Disco Demolition Night: An Autoethnography About the “Death” of Disco

I think I first learned about ‘Disco Demolition Night’ when I was 15 years old while watching ‘I love the 70s’ on VH1. In 1979, the Chicago White Sox allowed Radio DJ Steve Dahl to host a promotion in which fans could bring disco records to be set fire to on the field during the 7th inning stretch. Dahl’s promotion of the event was so successful the park was filled to capacity with 55,000 people in attendance. Dahl’s act quickly got out of hand when thousands of teenagers eventually rushed the field to take part in the destructive revelry. The baseball game had to be cancelled and newspapers the next day referred it the event as “the day disco died”.

Learning about this as a teenager, I thought it was a moment in which good music had overcome bad music. I hated disco. I also hated the music that was popular with most of my peers. I was a fan of real music. Authentic music, not bubblegum garbage like Britney Spears, N’Sync, the BackStreet Boys (what a dumb name ‘the backstreet boys’, give me a break). At 15, I was also a very scared, very depressed closeted Queer teen. 

This personal history is why I am fascinated by the sudden rise and fall of disco: A music born out of the Black and gay nightclub scene of the 1970s. In this historical moment in which young angry teens that looked like me rushed the metaphorical ramparts of their culture war, I see two of my own identities in direct conflict with one and other in society. I want to understand what this moment at Comisky Park meant. Did the rock n’ rollers hate disco for the same reason as I did? Was the backlash to this young new genre due to racism? Was it Homophobia? Or did disco just ‘suck’.

A chronological listing of unaccompanied double bass albums

Research I compiled for my lecture recital ‘Larry Grenadier’s solo record The Gleaners’ and the lineage of unaccompanied double bass albums’

Published on Double Bass HQ!