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Home , 99 Records, David Mancuso, House music, Mudd Club, Paradise Garage, The Loft (New York City)

Paradise Garage dancefloor, New Words Andy Thomas Portrait Mattias Pettersson , 1979 Photograph Bill Bernstein © 2016 Bill Bernstein from : the Bill Bernstein Photographs (Reel Art Press) LIFE AND DEATH ON THE DANCE FLOOR A new book by Tim Lawrence on the scene at the start of the reveals a countercultural melting pot of remarkable creativity, diversity and cross-pollination. New York Dance Floor 1980-1983

“The early 1980s would reveal themselves to Love Saves the Day is widely recognised as the Stefan suggested I talk to this guy with LSD, and was going into production I was thinking, I don’t Jean-Michel Basquiat be one of the most creatively vibrant and socially most in-depth book on 1970s New York dance called who he said experimentation want to go right into the next book about the DJing at , New dynamic periods in the history of New York,” culture. How did that project come about? was there from the very beginning. with sound. So it all 1980s straight away. At one of York, 1986 Photograph writes Tim Lawrence in the introduction to his I was supposed to write a history of I was actually a bit reluctant just presented itself held for Love Saves the Day, this guy called Steve Johnny Dynell, new book Life and Death on the New York Dance and culture. I had been hearing DJs like because at the time I didn’t want courtesy of the as a great story for Knutson from Audika Records was there and he Floor, 1980-1983. “Those superficially amorphous Louie Vega playing in and I wanted to to go back to the 1970s. photographer me. And I just followed had brought with him the Arthur LP years contained some kind of coded lesson about experience that every week really. So I went out it and as I did so it of Context to give to David. I had already been creativity, community and democracy in the to New York to study a PhD in English Literature Was that because you didn’t led into so many fishing around with my editor and publisher global city.” at Columbia University in the autumn of 1994. understand the link with what was different directions. about the idea but they didn’t think there was Lawrence’s book is the much anticipated The dance culture there at clubs like the Sound happening in New York at the time? the interest in him. So the Audika record came follow up to his Love Saves the Day: a History Factory Bar was just blowing me away. I was I didn’t really want to go back How long did it take out, then the one on Soul Records (The of American Culture, 1970-1979, having a difficult time as both my parents had to disco because to me house for all the strands to World of Arthur Russell). Then there was a piece which took its name from David Mancuso’s 1970 died in quite quick succession. So dance culture music was much more interesting. fit together? by David Toop in The Wire and features in The Valentine’s party that inspired the Loft, a series became very important to me; it gave me a sense I thought it was an irrefutable In some ways, it was New York Times and The New Yorker so things of underground dance parties. “ dictated of wellbeing, of joy and community. One of my advance of what had gone before. quite quick. By the really started to move along. Then my editor that this book should have told the history of 1980s professors, Edward Said, was a really interesting Stefan and Joe at Dance Tracks time I got that said, “OK, let’s do it.” So it was an interesting dance culture in the in the same way and inspiring guy and he suggested I write a were always trying to sell me disco really that relevant any more. He was this figure night after the interview with David way for me to in the same territory of the that my first bookLove Saves the Day excavated short book about dance music. The idea was to classics but at the time if it didn’t who was into high-end sound systems and didn’t Mancuso there were about 10 New York scene but to move sideways. the 1970s,” writes Lawrence in the preface to Life begin in mid-1980s with the beginnings have an on it, really mix with anyone, he didn’t interact with messages on my answer machine and Death. But instead of following the mid-decade of house music. At the time, I was going I didn’t want to listen to it. Also, other DJs, and so he was very much separate with people wanting to talk. So That leads us into Life and Death on the New rise of and , Lawrence regularly to buy records from Dance Tracks that quite a few people I spoke to were from what was going on. The Loft was no longer I started following up these leads York Dance Floor and what you described in immersed himself in the countercultural melting was run by Stefan Prescott and Joe Claussell. saying that David Mancuso wasn’t really happening at the time either, and he was and I knew that it was something the intro as your sideways “crab like approach”. pot of 1980 to 1983. Instead of being a mere bridge struggling financially. But I thought I would go really interesting. And all routes Writing the Arthur Russell book definitely gave between 1970s disco and 1980s house and techno, Tim Lawrence, author to meet him. seemed to lead back to the Loft. me a new way to think about New York at that the post-disco, post-punk and hip-hop scenes of Life and Death on the and time. The new book is a continuation of Love interacted with each other and became blurred. New York Dance Floor, What was that first meeting like? had been absolute diehards there, Saves the Day and picks