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Disco Demolition Night: How Disco Died at a White Sox Game · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give a big, big
0:32
Speaker 1: shout out to the one and only super producer, Mr
0:35
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Yeah, you can tell the energy folks were
0:42
Speaker 1: so stoked, so stoked. I've got no I've got to
0:44
Speaker 1: stop saying that in meetings because I think people can
0:47
Speaker 1: tell and being sarcastic. Know what, No, that was me
0:53
Speaker 1: being sarcastic, but about you being I don't know, it's
0:56
Speaker 1: too many layers of sarcasm here to wade through. Um,
1:00
Speaker 1: you know what's I'm not being sarcastic at all when
1:02
Speaker 1: I say that I love disco baby pretty on ironically.
1:07
Speaker 1: And that's the thing about like a craze or everywhere,
1:10
Speaker 1: like what something that could be seen as like a
1:12
Speaker 1: fat or like a like a moment and an explosive
1:15
Speaker 1: moment in pop culture that then starts to feel kind
1:18
Speaker 1: of dated later if you live through it, it's gonna
1:21
Speaker 1: temper the way you actually feel about it moving forward.
1:24
Speaker 1: Like you know, a dear, dear, dear friend of mine
1:27
Speaker 1: who was responsible for so much music that I was
1:29
Speaker 1: turned onto. Um, he owned a record store. Harry, you've
1:32
Speaker 1: met friend of the show, Harry grahams Um, he loves
1:36
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, as do I. But you know what he
1:39
Speaker 1: hates by Pink Floyd The Wall. Well, the Wall is
1:43
Speaker 1: an album he has a little overwrought and bloated, but
1:46
Speaker 1: he specifically hates the song another Brick in the Wall
1:50
Speaker 1: Part two. I think because it was such an inescapable,
1:55
Speaker 1: ubiquitous smash hit, and it is, in fact a disco song.
2:00
Speaker 1: It is and yeah, disco esque. If you were to
2:04
Speaker 1: ask me, Ben, what would you be doing in the
2:07
Speaker 1: nineties seventies. I don't know if I'd be partying at
2:09
Speaker 1: Studio fifty four or anything, but I would definitely be
2:12
Speaker 1: listening to disco because during that time it was the
2:17
Speaker 1: biggest genre. Like it's it's hard to, as you said,
2:20
Speaker 1: unless you lived during that era, during that craze, it
2:24
Speaker 1: would be difficult to really understand just how popular disco was. Now.
2:30
Speaker 1: I'm a lifelong ab A fan, for instance, I I
2:34
Speaker 1: think some people just didn't like disco because they felt
2:36
Speaker 1: it got overplayed, or maybe they were being a bit contrarian.
2:40
Speaker 1: But today's story is it takes place kind of in
2:44
Speaker 1: the context of disco, where you're gonna introduce you to
2:48
Speaker 1: a DJ, we're gonna talk a little bit about the
2:51
Speaker 1: White Sox, and you might be thinking, guys, how does
2:54
Speaker 1: this all come together? You're promising me quite a bit
2:58
Speaker 1: in today's podcast. Well, just you wait, fellow ridiculous historians.
3:03
Speaker 1: We should maybe start with the name. It's called Disco
3:08
Speaker 1: Demolition Night and shout out to our new researcher that
3:12
Speaker 1: we teased earlier, Mr Zach Williams. Yeah, Zach Um did
3:25
Speaker 1: a deep dive on a topic that I was pretty
3:28
Speaker 1: familiar with because of a podcast that I worked on
3:30
Speaker 1: called The Speed of Sound with the wonderful and talented
3:34
Speaker 1: and storied Mr Steve Greenberg, who did He insisted on
3:38
Speaker 1: doing a multipart episode. I think we talked him out
3:40
Speaker 1: of four parts and al ended up down to three
3:44
Speaker 1: on disco, and his argument was that it is a
3:47
Speaker 1: cultural kind of high water mark, or the very least
3:50
Speaker 1: represented a very important kind of crossroads in music, you know,
3:55
Speaker 1: in the history of music and the history of genre,
3:58
Speaker 1: in the history of fandom, and it all kind of
4:01
Speaker 1: crested or you know, we can actually see the moment
4:05
Speaker 1: that disco you know, or at least, the heyday of
4:08
Speaker 1: disco essentially died. Uh, and it died in full view
4:13
Speaker 1: of a a stadium full of around forty thousand baseball
4:18
Speaker 1: fans at Kaminsky Park in Chicago. It essentially went up
4:22
Speaker 1: in flames. Um demolition. Disco Demolition Night was a promotional
4:28
Speaker 1: thing like sort of like you know, free bobble Head
4:30
Speaker 1: Night or like two for one Beard night, you know,
4:33
Speaker 1: at the ballpark. But this was a little more divisive,
4:36
Speaker 1: and it was organized by a guy by the name
4:40
Speaker 1: of Steve Dahl, who was on the forefront of a
4:45
Speaker 1: movement that was happening at the time. Because any time
4:48
Speaker 1: you have something as big as disco, something as big
4:51
Speaker 1: as like, you know, let's say three D movies that
4:54
Speaker 1: kind of came and went, but they were pretty popular
4:56
Speaker 1: for a little bit, you're gonna have a backlash that
4:59
Speaker 1: goes along with. Uh. And this backlash was collectively referred
5:02
Speaker 1: to as the Disco Sucks movement right right, And uh, this,
5:07
Speaker 1: you know, this is very common. I would say that
5:10
Speaker 1: sort of mentioning contrarianism earlier, because if something reaches any
5:15
Speaker 1: certain threshold of hype, then there will be people who
5:19
Speaker 1: just say I'm not into it for one reason or another,
5:23
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about star wars or a religious movement
5:27
Speaker 1: or a genre of music. It's easy to understand, though,
5:31
Speaker 1: why the Disco Sucks movement could have occurred, like why
5:35
Speaker 1: people got less and less hyped about disco. It really
5:40
Speaker 1: was ubiquitous. If you look at the first half of
5:44
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, then you'll see that of all the
5:48
Speaker 1: top singles on the US charts, all sixteen we're disco
5:53
Speaker 1: except for three. There were three non disco songs, which
5:57
Speaker 1: is nuts. That means anywhere you go on the radio,
6:00
Speaker 1: you're virtually guaranteed to hear a disco song. And if
6:04
Speaker 1: you look at the year before that, disco songs had
6:07
Speaker 1: been number one for thirty seven weeks out of fifty two.
6:13
Speaker 1: That's where we go to. Alice eccles, who is a
6:16
Speaker 1: cultural historian and author of Hot Stuff, Disco and the
6:20
Speaker 1: Remaking of American Culture. Ecl says that disco had kind
6:25
Speaker 1: of pushed out the old standby of album oriented rock,
6:31
Speaker 1: which she refers to as a o R, and live venues,
6:36
Speaker 1: not just nightclubs, but live venues in general, were increasingly
6:39
Speaker 1: switching over to disco. And record labels were making a
6:43
Speaker 1: lot of money, but they didn't particularly love it. A
6:46
Speaker 1: lot of music fans, a lot of rock fans also thought,
6:49
Speaker 1: you know, disco was just the worst thing ever, and
6:53
Speaker 1: they started to fight back against it. And here's the thing.
6:55
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a record executive, you know, an A
6:58
Speaker 1: and R person whatever, like there's gonna be there's a
7:01
Speaker 1: certain tastemaker quality to to being a record executive or
7:05
Speaker 1: to running a record label, like you want to be
7:07
Speaker 1: the ones responsible for the next big sound or whatever.
