Sure­ly you’ve heard of Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night, when Chica­go DJ Steve Dahl invit­ed lis­ten­ers to the 1979 White Sox dou­ble head­er against the Tigers at Comiskey Park, offer­ing tick­ets for .98 cents if they brought a dis­co record he could blow up between games. The event drew thou­sands more than Dahl expect­ed, turned into a riot on the field, and has since passed into his­to­ry for its ral­ly­ing cry of “Dis­co sucks!” and its herald­ing of the end of disco’s reign.

Dis­co died at the end of the 70s, the sto­ry goes. But many music fans know dif­fer­ent­ly. Dis­co didn’t die. It mutat­ed, became House music, New Wave, and oth­er hybrid gen­res. It made its way into the music of the Clash, Blondie, Michael Jack­son, Madon­na, and oth­ers. Nonethe­less, Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night rep­re­sent­ed a wide­spread back­lash that drove dis­co off the pop charts and back where it came from—the most­ly black, Lati­no, and gay clubs in New York, Chica­go, Detroit, and oth­er cities.

Many peo­ple who have writ­ten his­to­ries of Dis­co Demo­li­tion have come to see it “as a not-so-sub­tle attack” against those groups of peo­ple, writes NPR, against “disco’s ear­ly adopters.” Dahl, who has co-authored his own book about the night, dis­agrees, but he admits that images of the event look “like a book burn­ing.” Dis­co “obvi­ous­ly threat­ened a lot of rock­ers,” he con­cedes. Anoth­er wit­ness to the event, an African-Amer­i­can ush­er named Vince Lawrence, saw evi­dence first­hand.

Lawrence—a dis­co fan and aspir­ing musician—tells the pod­cast Undone that he was actu­al­ly look­ing for­ward to the event. He liked Dahl and “had strict inten­tion of keep­ing records that were good that I didn’t have.” How­ev­er, as he col­lect­ed the records at the gate, he noticed among them Mar­vin Gaye and Ste­vie Won­der albums, “records that were black records,” he says, but not dis­co. He tells NPR, he saw “Cur­tis May­field records and Otis Clay records.… Records that were clear­ly not dis­co.” He balked, but was told he had to take them and issue tick­ets.

After Dahl rolled onto the field in a Jeep and blew up the dump­ster full of records, chaos ensued, and the stunt turned into “this zany, real life slap­stick rou­tine,” says Undone’s host Pat Wal­ters, “until all the sud­den, it’s just not.” Riot­ers set a bon­fire, stole the bases (lit­er­al­ly), and became a rag­ing mob. On his way out of the park, Lawrence was attacked by fans yelling “Dis­co Sucks!” and break­ing records in his face.

Colum­nist Renee Gra­ham, a gay woman of col­or who was a teenag­er at the time, recalls see­ing pho­tos of the event and being remind­ed of White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils smash­ing rock and roll records because they brought white and black kids togeth­er. “This wasn’t just ‘We don’t like this music,’” she says, “this was ‘We don’t like these peo­ple who lis­ten to this music.’” By 1979, how­ev­er, “those peo­ple” includ­ed many of the same kids’ class­mates, sib­lings, par­ents.… Dis­co had gone main­stream after Sat­ur­day Night Fever and the Bee Gees’ break­out. “It was almost like musi­cal gen­tri­fi­ca­tion,” says Gra­ham.

The Rolling Stones, Rod Stew­art, Led Zep­pelin, KISS—all of them appro­pri­at­ed dis­co. And the rock kids were furi­ous. After the riot at Comiskey, “dis­co became a four-let­ter word.” Careers col­lapsed, radio sta­tions changed for­mat, record stores reordered, almost overnight. Had none of this hap­pened, it’s pos­si­ble dis­co would have fiz­zled out. Dri­ven under­ground, back to its roots, it instead found new expres­sion in the hands of pio­neers like Chica­go DJ Frankie Knuck­les, the “God­fa­ther of House,” and New York’s “Lit­tle” Louie Vega and Ken­ny “Dope” Ramirez.

Knuck­les DJ’ed at Chica­go club the Ware­house, which lent its name to the music—predominantly dis­co or dis­co inspired—he played. As house music evolved, “you could hear it fill in the space that dis­co had occu­pied,” says Wal­ters. Vince Lawrence, too young to get into the Ware­house, began stag­ing his own house par­ties, and these spread to cities all over the coun­try, and even­tu­al­ly to Europe, where the music influ­enced bands like the Eury­th­mics and New Order, who dis­cov­ered house on the Span­ish island of Ibiza. Undone makes the case that Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night saved dis­co, in a way, so that it could emerge and influ­ence many more appre­cia­tive crossover fans in the decades to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­co Saves Lives: Give CPR to the The Beat of Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

Sat­ur­day Night Fever: The (Fake) Mag­a­zine Sto­ry That Start­ed it All

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

After this inspir­ing week­end, I did­n’t need any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly ener­giz­ing to start my week. But, then again, it’s hard to refuse a shot inspi­ra­tion when it falls right into your lap. Above, watch “Andante,” which the web­site Aeon describes as fol­lows:

Andante (a musi­cal term mean­ing ‘at walk­ing pace’) fol­lows the cel­list Ruth Boden as she climbs 10,000 feet to a peak in Oregon’s Wal­lowa Moun­tains for a deeply per­son­al, yet breath­tak­ing­ly pub­lic solo per­for­mance. With her prized cel­lo strapped to her back, Boden reflects on how she wants to do some­thing with music that tran­scends the com­mon­place, and on the par­tic­u­lar joy of play­ing from Bach’s cel­lo suite at ‘the top of the world’.