up that story, but New If there was one figure that epitomised this 1980-1983 Portrait I went to meet him at an Italian restaurant in they had gone to work for Nicky York of the 1980s is quite a different place convergence it was classical cellist turned mutant Mattias Pettersson the East Village and we spoke for three hours. Siano who had based his club sonically to New York in the 1970s. And it disco producer Arthur Russell. And prior to Life I thought I knew quite a lot about New York the Gallery on the Loft, Michael was by spending time on the Arthur book and and Death Lawrence wrote Hold on to Your dance culture at that juncture; but I didn’t know Brody’s dream was to open an understanding his legacy that I got a proper tour Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music anything or hardly understand a single word expanded version of the Loft that of the many different corners of the New York Scene, 1973-1992. he said. All the references were new to me; the would become . music scene and how everything connected. Life and Death is drawn from years of research Record Pool, , Michael Cappello, Nobody had written and hundreds of interviews, resulting in an Steve D’Acquisto, David Rodriguez, Reade Street, about any of this authoritative study of this riotously creative time the Tenth Floor. This was all new to me. And before. This was 1997. in New York. In the introduction, Lawrence credits I was like, “How come I haven’t heard any of this I soon realised this books as disparate as Jeff Chang’sCan’t Stop, at all?” Anyway, I carried on writing this book was the book I wanted Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation about house music until my editor said I should to write and that one and Simon Reynold’s Rip it Up and Start Again: have at least one chapter on disco. The first on rave culture would Postpunk 1978-1984. But as he explains, “While three key interviews were with Frankie Knuckles, have to wait. these authors capture a slice of the city’s cultural Tony Humphries and . At the history, their angled approach inevitably slices up end of each interview I would ask them: “By the After Loves Saves an era that was arguably defined by its synergy way, have you heard of this guy called David the Day you wrote and interconnectedness.” And it is in studying Mancuso?” And they all gave the same response the first book on these intersections of post-punk and post-disco almost line for line, that David Mancuso was the Arthur Russell. Can that Lawrence goes deeper, to reveal the true most important person in their life and that he you tell me how you creativity of New York’s counterculture in the had introduced them to the social and sonic came to write it? early 1980s. possibilities of the dancefloor. They all said the One of my earliest Anita Sarko DJing at the Mudd Club, New York, 1980 Loft was like a birthing place for them. So this interviewees had been Photograph Scott Morgan, courtesy of the photographer was when it got really interesting. Here were the pioneering Italian the major DJs from house music all saying the American DJ Steve D’Acquisto I understand you were planning for the new same thing and following the same lineage back who had told me about this crazy, book to focus on the continuation of disco into Disco had got so to the Loft. brilliant guy called Arthur Russell what became house music. who had hung out with Allen The idea of the new book was to take it up to at precise, so heavily What made the story so interesting to you? Ginsberg, recorded with John least 1988 and to be very much about the clubs As I carried on going through the archives it Hammond and made the most like the Loft, Paradise Garage and , produced that became apparent that the word disco simply extraordinary disco, but at the same and then the arrival of house music. But what wasn’t in circulation before 1974. It hadn’t time recorded beautiful folk happened was very quickly, I realised there there needed to been conceptualised as a genre, the record on the guitar and cello. But at the was this largely forgotten period before the companies didn’t know what was going on. time I thought, how could I write rise of house music and after the death of disco. be a twist if it was So there was this whole period of four or five a story of someone who is so all I initially thought I could deal with this period years when what became known as disco was over the place, doing everything all quite quickly because it didn’t really have a name going to excite developing. There was this very young, open at once. There was just no lineage and wasn’t being talked about very much at all. and democratic culture that was intertwined trajectory there to hang things on. I thought of it as an interesting period but not the dancefloors. with gay liberation, civil rights, experimentation But then when Love Saves the Day enough to attract people into it. So I really did 128 J&N J&N129 New York Dance Floor 1980-1983 think I would go from the late discrete elements together. They 1970s into the arrival of house were who became most quite quickly, at a similar pace to respected and revered. So first, Love Saves the Day. But I realised you had the DJs and producers there was something else going on who were mixing by bringing in and the book couldn’t be just about a diverse range of music, and in what happened next with David that amalgamation they create a Mancuso, Larry Levan and Frankie higher platform. This was the peak Knuckles. It soon became clear that period for the greats like Larry there was so much going on