There was an exhibit on Disco last year at Seattle's Experience Music Project (I'm betting everyone has heard of Paul Allen's multi-million dollar homage to rock and roll- now in serious financial trouble but that's another post).

The show really took the stance that Disco was integral to the gay and minority liberation movements of the seventies; that it provided a format for women, gays, and minorities to build community that the moribund seventies rock scene did not.

In all honesty, I hadn't really given Disco a thought since 1978 until I saw this show and it made sense to me. Who were the instigators of the disco inferno in Chicago? Certainly not women or minorities; and probably not gays. It was, I think, a reactionary stunt spurred on by one of those pre-Howard Stern DJ's looking to gain notoriety and ratings by appealing to the worst aspects of young white dumb guys.