Disco is Dead. Long Live Disco!
DISCO SUCKS! Was Displaced Homophobia. Both Remain With Us In Modified Form.
Who Could Have Guessed That a Fiery Act of Destruction Motivated by Hate Would End Badly?
On July 12, 1979, the Chicago White Sox were playing at home, old Comiskey Park, on Chicago’s south side. They were scheduled to play a double-header against the Detroit Tigers.
White Sox owner Bill Veeck was famous for his frequent and offbeat promotions and he had come up with a doozy for a game featuring two teams hovering around .500 (Veeck: "you can draw more people with a losing team plus bread and circuses than with a losing team and a long, still silence").
Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey
Veeck came up with “Disco Demolition Night.” He offered 98¢ admission with a disco record. A local FM DJ (FM radio used to feature local people playing records over the air) gathered all of the vinyl in centerfield and blew it up.
Who could have guessed that an act of destruction motivated by hate would end badly?
Disco was just another music subgenre. Like its first cousin hip-hop (originally called “Disco Rap”), disco began in urban dance clubs where records substituted for live performance. Its primary musical characteristic was its driving “four on the floor” beat.
Nobody Blew Up Reggae and Punk Records in Centerfield
Reggae and punk, like disco, came and went in the 1970s. I was there, and I can tell you that these (and other) musical subgenres waxed and waned in popular appeal but never engendered the murderous hatred of its mere existence that disco did.
Indeed, the Comiskey Debacle was organized in part by Chicago DJ Steve Dahl, who called his genocidal campaign against a musical subgenre a war, "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO.” Dahl even recorded a song of disco hate, a garden-variety 12-bar blues.
Fair warning, Dahl’s song is terrible. Dahl never - even by accident - sings a note in tune and the slide guitar solo is a ham-fisted Muddy Waters ripoff. I offer the recording below solely in the interests of historical omneity.
You will not get these three minutes of your life back.
The most plausible explanation for the DISCO SUCKS movement is displaced homophobia
Again, disco’s musical pedigree is unremarkable. Its genesis coincided with many other subgenres of rock and R & B such as punk, Afro-Futurism, reggae, and jazz fusion. All came and went absent the toxic hatred.
Disco Was Very Gay
Disco’s distinguishing non-musical characteristic was its strong (male) homosexual aesthetic. It is this characteristic, I suggest, that best explains the historical hate.
Gay expression in the 1970s and 1980s was not public but rather segregated in “gay” clubs where, rather than conforming their behavior to fit the heterosexual notions of nightlife, the gay community forged their own spaces and means of expression. Indeed, the Stonewall uprising was a defense of a gay, private space in response to violent police raids.
I regard disco’s gay origin as axiomatic; I will not bother to support this assertion. If you doubt it, take a few moments and read the lyrics to “YMCA.”
Anita Bryant
This violent, right-wing activism had a public face. Anita Bryant was Miss Oklahoma (1958) and a singer of minor acclaim, charting with Paper Roses in 1959 (written by Charlie Dicks. Seriously. I can’t make this sh!$ up).
In 1977, Dade County, Florida, became the 40th local government to issue an ordinance protecting homosexuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation.
That same year, Anita Bryant led a opposition to this civil rights statute and (successfully) sought its repeal. She called it “Save Our Children,” portraying equal rights for homosexuals as a moral rather than political issue. According to Anita Bryant, rather than protecting the rights of all citizens, Florida was allowing for the “grooming” of Florida children by homosexuals.
The Past Is Never Dead. It Isn’t Even Past
Faulker was right, of course. As a man of a certain age who lived through disco I see the “moral concerns” justifying Ron De Santis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida as a continuation of Bryant’s crusade. DeSantis ups the stakes, however, by taking the culture war into public school classrooms in order to blunt powerful, Democrat-oriented teachers unions as he runs for President.
Disco Never Died
Musically, disco never died, it just changed form. The musical development of disco after the 1970s is fascinating but I will not take it up here. I will merely suggest that it returned to its African roots and became “Afro Disco.” The epicenter is Nigeria’s thriving music scene and the music is awesome.
Disco is the Soundtrack to Fascism Because of Course It Is
As Trump and DeSantis drag the US into the burn pits of our nation’s values it is clear that just as disco as music never died, neither did the homophobia that hastened its demise. Indeed, disco is the soundtrack to 21st Century Fascism. Why do I say this?
Donald Trump’s cultist rallies all end the same way, by the Orange One dancing(?) to YMCA. I sh!$ you not.
The universe has a wicked sense of humor.