Disco Sucks Forever

Be proud, say it LOUD! DISCO SUCKS!!!

I hate disco. Always have, and always will. Besides gansta rap, I cannot think of any single genre that is more angering and outright annoying. I'm also not too crazy about country and hip-hop in general, but I usually don't go into conniptions when I hear either one, and some of it is actually OK. I admit I like a little Johnny Cash and even some old Hank Williams, while some of the rap songs from the late 80's from acts like the 2 Live Crew crack me up to this day. However, I have a zero-tolerance policy toward disco; thank goodness disco is as dead as the polyester in a leisure suit.

The Vietnam War ended in the 70’s, and that’s about as good as it got. A lot of good movies and non-disco music was spawned from the era, but otherwise, the decade was pretty dismal, giving us among other things, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, gas shortages, a recession, ugly clothes, bad hair, and worse music represented by that despicable disco. Yet nostalgia, even really dumb nostalgia - the longing for “the good old days” that probably never existed anyway - is reborn with each generation, which goes far to explain why disco reared its ugly, gaudy, garish, disco-balled, blow-dried head again in the 90's.

I still need to make copies and take them to the range

While disco remained relatively obscure for most of the sucky-assed 70's, that all changed with the 1977 release of the movie Saturday Night Fever. Practically overnight, the apartment building I lived in played that funky music at all hours of the day and night, and suffered a population explosion of coke-snorting, leisure-suit-clad, medallion-wearing melon heads trying to do "The Hustle." The word "gaudy" was not in their vocabulary, and the dances they did reminded me of someone having a grand-mal seizure, or watching a speeded-up movie of someone detoxing from heroin.

Steve Dahl practicing and wearing what he preached

As this bell-bottomed, sequined, gold-lame’d, platform-shoed, Quaalude-popping phenomenon got more popular, so did the backlash against it. Depending on where they were, people wearing Saturday Night Fever t-shirts were routinely verbally and sometimes even physically attacked. Bumper stickers and t-shirts that said "DISCO SUCKS" became more common than Smile buttons. 

Happier than they should be

In an early demonstration of what we now know as political correctness, the fans of disco accused their detractors of racism and homophobia. Whatever; if the Village People aren't an enduring symbol of the general fruitiness of the decade, I don't know what is.

Gaaaayaaaaayyyaaaayyyyy!!!!

It all came to a head on July 12, 1979. During a double-header at Chicago's Comiskey Park, a local radio DJ named Steve Dahl organized an event called "Disco Demolition Night." Fans who brought in a disco album for destruction were admitted to the park for 98 cents, to reflect Dahl's FM radio frequency of 97.9. The attendance far exceeded all expectations. Instead of 20,000 fans, an estimated 50,000 showed up, and fueled by drugs and alcohol, their anti-disco sentiments were loudly and boisterously demonstrated, physically and verbally.

Commander Dahl about to push the button

During the break between games, Dahl, wearing a badly-fitting military outfit that befitted his role as the leader of the soon-to-be badly acting "Insane CoHo Lips Anti-Disco Army," made the following announcement:

"This is now officially the world's largest anti-disco rally! Now listen—we took all the disco records you brought tonight, we got 'em in a giant box, and we're gonna blow 'em up reeeeeeal goooood!!!"

Enthusiastic anti-disco fans tearing it up on the field

Dahl then set off the explosives in a large box containing disco records, and just like Dahl said, they blowed up real good. Pandemonium immediately ensued; thousands of drunk, stoned, rabid anti-Disco fans overran the field and essentially destroyed it, resulting in a forfeit of the game, one of the few in the entire history of major league baseball. Riot police were called in, and after about an hour, the rowdy disco-haters were finally dispersed. Many have attributed this event to contributing to the demise of disco, although I'd like to think that people simply came to their senses; however, the revival of the genre in the 1990's changed my mind. Maybe instead of thumbscrews and waterboarding, the CIA can use disco as an instrument of torture, but even the CIA is probably too humane to employ such a measure.