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THE DISCO F ILES 1973-78 New York’s Underground, Week by Week by Vince Aletti xxx xxx Rolling Stone August 28, 1975 Dancing Madness By Vince Aletti NEW YORK – It’s not easy to pin down the disco craze with figures. As one independent mixer of disco singles explained, “The numbers are growing so fast. Every day I get four or five invitations to grand openings of new clubs.” But even the rough estimates of disco scene observers are revealing: 2000 discos from coast to coast, 200 to 300 in New York alone – the uncrowned capital of dancing madness, where an estimated 200,000 dancers make the weekly club pilgrimage. And when disco people like a record, it can become a hit-regardless of radio play. Take Consumer Rapport’s “Ease On down The Road.” Released on tiny Wing and a Prayer Records, it sold more than 100,000 copies in New York in its first two weeks before it was picked up on the radio. Discos and what has come to be known as disco music have turned out to be, if not the Next Big Thing everyone in the music business was waiting for, then the closest thing to it in years. Discos have opened in old warehouses, steak restaurants, unused hotel ballrooms and singles bars... any place you could stick a ceiling full of flashing, colored lights, a mirrored ball, two turntables, a battery of speakers, a mixer and a DJ. In a recession economy, they’re a bargain both for the club owner – who has few expenses after his initial setup investment and an average $50-a-night salary to the DJ – and the patrons, who can dance nonstop all night for a fraction of the cost of a concert ticket. Drag queens mugging © Peter Hujar Archive But the spread of disco music, especially in the last year and a half has outpaced even the growth of discos themselves. Though the new disco music evolved from the hard dance records of the Sixties – primarily Motown and James Discos and what has come to be Brown – the direction has been away from the basic, hard-edged brassy style and known as disco music have turned out toward a sound that is more complex, polished and sweet. If one style dominates to be, if not the Next Big Thing everyone now, it’s the Philadelphia Sound, which is rich and elegant, highly sophisticated and tightly structured but full of punch. The Philadelphia producers are the in the music business was waiting for, masters at using strings energetically, to boost as well as soften the arrangements, then the closest thing to it in years and they’ve perfected the glossy sound with Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, the O’Jays, the Trammps, the Three Degrees and Blue Magic. Gamble & Huff and 2 The Disco Files 1973-78 The Disco Files 1973-78 3 Village Voice June 16, 1975 The Loft By Vince Aletti Listening to the radio spots or reading the leaflets pressed into your hand outside blow-your-whistle concerts you might think they were new bands or star performers. “The tropical Sounds of Maboya,” “The Enchanting dreamwaves of Rip and Cliff,” “The Vibrant Sounds of Flowers,” “Shockwaves Conceived and Regulated by the Smith Brothers.” But “Maboya,” “Flowers,” Rip and Cliff and a growing number of others known like models and graffiti artists by a single name, are discotheque disc jockeys. These wizard/technicians in the raised booths are the underground stars of the discotheque boom that began three years ago and is now approaching the turning point from genuine phenomenon to media fad. No longer just human jukeboxes, discotheque DJs talk about creating “total evenings” or turning the night into “a whole big song, a trip,” and worry as much about their artistry as they do about new turntables that won’t slip cue like the old ones. Like hair stylists a few years back (another first-name-only group), disco DJs are emerging as the new pop professionals, holding down the up-from-the-ranks glamour jobs of the moment. Because a soundless second in a discotheque is like an hour in the real world, the new DJs blend all-night seamless musical environments, flights that may last eight hours from peak to ecstatic peak, while the lights flash and the crowd screams. But it’s not as master mixers or mood magicians that club DJs have David Mancuso © Peter Hujar Archive gotten a sudden snap-to of attention from the music business. Major record companies have begun to recognize the best discotheque DJs as tastemakers with an avid and often affluent following. Unlike their radio station Because a soundless second in a counterparts, discotheque DJs don’t wait to see sales figures, tipsheets or activity discotheque is like an hour in the real reports from other parts of the country. They’re used to tracking down new albums, singles and