Over at Washington Monthly today, Ed Kilgore has been commemorating an anniversary:
34 years ago today the Chicago White Sox hosted the infamous Disco Demolition Night, in which fans were given a discount admission price at Comiskey Park for bringing a disco record to be destroyed in a dumpster between games of a doubleheader. The promotion worked a little too well, as a sold-out park erupted into chaos and the White Sox were forced to forfeit a game....In response to that moment in 1979, Kilgore has been ending every post with a video from a musical genre he clearly loathes -- as, perhaps, you do as well.
So we'll be honoring the Worst of Disco today....
But at the risk of going all Slate-pitchy, I'd like to make the case that Disco Demolition Night was an early harbinger of the right-wing backlash that had become obvious a year earlier with the passage of the anti-tax Proposition 13 in California, and fully took root a year later with the election of Ronald Reagan.
Even if you loathe disco, think about what it was. It was music that was black and white, gay and straight -- you could argue that the disco coalition looked like the Obama coalition thirty years later. It was, in part, the music of groups that had had second-class status in America and didn't want to take that anymore.
Now think about rock in 1979: what had once been a multiracial form of music, with Buddy Holly sharing the spotlight with Little Richard and Richie Valens (ne Valenzuela), had become virtually a whites-only club by the late 1970s. On album-rock radio stations, the only black performer you were likely to hear was Jimi Hendrix, and he'd been dead nearly a decade. Prince put out his first record in 1979, but you didn't hear it on rock radio.
To some extent, the disco backlash was understandable -- disco dominated top 40 radio, and a lot of it was schlock with a monotonous beat. But what seemed to piss a lot of rock fans off was the sense that it was an injustice for radio to play music that wasn't by white guys with guitars. Remind you of anything? The sense that whatever white people prefer should be what we get, with no one else allowed to express a preference?
And with those white people throwing a fit if they don't get their way, which is what happened on Disco Demolition Night?
In the warm air that night, baseball's routine and soothing sounds mixed with the tribal cadence of off-color chanting, the drifting scent of marijuana and the sight of vinyl records descending through the summer dusk like Frisbees.People call it "the night when disco died," but disco didn't die. Sure, it fell from the charts, but disco-ish records kept being made, and disco had already started working its DNA into other forms of music. You listen to the later Talking Heads music and you think, "Oh, that's not disco, that's African-influenced" -- but I read a David Byrne interview back when I was in college in which he raved about Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," so that was in there, too. You heard disco in the music of the Stones and Queen and the Clash and Blondie and Bowie and Joy Division; Prince and Michael Jackson and Rick James built on what disco had done; rap started as disco instrumentals with Americanized Jamaican toasting; and even to this day, the likes of LCD Soundsystem are unimaginable without disco.
"They would slice around you and stick in the ground," Rusty Staub said. "It wasn't just one, it was many. Oh, God almighty, I've never seen anything so dangerous in my life. I begged the guys to put on their batting helmets."
... Jack Morris, a Tigers pitcher, recalled "whiskey bottles were flying over our dugout" after Detroit won the first game, 4-1.
Then [shock jock Steve] Dahl blew up the records.
"And then all hell broke loose," [Jack] Morris [of the Tigers] said. "They charged the field and started tearing up the pitching rubber and the dirt. They took the bases. They started digging out home plate."
The batting cage was dragged out and trashed; fans burned banners and climbed foul poles. Above the field, Hemond's private box sheltered the wife and children of Don Kessinger, the White Sox' manager, but fans tried to climb inside....
Rock didn't permanently lose its place of privilege to disco, but disco started what rap pretty much finished. There's still good rock, but white guys don't dominate popular music anymore. Again, sound familiar?
I like rock, including classic rock, but classic rock is now a refuge for a lot of white guys who still haven't gotten over the fact that pop culture changed. Country music, too -- and country music these days basically sounds like '70s rock.
I'm glad we have a mongrel culture now. Disco Demolition Night was an American embarrassment. It seems more like modern Republican politics every time I think about it.
34 comments:
Thanks, Steve. Never heard about that (but then, my marriage vows - to a Chicago native - included that I shall love, honor and obey the Cubs). Freaky stuff.
