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.
- Cover
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. 1980: The Recalibration of Disco
- 1. Stylistic Coherence Didn’t Matter at All
- 2. The Basement Den at Club 57
- 3. Danceteria: Midtown Feels the Downtown Storm
- 4. Subterranean Dance
- 5. The Bronx-Brooklyn Approach
- 6. The Sound Became More Real
- 7. Major-Label Calculations
- 8. The Saint Peter of Discos
- 9. Lighting the Fuse
- Part II. 1981: Accelerating Toward Pluralism
- 10. Explosion of Clubs
- 11. Artistic Maneuvers in the Dark
- 12. Downtown Configures Hip Hop
- 13. The Sound of a Transcendent Future
- 14. The New Urban Street Sound
- 15. It Wasn’t Rock and Roll and It Wasn’t Disco
- 16. Frozen in Time or Freed into Infinity
- 17. It Felt Like the Whole City Was Listening
- 18. Shrouded Abatements and Mysterious Deaths
- Part III. 1982: Dance Culture Seizes the City
- 19. All We Had Was the Club
- 20. Inverted Pyramid
- 21. Roxy Music
- 22. The Garage: Everybody Was Listening to Everything
- 23. The Planet Rock Groove
- 24. Techno Funksters
- 25. Taste Segues
- 26. Stormy Weather
- 27. Cusp of an Important Fusion
- Part IV. 1983: The Genesis of Division
- 28. Cristal for Everyone
- 29. Dropping the Pretense and the Flashy Suits
- 30. Straighten It Out with Larry Levan
- 31. Stripped-Down and Scrambled Sounds
- 32. We Became Part of This Energy
- 33. Sex and Dying
- 34. We Got the Hits, We Got the Future
- 35. Behind the Groove
- Epilogue. Life, Death, and the Hereafter
- Notes
- Selected Discography
- Selected Filmography
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
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Audio
Adobe DRM
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