Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983

by Tim Lawrence

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822362029
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2016
Pages:	600
Sales rank:	679,168
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Tim Lawrence is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London and the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979 and Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992, both also published by Duke University Press.

Table of 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
 

What People are Saying About This

Man Parrish

"What a wonderful piece of work! I think this may be the definitive Bible for NYC and Dance Music during that era."

François Kevorkian

"Tim Lawrence has followed his now-classic Love Saves the Day with a magnificent account of one of the most fertile and influential periods of New York City's long musical history. He manages to capture with striking accuracy the unique and stunning meshing together of styles and genres that defined this period as one of the key moments in modern popular and club culture. A must-read for anyone curious about how modern dance music got to where it is."

Ann Magnuson

"Tim Lawrence connects the dots of a scene so explosively creative, so kaleidoscopically diverse, so thrillingly packed with the love of music and the love of life that even those of us who were there could not have possibly seen or heard it all! Now we can. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983 is not only a remarkable account of a remarkable time, it is a moving memorial to all those who left the party much too soon.

Fab 5 Freddy

"Tim Lawrence’s powerfully pulsating and enthusiastically researched book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83, vividly captures the cultural revolution I took part in that had New York City under creative siege! The book flows like a time-capsule master-mix whisking you from club to party in those few no-holds-barred fun-filled years as a multiethnic mash-up of us grooved together to the DJ’s beat while the world clamored to get on the guest list."

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever - Will Hermes

"Tim Lawrence brings the authority of his deeply sourced disco history Love Saves the Day to club culture's great melting-pot moment, when hip hop, punk, and disco transformed one another, with input from salsa, jazz, and Roland 808s. If you never danced yourself dizzy at the Roxy, the Paradise Garage, or the Mudd Club, here's a chance to feel the bass and taste the sweat."

François Kevorkian

"Tim Lawrence has followed his now-classic Love Saves the Day with a magnificent account of one of the most fertile and influential periods of New York City's long musical history. He manages to capture with striking accuracy the unique and stunning meshing together of styles and genres that defined this period as one of the key moments in modern popular and club culture. A must-read for anyone curious about how modern dance music got to where it is."

Fab 5 Freddy

"Tim Lawrence’s powerfully pulsating and enthusiastically researched book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83, vividly captures the cultural revolution I took part in that had New York City under creative siege! The book flows like a time-capsule master-mix whisking you from club to party in those few no-holds-barred fun-filled years as a multiethnic mash-up of us grooved together to the DJ’s beat while the world clamored to get on the guest list."

Editorial Reviews

…Mr. Lawrence's thesis [is] that the New York party culture of the early '80s is of interest because it allowed the intersection of a wide array of subcultures, which sent sparks flying. Gallery owners and graffiti artists, punk bands and hip-hop D.J.s, performance artists and budding entrepreneurs all commingled—and, as Life and Death amply demonstrates, left defining footprints not only on one another's work, but sometimes on the forms themselves…The focus here is clearly music…But Life and Death is more expansive than that—it takes you deep into a time and place, the good-old-bad-old-days of pre-Rudolph Giuliani New York, which many have valorized for some time now. If the 1970s have been thoroughly examined, the early '80s have been left relatively unexplored, and while Mr. Lawrence provides a lot of minutiae, he also delivers a story with some sweep.

