Disco Demolition Night – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Disco Demolition Night Date July 12, 1979 Time 6 pm and following Location Comiskey Park, Chicago, Illinois, US Cause promotional event admitting those with a disco record for $0.98 Participants Steve Dahl, Bill Veeck and several thousand attendees Outcome Game 2 of the Tigers/White Sox doubleheader forfeited to Detroit. Deaths None Injuries Between 0 and 30 Property damage Damage to the field of Comiskey Park Suspect(s) About 39 Charges Disorderly conduct

Disco Demolition Night was an ill-fated baseball promotion that took place on July12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many of those in attendance had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the button was pressed. With the playing surface damaged both by the explosion and by the rowdy fans, the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader to the Tigers.

A disco craze swept the United States in the late 1970s, with the dance-oriented music featured in hit films such as Saturday Night Fever (1977). Although disco was popular, it also sparked a backlash from rock and roll fans. Disco and the pushback against it were prominent enough that the White Sox, seeking to fill seats at Comiskey Park during a lackluster season, engaged Chicago shock jock and anti-disco campaigner Steve Dahl for the promotion at the July12 doubleheader. Dahl's sponsoring radio station was 97.9 WLUP-FM, so attendees would pay 98 cents and bring a disco record; between games, Dahl would destroy the collected vinyl in an explosion.

White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000,about 5,000more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000 people (and possibly as many as 90,000)--including tens of thousands of Dahl's adherents--packed the stadium, and thousands more continued to sneak in even after gates were closed. Many of the records were not collected by staff and were thrown like frisbees from the stands. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police. The second game was initially postponed, but was forfeited to the Tigers the next day by order of American League president Lee MacPhail. Disco Demolition Night remains well known as one of the most extreme promotions in major league history.

The genre known as disco, named for its popularity in discotheques, evolved in the early 1970s in inner-city New York clubs, where disc jockeys would play imported dance music to get the crowd moving. With roots in African-American and Latin American music, and in gay culture, disco became mainstream by the mid-1970s. Even white artists associated with a much more sedate style of music had disco-influenced hits, such as Barry Manilow with "Copacabana".[1] By 1977, disco was very popular in the United States, especially after the release that year of the hit movie Saturday Night Fever. This film starred John Travolta and featured music by the Bee Geesthe fact that both actor and performers were white and presented a heterosexual image did much to make disco widely popular. As Al Coury, president of RSO Records (which had released the bestselling soundtrack album for the film) put it, Saturday Night Fever "kind of took disco out of the closet."

Despite disco's popularity, there were many who disliked it. Some felt the music too mechanicalTime magazine deemed it a "diabolical thump-and-shriek".[4] Others hated the music for the lifestyle associated with it, feeling that in the disco scene, personal appearance and style of dress were overly important.[4] The media, in discussing disco, emphasized its roots in gay culture. According to historian Gillian Frank, "by the time of the Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, the media commonly emphasized that disco was gay and cultivated a widespread perception that disco was taking over". Performers who cultivated a gay image, such as the Village People (described by Rolling Stone as "the face of disco") did nothing to efface these perceptions, and fears that rock and roll would die at the hands of disco increased after disco albums dominated the 21st Grammy Awards in February 1979.

In 1978, New York's WKTU-FM, a low-rated rock station, switched to disco and became the most popular station in the country; other stations sought to emulate its success. Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl was fired from local radio station WDAI on Christmas Eve 1978 when the station switched formats from rock to disco. The 24-year-old DJ was subsequently hired by rival album-rock station WLUP, "The Loop". Sensing an incipient anti-disco backlash[4][7] and playing off the publicity surrounding his firing (Dahl frequently mocked WDAI's "Disco DAI" slogan on the air as "Disco DIE"), Dahl created a mock organization called "The Insane Coho Lips", an anti-disco army consisting of his listeners.[8] According to Andy Behrens of ESPN, Dahl and his broadcast partner Garry Meier "organized the Cohos around a simple and surprisingly powerful idea: Disco Sucks".[4]

According to Dahl in 1979, the Cohos were locked in a war "dedicated to the eradication of the dread musical disease known as DISCO". In the months leading up to Disco Demolition Night, Dahl promoted a number of anti-disco public events, several of which became unruly. When a discotheque in Linwood, Indiana, switched from disco to rock in June, Dahl showed up, as did several thousand Cohos, and the police had to be called. Later that month, Dahl and several thousand Cohos occupied a teen disco in the Chicago suburbs. At the end of June, Dahl urged his listeners to throw marshmallows at a WDAI promotional van, which was at a shopping mall where a teen disco had been built. The Cohos chased the van and driver and cornered them in a nearby park, though the situation ended without violence. On July 1, a near-riot occurred in Hanover Park, Illinois, when hundreds of Cohos could not enter a sold-out promotional event, and fights broke out. Some 50 police officers were needed to control the situation. When disco star Van McCoy died suddenly on July 6, Dahl marked the occasion by destroying one of his records, "The Hustle", on the air.

Dahl and Meier regularly mocked disco records on the radio. Dahl also recorded his own parody: "Do You Think I'm Disco?", a satire of Rod Stewart's disco-oriented hit "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?".[8][11] This parody song presented discotheques as populated by effeminate men and frigid women. The lead character, named Tony like Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever, is unable to attract a woman until he abandons the disco scene, selling his three-piece white suit at a garage sale and melting down his gold chains for a Led Zeppelin belt buckle.

A number of anti-disco incidents took place elsewhere in the first half of 1979: "the Disco Demolition was not an isolated incident or an aberration". In Seattle, hundreds of rock fans attacked a mobile dance floor, while in Portland, Oregon, a disc jockey destroyed a stack of disco records with a chainsaw as thousands looked on and cheered. In New York, a rock deejay played Donna Summer's sexualized disco hit, "Hot Stuff"; he was protested by his listeners.

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