The event didn't go as planned: what was partly intended as a hype for the headline match between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers went south as the pre-match event turned into a pitch invasion, rendering the field unusable and causing the White Sox to forfeit the game.
The event also spoke greatly about the mindset of those that attended. The records that ended up on the pyre were not limited to disco but encompassed funk, soul, R&B, that is, music created and inspired by women, black people, Latino culture, gay audiences, nightclubs, etc., and seen as a threat to WASP males of a certain age.
The event had an immediate effect on record company investment, sales and association with disco music. Chic were one of the high profile casualties: on this day in 1979, Good Times achieved a peak of #12 in the UK and although they had a Top 20 and a Top 30 placing with their next two singles, that was it for them.
Ironically, the biggest disco single in the UK on Disco Demolition Night was Light My Fire, a cover of The Doors song by Amii Stewart, also reaching a peak position of #5.
Thankfully, there wasn't a lasting impact and good music and common sense prevailed. Amii was back in the charts again with a remix of Light My Fire (a double A-Side with Knock On Wood) in 1985, reaching #7 this time around. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards continued as a production powerhouse, together and separately, and subsequent generations have quite rightly fallen in love with Chic.
The backlash against disco also arguably created some inspired new musical shapes and genres, not least the music of Arthur Russell, particularly as Dinosaur L, and the remixes of François Kevorkian, whose mammoth body of work has continued into this decade. I didn't discover Go Bang! - by Dinosaur L, remixed by Kevorkian - until the early 1990s but it's an absolute cracker. YouTube has offered up a retrospective video created by Aurora Halal for your viewing and listening pleasure.
Alex Petridis wrote an interesting reflection on Disco Demolition Night on the infamous event's 40th anniversary in 2019, which you can find here. A sad reminder that sexism, racism and homophobia have not been consigned to the dustbin of history.
The other irony is how many huge rock bands of the late 70s incorporated disco elements into their tunes in order to get them into the charts. I bet some of those people throwing disco songs on the fire were huge fans of Kiss, for example... you're right though, in retrospect, this event had little to do with pop music and lots more to do with bigotry.
ReplyDeleteThe disco mix of I Was Made For Lovin' You is superb, though I generally admired KISS' makeup significantly more than their music. The Village People of course nailed it, image-wise for any young lad in the 1970s pondering their career choices, though the opportunities to be a cowboy in suburban South West England were disappointingly limited.
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