disco hits that year.
Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” (a number one a few months after Disco Demolition) wasn’t a number one as long as “Babe” by Styx.
In recent years, Time Out Chicago has covered the resurgence of disco and related music genres such as boogie with a reasonable amount of depth and sense of history.
Here are some links.
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/clubs/69703/disco-unusual-social-club
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/clubs/30075/rewind-and-recover
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/clubs/72493/new-york-cosmic-disco
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/clubs/24118/deep-listening
This still fails to address why TOC didn’t cover this themselves, opting instead to get a bad case of “the vapuhs! the vapuhs!” like a bunch of southern belles over pieces by the Reader and the New York Times.
The Trib and ESPN discussed DDN as well. Where was your piece on this, John? Where are these disco producers, who, so far, read like strawmen in your argument? You could (and should) have interviewed them, anticipating (and knowing about, presumably) the continued interest in DD. It would have been a great counterpoint, instead of complaining about other paper’s takes on it. You could have even gotten their comments about it in this blog, in lieu of nonpublication.
Face it: You’re breaking balls because you didn’t write the story you wish had been written.
Bill Veeck: John’s piece is…well, right above all these comments. Just because it’s online instead of in print doesn’t make it any less valid. So TOC did in fact cover this topic. You might disagree with their take or the way in which they covered it, but they addressed it all the same.
Moreover, it’s ludicrous to take opinion/commentary to task for what it isn’t. It would be like criticizing the Reader piece for not including enough of Costello’s personal opinion in favor of reportage.
Thanks for the comments.
I confess that I wasn’t really thinking much about the Disco Demolition anniversary before I saw the stories—but I knew a bit about the event. My blog was intended as a critique of a pair of stories that seemed oddly one-sided and even somewhat naive for our day and age. I feel that there are other opinions and critical points-of-view on what the event meant, how it was interpreted at the time and I am still surprised that there wasn’t a little room for them. So in this case, I was happy to play the critic—not the arts/music/sports writer. As I am now the full-time Web Editor, I was more focused on reacting on our blog (which I edit) rather than getting something in print.
I had a lively and informative e-mail exchange with Brian Costello and I was hoping he might comment here, too. If he and I agree on one thing, it is that there is much more to Disco Demolition. I just didn’t think the straightforward slice-of-life approach suited the topic at hand. I wasn’t satisfied, so I blogged about that.
As far as DJ/producers, I was, quite honestly, hoping they might comment as well.