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I was in my teens during that 'frenetic' '76 - '79 disco era....living in a small town just outside a fairly large city in Canada....a big music lover who was in those years of discovering that there was life outside the music box of radio, mainstream and pop charts.
Yes, disco was fairly well-known but it certainly wasn't well-received by most of my young peers. The adults around me didn't go to discos. Our radio stations didn't play one disco song after another. The guys I attended school with at that time loved their Supertramp, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Kansas and of course their beloved Zeppelin. Others were more into the softer rock of Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Bob Seger, Meatloaf and Steve Miller. This was the case for adults as well.
When I made my one or two visits to the record stores each week into the city, I had to search for anything of a disco nature outside of the Bee Gees and KC. Even my beloved Donna Summer albums (other than Bad Girls) were only to be found in the small disco section usually towards the back of the stores. The clerks at the stores were pretty ignorant and uncaring about my inquiries too.
I know that it was much different in mega-cities like Chicago, LA, Toronto (although I question just how big it was there) and of course NYC but elsewhere, if it was anything like the environment that I grew up in, disco was not the music norm of choice. So other than big cities on the coasts and borders, my guess is disco was not this huge phenomenon in North America that Steve Dahl and the like had distorted in their minds....it was not in every home, not in everyone's frame of mind, not taking over everyone's state of being!
I remember reading about that ridiculous Comiskey Park event. At age 18, I remember being incredibly confused that a music, who's prime reason for existing was to make people dance and smile, could create such hostility in the hearts and minds of a huge body of people.
It would be years and years later before I started to become aware of the damaging and harmful repercussions caused by the insecure soul.
So in answer to the question, no, I wouldn't have had one fleeting thought of participating in such inane immaturity.
Originally Written by paul
In the summer of 1979, I was a racist, homophobic, long-haired, 13 year old suburban white boy who, as a radio listener, was as sick of disco as anyone - despite the fact that I seem to remember still liking a few disco songs at the time, such as "Bad Girls". I was not a club-goer at the time (and wouldn't be until 1988), and I had NO idea of any of the history of disco beyond "The Hustle" and "Jive Talking" being huge hits in 1975. I was just sick of hearing it constantly on the radio, was getting more into rock like Led Zeppelin and The Cars and Pink Floyd (which is what my racist, homophobic, long-haired, suburban white boy friends were also listening to), and was a "disco sucks" spouter like so many others. 
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