DISCO SUCKS
July 12 nineteen seventy nine.
Jennifer Byrne
"We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die." W. H. Auden
"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change." Confucius
On 12 July 1979 over 75,000 people turned up at Comiskey Park baseball stadium in Chicago for a 'disco demolition rally' organised by jilted rock radio jocks Gary Meier and Steve Dahl. Only 5,000 had been expected. More than 10,000 disco records were blown up by Dahl and his cronies who, whipping up thinly veiled homophobic and racist sentiment, encouraged the colossal crowd to destroy their disco records and chant 'death to disco'. Vinyl was thrown like Frisbees, the crowd surged, the stadium set alight and riot ensued. The white male rocker threw his toys out of the pram and spoiled the game for everyone.
Few music wars have been as enduring and unforgiving as the one waged between rock and disco. By 1979, the sound that originated in the underground African American and Hispanic neighbourhoods of Philadelphia and later New York City had blown up so big that every major recording artist, who may have even have started off as rock act, was using samples to cash in on this new beat and sell records. Coupled with the popularity of John Badham's brilliant 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever, it seemed that disco was nothing less than a cultural revolution.
But middle America was not ready for such change. Established major record labels were losing control and money, and used the force of the 'Disco Sucks' rally to further damage the reputation and resonance of the new movement. All media followed suit, leaving disco out in the cold, with no radio airplay and no press. Suddenly the word 'disco' was something very negative and, in the USA, almost taboo.
In many ways the 'Disco Sucks' campaign was a white, macho reaction against gay liberation and black pride, rather than a musical reaction against drum machines. In England, in the same year as the 'Disco Sucks' demo in America, The Young Nationalist - a British National Party publication - told its readers: 'Disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys. In America, Craig Werner (author of A Change is Gonna Come) stated that "the attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia." Disco was dismissed as silly and effeminate with a thriving appetite for blow and poppers.
The truth is that disco is for everyone. It unites black, white, Hispanic, Jewish, Irish, Italian, rich or poor, gay and straight. Disco changed everything. It taught white men how to move, created the nightclub as we know it, and introduced partying with strangers, warehouse raves, loft parties and voguing. The 70s were a dance era, when people knew how to do it. The Disco Sucks rally tried to kill it, but all it did was push disco underground again, leaving it to be discovered afresh. Dancing, that was disco. It gets people out and onto the floor, leaving their troubles behind.