Disco Demolition Night, held at Chicago’s Comiskey Park on 12 July 1979, became a notorious anti-disco protest that disrupted a baseball double-header and came to symbolise the genre’s sudden backlash. The event matters because it illustrates how a commercial promotion, fuelled by resentment towards disco’s popularity and cultural associations, turned into a large-scale public disorder incident.

The Chicago White Sox created the promotion to raise low attendance, offering 98-cent tickets to fans who brought disco records to be destroyed between games against the Detroit Tigers. DJ Steve Dahl, whose rock radio job had been lost after his station adopted a disco format, promoted it heavily; organisers expected around 20,000 people, but estimates put attendance at 55,000, with about 20,000 more turned away. Records overflowed collection bins and were thrown onto the field, repeatedly interrupting play before the planned demolition.