7:11
Speaker 1: You know, even though disco was definitely super lucrative, it
7:14
Speaker 1: was kind of starting to feel a little samy and
7:17
Speaker 1: sort of like, well, it's all kind of bleeding into
7:20
Speaker 1: one another, all these songs, and the executives and the
7:23
Speaker 1: and R folks didn't really feel like they even had
7:25
Speaker 1: a hand in it as much anymore. But of course
7:26
Speaker 1: they're not going to turn off that money faucet. And
7:29
Speaker 1: the way this fantastic article in The Guardian by Alex
7:31
Speaker 1: Petro Titus puts it. The article, by the way, it's
7:34
Speaker 1: called Disco Demolition, The night they tried to crush Black music.
7:37
Speaker 1: That last part we're going to get into um in
7:39
Speaker 1: a big way very soon. They make a really good point.
7:43
Speaker 1: It's even the record labels were making a lot of
7:44
Speaker 1: money off disco. They were holding their nose. They were
7:47
Speaker 1: worried about it crashing, but they wanted it to crash
7:49
Speaker 1: so they could go back to classic rock. There was
7:52
Speaker 1: also a grassroots anti disco movement, a national effort on
7:55
Speaker 1: the part of people involved, so that that's that disco
7:58
Speaker 1: sucks movement. So Steve Dahl and the executives UH and
8:02
Speaker 1: responsible for promotions at the ball field at Kamiskey Park
8:07
Speaker 1: UH decided that this was something that could be capitalized on.
8:11
Speaker 1: UM So Steve Dahl and Gary Meyer, who were both
8:14
Speaker 1: disc jockeys, actually at the w l u p radio
8:17
Speaker 1: station in Chicago called the Loop FM. If you ever
8:20
Speaker 1: been in Chicago, you know there's a part of the
8:22
Speaker 1: city called the Loop where you can take the L
8:25
Speaker 1: train kind of orbits um different neighborhoods on the outskirts
8:28
Speaker 1: of the city and then various points kind of take
8:30
Speaker 1: you more into the city. Chicagoans tell me if I
8:33
Speaker 1: even remotely got that right, I think I'm closed. But
8:36
Speaker 1: Dall had moved to w l u P U from
8:39
Speaker 1: a rival station called w d a I, and that
8:43
Speaker 1: was because that station had switched to an all disco format,
8:47
Speaker 1: which was something that was happening all across the country
8:51
Speaker 1: in nineties seventy nine in particular. So a lot of
8:54
Speaker 1: rock DJs, We're getting their lunch eaten by the this
8:58
Speaker 1: this format change, by these disc a dj So there
9:00
Speaker 1: was a lot of resentment. There was a lot of
9:04
Speaker 1: simmering kind of you know, um bitterness toward this movement.
9:09
Speaker 1: And again because this, you know, a city like Chicago
9:12
Speaker 1: is like a rock city. You mean, there's a lot
9:13
Speaker 1: of jazz there and stuff too, but you think of
9:15
Speaker 1: chicagoan's kind of blue collar rock folks, and it's definitely
9:20
Speaker 1: even still like that to this day. So this was
9:23
Speaker 1: a place that made sense to be ground zero for
9:26
Speaker 1: that's kind of like destruction of disco, because these these
9:30
Speaker 1: concerns were very real, not to mention, like you said, Ben,
9:34
Speaker 1: the the the move away from the album format to
9:38
Speaker 1: the single format and away from the live music venue
9:41
Speaker 1: to the club was also busy, and people off Zanna Do. Sorry, guys,
9:47
Speaker 1: that's what I was trying to think of. Zanna Do.
9:50
Speaker 1: The nineteen eight film Remember Zanna Do Do? You guys
9:53
Speaker 1: remember they had Olivia Newton, John Electra Light Orchestra. No, yeah,
10:00
Speaker 1: you're yeah. Yes, it's a roller skating movie. Um, and
10:05
Speaker 1: it is not very good, but it is as an
10:08
Speaker 1: artifact of a time and place. It's such a specific,
10:12
Speaker 1: such a specific genre, that I think it naturally becomes
10:16
Speaker 1: number one in the roller skating musicals of the nineteen eighties.
10:21
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is the Disco is not for everyone.
10:25
Speaker 1: And there's this great article and Rolling Stone where they
10:29
Speaker 1: recount some of Steve Doll's statements two newscasters of the day,
10:34
Speaker 1: and he says he's listing out the reasons that he
10:38
Speaker 1: doesn't care for disco. He's pretty humorous. He says, I
10:41
Speaker 1: hate the taste of pina coladas. I'm allergic to gold jewelry,
10:44
Speaker 1: so there's nothing there for me. You have to spend
10:46
Speaker 1: so much time blow dry in your hair. It's a
10:48
Speaker 1: waste of energy. And uh you can tell. Of course,
10:53
Speaker 1: radio station personalities tend to we tend to be big personalities.
10:57
Speaker 1: So he is be and humorous, but he is also
11:03
Speaker 1: not He's also trying to find a creative way to
11:05
Speaker 1: protest against the dominance of disco, and he and his
11:10
Speaker 1: buddy Gary, he just mentioned At first, they said, all right,
11:14
Speaker 1: we're gonna just blow up a bunch of disco records
11:17
Speaker 1: on the field between the games. And they also cooked
11:23
Speaker 1: up this scheme with Bill Veeck, who was the owner
11:26
Speaker 1: of White Sox at the time. And Bill had another problem.
11:30
Speaker 1: The season wasn't going super well and he really wanted
11:33
Speaker 1: to increase attendance. He wanted those butts in the seat. Uh.
11:38
Speaker 1: And his son Michael, who was about twenty eight at
11:42
Speaker 1: the time, was instrumental in talking his father into doing
11:46
Speaker 1: this promotion because Michael, like Steve and like Gary, hated disco.
11:53
Speaker 1: He thought it was a blight on the American music
11:56
Speaker 1: scene and disco bashing, his mind, became a celebrity cause
12:02
Speaker 1: just because there wasn't really anything else to do. And
12:06
Speaker 1: you know, interestingly enough, the White Sox had experimented with
12:10
Speaker 1: a themed disco night before. Two years before this event,
12:14
Speaker 1: they had a disco night that was celebrating disco, so
12:17
Speaker 1: this one would be dissing disco. It's a disco disc.
12:25
Speaker 1: Disco dis disastrous, dystopia demolition. We have them, We're demolishing
12:31
Speaker 1: this this series of alliteration, alliterateate of terms. Remember that
12:43
Speaker 1: movie demolition man there was what were they for? Were
12:48
Speaker 1: there for wiping? It was unclear. It was on the
12:50
Speaker 1: back of a toilet. Sorry, it was just foolish to
12:52
Speaker 1: not know. And uh, Sylvester Stalone was haunted. But this,
12:57
Speaker 1: so this seems like it could be kind of fun.
13:00
Speaker 1: You go to the show or you go to the game,
13:03
Speaker 1: you bring a disco record with you, and you pay
13:07
Speaker 1: cents to watch the album's all get blown up together.
13:11
Speaker 1: So it's a little spectacle, you know what I mean.
13:13
Speaker 1: No one's getting hurt. The record companies probably don't care
13:16
Speaker 1: because you've already bought the record, the band already got
13:19
Speaker 1: their money, right, or whichever artists were mentioning. But soon
13:23
Speaker 1: enough it became clear that everybody, from the owner of
13:26
Speaker 1: the White Sox to the DJs involved, had no idea
13:30
Speaker 1: how popular this concept was. Especially you're only charging people cents.
