Yesterday, Awful Announcing mentioned that Comedy Central’s Drunk History was going to have a segment on the infamous Disco Demolition Night that occurred at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979 in the middle of a doubleheader between the White Sox and Tigers.
The Drunk History episode centered around “shit shows” and Disco Demolition Night was definitely one of them.
Mr. Show and Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk told the story about Chicago DJ Steve Dahl (played by Colin Hanks) and his hatred for disco music in the 1970’s. It’s easy to see why Odenkirk loved to tell this story. In addition to being a Chicago guy, Odenkirk hates disco music as well.
Overall, it’s a pretty good retelling of the story and Odenkirk does a pretty good job of keeping it together while being drunk. If you’ve ever seen the show, some storytellers can barely get through the story but Odenkirk, while pretty drunk, is rather coherent.
In the end, Odenkirk nails down the impact of Disco Demolition Night. It didn’t necessarily mean the death of disco but it did send a widespread message that a lot of people thought disco sucked and started an evolution of pop music going into the hair band and electronica style of the 80’s.
