The Disco Inferno

An splendid piece on disco, by the excellent Simon Price on The Quietus site, makes reference to mind the Disco Sucks movement which found full expression in the record burning bonanza at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in July 1979 (pictured). Price’s suggestion, not a new one, that the the Disco Demolition Night in particular was fuelled by racism and homophobia has some merit.

The negative reaction to disco was not invariably racist, of course. For starters, a lot of disco was produced by white people. Just as disco was a diverse collective, so were there different reasons for rejecting it. At Comiskey Park, at least, there was a distinct racist dimension as the mob of Lynyrd Skynyrd reactionaries incinerated records not only by disco acts such as Sister Sledge and Chic, but also those of Marvin Gaye and, for crying out loud, Bill Withers.

The charge of homophobia is more difficult to substantiate, even if some Village People albums found their way on to the pyre. Nonetheless, it has merit.

Disco was a broad movement borne of gay and soul-funk clubs alike. Sartorial flamboyance, funky basslines and synth experiments tended to blend across the sub-genres of what would become known as disco. The homophobia was not necessarily of a gay-bashing kind, but arguably was grounded rather in the disco culture's threat to the prevalent models of masculinity. When the mob at Comiskey Park burnt Earth, Wind & Fire records, possibly while humming Emerson, Lake & Palmer, part of their unarticulated objection related to extravagant costumes worn by men who sang in girly voices (those tight pants, ha ha di-fucking ha)! Disco corrupted the traditional models of manhood; and it subverted prevailing social (and sonic) norms. Comiskey Park and the Disco Sucks movement were, in part, a reaction to that.

A few years later this threat to masculinity found expression again when many believed Prince to be a homosexual because of his Purple Rain stylings. Of course, Prince has bedded more beautiful women than many of his accusers might have even laid eyes on in their sorry lives. But the effete Prince subverted the standard notions of masculinity, and therefore he just had to be gay. Happily, times have changed.

Of course, the camp exploits of Dee Snyder and David Lee Roth, or indeed Kiss, did not cause infernos of vinyl. But these did their shtick with a nod and a wink their rock fan constituency could understand and relate to. Their brand of camp was amusing, not gay, with Snyder looking like a superannuated, hairy-legged hooker. The same sort of fans denied, at the pain of death, that Freddy Mercury was gay. And the Kiss make-up was not considered camp to them but extensions of the members' personae. There was nothing here that threatened their concepts of masculinity like the unironic flamboyance of many disco stars.

But homphobia and racism surely were not the primary incitement for Disco Sucks. Disco sucked not because the music was bad (as some indisputably was) or because Verdine White played the bass while sporting silver flamingo wings. It sucked because, like punk, it ate itself. The exclusivism of clubs such as Studio 54 caused resentment -- even among those who produced disco music. Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernie Edwards wrote Le Freak after they were denied entry to Studio 54. The original title was Fuck Off. And yet, how can the artists be blamed for the behavior of those who played their records. Effigies of nightclub owners, not records by the artists, might have made for more appropriate burning matter at Comiskey Park.

The anti-disco sentiment was fed by disco’s ubiquity, starting with Saturday Night Fever (a gritty film which disowns the phoniness associated with the Studio 54 culture, something usually overlooked in favour of Barry Gibb's sterility-inducing trousers). Disco Sucks was in its essence a reaction to SNF and Travolta’s suit, and to Ethel Merman and Sesame Street recording “disco” albums, the hedonism of the élite, and the occasional musical horror which was falsely considered to be representative of disco.

And here we enter the final error of the Disco Sucks movement: the false notion that disco is a single, homogenous genre. As in rock music, there are common elements. Most disco songs have a 4/4 beat, basslines tend to drive the songs, and so on. And yet, take songs like I Feel Love by Donna Summer and Shoulda Loved Ya by Narada Michael Walden. Both fall broadly within the disco genre, but one is Euro-Disco and the other is what I'd call Disco-Funk. They are as different as Sweet Home Alabama is from A Whole Lotta Rosie. Then there was the pop-disco stuff such as Y.M.C.A. (though I'd be reluctant to call it disco), which is quite different from either Summer or Walden. Blondie's disco stuff, Heart Of Glass or Atomic, represents yet another separate genre; it's disco, of a sort, but not in the way Cheryl Lynn's Got To Be Real is disco. Like Rock, Disco is a collective term for many sub-genres.