Disco Demolition Night
You're Wrong About
Sarah Marshall
4.6 • 23K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2020
⏱️ 98 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mike tells Sarah how a silly sports promotion galvanized a reactionary movement. Digressions include “Charlotte’s Web,” Jane Fonda and German-language musicals. Songs are dissected; the honor of David Bowie and late-night salad bars are defended.
Huge thanks to historians Tavia Nyong'o, Eric Gonzaba, Luis-Manuel Garcia and Gillian Frank for helping Mike with this episode!
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Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads
Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase
Links!
- Tavia Nyong'o's "I Feel Love: Disco and Its Discontents"
- Gillian Frank's excellent article on disco and his delightful podcast
- Luis-Manuel Garcia's alternate history of club culture and dissection of the gay left's opposition to disco
- Alice Echols' "Hot Stuff"
- Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey"
- Tim Lawrence's "Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979"
- Peter Shapiro's "Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco"
- Undone did a great episode on Disco Demolition Night
- “The Flip Sides of 1979”
- “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” the (fabricated) New York Magazine story that inspired “Saturday Night Fever”
- Tony Smith interview
- "Disco and The Queering of the Dance Floor"
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I will probably cut this out. Did you know that the number one city for your wrong about listeners is Chicago? |
| 0:06.1 | No, and I think we should keep this in. I think that'll make Chicagoans be like, yeah, another thing |
| 0:11.2 | we're best at that no one knows about. |
| 0:13.4 | Welcome to your wrong about where every so often we stop being so depressing and get gay. |
| 0:37.2 | This episode is extremely gay and not depressing so that was very good. |
| 0:41.3 | Welcome to your wrong about the episode where whenever we take one fucking break from talking |
| 0:46.0 | about straight culture things get so much better. What a five. I was thinking earlier today that the |
| 0:51.3 | best thing about this episode is the worst thing that happens to anybody in this episode is somebody |
| 0:56.8 | breaks a hip. Oh good. That's pretty serious, but yeah, if that's the worst. We're taking a break |
| 1:02.0 | from all that this week. It's gonna be great. Amazing. I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for the |
| 1:06.0 | Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic and as I was |
| 1:10.4 | just demonstrating to Mike right before we started recording disco because our topic today is very |
| 1:16.4 | integral to this show because there is a song that I listen to every single week before we start |
| 1:23.7 | recording and Mike, what is that song? Raspoutine, makings of a love machine or something. |
| 1:29.6 | By Boni M. Yes. And I love it so much. And it's just like it puts me in like exactly the right energy. |
| 1:35.3 | Yes. For when we start recording, which is just like joyful and energetic and like ready for history. |
| 1:40.4 | It's a bop. We're gonna talk about other bops. I'm gonna introduce you to other unknown bops today. |
| 1:44.8 | I'm so excited. But yeah, I guess I want to start by saying the kind of steak I have in this topic, |
| 1:48.9 | which is that like we're talking about disco today. And disco is a much maligned form of music. |
| 1:54.3 | The tiny hearting of music one night saying because all it ever did was love us and give us something |
| 2:01.6 | to dance to and provide freedom and expression for the quote unquote tacky and mainstream American |
| 2:08.0 | culture responded by being really, really mean or did it or did it. This is what we're gonna talk |
... |
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