in this Levan and François Kevorkian early 1980s period, so much in the studio, then you had Arthur mayhem and inventiveness that Baker and coming I needed to step out from what through. And they were all thinking I made my name with in Love Saves about how they could bring the Day. I had to go sideways, as , and Fred ‘’ Brathwaite different elements together. And that is the way things were moving at , New York, 1983 Photograph Ande Whyland, then you had someone like Arthur at the time. courtesy of the photographer Russell. With Arthur it was all about how many different things How did you approach the writing So we had this moment when people were could be thrown in to create one record. And of the book? starting to ask, “What if?” When I came to this sort of thinking led to records like ‘Go Bang’, I realised the story was quite a write the book I couldn’t decide how to open which combines the new wave scene with the simple one. The 1970s had thrown it. How do you start a book where everything compositional orchestral scene – it’s got the R&B up these three genres: disco and is happening at once? What actually happened section, loft jazz style playing, it was associated DJ culture; punk music, was, the club I thought I would end up writing all in there. Then you have the party hosts that which largely germinated in New least about became the one I wrote most about. take mixing to a different level. So places like York; and hip-hop, which broke And that was the Mudd Club. the Mudd Club, , closely followed by through at the end of the decade. and Pyramid. There you have this But by 1980, there has been Why was the Mudd Club so important? approach to party culture that brings in DJing, the backlash to disco, punk has It was this punk discotheque, and as I started but on top of that they create venues where this failed to really break through to interview people connected to it they all said explosion of artistic experimentation and cross commercially, and most people the same thing – the punks wanted to dance too. pollination can be integrated into the club. think rap is going to be over within There had been no dancefloor at the other main six months. But it’s actually the punk clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. That’s something Chi Chi Valenti talks about start of the new decade and a new One of the first people I interviewed was a guy in the book, the importance of these clubs as moment for music culture in the called Johnny Dynell who was in a no wave band places of experimentation. living above the Mudd Yes, so you have the Mudd Club that combines Club. He became the DJs with , an extraordinary DJ there and thought, range of live performance and amazingly what is the ultimate elaborate and immersive happenings where punk gesture a DJ can reality is challenged following the philosophy make at this club? He of the situationists. Then at Club 57 you have decided it was not to similar events but much more performance art play punk music but to based, so there are a lot of theatrics often mixed play quite commercial with mushrooms so it’s a little bit giggly and disco music that the wacky. And that is where Keith Haring starts punks were meant coming through and starts curating exhibitions. to hate. And he does That leads Steve Mass to open his dedicated art this dressed as John Travolta. This was a Steve Mass and , Lower East Side, New York, 1978 piece of art really, but You have this Photograph Bobby Grossman, courtesy of the photographer the reaction was that all the punks in the city. There were these historic Mudd Club started to dance. It was meant to be supermarket antagonisms between punk and a provocation but instead it becomes an invite. It disco and hip-hop and disco, but was this moment when people were ready to do choice of cultural then all of a sudden people started something not pre-written for them to do. This to explore what else was going on. is going on right across New York at the time. experience. Disco had got so precise, so heavily produced that there needed to be These connections across genres and scenes Wherever you a twist if it was going to excite the worked on many different levels. Could you talk dancefloors. And Arthur Russell about the importance of the “mixers” that you go you will find was one of the first to anticipate write about in the book? this with the track ‘Kiss Me Again’, What I ended up concluding about New York in something new as he brings in all the distortion and the early 1980s was that the people who came to asks his vocalist to sing out of key. the fore were those that were mixing previously and dynamic. J&N 131 New York Dance Floor 1980-1983

gallery at the Mudd Club. Then eventually wanted to turn all this on its head and have there are all sorts of downtown that these were largely separate community was in crisis, everyone seems to Danceteria opens and it has three floors with something that was far more exploratory, much art celebrities, people like Andy scenes. What really amazed me as know someone who is addicted to crack. Reagan one for the DJ, one for live bands, and one for more exciting and democratic and free. So there Warhol, so this diverse community I started to explore this was that is slashing the money going into the inner cities experimental video from the downtown art was this huge flow of migration to Downtown in are coming together for the first guys like Afrika Islam, apprentice so poverty is increasing as the drug is tearing scene. And the whole idea here was that you the late 1970s that peaked in the