Dahl Does Demolition
Here's my friend Jesse Walker's tribute to the 30th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night, which was part of a good doubleheader for my team, the Tigers.
Jesse notes (but I don't believe endorses) the revisionist take on the anti-disco movement, which claims it was an anti-gay, anti-black and anti-Latino. I find these claims pretty funny, since at the time, if there was any group associated with disco, it was Italians.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:26 AM
5 Comments:
I thought about throwing in a parenthetical about all the Italians. Though I was reading something not long ago to the effect that virtually all the Italian-American DJs in the disco scene were gay, so...
During my years in Chicago, I used to enjoy listening to Dahl (and then partner Gary Meiers). He was a tamer version of Howard Stern. Having listened to both, I have to say I found Dahl more entertaining. But as the term "shock jock" conotes, Dahl and his ilk were not particularly anti-gay or racist or counter-culture or marxist. They were simply pushing the edge of permissable, live radio, lampooning anything that was mainstream, politically ciorrect, or sacrosanct. I bet Dahl didn't even realy dislike Disco Music.
People forget disco had almost died and then was revived by Saturday Night Fever. After that, you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing it. People from the Midwest didn't thing about any ethnic group from disco, they just wondered what was going on with their music.
Steve Dahl was example of "dumb guy" and the entertainment he offered (if you can call it that) was that pissed on everyone and everything and didn't like anyone. Guess that approach appealed to a large demographic.
I remember Steve Dahl when he was a local and very popular Detroit personality. I liked him, though never as much as I liked Howard Stern.
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