13:36
Speaker 1: Come on, that's like the cheapest day in town, and
13:38
Speaker 1: I want to jump in here. It was ninety eight
13:40
Speaker 1: cents for a double header two so you got eight
13:43
Speaker 1: pmatings of baseball, so you could just it's like an
13:46
Speaker 1: all day thing. You to go to a game, watch
13:49
Speaker 1: the stuff get blow up, get another game. Well at
13:51
Speaker 1: least in concept, and so it's just like that, that's
13:54
Speaker 1: that's a really good deal. It's forty eight. It's like
13:58
Speaker 1: less than fifty cents or game right, too good a deal.
14:02
Speaker 1: In fact, they didn't expect the turnout they were going
14:05
Speaker 1: to get because I think they were looking at this
14:08
Speaker 1: whole disco sucks thing is sort of a novelty, sort
14:11
Speaker 1: of a way to be a little contrarian, like you said, Ben,
14:14
Speaker 1: to sort of like support that whole of Chicago, you know,
14:17
Speaker 1: rock mentality or whatever, and sell a few extra tickets
14:21
Speaker 1: in the meantime. But it was way more popular than
14:27
Speaker 1: I think anybody planned. And part of that was that
14:30
Speaker 1: people were bringing records right that they were wanted to
14:33
Speaker 1: see blown up. But it wasn't really clear to the
14:38
Speaker 1: people that were taking tickets, you know, which ones were
14:41
Speaker 1: disco officially and which ones weren't. And to that end,
14:44
Speaker 1: I want to bring up an interesting point the genre,
14:48
Speaker 1: the idea of disco it is referring to. I mean,
14:50
Speaker 1: think about it. It's like a club is called a disco.
14:53
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not getting the order of operations here, right,
14:56
Speaker 1: but I mean a disc is a vinyl record, So
15:00
Speaker 1: it's just referring to playing records, so disco songs, while
15:05
Speaker 1: it ended up being associated with a genre and kind
15:08
Speaker 1: of a four on the floor, you know, kick drum
15:10
Speaker 1: kind of thing with percussion and stuff. A lot of
15:13
Speaker 1: there's a lot of genre hopping within the supposed genre
15:17
Speaker 1: that is disco. I would say the beat is a
15:20
Speaker 1: disco beat, but then you can apply that to like techno,
15:25
Speaker 1: you can apply that to toum house music or whatever.
15:27
Speaker 1: But that's of course came came later, and we'll get
15:29
Speaker 1: into that. Chicago played a big role in that as
15:31
Speaker 1: well later down the line. But people were bringing all
15:34
Speaker 1: kinds of records, but they were bringing like R and
15:36
Speaker 1: B records music by black artists, and it became, you know,
15:41
Speaker 1: a little bit clear that the whole disco sucks movement
15:46
Speaker 1: some of the folks involved in that, we're using it
15:49
Speaker 1: as a way of kind of participating in veiled racism,
15:54
Speaker 1: not very veiled, not very veiled. But you mentioned abbas
15:57
Speaker 1: about as white as you can get, you know, with
16:00
Speaker 1: with a with a band. I mean, there are a
16:01
Speaker 1: bunch of Swedes, you know, playing kind of disco music,
16:04
Speaker 1: but a lot of the top hits, you know, of
16:07
Speaker 1: the disco age were from black artists, and that was
16:10
Speaker 1: not the case prior to that in terms of like
16:13
Speaker 1: what was popular on the radio was a lot of
16:15
Speaker 1: white you know, long hair kind of like rock and
16:18
Speaker 1: rollers or whatever in the sixties and seventies. And of
16:20
Speaker 1: course there was some you know, popular black sixties motown
16:25
Speaker 1: of course and all of that stuff, but it wasn't
16:27
Speaker 1: the same. This was very very mainstreaming, and I think
16:30
Speaker 1: a lot of people resented that and used as an
16:31
Speaker 1: opportunity to be nasty towards these these black artists. So
16:36
Speaker 1: people were bringing all kinds of stuff that wasn't quote
16:38
Speaker 1: unquote disco, and they were told when the people taking
16:42
Speaker 1: tickets as their supervisors, I don't know, this is a
16:44
Speaker 1: really disco. That doesn't matter if they brought a record,
16:46
Speaker 1: give him a ticket. Yeah, And that still wasn't enough.
16:51
Speaker 1: Fans were busting down the gates, they were climbing over
16:56
Speaker 1: the walls. More than seventy five thousand people. We're filling
17:01
Speaker 1: the stadium, not even a lot of them. Not not
17:04
Speaker 1: so much for the games, even though, as you mentioned,
17:06
Speaker 1: max is a doubleheader. They just wanted to see the
17:09
Speaker 1: records explode. And the crowd was especially during the first game,
17:15
Speaker 1: they were already rowdy. They were throwing records, you know,
17:19
Speaker 1: supposedly disco records. They were throwing cherry bombs. They were
17:23
Speaker 1: throwing like anything they had at the players on the field.
17:29
Speaker 1: So this is, as you can imagine, kind of distracting
17:31
Speaker 1: to the guys who are there to play baseball. The
17:34
Speaker 1: Socks lose the first game to the Tigers, and it's
17:37
Speaker 1: four to one, and then right the game's over. So
17:41
Speaker 1: the part of the show everybody really wants to see
17:43
Speaker 1: is about to begin. Our DJ Dall comes onto the field.
17:47
Speaker 1: He's wearing camo and a helmet, and uh, everybody still
17:53
Speaker 1: is throwing beer and vital records at him, and he's
17:57
Speaker 1: cheering them on. He's like, this is the world largest
18:00
Speaker 1: dance I Disco rally. We took the records you bought tonight.
18:04
Speaker 1: We got him in a giant box. We're gonna blow
18:06
Speaker 1: him up real good. And everyone's like, WHOA, yeah, how
18:10
Speaker 1: do he blows them them up real good? Ye? Seeing
18:16
Speaker 1: what this guy looked like at this time, I actually
18:19
Speaker 1: haven't seen a photo of the guy describing to his max, Uh, he's, uh,
18:23
Speaker 1: what you call it a military outfit? I mean it's
18:25
Speaker 1: a it's a stretch. I would say, Uh, he's got
18:28
Speaker 1: real big, like seventies early eighties glasses. The hair is
18:34
Speaker 1: pretty scruffy to say the least. Um, it's an interesting
18:37
Speaker 1: look to say the least, it looks like it looks
18:39
Speaker 1: almost like a like a mix between a hippie and
18:43
Speaker 1: a would be dictator. That's very appropriate given his you know,
18:46
Speaker 1: what he's doing here is ultimately stirring up a mob
18:51
Speaker 1: with rhetoric, you know, surrounding what is ultimately an ideological perspective.
18:56
Speaker 1: You know, I mean it sounds silly now we think
18:59
Speaker 1: about it, like dis go whatever. It seems so frivolous
19:01
Speaker 1: and like this whole period of excess that was sort
19:04
Speaker 1: of like an antithesis to this the free love of
19:06
Speaker 1: the sixties and you know, psychedelics, it was more about
19:09
Speaker 1: cocaine and like longevity and just like endurance. You know,
19:12
Speaker 1: you would just you know, party boogie woogie woog until
19:15
Speaker 1: you just can't book you no more and all that stuff.
19:17
Speaker 1: But it was it was all kind of surfacy, like
19:19
Speaker 1: all of the like meaning and counterculture that was wrapped
19:24
Speaker 1: up in the sixties and seventies, all of that kind
19:26
Speaker 1: of went out the window with disco because it was
19:28
Speaker 1: just like all about looking good and like being hot
19:32
Speaker 1: and having money, you know what I mean. It wasn't
19:35
Speaker 1: that they didn't really have a cause it was it
19:37
Speaker 1: was all just kind of this like vacuous surfacing stuff.
19:41
Speaker 1: So this guy, who, like you said, represents you know,
19:45
Speaker 1: the the antithity, the backlash to what I just described,
19:48
Speaker 1: is up on a podium, you know, working this group
19:52
Speaker 1: up into a froth and then exploding these records and
19:56
Speaker 1: this symbolic act, you know, with shards of wreck. By
19:59
Speaker 1: the way, this does not seem very safe. You ever
20:01
Speaker 1: seen a shard of a vinyl record? I mean he
20:04
Speaker 1: cut somebody with one of those. I mean, you got
20:06
Speaker 1: like shrapnell of this stuff flying everywhere? Or were people
20:09
Speaker 1: wearing safety goggles? I mean, I know it was a
20:11
Speaker 1: different time, but come on, when when I was a kid,
20:14
Speaker 1: this is a true story, I did not understand that
20:18
Speaker 1: breaking a record was a figurative thing. I thought that
20:22
Speaker 1: you became a record breaker by physically breaking records. Uh.
20:26
Speaker 1: Apologies to my parents, because I got renaissance tasty vital
20:31
Speaker 1: and it came in. I told my mom I was
20:33
Speaker 1: a record breaker. I oddly enough to not get in trouble,
20:37
Speaker 1: but I did. I did hurt myself, so I know
20:39
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. The Vinyl Shards don't try
20:42
Speaker 1: it molten and sharp, and it's all just shooting out
20:46
Speaker 1: of the crowd and people are just like losing their minds.
20:49
Speaker 1: You know. It's like all over the field, people start
20:52
Speaker 1: channing Disco sucks, school sucks, Disco sucks. And they're getting
20:57
Speaker 1: out of their seats now and jumping over the barricade
21:01
Speaker 1: down into the field and like cult like, you know,
21:05
Speaker 1: dancing like around this this this dumpster fire literally while
21:11
Speaker 1: being rained down, you know, by while the Vinyl Shards
21:13
Speaker 1: are raining down from on high, they're stealing stuff. They're
21:17
Speaker 1: starting to loot like bats and batting helmets and things
21:20
Speaker 1: like that, and of course you know they're politely being
21:22
Speaker 1: asked by the announcers to please return to their seats. Right, Yeah,
21:26
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's increasingly ineffective that there's a there's an
21:30
Speaker 1: interesting escalation here, like a back and forth, right, because
21:33
Speaker 1: individual people are really really intelligent, but big groups of
21:37
Speaker 1: people are really really dumb. So I learned about that
21:41
Speaker 1: recently at a hot air balloon festival. But anyhow, so
21:45
Speaker 1: we know we see these people trying to talk down
21:48
Speaker 1: the crowd, like you said, noll the p A. Their
21:50
Speaker 1: appeals are ignored. The owner of the White Sox gets
21:54
Speaker 1: on the field, he grabs a microphone and it's like, hey,
21:57
Speaker 1: come on, will you please sit down out and so
22:00
Speaker 1: we can play play baseball. And then this goes on
22:04
Speaker 1: for like forty minutes. The crowd in the stadium divides.
22:07
Speaker 1: There's still some fans who are in the stands right
22:10
Speaker 1: there in their seats, and they start a counter chant
22:13
Speaker 1: and they're just yelling back to your seats, back to
22:16
Speaker 1: your seats, and then they start playing take me out
22:21
Speaker 1: to the ball game. None of this works to the
22:23
Speaker 1: crowd is just even more adamant about this protest. So
22:27
Speaker 1: the Chicago police show up in full riot gear and
22:32
Speaker 1: start clearing the field while the crowd in the stands
22:36
Speaker 1: is starting to sing in kind of a petty spiteful way.
22:40
Speaker 1: Na na na na na na na na. Come on.
22:50
Speaker 1: Every time I hear that, I always say. They're saying
22:52
Speaker 1: gooden bye, like like a German like good bye, you
22:57
Speaker 1: know not, So this becomes kind the rallying cry, right
23:01
Speaker 1: because this is sort of like an anti disco anthem
23:04
Speaker 1: sort of. I mean not not not because of the
23:06
Speaker 1: content of the song. It's just saying like goodbye, ushering out,
23:09
Speaker 1: you know, the age of discom But it also is
23:12
Speaker 1: more of a more of a rock song. Yeah yeah,
23:15
Speaker 1: by the band Steam, who has been described as pop
23:18
Speaker 1: or psychedelic pop. But it's it's a good song. And
23:21
Speaker 1: you know, in the three of us are big, big
23:23
Speaker 1: fans of music across many genres. I don't know which,
23:27
Speaker 1: I don't know which side we would be on in
23:30
Speaker 1: this in this stadium. But here's the thing that's really interesting.
23:34
Speaker 1: It's something we've alluded to through this episode. Right now,
23:39
Speaker 1: A lot of people may think of Disco Demolition Night
23:43
Speaker 1: as a marketing stunt gone wrong, right, be careful what
23:47
Speaker 1: you wish for when you say you want more people
23:49
Speaker 1: to come to your stadium. But in the larger context,
23:55
Speaker 1: this shows us um. I think it's indicative of some
23:59
Speaker 1: growing intensions in Chicago and in the rest of the
24:03
Speaker 1: United States. Like you mentioned the idea that people were
24:09
Speaker 1: picking records by black artists and then we say we're
24:13
Speaker 1: going to destroy those. I want to go back to
24:16
Speaker 1: that excellent Rolling Stone article that Zack pointed out, which
24:21
Speaker 1: is watch disco demolition Night devolved into a fiery riot
24:26
Speaker 1: by Andy Green, and Green points out that for a
24:31
Speaker 1: lot of people, for a lot of non white people,
24:34
Speaker 1: this incident was very disturbing because everybody was aware that,
24:40
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the guys who were doing
24:41
Speaker 1: this were white dudes who are like burning records and
24:44
Speaker 1: rioting and whatnot, and disco as a genre was incredibly
24:48
Speaker 1: popular among many non white groups and people from different demographics,
24:53
Speaker 1: you know, gay people. Oh not to mention people from
24:56
Speaker 1: the gay community, right was a big part of it too,
24:59
Speaker 1: And there was a sense you know, and again the
25:02
Speaker 1: DJs responsible for this event would go on to say
25:05
Speaker 1: like I'm no homophobe, I'm no racist. I was this
25:07
Speaker 1: was more just like a tongue in cheek kind of
25:10
Speaker 1: stunt to you know, sort of like pok the finger
25:13
Speaker 1: in the eye would have become the kind of like
25:14
Speaker 1: prevailing you know genre in almost like in a in
25:19
Speaker 1: a an egregious way, in a way that was like
25:21
Speaker 1: seeming seemingly wiping out other culture. But that doesn't just
25:25
Speaker 1: because someone had doesn't have like an endgame in mind
25:28
Speaker 1: that other people Glamanto as part of a movement doesn't
25:31
Speaker 1: mean those other people aren't part of the movement too.