I'm a pretty hard core rock guy (Close To The Edge remains my favorite album after some 35+ years), but geez Louise, who can't like 'I Feel Love', which I always heard as 'electronica' instead of disco (Bee Gee's 'Night Fever' - that's disco). Some folks are wrapped just a wee bit too tight.
--LittlePig
Steve,
I was there that night, and it was an embarrassment. I was a senior in high school and liked rock n' roll, and I was also a White Sox fan, so it seemed like a perfect fit for a fun night.
Turned out to be an ugly night with the second game forfeited following the mayhem that occurred between games 1 and 2. The Chicago PD arrived on horseback to clear the field.
I never made the connection with the "Reagan Revolution", but it's a thought provoking idea.
Enjoy your work.
By the way, I've remained a White Sox fan and that night is now an oddity I'll never forget.
Bill Veeck sure could put on a show!
Rob in Chicago
Ugh. So much over-thinking going on in this post it hurts.
It was a dumb publicity stunt at a dumb baseball game that got out of hand.
Also, I don't know how old you are, but I was thirteen in 79. Back in those pre-digital days, radio was really important. Everybody listened to it a LOT. It was pretty much always on in my house, in the car, everywhere. And obviously you could change the station, but people had a lot less control over the soundtrack of their lives. And disco was just everywhere.
I can actually enjoy some disco music today on some levels, but back then we were absolutely inundated with it and it really did suck. Disco on every station, at every store, no matter where you went you couldn't escape disco. Also, by 1979 it had been going on for years!
Need a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk? Hope you don't mind hearing A Fifth of Beethoven a few times while you're out getting it!
Making disco demolition night about white people rebelling against black music is really really misguided. Steve Dahl was just being a goofball provocateur and tapping into a widely felt sentiment at the time, which was "This sucky music is driving me nuts! Please make it stop!"
Very interesting take, and you defend it well.
And I don't disagree with it.
It makes me look at things in a different light - which is what makes you one of the best writers/thinker on the inter-tubes.
Ok, excuse me, while I wipe this brown stuff off of my nose...
Ok, I'm back.
Me?
I fell in love with Punk Rock. The moment in the summer of '76 that The Ramones opened in Poughkeepsie, when my friend and I went to see Blue Oyster Cult, our mind's were completely and permanently blown.
All I remember from that night, was the quick, hard, funny songs in the short set The Ramones did.
After we left, neither one of us talked about the weepy guitar, and maudlin lyrics of BOC.
It was ALL Ramones!
We told our friends, and I took down a small bunch of us Upstate sh*t-kickers, to CBGB's, and a week or two later, to Max's KC II.
And, in the late 70's, I went by myself down to a club in NY City (CBGB's, probably) and saw, as the opening band, my favorite under-rated band of all time:
The Bad Brains.
The Bad Brains were a (then, all-black) DC jazz band who had switched to Punk and Reggae - and did both superbly!!!
They had, literally, been kicked out of DC, and moved to NYC.
The were musicians, first and foremost. And they were probably THE tightest band I've ever seen.
The would do a set of kick-ass Punk, then a set of kick-ass reggae - and man, were they TIGHT!
And then, out of nowhere in either or both sets, in the middle of a song, you'd hear them do some of the jazzy riffs that they were first known for.
The Who, not surprisingly, were right - "Rock is dead they say... LONG LIVE ROCK!!!"
And it has.
It's now "blacker," more female and Hispanic, and is starting to get a more Asian influence.
Just like America:
The home of Ragtime, Jazz, and Rock & Roll, and Funk, and R&B, and Disco, and Rap, and...
But no matter what comes, The Who will always remain my favorite band.
They resonated with my teenage heart.
And what is a grown man, but a teenager, grown ancient.
Sadly, the time is long past, to 'Hope I die before I get old."
I was there that night, too and have mixed feelings. It was an embarrassment. It was awesome. I'm pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with Reaganism. Itt was about music that really did suck, but then again the previous commenter was right about the fact that rock music by that time had started sucking, with the backlash known as punk. Not only did a lot of people truly despise disco music, but it was starting to infiltrate previously good rock music (Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart). The other aspect to all this was that MANY white people were into a disco lifestyle (remember white leisure suits?, cocaine, etc.) that was just plain embarrassing and easy to mock.
