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Party Pariahs and the Path to Permanent 2. consolidation Revolution

6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet A virtuoso of West African percussion, Babatunde Olatunji traveled from Nigeria to the United States in 1950 in order to study at Morehouse Col- lege in Atlanta on a Rotary International scholarship. He applied to take a Ph.D. at New York University in the hope that this would enable him to pursue a diplomatic career but quickly ran out of money and turned to music in order to earn a living. It proved to be an auspicious U-turn: in 1958 he was invited to appear as a featured soloist at a Radio City Sym- phony Orchestra concert at Radio City Music Hall, and he was subse- quently offered a record deal by Columbia. Featuring four drummers and nine female singers, Drums of Passion was released the following year and became a national hit, effectively introducing African percussion to the American listener. Francis Grasso purchased the mesmerizing slab of vinyl in a record store on Flatbush Avenue. ‘‘I was a wee teenager,’’ he says. ‘‘I had always wanted to be a drummer and was fascinated with African beats. The album had this outrageous cover of all these men playing drums. It was a favorite of mine way before I became a disc jockey.’’ Drums of Passion lived up to its name. ‘‘I took it with me whenever I wanted to get laid. All of the women said that it was so rhythmically sexual.When I went to a girl’s house I took Olatunji and Johnny Mathis. I would start off with Olatunji and end up with Johnny Mathis.’’ Grasso started to play the polyrhythmic sounds of the African artist only once Seymour and Shelley had taken control of the Sanctuary, and ‘‘Jin-Go-Lo-Ba (Drums of Passion)’’ became his most radical statement—older music for a bolder dance floor. ‘‘You needed a crowd that was limber enough. Straight people were clumsy and had no rhythm, whereas gay men were right on. They moved their hips,

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their bodies, and their arms, and the faster the music got the crazier they reacted. I didn’t want to play Olatunji until I had an audience for it.’’ San- tana had coincidentally just come out with a cover version of ‘‘Jin-Go-Lo- Ba,’’ renamed ‘‘Jingo,’’ and the Sanctuary DJ used this popular remake as his cue. ‘‘I said to myself, ‘If Santana works then the real shit is going to kill them!’ I was good at mixing one record into another so I played the Santana and brought in ‘Jin-Go-Lo-Ba.’ The crowd preferred the Olatunji, where there’s no screaming guitar. They got into it straight away.’’

Francis Grasso Select Discography (Sanctuary 1970) 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet Abaco Dream, ‘‘Life and Death inG&A’’ James Brown, ‘‘Cold Sweat,’’ from Live at the Apollo, Volume 2 James Brown, ‘‘Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine’’ James Brown, ‘‘Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)’’ Chicago, ‘‘I’m a Man’’ The Four Tops, ‘‘Still Waters’’ Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsys The Jackson 5, ‘‘ABC’’ King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King Led Zeppelin, ‘‘Immigrant Song’’ Led Zeppelin, ‘‘Whole Lotta Love’’ Little Sister, ‘‘You’re the One’’ The Marketts, ‘‘Out of Limits’’ Olatunji, ‘‘Jin-Go-Lo-Ba (Drums of Passion)’’ Osibisa, Osibisa Rare Earth, ‘‘Get Ready’’ Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, The Detroit-Memphis Experiment Sam and Dave, ‘‘Hold On! I’m a Coming’’ The Temptations, ‘‘I Can’t Get Next To You’’

Within the framework of the public discotheque circuit,Grasso’s range of music was unique. In addition to Olatunji and Santana he would play the raw funk of James Brown, the rock-like reverberations of the Doobie

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Brothers, the sweet sounds of boyhood hero Johnny Mathis, and the African-rock fusion of Osibisa, as well as Motown staples such as the Supremes and the Jackson 5. ‘‘Terry Noël was on a different wavelength,’’ says Grasso. ‘‘He would play the Beatles, he would play the Stones, he would play Elvis, and he would play bubble gum. He wasn’t very big on black. I played more soul, more R&B, more African, and more rock. I played things nobody would dream of playing. I gave you the full bag.’’ David DePino, who was working behind the bar, found himself shuffling to a new beat. ‘‘Francis got heavy. He played all kinds of music—things that you wouldn’t expect to hear.’’ Grasso’s method of mixing was initially less radical than his actual selections. Leaning heavily on radio protocol as well as the practice of 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet other discotheque DJs, he would segue from one record to the next by using his fingertip to grip the non-playing record as the turntable spun underneath. When the outgoing track recited its final phrases he would release his hold, and the two records would overlap for a couple of sec- onds, bleeding into each other and establishing a temporary bridge—or ‘‘blend,’’ as it was more frequently described—that maintained the musi- cal flow and helped to generate a hypnotic groove. That groove became virtually seamless if the DJ ‘‘slip-cued’’ between two copies of an extended single in which the recording was pressed up in ‘‘two halves’’ on the A- and B-sides of a forty-five. These were standard tricks of a nascent trade, but, as the reaction from the dance floor became progressively more intense, Grasso set about in- venting a technique that would dramatically extend the effect. Using his headphones to their full potential, the DJ started to use his left ear to listen to the incoming selection and his right ear to hear the amplified sound in order to forge an imaginary amalgam that, if everything was in place, could be transformed into sonic reality. ‘‘Somewhere in the middle of my head,’’ says Grasso, ‘‘I would make the mix.’’ The DJ’s most famous permutation layered the Latin beats of Chicago’s ‘‘I’m a Man’’ over the erotic groans of the vocal break in Led Zeppelin’s ‘‘Whole Lotta Love.’’ ‘‘You really couldn’t dance to the Zeppelin once it went into that orgas- mic tripping stuff, but if you mixed it with the Chicago then you could. Amazingly, the entire break of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ lasted exactly the same time as ‘I’m a Man,’ so as the ‘I’m a Man’ finished the full song of ‘A Whole Lotta Love’ would come back.’’ Unstable and exciting, the vinyl compound emerged as a heightened moment of DJ musicianship, with Grasso cast-

