{"id":2446265,"date":"2019-07-12T05:35:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/uncategorized\/uncategorized-news\/flashback-watch-disco-demolition-night-devolve-into-fiery-riot-206237\/"},"modified":"2019-07-12T05:35:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T11:35:00","slug":"flashback-watch-disco-demolition-night-devolve-into-fiery-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/flashback-watch-disco-demolition-night-devolve-into-fiery-riot\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Watch \u2018Disco Demolition Night\u2019 Devolve Into Fiery Riot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Forty years ago this evening, a doubleheader at Chicago<\/a>\u2019s Comiskey Park devolved into a fiery riot when crazed fans stormed the field as part of anti-disco<\/a> promotional event dubbed Disco Demolition Night. The whole thing was the brainchild of disc jockey Steve Dahl, who dressed up like the general of an anti-disco army and called his followers \u201cThe Insane Coho Lips.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate the taste of pi\u00f1a coladas,\u201d he told newscaster Greg Gumbel on the fateful evening shortly before smashing a disco record against his head. \u201cI\u2019m allergic to gold jewelry, so there\u2019s nothing there for me. You have to spend so much time blowdrying your hair. It\u2019s a waste of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of that interview, Dahl thought the demonstration would consist of simply blowing up some disco records on the field between games. It was a scheme cooked up between the radio personality and White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who was desperate to increase attendance at the ballpark in the middle of a lackluster season.<\/p>\n

The game sold out, but thousands of additional ticketless fans showed up to voice their hatred of an entire genre. Many stormed the gates and filled the ballpark way beyond capacity, setting up a dangerous situation when Dahl blew up the disco records. Fans threw firecrackers and bottles onto the field, eventually storming onto it, starting fires and battling with police. The second game was eventually called off amidst the madness.<\/p>\n

For many fans of traditional rock that had little love for disco, the incident was nothing more than a bunch of drunks having harmless fun on a summer evening. Disco had dominated the charts for the past few years, stealing the spotlight from their heroes or causing them to actually record disco music themselves<\/a>, and this felt justified.<\/p>\n

But for minority groups, the incident had highly disturbing undertones given many of the perpetrators were white men and the genre was incredibly popular amongst homosexuals, blacks and women. \u201cIt felt to us like Nazi book-burning,\u201d Chic\u2019s Nile Rodgers<\/a> once said. \u201cThis is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word \u2018disco.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out this amazing local news broadcast from the night of the episode where the newscasters try to make sense of the insanity in real time. \u201cPerhaps some arrests, it\u2019s hard to tell,\u201d says one as images of absolute madness fill the screen. \u201cWe don\u2019t know the exact nature of everything that\u2019s going on out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago this evening, a doubleheader at Chicago\u2019s Comiskey Park devolved into a fiery riot when crazed fans stormed the field as part of anti-disco promotional event dubbed Disco Demolition Night. The whole thing was the brainchild of disc jockey Steve Dahl, who dressed up like the general of an anti-disco army and called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 11:28:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}