Disco Demolition was simply what happens when you let tens of thousands of already drunk teenagers into a baseball game for 99 cents if they bring a record album (and let them bring it into the park) with them. Same as 10 cent beer night in Cleveland.
I was in a rock band about that time, and to me the biggest threat of disco wasn't white male guitarist entitlement, but the threat of recorded music driving live music out of business at social events. When I went out, I wanted to hear bands, not records. P-Funk and EWF at least put on hella live shows, even if they weren't rock and roll as that term was understood at the time. My POV was probably a tiny minority at the time, but so was the live-music community.
My firsthand experience of FM rock in the '70s came from WNEW in New York and WBCN in Boston, and I never heard those groups there. The groups were on Top 40 stations (which had migrated to FM also), but not on "album rock" stations. The segregation was eventually reflected in MTV's playlist, which was lily-white until Michael Jackson broke through.
I lived in SoHo and the West Village in 1979, and I remember how pervasive disco was, and how numbingly boring that beat was. There were dance clubs everywhere - at least downtown - and disco poured out on the streets from the bars, the cars, the boom boxes. Even so, CBGBs was alive and vital - I remember walking past the club many nights at midnight or so with people standing out on the sidewalk and the noise booming inside. And I saw P-Funk and Bootsy's Rubber Band at the Palladium (aka Academy of Music) on 14th Street. It wasn't all white, for sure, but disco was the corporatized homogenization of music, with even the Stones co-opting it ("Miss You"). And Rod Stewart? that was the era when Rod Stewart started to suck.
Oh, and Unknown -- you're basically saying that a riot, while inappropriate, was understandable because ... the music on the radio wasn't to a lot of people's tastes? And because they had to endure walking into stores and hearing songs they didn't like? Wow, talk about First World problems, or white people problems, or whatever you want to call them.
I guess my thing is it wasn't such a big deal. Like Wheezy said, it was a shock jock telling thousands of his fans, "Hey, let's go party at the ball game and blow up a dumpster full of crappy records!" That was how it was promoted. I'm pretty sure most people in the stands that day were there to do just that. It probably should have been obvious to the promoters that a lot of them would pour onto the field and trash the place, I guess.
I wasn't trying to make a case for it being appropriate in any way.
As to the First World white people problems thing, I was just trying to point out that disco music was everywhere and it was hard to go about your day without having it thrust upon you. And it was annoying because it was pretty crappy music. Is that the worst kind of problem to have? Of course not. But the conversation was about disco so that's why I brought it up.
One example of a worse problem would be actual racism. Like if tens of thousands of white people got together to blow up records and riot because they were pissed off because it was an "injustice for radio to play music that wasn't by white guys with guitars." But that never happened.
We have a principle in scientific investigation that says one should be careful not to overanalyze the results; as Freud supposedly said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. You select a single incident, filled to the brim with confounding data, and conclude what? Then proceed to use a corporate driven enterprise such as MTV to bolster that argument?
Disco demolition was what it was, a stunt. It no more indicates a cultural trend than any of the other stunts, hoaxes, or popular trends of the time. Pet rocks were popular then, do they indicate the the start of decline in moral standards, or are they just the result of a very careful and well directed marketing campaign.
BTW - who was governor of California when Prop 13 passed? You apparently know very little about the reasons why Prop 13 was such a touchstone in California politics. I'll give you a hint, the behavior of county assessors had more to due with it than any other factor. The nascent high tech industry, with its rapid conversion of agricultural lands to residential and and commercial property was the greatest contributor, not some latent libertarian don't tax me sentiment. You inflict a fair amount of self-damage your arguments and positions when you make such unfounded and specious assertions.
What you seem to be saying is that a cigar is never anything more than a cigar. Or maybe you're saying it's never something you don't think it is. Fine; believe what you want. I'm standing by what I wrote.
In the Spirit of SIWOTI
I am unaware that "sometimes" is synonymous to "always." What I stated is that your argument is not supported by the facts you presented. The event was a single incident. Judging by the results, that is understandable that no other promoter would would attempt to duplicate it. If your hypothesis were correct, one could point to numerous incidents of spontaneous "outrage," albeit on a smaller scale. Moreover, the NYC blackout of 1977, when widespread vandalism and looting occurred, we should have experienced targeted acts towards discotheques and dance clubs if this simmering resentment existed.
