Books by Tim Lawrence
Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92 (Forthcoming, autumn 2009)
Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, the first biography the be written about the downtown musician Arthur Russell, has gone into
production with Duke University Press and will be published in the
autumn of 2009. Developed around exhaustive interviews with Russell's
closest collaborators, friends and family, and including eight-seven Read more »
Love Saves the Day / Japanese Translation
Love
Saves the Day has been translated into Japanese:
＜ガラージ＞＜ロフト＞＜12インチ＞＜ノンストップ・ミックス＞…
現在の隆盛の礎となった、NYを軸とした70年代のDJ/クラブ/レコード業界まわりの史実を、オリジナル・インタビュー、“ダンス・クラシックス”リス
トを通して徹底検証した決定版！DJカルチャー参 Read more »
Love Saves the Day / Italian Translation
"Love
Saves the Day", uscito in prima edizione nel 2003 per la Duke
University Press, e' un libro secondo noi importante, giunto a colmare
una lacuna evidente nella critica musicale e piu' in genere nella
critica del costume. Infatti, sebbene non manchino i libri e le
pubblicazioni sugli "anni della disco" -- quasi tutti elencati
nell'ampia bibliografia, la più... Read more »
Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79
Opening with David Mancuso's groundbreaking "Love Saves the Day" Valentine's
party, Tim Lawrence tells the definitive story of American dance music
culture in the 1970s -- from its subterranean roots in NoHo and Hell's
Kitchen to its gaudy blossoming in midtown Manhattan to its wildfire
transmission through America's suburbs and urban hotspots... Read more »
New from Tim Lawrence
Feminist / Queer Desires (Goldsmiths, June 2008)
I
was invited by Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications at
Goldsmiths College, to present a paper on the theme of "Disco and the
Queer Dance Floor" at the third annual Gender and Theory Conference,
which took place on Wednesday 11 June 2008... Read more »
Arthur Russell / Rhizomatic Musicianship (Liminalities)
During the 1970s and early 1980s, a diverse group of artists,
musicians, sculptors, video filmmakers and writers congregated in
downtown New York and forged a radical creative network... Read more »
David Mancuso and the Loft (Placed)
The following article and interview appears in Placed, an new
Berlin-based magazine. Conducted in London on the eve of Lucky
Cloud Sound System's spring party, the interview... Read more »
Arthur Russell interview (Blow Up)
On
25 January 2007 I was interviewed by Daniela Cascella for the March
2007 edition of Blow Up (Italy). The full transcript of the interview
follows, along with a PDF of the article. Daniela Cascella: Setting out
on a new project always implies a great deal of research... Read more »
In Defence of Disco (Again) (New Formations)
"Disco"
is the overburdened name given to the culture that includes the
spaces (discotheques) that were organised around the playback of
recorded music by a DJ (disc jockey); the social practice of individual
freeform dancing that was established within this... Read more »
"I Want to See All My Friends At Once": Arthur Russell and the Queering of Gay Disco (Journal of Popular Music Studies)
Disco, it is commonly understood, drummed its drums and twirled its
twirls across an explicit gay-straight divide. In the beginning, the
story goes, disco was gay: Gay dancers went to gay clubs, celebrated
their newly liberated status by dancing with other men, and discovered
a vicarious voice in the... Read more »
Disco: Liberation of the Body (Liberazione)
In the popular imagination, disco conjures up images of Studio 54, the
celebrated New York 1970s nightclub, where hoards of would-be dancers
queued up on a nightly basis, waving their arms frantically in an
attempt to... Read more »
Discotheque: Haçienda
Histories of UK club culture often tell the following story. Before the
summer of 1987, rare groove ruled, beats-per-minute were slow and dance
floor energy was low. Then a gaggle of London lads went to Ibiza,
tasted the Ecstasy-dance cocktail, and carried on the party when they
came back home. The "Summers of Love" of 1988 and 1989 that followed
didn't so much mark a new twist in Read more »
Acid - Can You Jack?
House
music is disco's revenge. So said Frankie Knuckles, reflecting on the
charged history of the genre, which emerged in hometown Chicago in the
middle of the 1980s. In this case home, to quote... Read more »
Mixed With Love: The Musical World Of Walter Gibbons
This tale begins with a skinny white DJ mixing between the breaks
of obscure Motown records with the ambidextrous intensity of an octopus
on speed. It closes with the same man, sick with AIDS... Read more »