On March 24, 1979, disco legends the Bee Gees secured a spot at the top of the U.S. singles chart with “Tragedy,” their eighth song to accomplish the feat. The song is also the opening track of the 1979 album, “Spirits Having Flown,” the trio’s fantastic follow-up to their genre-defining soundtrack for the film “Saturday Night Fever.”
It’s arguable that there is no genre with a more interesting history than disco. The genre began its emergence in the early ’70s, supposedly in opposition to the popularity of rock music. By the middle of the decade, it had essentially taken over the airwaves, but its reign was short-lived: almost officially, disco died on July 12, 1979, during Disco Demolition Night.
What started as a promotion between baseball games at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Ill. where a crate of disco records was blown up quickly devolved into chaos. Many of the game’s attendees were actually disco-haters not even there for the thrills of athletic competition. Thousands snuck into the stadium: an expected crowd of 20,000 grew to about 50,000, with some estimating 90,000 to be more accurate.
During the first game, fans threw their records onto the field and disrupted the game several times, foreshadowing the destruction that was to come next. Security was stretched thin to prevent unauthorized entry into the stadium, so immediately after the explosion, there was an inadequate amount of staff to prevent the 5,000 or so soon-to-be rioters from storming the field.
The field was torn up, equipment was destroyed, bonfires were started. Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: the late actor Michael Clarke Duncan, then a 21-year-old aspiring actor, was on the field and claims to have slid into third base and stolen a bat from one of the dugouts.
After about a half hour of insanity, police in riot gear were able to make the crowd disperse. The baseball fans in attendance applauded, but the field was so badly destroyed that the Chicago White Sox ended up having to forfeit the second game to the Detroit Tigers.
Disco’s troubled history, combined with the cliched image of cartoon-like disco dancers with afros and white disco suits, has turned the genre into a joke for many, which is a shame because it had it moments.
The aforementioned “Spirits Having Flown” is full of them. There’s “Tragedy,” the lead single and obvious pick, but the funky “Living Together” and the smooth “Love You Inside Out,” historical hate of the genre aside, are timeless.
Admittedly, I have an extremely limited knowledge of disco’s deeper cuts, but it seems that for every ABBA and Donna Summer, there is a Sparks and Sylvester waiting to be discovered by a curious music lover. The former’s 1979 album “No. 1 in Heaven” is an experimental, electronic take on the genre, while Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” has an undeniable modernness to it, although it was released almost 40 years ago.
There’s a reason why the song feels almost at home today: disco has slowly been climbing back into the modern musical consciousness for some time. It goes back earlier than this I’m sure, but the first example that comes to mind is LCD Soundsystem. Frontman James Murphy has often described his now-defunct group as “dance-punk” or “disco-punk,” and the influence of the genre on his band and others like it is obvious.
The return of disco hit its highest point in a long time in 2013. Of all places, it happened in mainstream pop: Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” undoubtedly owes a token of gratitude to disco and even features guitar work from Nile Rodgers, cofounder of elite disco group Chic. Some of the year’s other massively popular songs were also inspired by disco, including Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Bruno Mars’ “Treasure.”
The lyrics of “Tragedy” seem to foreshadow the cruel fate of disco: “Here I lie / in a lost and lonely part of town / Held in time / In a world of tears I slowly drown.” Disco was banished to its own untouched corner of history, truly bound to and not allowed to escape from its era of prominence.
But disco is dance music. Danceable genres like pop and EDM are huge right now. Today’s biggest songs were created in the disco mold. What does this all mean? It’s time to shake the “disco fever” stigma and embrace a wrongfully ignored and crucial part of music history.