My life as a club
kid was relatively short. It basically coincided with the year I attended NYU
(1981), which allowed me to stay out late, and carried over into my first job
at The Village Voice, which allowed me
to go to New Wave nights at The Anvil on Tuesdays since I had Wednesdays off.
Similarly, the
amount of time I lived in the East Village was relatively brief (the summer of
1980, plus 1981-1987). But, at one point, I was living next to the Fun Gallery
(in Steve Buscemi’s old apartment), across the street from Jeff Weiss’s
storefront theater, around the corner from PS122, and I was surrounded by
dozens of art galleries and clubs.
Both these things
were critically important in shaping the person I am today.
So when news of
Tim Lawrence’s book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor: 1980-1983, popped up in my Facebook news feed, I couldn’t wait
to read it.
The book does not
disappoint.
I’m not alone in
saying that Lawrence has written one of the most comprehensive and exhaustively
researched books about this vitally important period in New York’s history.
The premise of
the book is that this was a unique period for two reasons.
First, artists
felt free to work in different mediums: everyone was an artist, musician,
filmmaker and actor.
Second, and
perhaps more important, is that this was a period when downtown met uptown,
which is to say that downtown’s art/punk scene met uptown’s hip hop scene.
This resulted in
an unprecedented outpouring of artistic creation.
And the place where
a lot of that creation happened or was initiated was the city’s dance clubs.
I was more of a
Mudd Club/Berlin person, but this book exposed me to a whole world I was barely
aware of: clubs like The Loft, Better Days and Paradise Garage, that were more
racially mixed, as opposed to the predominantly white punk/new wave clubs I
went to or the almost exclusively white Saint.
One of the great
things about this book is the inclusion of actual DJ discographies from this
period. Now I like to think of myself as something of an ’80s music expert, but
I usually only recognized about half the songs in these discographies (mainly
the punk/new waves ones), and found myself scratching my head at some of the
others.
I guess I led a
sheltered existence!
But the reason why
this book is so important is because it soon becomes abundantly clear that this
period of New York’s history was a unique time that will never happen again (although Lawrence tries to paint a more hopeful
picture).
In the early
’80s, it seemed like new clubs were opening up every week and that was just normal.
And, before the
Internet destroyed everything, the only way to find about these places was by
word of mouth, so they had time to grow and flourish before being ruined by
yuppies. (I kid the yuppies!)
Ultimately, it
was a combination of gentrification and AIDS, among other things, that drove
most of these clubs out of business.
Nowadways, I’m
ashamed to admit, I’ve become very middle-class, and I can’t be bothered
dragging my ass to Brooklyn to go dancing.
And that’s the
other thing that was great about the early ’80s in New York: all the clubs were
in downtown Manhattan and downtown Manhattan was still cheap enough that you
could afford to live there and walk to them.
There’s a passage
near the end of the book where Lawrence describes what’s become of some club
locations (the Mudd Club is now a luxury apartment, the Loft is now a J. Crew,
etc.). It’s hard not to feel nostalgic.
As Lawrence says,
“The contrast between the version of the city that used to attract moneyless
people who wanted to build a life and the one where the best those without
capital can hope for is to commute to its center to carry out jobs that will
never enable them to establish a home in its increasingly exclusive landscape
is dramatic and continually charges the fascination with this bygone era.”
Only someone who
was there will recognize names like Roxy promoter Ruza Blue, Man Parrish’s band
Shox Lumania or performer Kestutis Nakas.
Everyone else
will have to read this book.