Posted on 05/11/2024 6:55:17 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Forty years ago, on July 12, 1979, what was supposed to be a wacky promotional stunt by shock-rock DJ Steve Dahl to sell tickets to a double-header White Sox baseball game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park turned ugly — when piles of vinyl records, many by artists of color, were destroyed as thousands of anti-disco rioters, 39 of whom were eventually arrested for disorderly conduct, stormed the field. Dahl has always vehemently denied that 98.7FM WLUP’s infamous “Disco Demolition Night” had any racist or homophobic undertones or intentions, arguing that “annexing this event to today’s advocacy is lazy academically and inappropriate geographically” and that what happened should be “viewed in the 1979 lens.”
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The disco movement had been spearheaded by many marginalized people, artists who were LGBTQ or of color, and had initially appeared to those audiences — which is why it’s so easy to assume that Disco Demolition Night had been a bigoted event. But by 1979, disco was as mainstream as a music genre could get. … So, it could be argued that disco fatigue had set in after all this market saturation,
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..there was one report in Rolling Stone that mentioned the inherent, if possibly unintentional, “racist and homophobic s***” that occurred at Comiskey Park. That article’s author, esteemed music critic Dave Marsh, described Disco Demolition Night as “your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead… White males, 18 to 34, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks, and Latins, and therefore they’re the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security.”
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
“... “Play That Funky Music White Boy” were just the worse crap pretending to be music...”
Yeah. I’ve always hated that song. HOWEVER I make an exception with this excerpt played by Prince former guitar extraordinaire and funk-meister.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=854006675486604
It sounds like it was a real disco inferno!
Unfortunately the station and the DJ are both defunct.
Their heyday was in the 70s and 80s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOME
Also, you'll find more Stones on the radio and any juke joint Jukebox than the Beatles. Plus the Stones hits have been included in more movies than I can count...even if only snippets.
While the Beatles were doing bubblegum "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and other souless crap, the Stones came out the gate doing covers of Muddy Waters and other original blues artists with their own arrangements. Then they hit big with their own songs, "It's All Over Now" and "Little Red Rooster". In 1965 came "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and on to the greatest rock n roll band in the world.
The Stones and their manager wanted to be the antithesis of the Beatles by being the bad boys of rock. I'd say they accomplished that goal.
"What a loss when Prince died - he had more for us to enjoy, not to mention being a consummate guitarist. I'd like to see a documentary of his life like the one I just recently saw of Michael Jackson.
I have a new appreciation for Jackson after watching it. I always thought he was a product of his handlers. I was wrong. He was multi-talented and a product of his own design. Why he turned himself into a white woman when he was a handsome black man I will never understand. Then there was the pedophile thing.
So, I mourn the passing of Prince over Jackson.
Can we now do it with rap music? Please?
Or these guys:
I was a big Loop listener back in ‘79, and the main reason Dahl hated disco is that he got fired from a radio station when it switched from rock to disco. When he landed at the Loop, he was constantly bad mouthing disco music. It truly had nothing to do with any sort of racial or sexual prejudice. People who view the world through the lens of oppressed and oppressors are mentally ill.
Black music my ass. People back then!who hated Disco viewed it as annoying silly dance music with as many or more white artists as black. Maybe some troglodyte that night yelled some drunken bullshit but Black had long since blended with white and was old hat as even a consideration.
Yeah I always knew Michael Jackson was dripping with talent despite him being a sick individual.
There are some Prince documentaries but haven’t seen any of them and no idea whether they are any good. Yeah they need one on Prince as good as the Jackson one.
“The Bee Gees were extremely talented and did great work.”
Yeah. I don’t get equating discount with race. Bee Gees. KC and the Sunshine Band, ABBA. Disco featured equal opportunity artists.
BTW, I was trained in classical piano, and majored in Church Music / Hymnology in seminary, and I love disco.
“Didn’t know the BeeGees were black”
A couple years ago I saw a man-on-the-street series of interviews of black people who were shocked to learn the Bee Gees are white.
“then came rap.”
Yep. Which conclusively proves the old adage “Just when you think things can’t get any worse...”
“You really can’t say too much negative about any of these groups.”
I can’t?
Disco sucks.
Disco has always sucked.
Disco will always suck.
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