On July 12, 1979, a “Disco Demolition Night” was held at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It was a stunt put on by WLUP-FM’s Steve Dahl, who was considered back then a “shock jock” but who was also heavily anti-disco…as many of us with sense were by mid-1979. The stunt was to bring out a big crate filled with disco records (on vinyl, of course) and between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, blow up all the records. With dynamite.
It was kind of a slow season for the White Sox, so the radio station was sponsoring the promotion, and game attendees had an entry fee of 98 cents and a disco record, in order to “pack the house” for the Sox, figuring lots of people would show up for the between-games display. They had NO IDEA how many people would actually show up…they were hoping for 20,000, with the stunt. However, records indicate more than FIFTY-THOUSAND were inside the stadium…and a few more tens-of-thousands (possibly another 40k; it was hard to get a head count) of Dahl fans were hanging around outside.
When Dahl blew up the record pile, many of those outside began streaming in, making for complete chaos. The ball field was littered with vinyl shrapnel, and the surface was damaged pretty badly, not just from the explosion but from people storming the field, attempting to pick up the pieces and grab a bit of history. Riot police had to come clear the place. And the second game ended up unplayed, the next day forfeited to Detroit.
It was awesome, actually. We’ve both compared notes, and have learned that both of us remember it well.
Now if we could only get people to rally around doing this kind of thing for rap.