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ing aside entrenched notions of artistic integrity—that these were sepa- rate records—in favor of exploratory combinations that became longer and longer. ‘‘Nobody mixed like me. Nobody was willing to hang out that long. Because if you hang out that long the chances of mistakes are that much greater.’’ The problem of combining two records that were in all likelihood run- ning at different tempos, and whose live drummers were prone to rhyth- mic shifts, was compounded by inflexible mixing technology. ‘‘Back then you couldn’t adjust speeds,’’ says Grasso. ‘‘You had to catch it at the right moment. There was no room for error, and you couldn’t play catch up. I had Thorens turntables and you couldn’t do that on Thorens.’’ If the DJ wanted to increase the tempo he would simply bring in a record that ran 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet half a beat faster. ‘‘I would build it up slowly. I was dealing with people who were high.The idea was to make them enjoy their head, not fuck with their head. I took care of the people who paid to hear me.’’ Unfavorable conditions made Grasso’s feats all the more remarkable. The average forty-five lasted little more than two minutes, in which time the DJ would have to find his next record, cue it up, make the mix, and work the lights. ‘‘The lights were on my right-hand side on a switchboard, but to work the main room lights I had to go out of my booth, run past the service bar and go into this little room where there were these heavy- duty switches. I would flip the switches to the beat of the music, and then I’d run back to my booth. I earned my pay.’’ Grasso also operated the discotheque’s state-of-the-art strobes, which generated a profoundly disorienting environment. ‘‘When the strobe lights went on they really strobed,’’ says DePino. ‘‘They made it look like people were dancing in slow motion. It was intense, surreal.’’ Frank Crapanzano was similarly spellbound. ‘‘The Sanctuary was the first place I ever saw a strobe light. The effect was so overwhelming I had to stop dancing—and I’m a dancer. Everyone looked ominous and satanic. It was just beyond.’’ Timesaving strategies were crucial for Grasso. When he needed to go for a pee, he visited the sink in the utility room, which was a short walk from the altar. (The men’s toilet was deemed out-of-bounds because he was worried the Sanctuary’s gay contingent would get the wrong idea about his sexuality, and the women’s bathroom on the other side of the discotheque was too far away.) The discovery that records could be ‘‘read’’ also helped Grasso streamline the mixing process. ‘‘If you look at an

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album carefully you can see which parts of the album are vocal and which parts are musical so you’ve already got a head start.The dark black grooves are instrumental sections and the lighter black is the vocal.’’ Ultimately, however, Grasso was more interested in reading the mood on the dance floor. ‘‘I always played according to what I got from the crowd. If I saw them maintain the level of intensity then I’d bring in a quicker record. It always depended on the vibe.’’ Inspired by the fresh combination of space, light, and sound, the sheer density of bodies, the expansive danceability of Grasso’s selections, the feeling of commonality forged by their wider repression, and the sense of security that came with a gay-controlled door, the crowd danced to a new dynamic that was quite unique within the short history of the disco- 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet theque. ‘‘I loved to go out on the floor,’’ says Sanctuary regular Richard Brezner. ‘‘There was nothing better than grabbing someone you knew or someone you had just met and dancing with them.’’ In a break with estab- lished etiquette, dancing wasn’t necessarily partnered. ‘‘If a song came on that I really loved I thought nothing of going out onto the dance floor by myself and just dancing.’’ When partnerships formed they did so sponta- neously. ‘‘Ninety-nine percent of the time somebody would start to dance with you or a group of people would grab your arm and pull you in to join them. You always gravitated toward holding someone.’’ The nascent dance ritual enabled gay men, ethnic groups, and women to experiment with a new way of being that revolved around commu- nal hedonism, ecstatic release, stylish yet functional clothing, and bodily rather than verbal communication. Yet just as the dance ritual recast the identity of the crowd, so the shifting identity of the crowd revolutionized the dance ritual, and this interaction enabled—or even required—Grasso to perform not only longer and longer mixes but also longer and longer sets. ‘‘I saw people dance three hours straight,’’ says the DJ.‘‘I couldn’t be- lieve it.’’ Grasso was compelled to revise his habit of sprinkling his sets with occasional slow records. ‘‘I learned the importance of playing slow records from being in the straight clubs. They didn’t charge at the door so you had to encourage people to drink more. I would play music that people could dance slow to, and if they wanted to drink then they could drink.’’ The tactic, though, was now defunct. ‘‘When the Sanctuary went gay, I didn’t play that many slow records because they were drinkers and they knew how to party. Just the sheer heat and numbers made them