Hope this helps you get to Wednes­day. And, to reach Fri­day, we’ve added some oth­er fine Bach mate­r­i­al in the Relat­eds below.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Com­plete Works Online: 150 Done, 930 to Come

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured numer­ous read­ings of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous nar­ra­tive poem, “The Raven” (1845). Nar­ra­tions by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, Christo­pher Lee, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee and John Astin (think The Addams Fam­i­ly)–they’ve all got­ten some air­time here on Open Cul­ture. Now you can add The Grate­ful Dead to the list. Kind of.

In April 19, 1982, the Dead played their final show of an East Coast tour in Bal­ti­more, the town where Poe lived and even­tu­al­ly died (under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, I might add). About 15 songs into their set, the band wheeled two giants tanks of nitrous oxide onstage and launched into their long improvs “Drums” and “Space.” In what’s since been dubbed “Raven Space” (lis­ten above), an eerie sound­scape unfolds. Then bassist Phil Lesh, says grim­ly “Quoth the Raven ‘Nev­er­more,’ ” let­ting you know what idea they’re riff­ing on. No com­plete nar­ra­tion of “The Raven” fol­lows. The homage to Poe is more con­cep­tu­al than lit­er­al, just as you might expect from the Dead.

You can lis­ten to the Dead­’s com­plete Bal­ti­more show here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price & Christo­pher Lee

Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Mas­ter of Dra­mat­ic Sto­ry­telling Reads Anoth­er

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

They may have arrived on the scene in the 80s as one of the four horse­men of thrash metal—kin to such cud­dly acts as Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer—but believe or not, Metal­li­ca had some seri­ous crossover appeal from the start. Grant­ed, that appeal was lim­it­ed to a small sub­set of punks and skaters who came to appre­ci­ate met­al thanks to Metallica’s cov­ers of hor­ror-punks The Mis­fits on their 1987 Garage Days Revis­it­ed EP. Nonethe­less, it showed that the band always had a sense of humor and an appre­ci­a­tion for other—albeit very closely-related—genres.

Since then, Metal­li­ca has grown up, some­times awk­ward­ly. We watched them do it with the help of a ther­a­pist in the 2003 doc­u­men­tary Some Kind of Mon­ster. We lis­tened to their grown-up angst on that bum­mer of an album, St. Anger.  That year, they also took on a fourth mem­ber, bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo, whose extra-genre affini­ties are broad and deep—from his love for Motown, funk, and the ath­let­ic fusion of Jaco Pas­to­rius to his dab­bling in fla­men­co. The band may have returned to their thrash roots with 2008’s Death Mag­net­ic and this year’s Hard­wired… to Self-Destruct, but they’ll like­ly take a few more weird excur­sions (like their puz­zling 2011 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lou Reed) in com­ing years.

And yes, they gained a rep­u­ta­tion as being stingy with their cat­a­log dur­ing that whole Nap­ster dust-up. But as you can hear James Het­field and Kirk Ham­mett dis­cuss in a recent Nerdist pod­cast (stream it at the bot­tom of this post), their “cre­ative rest­less­ness” has made them very appre­cia­tive of what oth­er artists have done with their music, stretch­ing it into alien gen­res and unex­pect­ed instru­men­ta­tion and arrange­ments.

In his self-dep­re­cat­ing way, Het­field con­fess­es, “there’s a lot of bet­ter ver­sions of ‘Noth­ing Else Mat­ters’ than ours.” Ham­mett agrees, and here you’ll find most of those they mention—from Scott D. Davis on solo piano at the top of the post, to a choir at San­ti­a­go de Com­postela with their Gre­go­ri­an Chant ver­sion below it, and, just above, Finnish cel­lo ensem­ble Apoc­a­lyp­ti­ca.

It may not be many people’s favorite Metal­li­ca song, but I think the vast range of wor­thy inter­pre­ta­tions speaks to the strengths of its com­po­si­tion. “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” has even trans­lat­ed to blue­grass, thanks to Finnish pick­ers Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls, who spe­cial­ize in such tongue-in-cheek coun­try met­al cov­ers. And Het­field and Ham­mett both men­tion with awe Macy Gray’s smoky lounge-jazz cov­er, below. “That’s an hon­or,” says Het­field, “that is a huge com­pli­ment, when some­one takes your song and legit­i­mate­ly does it their style.… It’s real­ly cool to think that the song is that good it can work in any dif­fer­ent genre.”

Indeed. Have a lis­ten to SHEL’s haunt­ing cov­er of anoth­er Metal­li­ca dirge, “Enter Sand­man” or Stary Olsa’s riff on the most­ly dirge-like “One.” And it doesn’t only work with the slow tunes either. Just check out this killer ban­jo ver­sion of “Mas­ter of Pup­pets.”

Hear Metal­li­ca talk cov­er ver­sions (around 50:00), the joys and woes of still tour­ing after all these years, and more at the Nerdist pod­cast just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metal­li­ca Play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on Class­room Toy Instru­ments

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness