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Unforgettable Moments In Music History That Shocked The Media

Khalid Elhassan March 8, 2023 32 min

disco demolition night comiskey park steve dahl 1979

Disco music took the world by storm in the 1970s, and like a sudden summer storm, it went away just as swiftly as it came. Even as reigned at the top of the charts, however, disco had plenty of detractors. Or outright haters, to be more exact. Many rock and roll fans couldn’t stand disco and the fact that it had become more popular than their favorite genre. On a summer night in 1979, they expressed those feelings at a riot known forever after as Disco Demolition Night. Below are twenty five things about that and other historic music facts.

The Rise of Disco Music Was Accompanied by Resentment and a Backlash

John Travolta’s disco pose in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever became one of the disco era’s most iconic images. Amazon

Disco seemingly came out of nowhere, dominated the charts for years, and then as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. Radio ignored disco for years after it first appeared in the 1960s. That changed after the dance-oriented music started to get exposure in DJ-based underground nightclubs that catered to Black, Latino, and gay dancers. Disco began to get airtime, and by the mid-1970s it had established itself. It was more than just a musical genre. Disco was accompanied by a fashion revolution, as night clubbers adopted extravagant outfits of loose and flowing clothes that were easier to dance in. A drug subculture also thrived, as narcotics like quaaludes and cocaine, that enhanced the experience of flashing lights and loud music, became popular in disco nightclubs.

Before anybody knew it, the music that seemingly came from nowhere had displaced rock and roll in popularity. The dominance of disco did not sit well with many rock fans, and the dance music’s rise was accompanied by resentment and a steadily building backlash. It erupted in dramatic form on the night of July 12^th, 1979, in a baseball stadium riot that came to be known as Disco Demolition Night. Tens of thousands of rock fans were mad that disco had pushed their music off the charts and out of nightclubs. They were determined to let the world know just how much they hated the genre whose smooth and danceable grooves they saw as the antithesis of rock.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.