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drink. The energy level was phenomenal. At one point I used to feel that if I brought the tempo down they would boo me because they were having so much fun.’’ Grasso moved onto a different musical plane. ‘‘The straight crowd really didn’t want to get too sweaty, but when it went gay I could do things that the straights couldn’t have handled. I was ready to play, and they were ready to dance. We met.’’ A self-declared stud who talks of sleeping with some five hundred women during his DJing years, Grasso developed his most intimate relationship with Seymour and Shelley’s gay clientele. ‘‘Musically my creative juices were stirred up. I had this burning desire to do better all the time, and the people came expecting me to perform. It was like kismet, a state of nirvana where everything meets together.’’ 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet As befitted this gayest of mixed discotheques, power was being exercised from the bottom up. What had emerged in the Sanctuary—and simultaneously in the Loft —was a social and egalitarian model of making music in which the DJ played in relation to the crowd, leading and following in roughly equal measure. In order to lead, the DJ would buy records, rehearse certain mixes, and make live selections, the combination of which suggested a dominant position in relationship to the crowd. But the role of following, in which the DJwould improvise in order to take account of the energy and desires of the dance floor, was equally important given that no amount of preparation could fully anticipate the mood of the dance floor. With im- provisation came discovery (rather than familiarity), freedom (as opposed to control), and chaos (instead of order). As a result the relationship be- tween the DJ and the crowd resembled a dynamic conversation between separate agents that, when combined, had a greater total effect than the sum of their individual parts. This synergistic alliance amounted to an intensified version of the participatory and democratic form of making music known as call-and- response, or antiphony, which features reciprocal conversations between participants in styles as varied as folk, gospel, and jazz. The synergy of the discotheque, however, was unique inasmuch as the music was never separable from its various authors. Of course, the individual units of vinyl that comprised the DJ set might have been for sale, but the blended and mixed combination wasn’t. Nor could it be either recreated in a record- ing studio (the dancers wouldn’t fit) or effectively taped within the disco- theque (the screams of the crowd would be either lost or too disruptive for

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home listening, plus no format could fully reproduce the entire length of the nightclub nuptial). DJs were spearheading a turntable revolution.

*** A makeshift imitation of the Sanctuary was shipped out to Fire Island when Michael Fesco opened the Ice Palace on Memorial Day weekend 1970, roughly three months after his first visit to the converted church on Forty-third Street. ‘‘After going to the Sanctuary I said, ‘I’ve just got to do something like this!’ ’’ says Fesco. ‘‘I sat there in the rafters mesmerized by the people on the dance floor. I said, ‘Look at them! They’re just having the most fantaaastic time! This is what I’m going to do in the Boom Boom Room!’ ’’ 6932 Lawrence / LOVE SAVES THE DAY / sheet Situated on Cherry Grove, a gay Fire Island community that dates back to the 1920s, the Boom Boom Room had been handed over to Fesco in the summer of 1969. ‘‘I was invited to help manage the Beach Hotel and Club, and I turned up for the interview in a black mohair suit and tie. The friend who gave me the job turned out to be a heavy drinker, and after a month I found myself running the entire complex.’’ That included the hotel itself, the Sea Shack restaurant, and the hotel bar. ‘‘There was a jukebox in the bar, and the neighbors would complain about the music. The only thing they could hear was this ‘boom, boom, boom,’ so it was re- ferred to as the Boom Boom Room.’’ At the beginning of 1970 it became the Doom Doom Room. ‘‘As soon as I went to the Sanctuary I knew its days were over.’’ Fesco opted for a wholesale revamp. ‘‘There was a novel called The Ice Palace, and I thought the name would be perfect for the Boom Boom Room. It was always so damn hot in there that I thought a nice cool name would be psychologically appreciated.’’ In line with the new con- cept, Fesco covered the walls with a mass of cut-price industrial tinfoil purchased on Canal Street, and, in an attempt to emulate Seymour and Shelley’s discotheque, the ungainly jukebox was replaced with a sound system and a DJ. ‘‘We rented the equipment for the summer—that’s how unfamiliar we were with the possibilities.’’ The Ice Palace opened on 30 May 1970. ‘‘We had a line outside that ran all the way to the beach. I believe 1,800 people came to the opening.We charged five dollars admis- sion, and my rent for the season was assured.’’ Fortunately for Fesco, the opening coincided with a marked relaxation in state surveillance. ‘‘The police were severe in Cherry Grove before 1970,

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