25:34
Speaker 1: And and there certainly were homophobes and racists involved. And
25:38
Speaker 1: we'll get to a really fascinating story in a little
25:41
Speaker 1: bit that Zach found as well, from the perspective of
25:44
Speaker 1: of of of a black person who was actually working
25:46
Speaker 1: at the field the day of of this of this riot,
25:49
Speaker 1: and the way he was treated. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I
25:53
Speaker 1: mean there's a guy named Nile Rogers speaking about this
25:55
Speaker 1: incident who said that for his yeah, yeah, he said
26:00
Speaker 1: that for this community felt like Nazi book burning. You know,
26:04
Speaker 1: Roger said, quote, this is America, the home of jazz
26:07
Speaker 1: and rock, and people are now afraid to even say
26:09
Speaker 1: the word disco. And you know, I think we stumble
26:13
Speaker 1: upon such an important thing about American culture here. Like
26:18
Speaker 1: you said, nol Doll just said, Look, he said, we
26:21
Speaker 1: were just kids who were basically taking the piss out
26:24
Speaker 1: of a genre of music. We're not. It wasn't meant
26:29
Speaker 1: to be racist, it wasn't meant to be homophobic. But
26:32
Speaker 1: I think you make an excellent point that just because
26:34
Speaker 1: that guy didn't intend to do this, it doesn't mean
26:37
Speaker 1: that other people involved, We're also not being racist or homophobic,
26:43
Speaker 1: because a couple definitely We're so there's this idea. It's
26:48
Speaker 1: mentioned in that Guardian article we sided earlier that disco
26:53
Speaker 1: is a threat to some kind of white status quo.
26:57
Speaker 1: You know that there's a culture war brew Wing and
27:01
Speaker 1: d J's in Detroit. I didn't know this week out
27:03
Speaker 1: in the story, DJ's in Detroit formed a disco themed
27:07
Speaker 1: vigilante group called, and this is true, folks, the Disco
27:11
Speaker 1: Ducks Clan. Because Disco Duck was was kind of a
27:16
Speaker 1: a lot of people point to Rick D's Disco Duck.
27:19
Speaker 1: We should actually play a little clip of it. It's
27:21
Speaker 1: it's too silly, down too essentially a Donald Duck kind
27:36
Speaker 1: of voice over at disco beats. It really signaled like
27:41
Speaker 1: this is a joke. This has become a joke. Quack quack,
27:45
Speaker 1: you know it's I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's it's
27:47
Speaker 1: it's just a total novelty song. And just showed that
27:50
Speaker 1: this that bubble that the record labels were worried about,
27:53
Speaker 1: it was. It was, it was there and and and
27:55
Speaker 1: all it needed for it to burst was this moment
27:59
Speaker 1: at com Ski Park. And that was literally like the
28:01
Speaker 1: powder Keg moment that burst the disco bubble and then
28:04
Speaker 1: made it just like straight up not cool because again,
28:07
Speaker 1: it also represented kind of yuppie culture. It represented kind
28:11
Speaker 1: of these like you know, but then then we're getting
28:13
Speaker 1: into the eighties and then the disco kind of molds
28:16
Speaker 1: into like, you know, eighties kind of like you know,
28:20
Speaker 1: electronic music, like things like you know, Culture Club and
28:23
Speaker 1: Human League, which I love all of that stuff. But
28:26
Speaker 1: if you watch a movie like American Psycho and you see,
28:29
Speaker 1: you know, the way the serial killer Patrick Bateman is
28:32
Speaker 1: sort of um portrayed as this eighties music loving, you know,
28:37
Speaker 1: suit wearing, fine business card having psychopath, you understand what
28:43
Speaker 1: how it's parodying that kind of yuppy culture that sort
28:45
Speaker 1: of began with disco and didn't really go away. It
28:49
Speaker 1: just started calling it something else and the sound changed. Yeah,
28:52
Speaker 1: and and music should always be evolving, right, I think
28:56
Speaker 1: that's a very solid argument to make. But this is
29:01
Speaker 1: a flashpoint for the American attitude about disco. And after
29:08
Speaker 1: this moment, disco begins to encounter a really sharp decline.
29:13
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that everybody all at once decided
29:15
Speaker 1: they didn't like disco. It had just been so popular
29:19
Speaker 1: that it was unsustainable, you know what I mean. So
29:22
Speaker 1: if you go to that we mentioned the stat for
29:24
Speaker 1: the first half of ninety nine, right, all but three
29:28
Speaker 1: of the top hit songs or disco songs. But if
29:31
Speaker 1: you go to the second part of nine, you'll see
29:35
Speaker 1: there was only one disco song that made it to
29:38
Speaker 1: the top of the charts, and it only did it
29:40
Speaker 1: for a week. It was Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Till
29:44
Speaker 1: You Get Enough. I'm falling into DJ voice, you know,
29:49
Speaker 1: like we're back from the commercial for sure, which is
29:51
Speaker 1: which is a stone called banger, and that song holds
29:54
Speaker 1: up to this day despite you know, it is that
29:57
Speaker 1: art from the artist the conversation, I think it's a
30:00
Speaker 1: case by case basis. But for me, some of the
30:02
Speaker 1: music of Michael jacks especially his classic error is unimpeachably great.
30:06
Speaker 1: And don't Stop Till You Get Enough. Yes, it is
30:08
Speaker 1: a disco song. It has a lot of hallmarks of
30:11
Speaker 1: disco culture, those strings and that don't bank ant all
30:15
Speaker 1: of the instrumentation of that, uh, is very much in
30:18
Speaker 1: line with disco, but it also like what even is disco?
30:22
Speaker 1: You know, I mean it really it was just it
30:24
Speaker 1: just danceable music with like cool arrangements, with kind of
30:28
Speaker 1: an airy uppeat quality to it. Like, I think that's
30:31
Speaker 1: the issue here, is like it was more of a
30:34
Speaker 1: culture than it was a genre, you know. Yeah. Denny Hilton,
30:39
Speaker 1: writing Froxford University Press, he had this article called the
30:44
Speaker 1: Birth of Disco and I learned some pretty interesting stuff
30:48
Speaker 1: from that. I didn't know the etymology, you know, I
30:50
Speaker 1: love etymology. Disco tech is a French word that just
30:53
Speaker 1: means library of phonographic records, like tech. And I was,
30:58
Speaker 1: I was, I was posing this question earlier, and a
31:00
Speaker 1: conjectured that had to be disco is just the disc
31:03
Speaker 1: and the disco is just a place where you go
31:05
Speaker 1: to listen to the disc. Yeah. Yeah, it goes back
31:08
Speaker 1: to it was a type of French nightclub emergent in Paris.
31:12
Speaker 1: They had started playing these records during the Nazi occupation
31:16
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, and eventually some clubs just started
31:20
Speaker 1: calling themselves, you know, like the disco dick and and
31:24
Speaker 1: uh then later it came over across the pond to
31:28
Speaker 1: the US. But but yeah, it's tough to kind of
31:31
Speaker 1: define it. And I like the point. I like the
31:34
Speaker 1: supposition that it might simply be a matter of culture, right,
31:38
Speaker 1: as much as a rigorously defined musical genre, which it
31:43
Speaker 1: kind of isn't rigorously defined. And so now we know
31:47
Speaker 1: there's this mainstream push against disco, but it doesn't go away.
31:53
Speaker 1: It kind of goes back underground where it was in
31:56
Speaker 1: the beginning. There's a pretty interesting thing that I wanted
32:06
Speaker 1: to ask you guys about. There's this argument that when
32:09
Speaker 1: it went back underground and it wasn't as mainstream as
32:12
Speaker 1: it happened in years past, that the artists were able
32:15
Speaker 1: to become even more adventurous and creative. You think, so
32:19
Speaker 1: you agree with that, Oh well, nineteen seventy nine was
32:22
Speaker 1: a really important year for music in the underground in
32:25
Speaker 1: terms of like indie which you might call indie music.