early 1980s. time. Jean-Michel Basquiat is of , and others through the community. Then hip-hop took a have this almost supermarket choice of cultural These people who want to find new forms of there and at the time he was the from that whole Zulu Nation crowd, more radical turn and became much harder experience. Wherever you go you will find community and sociality are a very important co-author of this notorious graffiti were going regularly to the Paradise edged. So with Aids and crack, people on both somewhere new and dynamic and varied. So part of this social mix. You mentioned Chi Chi tag Samo. Until then nobody Garage and they loved it. To me scenes are generally becoming more defensive, it was the mixers who were bringing things Valenti; she is an iconic Downtown figure, a realises who Samo was and at the that was really interesting. And and this whole period where there was openness together and this was all happening in party promoter, performer, and bar woman, a very party he reveals it was him and his then all these new wave DJs like to hybridity and exploration through meeting spaces. This is where things really germinate. charismatic scenester. She said they wanted to friend Al Diaz. He becomes very Mark Kamins at Danceteria and different people – that is very to sustain. It’s the people who run these spaces that help go to bed when other people were going to work. tight with Fred Brathwaite and they Justin Strauss from the Ritz, they make the connections. They would have been out all night putting on start to head to the Mudd Club. And were gong to the Garage. And then You end the book by talking about the events, taking part in some kind of performance, soon they are meeting with Debbie Larry Levan would go to places like economic changes in downtown New York in One of the arguments of the book is that rather socialising with friends and often funding ways Harry and Chris Stein [of Blondie] the Ritz and go into the DJ booth the mid-1980s and the effect on the scene. than being simply hedonistic, party culture in to get more work; get a part in a film, fashion and the whole bunch of new wave and watch the bands like If you look at Downtown New York today it’s very 1980s New York was hugely important both show or whatever. These clubs became hives figures. So they quickly realise this when they played there. So there clean, polished and commercial and of course it’s socially and culturally. of activity for this very diverse range of people. affinity. And so it started with was all this movement going on very expensive to live there. One of the arguments There are so many levels to this. One of the graffiti but then you had people Ruza Blue at Danceteria nightclub, New York, 1984 that I don’t think anybody has of the book is, if you want to see how it ended up What was the most dramatic development most important parts to it is that this whole like Afrika Bambaataa and Photograph Rhonda Paster, courtesy of the captured before. like that you need to go back to 1983. Reagan to come out of this socialisation? party culture was a place for people that Grandmaster Flash; they had this photographer becomes the first politician to seriously push an somehow were slightly outcast of society and It was very much about groups coming together same aesthetic of recycling music Another interesting intersection agenda of cutting back the state, cutting back not comfortable in the mainstream. You can who had never met before and what would and working with fragments. coming out the wall; but instead of trying to was with the coming in taxes and trying to centre things around market trace it back to David Mancuso who grew up in happen when they exchanged ideas. Up until cover that up it was like, how can we turn this from Jamaica and England. competition and the priorities of the individual an orphanage and created the Loft as a place for then if you were a performer you would mix Recycling was also a big thing in into a sculptural installation. And then in the François Kevorkian was of course versus the public and social. By 1983, the free people who needed a wider family. So there were with other performers, sculptors with sculptors, London, from the Creative Salvage music, as well as with the hip-hop guys, you one of the key guys with his work market growth Reagan set in motion starts to a lot of gay black and Latino men and women punks with punks and so on. And as the decade of Tom Dixon and Ron Arad to the also saw a DIY aesthetic in disco. That was with the Prelude label. He starts to come into play in quite a serious way. As well who would go there as a welcoming place as they progressed and people discovered that they clothes of Chris Nemeth. As with partly a reaction to the corporatisation that had take the dub sounds and techniques as people being priced out of Downtown, the weren’t able to come out to their families at the were living in the same buildings with different New York this was very much a happened towards the end of the 1970s. Initially and uses it as an integral part of the subsequent gentrification took other forms. time. And this carries on in the 1980s. creative people they started to have result of the economics of course. disco was extraordinarily earthy and there was studio mix. It was very dramatic. The new people moving into the city join the conversations with each other. And it was Yes exactly, there wasn’t a lot of rawness to it. But it had reached a point that And then of course Larry Levan neighbourhood association and start complaining Another part to this is the