by DAVE HOEKSTRA with STEVE DAHL, photography by PAUL NATKIN
Friday July 8 between 7-10 PM @ Co-Prosperity Sphere (3219 S. Morgan) followed by an after-party @ Maria's Packaged Goods (960 W. 31st St) between 9 PM-2 AM.
Foreword by BOB ODENKIRK
Curbside Splendor is thrilled to announce Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died, the first book to take on the night that changed America’s disco culture forever.
In the late 1970s disco music dominated radio airwaves, much to the dismay of rockmusic fans who viewed it as a threat to their very way of life. To boost attendance at Old Comiskey Park (now U.S. Cellular Field), White Sox owner Bill Veeck and Chicago DJ legend Steve Dahl collaborated to host “Disco Demolition” on July 12, 1979, when the team was scheduled to play a double-header against the Detroit Tigers. Admission to the park was 98 cents and a disco record. The plan was to destroy the records on the field between games, declaring absolutely how rock fans felt about disco. Attendance exceeded 50,000, far beyond anyone’s estimations, and when fans stormed the field for the demolition, chaos ensued. Police cleared the field, Comiskey Park was evacuated, and the second game was cancelled—for the first time in Major League Baseball history.
Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died features over 45 interviews conducted by journalist Dave Hoekstra with sports and music icons (including Nile Rodgers and Rick Nielsen) as well as Comiskey Park employees and Chicago club and record store owners, a foreword by actor Bob Odenkirk, archival photographs by the legendary Paul Natkin, and an introduction by Steve Dahl, the man who launched it all.
“If you were young and shiftless—and viscerally repulsed by Abba—Steve Dahl was a god. And you were drawn to Disco Demolition."
—ESPN.com
To celebrate the release of the book both the Co-Prosperity Sphere (3219-21 S Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60607) and Maria's Packaged Goods & Community Bar (960 W. 31st Street) are hosting its own double-header of events on Friday, July 8. The first part of the "series" will take place at Co-Prosperity between 7-10 PM and will include a book signing with both Dave Hoekstra and Steve Dahl (books will be available for purchase that night) and an exhibition of documentary photographs by Paul Natkin from the infamous evening and pictures taken for the book. To capture the gestalt of the occasion, a soundtrack of disco and rock music the period in question will be compiled by DJs Joe Bryl and Logan Bay to enhance the verisimilitude of the evening, and rekindle the cultural collision of the period.
The action will then shift to Maria's starting 9 PM where DJ Lady D (aka Darlene Jackson who is featured and interviewed in the book) will play a classic Chicago House set to highlight the emergence of House music here in Chicago in the wake of the event and how Disco Demolition gave unexpected birth to this phenomenal movement. For more details on DJ Lady D see http://artistecard.com/djladyd. DJ Lady D will also be joined by DJ Jevon Jackson.
About the Contributors:
Dave Hoekstra is a former columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a longtime radio host for WGN. Dave was a 29 year veteran of the Chicago Sun-Times (he recently left his post in a buyout in 2014) and is considered a consummate newsman, oral historian, archivist and storyteller in the grand tradition of New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell ("Up In the Old Hotel"). In 2013, he won two Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club and a Studs Terkel Community Media Award from the Community Media Workshop. He previously published to great acclaim The People's Place: Soul Food Restaurants and Reminiscences from the Civil Rights Era to Today.
Paul Natkin has photographed The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Brian Wilson, and many others. He was an official photographer of the Oprah Winfrey Show, and has shot magazine covers for Newsweek, Ebony, Spin, and People. Paul has been one of the most sought-out portrait and music documentary photographers and has contributed to such publications as CREEM Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, People, Playboy, Ebony and many others. His photographs have also been used by many local indie labels including Alligator, Delmark and Blind Pig. In 1988, he accompanied Keith Richards on his Xpensive Wino Tour which resulted in further work as tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. He recently had an exhibit of his massive portfolio at the Chicago Cultural center and is personally involved with various charity work including Farm Aid and Rock For Reading. He has previously worked with Dave Hoekstra on 2013's "The Supper Club Book: A Celebration of a Midwest Tradition".
Steve Dahl is an American radio personality and former columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Originally, Dahl broadcast with Detroit stations WABX and WWWW and later with Chicago stations WCKG, WDAI, WLUP, WMVP and WLS. He is a Chicago radio icon and noted for his quick wit, humor and storytelling ability where he often intertwines his own personal affairs into the public discourse. In addition to his radio career, Dahl is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His band, Teenage Radiation, recorded and performed a number of song parodies (which he often played on his show throughout the 1980s) and since 1990 he has performed and recorded as Steve Dahl and the Dahlfins. Dahl also continues to host a separate, 90-minute daily podcast besides his current show on WLS Radio.
About Curbside Splendor:
Curbside Splendor was conceived as a punk rock band in the early 1990s in an apartment in Urbana, Illinois. The band never really went anywhere, but Curbside was re-founded as an independent press in the fall of 2009. We're located in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. We publish fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry that celebrates art, urban life, and extraordinary voices.
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Distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
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There is no cover for this twi-night double header.