A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1980-92
[Last updated: 07.06.2005]
Initially Love Saves the Day was going to be a history of dance music
culture in the United States and Britain from the middle of the 1980s
to the end of the 1990s. It didn't take me long to work that the I
needed to drag my start date back by a good fifteen years: as Michael
Cappello, Steve D'Acquisto, Francis Grasso, David Mancuso and others
made clear, 1970 was year zero for dance culture as we know it today.
So I started to research and write a history that would stretch over a
thirty-year time span, beginning in 1970 and winding up at the end of
millennium. Ha ha! I became so absorbed with the 1970s that, by the
time I had reached the close of the decade, I had rattled up 180,000
words, enough for a five-hundred-page book. I decided that I would
write about the 1980s and 1990s in a separate book.
I've already had to get sensible and revise the scope of the "sequel". If the experience of writing Love Saves the Day is anything to go by, it looks like I'll be doing well to get to the end of the eighties in one go, so the nineties will just have to wait a little while. (The sequel to the sequel?) Ending in the late eighties could work well: 1987, the year the Paradise Garage closed, marks one possible closing point; 1988, the year the Saint shut down, is another; or I could take things through to the end of the decade, ending with a story of revival and renaissance ⎯ the opening of the Sound Factory, the rising profile of New York's voguers, the formation of the Masters at Work production team, etc.
Whatever the end date, the subject matter of the core of the book will include the transition from disco to dance in the eclectic downtown milieu of New York at the turn of the 1980s; party spaces such as the Paradise Garage, the Loft, Zanzibar, the Warehouse, the Power Plant, the Music Box; DJs Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles, Tony Smith, Jellybean, David Morales and their peers; and producer/remixers/artists ranging from Larry Levan to Jellybean, Marshall Jefferson to Larry Heard, Juan Atkins to Derrick May to Kevin Saunderson, Blaze to Todd Terry. As with Love Saves the Day, the evolution of club culture will be firmly set within the social milieu of the 1980s ⎯ an ugly decade. New York Clubland was devasted by Aids, the Regan administration did little, if anything, to help, and the acceleration of liberalisation accentuated an already divided nation. Nightworld, for many, became a place not just to celebrate and let go but also to take refuge and find solace.
Duke University Press, who did such a wonderful job with Love Saves the Day, are keen to publish the sequel. At present there is no deadline for the delivery of this project, but I am well underway with the research and have conducted interviews with the likes of Juan Atkins, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Joaquin "Joe" Clausselll, David DePino, Leslie Doyle, Mark Finkelstein, Bruce Forest, Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez, Larry Heard, Kevin Hedge, Tony Humphries, Steve "Silk" Hurley, Marshall Jefferson, Fran
I've already had to get sensible and revise the scope of the "sequel". If the experience of writing Love Saves the Day is anything to go by, it looks like I'll be doing well to get to the end of the eighties in one go, so the nineties will just have to wait a little while. (The sequel to the sequel?) Ending in the late eighties could work well: 1987, the year the Paradise Garage closed, marks one possible closing point; 1988, the year the Saint shut down, is another; or I could take things through to the end of the decade, ending with a story of revival and renaissance ⎯ the opening of the Sound Factory, the rising profile of New York's voguers, the formation of the Masters at Work production team, etc.
Whatever the end date, the subject matter of the core of the book will include the transition from disco to dance in the eclectic downtown milieu of New York at the turn of the 1980s; party spaces such as the Paradise Garage, the Loft, Zanzibar, the Warehouse, the Power Plant, the Music Box; DJs Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles, Tony Smith, Jellybean, David Morales and their peers; and producer/remixers/artists ranging from Larry Levan to Jellybean, Marshall Jefferson to Larry Heard, Juan Atkins to Derrick May to Kevin Saunderson, Blaze to Todd Terry. As with Love Saves the Day, the evolution of club culture will be firmly set within the social milieu of the 1980s ⎯ an ugly decade. New York Clubland was devasted by Aids, the Regan administration did little, if anything, to help, and the acceleration of liberalisation accentuated an already divided nation. Nightworld, for many, became a place not just to celebrate and let go but also to take refuge and find solace.
Duke University Press, who did such a wonderful job with Love Saves the Day, are keen to publish the sequel. At present there is no deadline for the delivery of this project, but I am well underway with the research and have conducted interviews with the likes of Juan Atkins, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Joaquin "Joe" Clausselll, David DePino, Leslie Doyle, Mark Finkelstein, Bruce Forest, Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez, Larry Heard, Kevin Hedge, Tony Humphries, Steve "Silk" Hurley, Marshall Jefferson, Fran