importance during out of this that the multidisciplinary, hybrid money around in New York so where there was this disco that was being with his productions with records about the Paradise Garage, as they don’t want this time of New York as a place of migration for collaborations started churned out by the major companies and much like ’ ‘Don’t Make Me 3,000 Latin and black gay men on their doorstep. artists, bohemians, hedonists, gay activists and to come about. But the of it sounded the same, so there needed to be Wait’ was very into dub. Then you And this became fairly typical, the rise of libertarians from across the US. most extraordinary change. The DIY thing became very important. had groups like neighbourhood associations and the pressure That’s something I didn’t touch on so much development was this And you can see that with people like Arthur going off to record at Compass they start to put on to more tightly in Love Saves the Day but wanted to in this meeting point of the Russell. He called his label Sleeping Bag – it was Point Studios in Nassau. So it was regulate the party scene. So things become less new book, as you see it much more during downtown art punk saying, “We’re not fancy we’re just roughing it all going on into this heady mix. affordable, rents go up and the city becomes a this period. New York City and particularly scene and the South and down and out.” And that was cool. more regulated and repressive place. And all these downtown became this refuge for what Ann Bronx hip-hop and You’ve called the book Life and things conspired to bring this incredibly exciting Magnuson calls in the book “suburban refugees”. graffiti scene. That Sleeping Bag was just one of a number Death on the New York Dance and creative period to a close. And now of course People who had grown up in all different parts was the most unlikely of independent labels alongside Prelude, Floor – could you end by talking it’s very hard to pursue your artistic dreams in of the United States, quite often in white middle coming together. West End, Tommy Boy, 99 Records etc. about the death of this hugely New York because it’s so expensive – even if there class homes and feel fundamentally alienated by How important were they to this scene? vibrant, cross-pollinating scene? is openness for people to mix and be creative. the routine, the conventions, the conservatism, What did these With the major corporations gone, it was the The death is kind of complicated the 9am-5pm clocking in and clocking out, the two scenes have independent sector that were connecting to the and happens in various ways. The Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, whole regulated nature of family life. And they in common? DJs and so there was an awful lot more openness most obvious thing was of course 1980-1983 is out on 30 September At the time, the Fred ‘Fab Five Freddy’ Brathwaite after filmingTV Party, 1980 to what could get released and how it could Aids. It reaches epidemic dukeupress.edu downtown art scene get released. There was what I call a virtuous proportions by 1983. Photograph Bobby Grossman, courtesy of the photographer Futura and , New York, 1981 Photograph Anita at clubs like Club 57, self-sufficient economy kicking in where it We get to the point This whole Rosenberg, courtesy of the photographer Mudd Club and Danceteria had an interest in people were doing the DIY thing becomes a regular experience to sell 50,000 where key figures on cut up, in semiotics, in collage and recycling. out of necessity to begin with. copies of a 12-inch single. And that’s an awful the scene are starting party culture And when they come into contact with the Downtown was pretty down and lot of copies for an to pass away, so there nascent hip-hop scene they see that their out at the time; it wasn’t anything to sell and for the DJs who did the mixes to is this great terror and was a place for aesthetic matches very closely with what is like it is today. was be working on. So it was a good moment for cloud that is hanging happening with South Bronx party culture. really cheap, where you could get everyone involved. It was quite a healthy form over everything. And it people that were And the first person to really make something material like foil or whatever you of low-level commercial capitalism. The profits wasn’t just in the white of this overlap is Fred Brathwaite, Fab 5 Freddy, needed to decorate a space or make were shared and it was very participatory and gay scene at places like slightly outcast who is invited to a downtown party by Michael something. And then there was all people really looked out for each other as well. the Saint that this was Holman [filmmaker and founder of the band sorts of stuff being dumped on the happening; it was also of society and not Gray with Jean-Michel Basquiat]. He wants the sidewalk so that was being used One of the other interesting intersections was devastating the East Fab 5 collective to come downtown to do some as well. You also had buildings hip-hop and disco. It could be argued that they Village art scene. Then comfortable in live graffiti. So Holman is also a key figure crumbling and falling apart. I mean were never that far apart in the first place. in 1984 crack reaches in realising that there is this parallel AM/PM, where François Kevorkian There has always been this historic assumption epidemic proportions the mainstream. between Uptown and Downtown. At that party was DJ, had great big concrete slabs about people who write about disco or hip-hop and so the whole black 132 J&N J&N133