Thursday morning, I chanced upon an ESPN piece on
Disco Demolition Night. Growing up a baseball fan, the phrase initially conjures up mostly chuckles: the last great
Bill Veeck promotion; a well-meaning bust that it drew more than 59,000 people to watch a typically moribund Chicago White Sox team
in some unsightly uniforms — but resulted in the home team having to forfeit the second game of a doubleheader.
But time and perspective change things a bit. DDN, which “celebrated” its’ 30th anniversary Thursday, now stands revealed as the flashpoint of an ugly trend.
Let me be blunt: see any POC in the picture up top? Okay, how about this picture?
Thought not. The event drew in thousands of disgruntled or mock-outraged white rock fans. Most rock documentaries describe the disco era as one of rock under siege, with “real music” in danger of being overrun by hordes of fops in sequined jackboots. Disco represented not only the first popular music wave since Motown Records’ heyday to feature performers of color, but it brought gay artists to the mainstream. Somebody, obviously, had to “save the day” for those oppressed
Ted Nugent fans.
Enter
Steve Dahl. After getting fired from an all-disco station, he formed what he called his Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco Army on WLUP-FM. Now, every pop culture wave has its’ regular backlash, but Dahl hit back with a special kind of venom: he
reportedly destroyed a copy of
“The Hustle,” the morning after the man who recorded it, Van McCoy, died of a heart attack.
