Undone: Disco Demolition Night

November 17, 2016 12:03 PM

One summer night in 1979, 50,000 people got together at a baseball stadium to kill disco. And it worked. Kind of. In this first episode of "Undone" we meet someone who worked as an usher at Disco Demolition Night and played a vital role in keeping the spirit of disco alive today.

Spotify playlists of music used in this episode (and playlists inspired by this episode) are on the episode page.

Jessie Saunders & Vince Lawrence - On And On (because spotify doesn't work for me)

posted by sparklemotion (2 comments total)

I liked this episode much better than the other "first" one released the same day.

Introducing Vince as just "an usher who had a bad experience at a (possibly unintentionally) racist event" was good storytelling I thought.

As a kid in the 80s I never really understood the backlash against disco, so this was all pretty eye-opening. I thought the treatment of the racism and homophobia inherent in the history was really well done too.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:08 PM on November 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I also enjoyed this more than "The Ancient One." Very cool story. I like how they turned "disco is dead" into "disco is everywhere." I do also like the narrative technique where they introduce a famous/important person as "just some dude who was there."
posted by radioamy at 7:52 PM on November 20, 2016