On July 12, 1979, Steve Dahl, a DJ at Chicago's rock station WDAI-FM, "organized an anti-disco rally at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, which was timed to coincide with a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. Fans were told they could pay just 98 cents if they also handed over a slab of unwanted disco vinyl, and 40,000 of them, carrying some 40,000 records, filed through the turnstiles as the first game drew to a close (another 30,000 were locked outside). Then came the fireworks between the games.

'Dahl made a big 12-foot pile with all the records', says disco fan Ralphie Rosario. 'He got everyone to chant "disco sucks", and then he blew up the records up with dynamite.' The crowd rioted.

'They were losing their minds. The only people who actually enjoyed baseball were rock 'n' rollers. The crowd was made up of .

. . white suburban boys and families with their kids.

There were drunken people all over the place. It was Middle America.'"

Or, more precisely, middle-class America.

As described in Love Saves the Day, Tim Lawrence's brilliant and comprehensive book on the American dance music culture of the 70s (buy it , or , but do buy it, it's excellent), the gathering echoed "the fascist rallies of the 1930s and 1940s", except that "on this ocassion it was Dahl, dressed up in army fatigue and helmet, who played the role of the charismatic, knowledgeable and power-hungry" little would-be Führer to marauding hordes of down-home fucked-up, homophobic honkies who obviously thought that a bunch of denim-clad, headbanging half-wits with socks stuffed down their crotches, given to meandering guitar solos and spouting dumb lyrics about cars and girls, were the epitome of musical sophistication. The "ignorant and inflammable crowd . .

. sporting regulation black t-shirts that carried the name of their hero's radio show" following a "leader" who, according to "a standard myth of fascism . .

. comes to express the will of the masses through a mystical transmission of desire . .

. mirrored the fascist-style burnings of jazz, which was tied to African Americans and Jews. And Dahl's acknowledgement that the campaign" - which spawned lots of imitators all around the country who, in gas masks and fatigues, trashed, smashed and burned uncounted disco records, with one Portland, Oregon, DJ even playing Leatherface and hacking vinyl stacks to bits in a veritable Disco Chainsaw Massacre - "'worked real well for me', was consistent with fascism's profit motive: 'disco sucks' equalled rock'n roll bucks.

"

In Germany, which hadn't exactly invented the fascist rally but had certainly played it to perfection some 40 years before, the situation was much more relaxed. While most of the country was still dozing in a dope-dazed state of post-flower-power bliss, disco first reared its colorful head in the still half-closeted gay clubs of big cities like Berlin or Cologne, where hedonistic homosexuals high on LSD and poppers shook their sweat-gleaming booties to the soulful strains of Barry White or the Hues Corporation. Only when German disco productions like Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby", Boney M.

's "Daddy Cool" and, most of all, Silver Convention's "Fly Robin Fly", the first German record ever to hit the #1 spot on the US charts, enjoyed massive overnight success, did the disco phenomenon begin to affect the mainstream, culminating, of course, in the Saturday Night Fever fad of 1978. Leaving no stone unturned, German Schlager producers quickly jumped on the thumping band wagon, turning out a truckload of teutonized disco duds.

Before charting with "Was ist schon dabei" (What's the Harm), the first in a series of totally forgettable and long-forgotten hits, in 1970, Croatian-born had played more or less minor parts in kraut westerns such as or and c-grade sex flicks like .

Graced with a rather deep and smoky, if somewhat maudlin-sounding singing voice, she seemed just about the most improbable choice to do a German-language version of Gloria Gaynor's 1979 disco anthem "I Will Survive"; none the less she was recruited to record "Ich überleb's", and although the German lyrics are pretty close to the original, Rajter - unlike the mighty Ms. Gaynor - doesn't sound like a strong woman celebrating her having been left by her man as one more step towards female liberation but more like a trusting little housewife resignedly accepting the end of a relationship gone sour as the beginning of her swift decline into early spinsterhood. Today, Ms.

Rajter is heavily committed to raising funds for rebuilding post-war Croatia and plays a leading role in the anti-nazi movement "Gesicht zeigen!", so despite her questionable merits as an actress and a singer, she deserves our humblest respect.

Which certainly can't be said of , a Berlin vocal quartet with varying line-ups which at one point even included singer, composer, producer and downright moron Dieter Bohlen of dubious Modern Talking fame.

The four-piece garnered some notoriety for recording a German-language version of the Village People's 1978 smash "Y.M.C.

A." (C.V.

J.M.) which sounds like a bunch of hikers walking along a sunlit Alpine ridge, gaily (sic) and in blaring unison praising the undying virtues of community and comradeship, quite obviously oblivious to the double entendre of the original.

Ghastly, to say the least.

Austrian singer and bass player Gisela Wuchinger shortened her first name to and, with her band Seventy-Five Music, went out to make it big in Germany in (guessed it?) 1975 where, under the aegis of producer Frank Farian, she laid down her thoroughly teutonized take on LaBelle s classic Lady Marmelade called Willst du mit mir schlafen gehn?

(Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?/Do You Wanna Sleep with Me?).

Although in the German version the lady in question doesn't strut her stuff trying to turn a few tricks but in all seriousness goes to bed with her teddy bear instead, the record was banned by some German radio stations for being too dirty and subsequently became an instant chart success. With Tu es! (Do It!

), she repeated the formula of "risqué" lyrics set to catchy ersatz disco music, but after two more singles, Zieh mich aus (Undress Me) and Ich brenne (I m on Fire - no connection with the 5000 Volts song), the whole concept had worn pretty thin, and she disappeared again.

Except for the fact that he recorded an awful German-language cover of "Hey Jude", one of the Beatles' most nerve-racking numbers, not much is known about Mark Sommer who unsuccesfully tried to chart in 1977 with "Dabei weiß die ganze Welt - ich liebe dich" (Though Everybody Knows I Love You), his version of the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" as recorded by Leroy Gomez and Santa Esmeralda. The third-rate band trying hard to give the song some Latin flavor, the lame production plus Sommer's futile - and ridiculously strained - attempts to mimic Gomez' vigorous singing style while having to cope with incredibly stupid lyrics make this a true gem of the genre.

An even more mysterious case is Christian Bühner who was summoned to the recording studio by hardened Schlager criminal Ralph Siegel to lay down "Jeden Samstag abend" (Every Saturday Night), a version of the Bee Gees' eardrum-piercing "Night Fever", in '78. Clad in a broad-lapelled white suit similar to the one John Travolta's wearing in the film and shuckin' and jivin' white-boy-style across the dancefloor of a village discotheque, he looks hilariously pimpish on the cover, and his hapless singing, accompanied by a decidedly unfunky ensemble and a bunch of absurdly meowing background vocalists, doesn't do much to change that impression.

To be continued .

. .