32:27
Speaker 1: Like nineteen seventy nine I believe was the year that
32:30
Speaker 1: like David Bowie's Low came out, and and Bowie certainly
32:33
Speaker 1: would dabble in, you know, dance dancing music with stuff
32:36
Speaker 1: like literally let's dance and uh fashion on Scary Monsters,
32:40
Speaker 1: But he took dance music and kind of like flipped
32:43
Speaker 1: it on its head and made it like sort of
32:45
Speaker 1: subversive dance music where it was like yeah, it has
32:48
Speaker 1: a fun disco b but it also has like a
32:51
Speaker 1: Japanese woman like screaming of the top for lungs and
32:54
Speaker 1: Japanese and like the sounds of glass breaking, and you know,
32:57
Speaker 1: like Robert Fripp's guitar sounded like a chainsaw cutting down
33:01
Speaker 1: a forest, you know, and you can really I tried
33:04
Speaker 1: to find a chronological list of of hit songs from
33:08
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, and it's true. It really does kind
33:12
Speaker 1: of appear that the first part of it is a
33:14
Speaker 1: lot of disco e type songs like Donna Summer, Herbie Man, Shalamar.
33:19
Speaker 1: You know, I believe that's uh. I believe that's a
33:21
Speaker 1: disco e type song. But then you have like, you know,
33:24
Speaker 1: Blondie with Heart of Glass, which is a disco song
33:28
Speaker 1: by Blondie. Because even artists that were more punk, we're
33:32
Speaker 1: getting into disco, like we talked about with Pink Floyd
33:35
Speaker 1: in the Wall. You know, they were like kind of
33:36
Speaker 1: a psych band, punk you know, whatever you wanna call it,
33:39
Speaker 1: experimental band, but they that song was a massive hit
33:41
Speaker 1: for them, and even if it wasn't like anything else
33:43
Speaker 1: they've ever done. And you know, Rod Stewart, if you
33:46
Speaker 1: want my body and you think I'm sexy. Like his
33:48
Speaker 1: earlier stuff was mega seventies and beautiful, like The Faces
33:51
Speaker 1: was kind of you know, folky, punky kind of roots music,
33:55
Speaker 1: you know. But then later when we get to that
33:58
Speaker 1: second half, you have Blondie you with a hit with
34:00
Speaker 1: the song Dreaming, just a disco song at all. It's
34:03
Speaker 1: much more of like what we would think now is
34:06
Speaker 1: like a proto kind of indie dream pop kind of song,
34:09
Speaker 1: you know, like something that Beach House would do almost
34:13
Speaker 1: you know. So it's a really interesting trajectory because then
34:16
Speaker 1: you have like Brian Eno and these artists that are
34:19
Speaker 1: helping some of these disco e type artists make more
34:22
Speaker 1: interesting stuff or take pieces of the disco sound and
34:26
Speaker 1: turn into something a little more interesting something. I'm a
34:29
Speaker 1: fan of that in every in every genre. That's one
34:32
Speaker 1: thing that I really love about hip hop as well,
34:35
Speaker 1: is you can you can take pretty much any aspect
34:39
Speaker 1: of any other genre of music and you can put
34:42
Speaker 1: it into a beat and it'll sound really good right
34:45
Speaker 1: with especially the hands of a talented producer. I think
34:48
Speaker 1: that kind of evolution should be welcomed. You know. It's
34:51
Speaker 1: always weird to me when I and I know, not
34:54
Speaker 1: all music is for all people, but it's weird to
34:56
Speaker 1: me when I hear someone say I disc like insert
35:01
Speaker 1: genre here, whether that's like um marengue, or whether it's
35:06
Speaker 1: you know, opera, or whether it's nineties alternative rock. The
35:09
Speaker 1: question is have you heard every song in that genre?
35:13
Speaker 1: Maybe you just haven't heard one that speaks to you.
35:16
Speaker 1: So it's such a weird broad brush to say, you know,
35:18
Speaker 1: I hate all disco. It seems like in this case,
35:21
Speaker 1: these people were saying, I hate what disco in my
35:25
Speaker 1: mind represents one million percents. Now that's that's that's why
35:30
Speaker 1: I said it was much more of a a lifestyle
35:33
Speaker 1: or like a brand than it was even a sound.
35:36
Speaker 1: And you know, we we get into kind of more
35:38
Speaker 1: modern times where now you know, like vapor wave for example,
35:42
Speaker 1: which is like a really interesting mash up kind of
35:46
Speaker 1: culture jamming sort of genre of music that will take
35:48
Speaker 1: everything from like elevator music to like gum commercials from
35:52
Speaker 1: the eighties to disco and like slow it down and
35:56
Speaker 1: kind of chopp and screw it to make really interesting
35:59
Speaker 1: subversive psychedelic dance music. You know Arthur Russell, for example,
36:04
Speaker 1: who's like, you know, he's he's an artist that's all
36:06
Speaker 1: over the place. He put out a kind of a
36:08
Speaker 1: series of avant disco kind of records and that became
36:12
Speaker 1: a thing too with DJs, and like, you know, then
36:15
Speaker 1: you start getting into like the mainstreaming of Kraft work
36:18
Speaker 1: and like German electronic or European electronic sounds, and that's
36:22
Speaker 1: all kind of part and parcel with that Bowie era
36:25
Speaker 1: that I was describing, because he went to Berlin to
36:28
Speaker 1: get off of cocaine and other drugs and he ended
36:31
Speaker 1: up making these three albums while he was there, produced
36:34
Speaker 1: by Brian you know, Low Lodger and Heroes, which are
36:37
Speaker 1: three of my favorite albums of all time and certainly
36:39
Speaker 1: of of Bowie's career. And then you start getting into like,
36:43
Speaker 1: you know, DJ's like Frankie Knuckles in Chicago who's using
36:48
Speaker 1: edits of disco songs and changing the speed and mashing
36:51
Speaker 1: them up with other sounds and synthesizers and stuff. So
36:54
Speaker 1: it's like, this is the city that you know, burned
36:57
Speaker 1: disco to the ground, became a really important city for
37:01
Speaker 1: a burgeoning new kind of club sound, which is disco
37:06
Speaker 1: in a way, like neo disco. Yeah, and this is
37:10
Speaker 1: where we want. So I've been trying so hard not
37:15
Speaker 1: to tell you guys bad disco jokes. But we're gonna get.
37:18
Speaker 1: We're gonna get a few days. We'll save for the end.
37:22
Speaker 1: You say that now, my friend. But uh, but we
37:24
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we did not follow up
37:28
Speaker 1: on a very important story that we talked about just
37:30
Speaker 1: a second ago. We said, we're gonna give you the
37:33
Speaker 1: experience of someone who is a civilian not involved in
37:37
Speaker 1: this riot. There's a guy named Vince Lawrence. It's the
37:40
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy nine. He has acquired a part
37:44
Speaker 1: time job at Commitsky Park as an usher. And Vince,
37:49
Speaker 1: you know, as a young black teenager, knew this wasn't
37:52
Speaker 1: maybe the ideal job, but he like It was very
37:56
Speaker 1: close to a neighborhood called Bridgeport, and at the time,
38:00
Speaker 1: according to Vince, he said, quote, it was common knowledge
38:04
Speaker 1: that you might not want to be hanging around after
38:06
Speaker 1: dark because there were people there who for sure don't
38:09
Speaker 1: like you based on your color. That's right, And just
38:12
Speaker 1: just a little extra context, Vince Lawrence's father was a
38:16
Speaker 1: guy named Eddie Thomas who worked, or believe founded or
38:20
Speaker 1: managed several funk acts who were on the label Curdam
38:24
Speaker 1: Records was the Chicago based like funk label artists like
38:27
Speaker 1: Captain Sky who you know funk also was kind of
38:31
Speaker 1: in the disco realmant times, but it was again it
38:34
Speaker 1: was lumped in. I would not say that it absolutely
38:37
Speaker 1: actually was that what you would associate with the disco sound.
38:41
Speaker 1: It was the kind of artist that you'd see on
38:42
Speaker 1: Soul Train. But Vince himself went on to become a
38:46
Speaker 1: pioneering electronic music producer in the genre that I was
38:49
Speaker 1: describing earlier, like the synth kind of like mash up,
38:52
Speaker 1: you know, neo future disco and and and funk kind
38:55
Speaker 1: of sounds. But yeah, so he's he's there, he's working
38:59
Speaker 1: at the stadium while this event is taking place, and
39:03
Speaker 1: um he sees some things that are pretty ugly. Mm hmmm, yeah,
39:07
Speaker 1: he really does. And bridge Board itself could be could
39:12
Speaker 1: be an episode you know, all its own. This area
39:16
Speaker 1: was very, very notorious for racial tension. There was even
39:20
Speaker 1: one white sox player, a guy named Thad Boseley, who
39:25
Speaker 1: was surrounded while he was driving through town. He was
39:27
Speaker 1: surrounded by a mob of people because he took a
39:31
Speaker 1: wrong turn after going home from a game, and the
39:35
Speaker 1: situation only ended, or like only diffused really when one
39:40
Speaker 1: of the people in the mob recognized him and said, oh, hey,
39:45
Speaker 1: you with the White Sox. We love that team, you
39:47
Speaker 1: know what I mean, which is terrifying. Lawrence, though knew
39:52
Speaker 1: that this job was an opportunity. He said, look, if
39:56
Speaker 1: there are people who were wealthy enough to sit in
39:59
Speaker 1: the stadium boxes, then they're probably gonna tip me. All right,
40:02
Speaker 1: I can get a good view of the game. And
40:05
Speaker 1: there are always these promo events, these theme nights, right
40:09
Speaker 1: like Elvis Knights, Country Music Nights, etcetera. And Vince Lawrence
40:15
Speaker 1: was aware of Steve Dahl. He liked them. He wanted
40:19
Speaker 1: to see this band called Teenage Radiation. They had recorded
40:24
Speaker 1: a parody single, I don't know if we mentioned this
40:27
Speaker 1: yet called do you Think I'm Disco? Yeah, that led
40:32
Speaker 1: up to this, you know, to this event. And when
40:36
Speaker 1: you hear Lawrence's account of this, you can tell that
40:39
Speaker 1: he quickly clocked something wasn't right. He noticed firsthand because
40:46
Speaker 1: he was there. He noticed that people we're coming with
40:49
Speaker 1: disco records, but a lot of people were, just as
40:52
Speaker 1: we said earlier, picking any music that was made by
40:55
Speaker 1: a black artist, and he told his boss. He said, look,
40:58
Speaker 1: they're not These aren't all the disco records obviously, R
41:01
Speaker 1: and B. I see funk. Should I make them go
41:04
Speaker 1: home and come back with a disco record? And then
41:07
Speaker 1: that's when the decision was made. Now they if they
41:09
Speaker 1: have a record, take it, give them that, you know,
41:11
Speaker 1: give them that ticket. And he says, quote, I want
41:16
Speaker 1: to say, maybe the person bringing the record just made
41:18
Speaker 1: a mistake. But given the amount of mistakes I witnessed,
41:22
Speaker 1: why weren't there any cheap trick records or air supply right?
41:26
Speaker 1: No Carpenters records. Yeah. I was talking to Zach um
41:29
Speaker 1: or any researcher who whodug a lot of this stuff up,
41:32
Speaker 1: who is a very thoughtful, smart and um have her
41:35
Speaker 1: of great taste, And he pointed out this section we
41:38
Speaker 1: were talking about in particular, like there are a lot
41:40
Speaker 1: of like kind of um, I guess you could call
41:43
Speaker 1: it easy listening or like kind of like you know,
41:47
Speaker 1: maybe adult contemporary artists that you could potentially more easily
41:53
Speaker 1: blur the line between what they are and what disco is.
41:57
Speaker 1: But none of those were even making it. And like
41:59
Speaker 1: things like air supply are things like you know, Hall
42:01
Speaker 1: and Oates or something like that. Not that they're adult contemporary,
42:05
Speaker 1: but like you know, they've got some songs that you
42:07
Speaker 1: could construe with a discoe type vibe. So it started
42:10
Speaker 1: to seem like there was intent. Yeah, I think it's
42:13
Speaker 1: what we're getting now, absolutely, And Lawrence's account I think
42:18
Speaker 1: is really important to keep in mind. He says, quote,
42:21
Speaker 1: I was one of the few African American people in
42:23
Speaker 1: the stadium. Steve Dahl said it wasn't discriminatory. He was
42:26
Speaker 1: an equal opportunities offender or whatever. But Steve didn't invite
42:30
Speaker 1: brothers to commit ski part. So once the scenes starts
42:35
Speaker 1: kind of veering towards more like full blown riot, and
42:39
Speaker 1: we've got estimates as high as fifty thousand people rushing
42:42
Speaker 1: the field, absolutely more chaos than the meager, you know,
42:47
Speaker 1: police presence that was there could deal with. Lawrence started
42:51
Speaker 1: to feel really unsafe, like because he was being targeted
42:55
Speaker 1: by these folks. What he did, according to him, how
43:00
Speaker 1: he felt was because he was black, and he's he's
43:02
Speaker 1: a black kid, you know, living in Chicago. He was
43:05
Speaker 1: wearing a loop T shirt, so he was what's it
43:07
Speaker 1: inter between me and the next usher trying to get
43:10
Speaker 1: back to his locker. So at one point you have
43:12
Speaker 1: a guy that walks up to him and looks him
43:15
Speaker 1: right in the face and says, hey, you, disco sucks
43:18
Speaker 1: and just snaps a record in his face, like in
43:22
Speaker 1: his face. Well, now, of course, vinyls right, yet eye
43:26
Speaker 1: level that could easily hurt you. We're not even, I'm
43:29
Speaker 1: not even. It's more about the gesture. It's almost like
43:31
Speaker 1: spitting at somebody, you know. It's like I'm targeting you
43:35
Speaker 1: with this act of aggression. It's not like, hey, we're
43:37
Speaker 1: on the same team. Disco sucks. It's like, hey, you
43:41
Speaker 1: person who I associate with this what you represent sucks.
43:45
Speaker 1: And in this situation, it's almost like disco is a
43:48
Speaker 1: stand in for like being black or something or just
43:51
Speaker 1: being different, you know, right exactly. And this also is
43:56
Speaker 1: only one example of how things can go raw in
44:00
Speaker 1: big sporting events. Uh, this is also, I would say,
44:03
Speaker 1: even more importantly, it proves to us that there's always
44:06
Speaker 1: more to the story behind the headline. And Max, we're
44:10
Speaker 1: talking a little bit off air, you my friend, to
44:14
Speaker 1: have your own first hand account of things going a
44:17
Speaker 1: little south at a ballgame. Huh yeah, yeah, yeah. As
44:20
Speaker 1: It's been noted multiple times here on the show. I
44:23
Speaker 1: am a dispassionate sports fan on Dispassionate again, and I
44:28
Speaker 1: went to the first ever and Al wild Card game
44:31
Speaker 1: back in twelve between Atlanta and St. Louis. And for
44:35
Speaker 1: people who know that, um Sam Holberg had one of
44:38
Speaker 1: the most egregious calls in baseball history, called an infield
44:41
Speaker 1: fly on a ball that was in the outfield. He
44:44
Speaker 1: was the outfield umpire. It doesn't make any sense any
44:46
Speaker 1: of it, and it very much changed the game. So
44:48
Speaker 1: for nineteen minutes, Atlanta fans showered the field with beer bottles,
44:53
Speaker 1: just screaming. It was very, very similar to this. There's
44:56
Speaker 1: a million videos of it and stuff, and so we
44:59
Speaker 1: were in it was I'm like, yeah, I've experienced this before.
45:02
Speaker 1: I will say my one regret though, is I had
45:04
Speaker 1: just turned twenty one at the time. I had finished
45:06
Speaker 1: my beer already. I didn't have anything to throw. It's
45:11
Speaker 1: like that old Mitch Hedberg joke where they say who
45:14
Speaker 1: here's feels like a human being in he cheers, and
45:17
Speaker 1: they say, who he feels like a monster. I did
45:20
Speaker 1: not know there was another choice. Yeah, And I mean
45:23
Speaker 1: I will say the one lucky thing for both teams
45:27
Speaker 1: was that it happened in the eighth inning, and it
45:29
Speaker 1: cut off selling beer at the seventh inning stretch, so
45:32
Speaker 1: there was a finite amount you could have. Okay, this
45:38
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with anything, but I just
45:40
Speaker 1: want to deliver on what we promised here. Towards the
45:42
Speaker 1: end of the episode, what did the cops say when
45:47
Speaker 1: he entered the disco club? Hold On, hold on, hold
45:51
Speaker 1: on a good classy, cheesy joke, like this is almost
45:56
Speaker 1: like a riddle. Um No, I don't what is he say?
46:00
Speaker 1: Get down? So I didn't write that one. Yeah, I
46:09
Speaker 1: will say though, I kind of miss the dance moves
46:12
Speaker 1: of the disco era. You know, the one finger kind
46:16
Speaker 1: of like cross chest thing, and then you alternate lots
46:19
Speaker 1: of very big moves. I like the one where you
46:23
Speaker 1: kind of get down. Well a lot of these were
46:24
Speaker 1: James Brown moves to they were just slowed down and
46:28
Speaker 1: made like palatable for people that weren't really that good
46:30
Speaker 1: at dancing. But then you know, there was certainly it
46:32
Speaker 1: was a big dance scene. There were a lot of
46:34
Speaker 1: dance It was all about the dance moves and being
46:36
Speaker 1: seen on the floor. There's a really cool movie that
46:39
Speaker 1: a buddy of mine turned me onto called The Last
46:42
Speaker 1: Days of Disco. I think it's what it's called. It's
46:45
Speaker 1: a Slim Whitman movie. It's got Chloe Seve Agney in
46:49
Speaker 1: it or set seventy. However you say that name, I
46:51
Speaker 1: least get it wrong. And Um, who's the actor that
46:54
Speaker 1: plays the vampire hunter in the Underworld movies? Who Kate Beckinsale?
47:01
Speaker 1: Kate Beckinsal in it? No, it's just Kate beck and Stale.
47:05
Speaker 1: Um what that Isaac's guy that Max Links. There's a
47:12
Speaker 1: handful of other smaller bit part actors that are in
47:14
Speaker 1: that I recognize, but I can tell you what their
47:15
Speaker 1: names are. But it's it's a little bit stilted. It's
47:18
Speaker 1: got this kind of like fly on the Wall kind
47:21
Speaker 1: of perspective, and there's some definitely definite cringe moments. But
47:24
Speaker 1: I believe there you'll see some parts where there's some
47:27
Speaker 1: dudes roaming through the streets with leather jackets and there's
47:30
Speaker 1: an altercation with them shouting disco sucks at some of
47:33
Speaker 1: the main characters. So I think the movie is meant
47:35
Speaker 1: to take place in nineteen seventy nine. So uh, if
47:38
Speaker 1: you want to see kind of like a crystallization of
47:40
Speaker 1: what the heyday of this whole would have been like.
47:43
Speaker 1: And then um, I think even there's like a post
47:46
Speaker 1: mortem thing where it's like, well, that was fine while
47:48
Speaker 1: it lasted, and now we all have to go get
47:50
Speaker 1: real jobs, like, you know, grow our hair out. I
47:54
Speaker 1: think it was just such a creative time to musically.
47:58
Speaker 1: There were these amazing salts that probably wouldn't have been
48:01
Speaker 1: made in an any other environment or in any other
48:04
Speaker 1: kind of cultural soil, you know. So we should all
48:08
Speaker 1: be grateful for disco, even if it's not particularly your jam,
48:15
Speaker 1: because it tells us a lot about American society. And
48:19
Speaker 1: this is this was one heck of a story. I
48:22
Speaker 1: know we went a little long today, but really enjoyed
48:25
Speaker 1: this one. So thank you. Dear Ridiculous Historians were coming
48:29
Speaker 1: on this journey with us. What's your favorite weird disco song?
48:33
Speaker 1: Can't wait to hear tell us all about it on
48:36
Speaker 1: our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us,
48:40
Speaker 1: you know, just we're around. We're everywhere on the internet
48:44
Speaker 1: these days. Big big thanks to our super producer, Mr
48:48
Speaker 1: Max Disco Williams. You like that nickname, it's an acronym
48:56
Speaker 1: though it's a it's a. It's an acronym that stands
48:58
Speaker 1: for discover are of interesting curling organizations? There it is
49:03
Speaker 1: well done. Now did we work on that a little
49:06
Speaker 1: bit off air? We didn't. Yes, we didn't question about that.
49:12
Speaker 1: Let's be behind the curtain peak, behind the v I P.
49:17
Speaker 1: Discotheque curtain. No, I had a great time with this one.
49:20
Speaker 1: I feel like we all did. Yeah. So also, as always,
49:24
Speaker 1: thanks to Christ Frost you know it is Eves, Jeff Coche,
49:27
Speaker 1: thanks to our research associates Zach Williams and Jeff Bartlett
49:32
Speaker 1: and no thanks to you man. We are like, we
49:34
Speaker 1: should go do a disco thing. Is is there any disco? Well,
49:38
Speaker 1: nowadays they just call them dance parties, you know, and
49:40
Speaker 1: you can certainly have themed ones or maybe there's ones
49:43
Speaker 1: with We didn't even get into that. We believe we
49:45
Speaker 1: briefly discussed the film Zanna Do. But like roller, disco
49:48
Speaker 1: was a whole thing, you know, And that's hard, man,
49:51
Speaker 1: that takes some stamina and um coordination and that is
49:54
Speaker 1: not for me. But no, I would gladly attend a
49:58
Speaker 1: night out dance party with that. With the two of
50:00
Speaker 1: you find fellas leisure suits, need leisure suits. That game
50:05
Speaker 1: leisure suit, Larry. Yeah, it was just I'm actually just Google. Yes. Yeah,
50:09
Speaker 1: silly silly, silly game, silly character. See you next time, folks.
50:20
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
50:22
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50:25
Speaker 1: your favorite shows