Dating back to my first interview with David Mancuso on 9 April 1997, I have become more and more immersed in Loft culture, the Loft being the party that came into de facto formation when David held a Valentine’s Day dance party on 14 February 1970 his home at 647 Broadway, a party that is still running today.
My connection goes back to researching and writing Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979, which evolved out of that interview. David revealed an entirely new way of understanding 1970s dance culture, including disco, the genre that grew out of that decade’s innovative and radical dance floor movement. He urged me to appreciate the contribution of a mushrooming downtown party scene that largely grew out of the Loft. I connected immediately and deeply to David’s obvious intent and ongoing passion: that the dance floor should operate as a intentionally Utopian space of freedom, collectivity and expression. The book was the first to provide an account of the Loft’s huge influence on 1970s dance floor and music culture as well as the first to provide a detailed account of DJ-led dance floor culture during the 1970s.
In 2002 David invited me followed by Colleen Murphy, a friend of David’s from New York, to begin to co-host Loft-style parties with him in London. Teaming up with Adrian Fillary, Jeremy Gilbert and Nikki Lucas, we started to organise parties in June 2003, shortly before the publication of Love Saves the Day. David would go on to say in an interview conducted by Simon Halpin and Darren Henson that it was the book that led him to think of turning to Colleen and me to start the party. Colleen, Jeremy and I joined as co-partners to form Lucky Cloud Sound System in 2005 in order to take out a large loan to purchase equipment. We understood Lucky Cloud to be a collectively-run, dependent as the party was on the goodwill, love and labour of volunteers.
A visit to the Brooklyn-based Loft off-shoot Joy in the spring of 2017 inspired me to start another Loft-inspired party, All Our Friends, in January 2018. Having started to feel somewhat constrained Lucky Cloud, especially after David ended up playing his last party in London in March 2011, I wanted to explore how the principles of the Loft could be reimagined on this side of the Atlantic, with the re-introduction of a democratic invite list, a Saturday late-pm start, turntables that were shared rather than overseen by a single musical host or DJ, and an approach to selecting music that engaged more willingly with southern hemisphere and tropical sounds.
The final twist to the party story surfaced in January 2023 in the run-up to Lucky Cloud’s 20th anniversary party when we held our first big team meeting in a while. Ideas flew around the room, including suggestions about the musical hosting (David’s preferred term for a DJ who also takes on the role of party host), the sound system, when to hold the parties, all sorts.
In the end, we took the decision to evolve peacefully and lovingly into two parties, Lucky Cloud Sound System (led by an organising team) and the London Loft (led by Colleen). Lucky Cloud/the London Loft its final all-together-and-one-for-all party in June, after which I began to devote myself to the Lucky Cloud Sound System half of the family, having concluded that this offered the greatest opportunity to operate in a collective and mutually supportive manner, with no single person ultimately in charge.
After spending so much time interviewing David, writing about David and organising parties alongside and/or inspired by David, I’ve become an advocate of Loft-inspired partying and have been happy to support similarly-minded initiatives whenever invited, from organic party groups to museum curators. I give regular public talks about the influence of David Mancuso and the Loft and regularly publish articles on the topic. I am currently researching and writing an oral history of David Mancuso and the Loft.