Your hypothesis ignores multiple confounding factors - high alcohol consumption, selected audience (sports fans, who were also subsidized to attend), and a deliberate and charasmatic leader (the "shock jock"). This was not a spontaneous event, it was orchestrated.
If this was a harbringer of future rage, based in the perceived loss of privilege, what events did it spawn? Did it prevent a British blues band from transforming itself into the quintessential California pop band? (Fleetwood Mac) Did it force the premier jam band, who regularly featured Martha and the Vandella's "Dancing in the Streets" in their reportoire to change that song selection? (The Grateful Dead. And BTW - a regular feature of Dead parking lots was the disco bus, where after show dozens of invariably white boys and girls gyrated wildly.) If this seething hatred just hidden from view truly existed, why is it that suburban teenagers latched onto such music as Madonna (better produced version of Donna Summer) and the various rap bands? I don't know what stations you listened to, but WPLR (New Haven) and WPLJ (NYC) played a wide variety of music and were consistently among the top rated stations in the region. Although I had left for military service by 1979, I remember well hearing Prince, P-Funk, Isaac Hayes, and the absolutely wonderful Philadelphia soul sounds on those stations, and on others as I passed through Texas, Illinois, and South Carolina. Crikey, Saturday afternoons were spent with Soul Train on the TV. This concept that there was widespread resentment among the populace is simply unfounded.
We always had a mongrel culture, it wasn't something that suddenly appeared after disco. Do you remember who opened Woodstock? Was Otis Redding's (Sitting On) the Dock of the Bay ever not in the rotation of any radio station? Was the lack of success by Aretha Franklin in the late seventies the result of this racist sentiment or simply poor management. Was it a coincidence that When she joined Clive Davis at Arista her career took off again? (The Dead also signed with Arista, which brought us the memorable lyric change to the murder ballad Jack Straw: "We used to play for silver, now we play for Clive.")
I agree with you that the current political climate is poisonous, that the Republicans are not intent on governing or compromise as much as the are bent on destruction. I will further agree, that their behavior resembles the adolescent rage and lack of sense typified by the Disco Demolition Night. However, if your argument is that that incident is somehow representative of the climate of the populace at the time, and that those who attended the event are representative of the current political class, then you did not provide a scintilla of evidence to support that argument. There is no creature on the planet more dangerous than an adolescent male mammal, they are prone to horomonal surges and poor judgment. However, if you are going to say incidents where gatherings of such organisms provide insight to the overall mood of the population, then you are making an argument that no sociologist, anthropologist, or social scientist is going to accept without a bit more then you provided here. Bold assertions require bold evidence.
Boba,
Well put, I couldn't agree more.
Steve
I would add that adolescent Humans have a tendency to oscillate between the "Squirrel!" mindset (new, bright and shiny) and that of the euphemistic lemming, wanting to be one of the group (cool).
Big business manipulates this for their quick commercial advantage.
Ask your self Look at X factor, you've got talent... how winners actually have a long standing careers...not many.
Have no doubts many of the record fads/ stars are manufactured. They have done that since records were first made.
I would be very reluctant to put any more emphasis on 'Disco' other than a manufactured fad.... Hormones on the rampage.
Jazz, Blue have it roots in real events ( social conditions). These root still resonate today.
As I've said before the "60's subculture"( sic) was a confluence of many subcultures and unique circumstances.
What one mustn't neglect is the sheer weight of numbers of the BABY BOOMERS.
By the Disco fad the BB were in largely partnering mode and the discos ticked all the boxes for all the mating rituals etc. It was the primary source to meet the opposite sex.
This was blatantly manipulated (extended by industrialisation of music that stimulated emotions )by the music/entertainment industry. (see Dona Summer's "love to love you baby" or Barry White and the love unlimited orchestra")
Motown did the same thing a decade or so earlier.
I agree that you're over thinking D&M conclusions and ignoring the predominating influences of the Corporate marketeers.
The real Music trends tend to transcend industry manufactured/extending of fads.
Finally, take a look at the mob mentality English real FOOTball fans. Tens of matches every week but a very small minority of "Bover (read Bother... trouble makers gangs) Boys" go 'tooled up' along to start riots. Simply because they like to fight...
