Full Description
As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city's subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
Part I. 1980: The Recalibration of Disco
1. Stylistic Coherence Didn't Matter at All 11
2. The Basement Den at Club 57 30
3. Danceteria: Midtown Feels the Downtown Storm 48
4. Subterranean Dance 60
5. The Bronx-Brooklyn Approach 73
6. The Sound Became More Real 92
7. Major-Label Calculations 105
8. The Saint Peter of Discos 111
9. Lighting the Fuse 122
Part II. 1981: Accelerating Toward Pluralism
10. Explosion of Clubs 135
11. Artistic Maneuvers in the Dark 155
12. Downton Configures Hip Hop 170
13. The Sound of a Transcendent Future 184
14. The New Urban Street Sound 199
15. It Wasn't Rock and Roll and It Wasn't Disco 210
16. Frozen in Time or Freed into Infinity 221
17. It Felt Like the Whole City Was Listening 232
18. Shrouded Abatements and Mysterious Deaths 239
Part III. 1982: Dance Culture Seizes the City
19. All We Had Was the Club 245
20. Inverted Pyramid 257
21. Roxy Music 271
22. The Garage: Everybody Was Listening to Everything 279
23. The Planet Rock Groove 288
24. Techno Funksters 304
25. Taste Segues 314
26. Stormy Weather 320
27. Cusp of an Important Fusion 331
Part IV. 1983: The Genesis of Division
28. Cristal for Everyone 343
29. Dropping the Pretense and the Flashy Suits 369
30. Straighten It Out with Larry Levan 381
31. Stripped-Down and Scrambled Sounds 400
32. We Became Part of This Energy 419
33. Sex and Dying 430
34. We Got the Hits, We Got the Future 438
35. Behind the Groove 449
Epilogue. Life, Death, and the Hereafter 458
Notes 485
Selected Discography 515
Selected Filmography 529
Selected Bibliography 521
Index 537
