LIVING IN OBLIVION - DISCO LIVES!

Does anyone know the name Bill Veeck?

For those of you that don't, his name lives in baseball and music infamy. He was the owner of the Chicago White Sox through the 1970's and is best known for his promotional gimmicks and off the wall antics.

But if you hit Google for articles about this guy, you'll find out that many of his gimmicks were famous failures. Namely, the season he made the White Sox wear short pants with uniforms that looked like pajamas (obtain any baseball card of a 1978 White Sox player and you'll see what I'm talking about), and most famously, 1979's DISCO DEMOLITION NIGHT in which Veeck sold tickets for under a dollar, invited a local disco hating radio DJ to be the MC and encourage the raucous crowd to bring disco records to be destroyed in a bonfire in centerfield between games of a double header with the Tigers. This event was one of the catalysts for the T-shirts that read "Disco Sucks."

While the golden age of disco was dying out at this point, it did combine itself with punk and give way to the new wave movement of the early 80's which included The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, and a host of respectable mainstays in the club music scene. Nowadays, we are treated to house and club music that goes beyond the club and is actually good music to listen to in the confines of your own home (IE Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, Thievery Corporation and the like).

With all this evolution however, I'm here to tell you that vintage disco is NOT DEAD! While disco still does suck, IT LIVES! While I was never a dance club guy, I went to my share and the last time I was in one is surely over 10 years ago. New York City, once Dance Club Central, has seen it share of clubs close down for various reasons of drugs, crime, and all around unpleasant hooliganism happening inside. The Palladium, The Limelight, Twiloh, Club Metro, and of course Studio 54 (now a broadway theater eeeesh!).

But a couple of weeks ago, on the Nautical Mile in Freeport, Long Island, (a mile long strip along a marina of restaurants, bars, fish markets and fishing boats), you could hear and see nothing except the pulsating bass of each and every dance club along the line. The cheesy disco balls, the colored lights, ABBA, Donna Summer, Rob Base, big hair, knee high socks...IT WAS EVERYWHERE!

The golden age of disco lives...IN FREEPORT...and where else? The pockets of resistance are probably infinite. Disco Waarrriorrrrs - come out to plaaay-ay!

A great shock to my system but what the hell did I know. I became a conformist rock and pop pinko! Disco hadn't been on my radar since I left my college years in Miami.

I calmly strolled down the mile, hearing the transition of music from place to place, finally releived to be on the other side of the train tracks, back in my comfort zone. But I was a bit wiser for the wear.

The end of the DISCO DEMOLITION NIGHT story in 1979 is, when the bonfire and destruction of the disco records went up in a blaze of glory, the drunk raucous crowd who paid $1 to get in stormed the field, ripped it up and field was destroyed and the 2nd game of the double header was automatically rewarded as a victory for the visiting Tigers. Nice going Mr. Veeck!

We were oblivious then and we're oblivious now. So all of us oblivious guitar toting rock mongers who spit on Special Sauce with our Lipps Incorporated, take note, because disco is here to stay.