Most are known to the police and actively separate the fans and exclude the BB's.
It's not had to see this type of hoodlum there at the incident you mention.
White people don't riot a lot because white people usually get their way through non-violent channels. And they did, at the ballot box, a year later.
The BBC made a brilliant doco about this - 'The Joy of Disco' >> http://t.co/A7GEe85Lxl Not been shown on BBC America I presume (because BeebUSA is shi*e). May be downloadable by illicit means ...
It shows how influential the genre is, still is, think 'Get Lucky', and how it - as you point out - was as much a music of the oppressed as rap was (once).
Interviews with protagonists back up your argument Steve, on how a backlash was race-driven.
Oh, and the BBC also just aired a fab, authoritative doco on Nile Rodgers. Why this stuff doesn't get a US airing I don't know ...
On white people rioting. I did a post once on a (US) football riot, specifically naming it 'white people rioting' and comparing it with coverage of, er, 'black people rioting'.
The comments (this was for a very mainstream website) didn't like it AT ALL. Can't call it that apparently ... touchy nervy ...
http://www.care2.com/causes/another-white-riot-in-kentucky.html
Thanks for all that, Paul -- I appreciate the support, and I'll look for that documentary. And on the subject of U.S. sports rioting, also see the Joe Paterno riot.
The BBC now has a 'highbrow' channel, BBC4. Every Friday it is 100% music and it has shown a load of fabby docos - *cough* download To**ent ...
What got me with the Paterno etc stuff was *still seeing on US TV images from here (eg Daily Show). That the UK was supposedly the home of sports riots.
We just ain't. It stopped years ago. *Plus we have a concerted anti racism *and anti-homophobia campaign now in sports.
We're an example of what can be done, a particular example to Europe of course, which does have racist cr*p still going on in parts. We're (doh) not perfect but it is great to see how working class culture can be changed once everyone piles in.
Well put. Especially that it was a harbinger or a symptom of what was going on in the American psyche at the time. And not the cause of the same.
And perhaps it was only fitting that, only a few years later, in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse, DJs were developing the style of music that would be named after the club in which it was first played, house music.
It was Chicago in the late ’70′s/early ’80′s: everything was about race. I was 8 at the time, and even I figured that out from the way the black kids in my school listened to disco and R&B, as did the trendy white teachers. The white kids from the south suburbs hated disco with a burning passion. (Me, I was Daddy’s girl, and pretty much all we listened to was classical music with some occasional Broadway and jazz thrown in.) It was especially charged on the South Side, where the white folks were fleeing as previously all-white neighborhoods like Beverly became integrated.
Steve is hardly the first to note the sociological aspects of the disco backlash. Just checking the Wikipedia article returns three cites to peer-reviewed journals, though they’re focusing on the homophobia aspect more than race.
Ironically, popular country music of the time was not entirely immune to the influence of disco. Barbara Mandrell's "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed" (#1, 1978) owes far more musically to Donna Summer than Patsy Cline. Even stalwarts such as Waylon Jennings--I'm a Ramblin' Man (#1, 1974)--and Merle Haggard--I'll Just Stay Here and Drink (#1, 1980) make heavy use of signature disco drumbeats and bass lines.
And as far as "disco as lifestyle" is concerned, movie critics called Urban Cowboy (1980) the country-music version of Saturday Night Fever (1977).
So I don't think it was the music or the "values" of the music so much as... you know... the idea that the "wrong" people were performing this music.
Another disco country song "Baby I'm Burnin' " by Dolly Parton.
Dahl's song "Do You Think I'm Disco" (to the tune of Rod Stewart's "Do You Think I'm Sexy") was mainly a parody of white "mainstreaming" of disco.
Part of the lyrics:
[spoken]Don't you like my
White three piece suit
My gold coke spoon
Gold razor blade and
Gold Italian snaggletooth, you know
Come on, please dance with me
[sung]I wear tight pants
I always stuff a sock in
It always makes the ladies
Start to talking
He also mentions Margaret Trudeau, and jokes about a reformed-disco fan/rock fan having a Led Zeppelin belt buckle and a '69 Dodge Dart.