imports even before they’re reported in the music trades world, the new DJs blend all-night seamless (often spending as much as $50 a week to keep their collections up to date), musical environments, flights that may last and pride themselves on being the first to introduce records hot off the presses to their crowd. Record company promo men are finding they may have to fend eight hours from peak to ecstatic peak off anxious disco DJs before they can hype them, but they’re also discovering 4 The Disco Files 1973-78 The Disco Files 1973-78 5 After Dark November 1976 The Men In The Glass Booth By Vince Aletti He’s there each night from ten to closing time, With sights and sounds to help the crowds unwind, And from the booth each night he blows your mind, With his mix and tricks Forget – for the moment at least – Donna Summer, Silver Convention, Brass Construction, Gloria Gaynor, Bohannon, Love Unlimited – that endless ever- changing, slippery starstream of names shooting through disco heaven. The real stars of the seventies disco boom aren’t on records, they’re spinning them. Discotheque DJs have become tastemakers, record-breakers (several have received gold records in recognition of their influence on sales), mood magicians, performers with personal styles. The new DJ doesn’t just change records, he creates a musical “journey,” blending records into “one continuous song, one story.” As Tom Savarese, one of New York’s top DJs puts it, “From the moment I go in there to the moment I leave – that’s my canvas.” To conjure up this kind of vibrant, volatile aural landscape the DJ has to be part artist (the medium: musical collage), part technician, part crowd Back row, L-R: Barry Lederer, Tom Savarese, Don Findlay, Vincent Cafiso, Jimmy Stuard, psychologist. Some would say a total madmen. You have to know your records Nicky Siano; Front row Tony Smith, Larry Sanders © Eric Stephen Jacobs inside out, they say: the intros, the fades, the breaks, the changes, then maybe you’ll understand why disco DJs talk about “my music.” This intimate knowledge allows them to weave record into record, making one seamless tapestry. Like any artist, a talented DJ develops an individual, idiosyncratic style. One is famous for his drum collages – his hot pulsing evocation of the urban jungle. Another has a One is famous for his drum collages – his trademark sound that’s cool, loose and sweetly ecstatic. Still another will purposely break the floor “like a billiard table,” shifting the crowd for a record hot pulsing evocation of the urban jungle. he feels they should hear, nudging them into unfamiliar music. Others are Another has a trademark sound that’s cool, abrasive or frenzied or cheerfully crowd-pleasing, but they all stamp the music with their personal taste. The best inspire passionately loyal followings that trail loose and sweetly ecstatic them from club to club. (In New York, where discos open and close at the drop 6 The Disco Files 1973-78 The Disco Files 1973-78 7 After Dark November 1976 After Dark November 1976 of a Thorens tonearm, most experienced DJs can reel off a list of past jobs – Sanctuary, the Haven, Machine I, Machine II, Tambourlaine, Limelight, the Ice Palace, Le Jardin, Make-Believe Ballroom – that reads like an index to the city’s underground high and low life for the past ten years.) But if disco DJing is an art, it’s solidly based on technology – not only on the mastery of elaborate systems of turntables, mixers, speakers, amps, filters, headphones and lightboards but on a sensitivity to the technical pluses and minuses of the records. DJs quickly develop a sharp critical ear for the quality of a mix or a pressing, if only because disco equipment is sure to exaggerate flaws. When record companies realized that a muddy studio mix or a drastically reduced sound level was keeping their records off disco turntables they snapped to with special pressings “For Disco DJs Only,” usually single long tracks on limited edition, high-quality twelve-inch discs. This past spring, a number of companies began commercially marketing these discs – the first new record format in decades – and found them selling briskly to people eager for the same full length and quality they had heard in the clubs. (Appropriately, the first “disco disc” in the stores, Double Exposure’s stunning “Ten Percent,” was “disco blended” by New York DJ Walter Gibbons, one of a small but increasing number of spinners crossing over to the production side of the music.) Not only was the disco DJ the impetus behind the creation of the “disco disc” but he was the key factor in the development of the entire specialized disco market that record and equipment manufacturers are now turning into a goldmine.