Dahl did have significant racial stereotyping on his radio show, like Howard Stern does, and his station didn't play many (if any) black artists. But his song -- which lead to Disco Demolition Night -- was more of an attack pop culture "discomania" hype than an anti-black culture thing. More akin to mocking Justin Beiber for affecting a "gangsta" pose.
http://idolator.com/7465813/justin-bieber-gangsta-gallery
Or maybe, like a lot of white people, he thought disco started when Saturday Night Fever came out, instead of several years earlier.
I thinks you hit a nerve :0
Have to bring you this. I am still catching up on multiple acts from Glastonbury, the 'legendary' 'hippie' festival in Engerland's West Country and I just caught my BBC (thank you public TV) download of --- they had CHIC!*!
Effing amazin.
Here's the crowd-goes-craazy highlight mid set (and yeah you really need to see all): http://t.co/FUAOMNnhCw
And here's the whole set on utibers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2PKKtphurc
Thing is, to your point, to this point, this is a terribly English and white event, chaps, and they, Chic, stole it. Disco is just so now, so 2013, baby,
*But, see, note, the finale and see how the white guys behave.
The finale is 'Good Times', which could be a DNC anthem (?). Could be a socialist anthem! But, what appens? Audience on stage, white guys surround the now groovy Niles. They have their effin iPads out FCS. They are not living the moment. The groove stops whilst they tweet 'I woz there' ... *But there's plenty of others (incl white guys who look like oldie me) who are just losing it.
The ones surrounding Niles are the G-O-effin-P - the David Cameroons as well. Our Tory papers called it a 'party' set. They missed WTF happened entirely, they missed what freedom actually is! and WE, the majority of the world, are the rest who got it.
Disco is freedom music. Seeing that effed up finale stage just confirmed what my life slash guts had always known.
Thanks for bringing this sh*t up!
ps
we need a Woody Guthrie remix to make the point.
I just felt like Chic, googled and THIS comes up!>!
>>
Menu : Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard
www.goodtimesburgers.com/menu.html
5+ items - Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard - All-Natural Beef, ...
440 calories 7 fat 66 carbs 27 protein.
Kids All Natural, Hand-Breaded ...
280 calories 7 fat 25 carbs 31 protein.
All Natural, Hand-Breaded Chicken ...
All-Natural?
Hand-Breaded?
End times.
Bachmannn. Paging me some Bachmann...
Speaking as a south side, white boy, and life long Sox fan who was there that night:
It's true we were burning weed and boozing. And when the records blew up... oh man, I still to this day laugh my ass off at how crazy it was.
BTW, for the sake of context, back then the White Sox weren't exactly filling up the seats every night at the old Comiskey. It was also common knowledge for the low/middle class teens in my crowd that the beer guys never checked id's as long as you looked reasonably old enough, and nobody I know ever got hassled for discreetly lighting up a jay on ANY game night, not just DD.
Bill Veeck, as others have mentioned, would do anything to sell a ticket (burnout marketing strategy? Hell yes.)And If I remember correctly, it only cost about $3.75 for grandstand seats on any given night, so it was a natural place to gather for older teens who liked catch a ball game and some party.
The thing is, I was not then a racist or homophobe, nor am I one now. None of my friends were (or are) either.
I personally went on to make my very first vote for Carter and worked my whole life for fair labor practices for all people. I'll skip further details of my lib. credentials, but would be remiss not to clue you in to the fact that every south sider I've ever met was a Democrat.
I know, I know, D's can be racist too, and there was no shortage of of horrible people in Chicagoland back then.
But contrary to the wide sweeps of generalization and tenuous connections you posit, we were as inclusive and "normal" as libs tend to be everywhere.
Until I read this post I thought we were just a bunch of low-class, disenfranchised lunkheads who let loose (like punks of the day) on one that one night way back when. I had no idea that by liking Zepplin more than Donna Summers I was such a pig.
Do me a favor, Steve, and please do not ever go to a Hawks game and write about that too.
I don't know if I can handle the treacherous ramifications, since you've so cogently shattered my (formerly)cherished White Sox memories.
On a groove.
How about this as a DNC anthem ? www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjbVmX1_wh8
TFA -- it has guitars - eeelectric! - and everything!
URs not a pig, we just want to see you shakeing that booty ...
Plantt gets it :}\Loosen something.
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