The New York Times - Michaelangelo Matos

"Life & Death defines New York's unnamed era of invention. When Boy George was nicking from the cloakroom at Blitz, and everyone else was at The Batcave, this is how it ran in NYC. With hundreds of interviews, deep research and enlightening playlists, it's almost as invigorating as being there."
-- "DJ Magazine" (11/21/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Life and Death provides the most intensive mapping of this brief era of New York subculture we've yet seen. The book's strength is its depth of research, drawing on the realtime journalism of the era as well as many new interviews. The detail is fascinating, as Lawrence salvages ephemeral events, forgotten people, and lost places from the fog of faded memory."--Simon Reynolds "Bookforum" (9/8/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor is a remarkably intense piece of 'community history writing.' It breathes life into an iconic historical epoch and sociocultural scene without ever retreating into nostalgia or naive celebration. In fact, there's something unexpectedly electrifying about reading Lawrence's exceptionally well-researched historical studies. It is the sensation of remotely yet meaningfully becoming part of something hitherto only secretly known. One becomes slowly yet unequivocally aware of how that specific era's cultural and sociopolitical conditions, so thoroughly reconstructed in these works, resonate with the current sense of cultural and political impasse."--Niels Van Tomme "The Wire" (4/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"[A] compelling tale, beautifully told. As one who was fortunate enough to have landed in New York during this timeframe, Lawrence does a cracking job capturing a time when even listening to the city's black radio stations at noon could change your life. It was a surreal, magical period of ground-breaking activity which now seems hard to believe could actually happen at the same time in the same city. Finally, here's the proof."--Kris Needs "Record Collector" (9/9/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"[I]f you have no abiding love for New York, disco, hip-hop, studio techniques, or fast and dirty real-estate shuffles--there must be such people, statistically--perhaps Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor will not hold you. But if you care for any of those things, and even if that concern borders on the obsessive, you will benefit from Lawrence's investigations."
--Sasha Frere-Jones "The New Yorker" (9/27/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"[O]ffers fresh detail and insight on the clubs, DJs, parties and recordings that emerged from the scene. He even offers DJ playlists from different clubs."
--Andy Beta "Wall Street Journal" (10/13/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Exceptionally accessible (the author's passion for his subject shows through on every page; it's easy to imagine how his knowledge and genuine interest opened many a door and got people talking, telling tales recorded here that might not otherwise have seen the light of day), the raw, new energy of the city is accurately captured and conveyed. No small feat.... Seriously, when's the last time you read a book you could actually dance to?"
--Tom Cardamone "Lambda Literary Review" (9/18/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Lawrence goes into remarkable depth to portray this world which, during its few short years, gained expansive popularity and had a significant impact on art, film, literature, and culture. His meticulous research, with details on the leading figures, trends, events, places, and music that made it all happen, also provides critical/analytical commentary on the social backdrop of the times, the genesis of the emerging and eclectic music/dance styles, and the essence of this artistic renaissance. In addition to the well-selected photographs, notes, and bibliography, set lists, discographies, and a filmography add to the title's impressive breadth. Cultural historians and those familiar with the 1980s milieu will find this informative and insightful."--Carol J. Binkowski "Library Journal" (8/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Lawrence has mustered convincing evidence for the case that Madonna was not the most important cultural creation of early 1980s New York. . . . Lawrence is most convincing when he documents the remarkable variety and genre-blurring fecundity of sounds available to tuned-in city dwellers, a diversity that was even more bracing when contrasted with the monotonous airwaves stifling the rest of North America."--Robert Anasi "TLS" (3/3/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"Reading Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor as a clubber in the city is to reflect not only on what's been lost over the past three decades, but on how the sounds, events and characters at the center of Lawrence's story still influence NYC's nightlife. . . . [W]hat Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor makes acutely obvious, as both volume and prism, is not just the cultural value of the city's party scene, but how it also serves as a moral compass - and how it still can."--Piotr Olov "The Guardian" (11/12/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"The cast of characters in the book can be staggering, the exhaustive accounts overwhelming -- Lawrence interviewed or corresponded with more than 130 people, and he makes room for their voices -- but that's part of the point: He wants a crowded and motley party. This is a scrupulously researched, marvelously detailed history."--Megan Pugh "Village Voice" (10/6/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"The focus here is clearly music. Mr. Lawrence even includes some D.J. playlists for the listener to investigate. But Life and Death is more expansive than that -- it takes you deep into a time and place, the good-old-bad-old-days of pre-Rudolph Giuliani New York, which many have valorized for some time now. If the 1970s have been thoroughly examined, the early '80s have been left relatively unexplored, and while Mr. Lawrence provides a lot of minutiae, he also delivers a story with some sweep."--Michaelangelo Matos "New York Times" (10/9/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Through a comprehensive and lushly detailed text stuffed with original photos from dance floors, DJ booths, and parties, Lawrence imparts the mood, the music, the faces and the places from that remarkable era, with a nostalgic nod to nights where 'a new kind of freedom was set to rule the night.' ... Dance music historians will want this book for reference, while others who recall these days with a sense of longing will close its covers and dream of the days when nightlife amounted to a line of cocaine, a Madonna remix, and a dark, packed dance floor in a basement club in the Village."
--Jim Piechota "Bay Area Reporter" (9/22/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Tim Lawrence's Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983, the definitive history of that fabled time in the city, is already taking on the status of a sacred text."--David Hershkovits "Paper Magazine" (10/24/2016 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"[I]f you have no abiding love for New York, disco, hip-hop, studio techniques, or fast and dirty real-estate shuffles—there must be such people, statistically—perhaps Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor will not hold you. But if you care for any of those things, and even if that concern borders on the obsessive, you will benefit from Lawrence’s investigations."
 

The New Yorker - Sasha Frere-Jones

"Life and Death provides the most intensive mapping of this brief era of New York subculture we've yet seen. The book's strength is its depth of research, drawing on the realtime journalism of the era as well as many new interviews. The detail is fascinating, as Lawrence salvages ephemeral events, forgotten people, and lost places from the fog of faded memory."

Bookforum - Simon Reynolds

"Through a comprehensive and lushly detailed text stuffed with original photos from dance floors, DJ booths, and parties, Lawrence imparts the mood, the music, the faces and the places from that remarkable era, with a nostalgic nod to nights where 'a new kind of freedom was set to rule the night.' ... Dance music historians will want this book for reference, while others who recall these days with a sense of longing will close its covers and dream of the days when nightlife amounted to a line of cocaine, a Madonna remix, and a dark, packed dance floor in a basement club in the Village."
 

Bay Area Reporter - Jim Piechota

"The cast of characters in the book can be staggering, the exhaustive accounts overwhelming — Lawrence interviewed or corresponded with more than 130 people, and he makes room for their voices — but that's part of the point: He wants a crowded and motley party. This is a scrupulously researched, marvelously detailed history."

Village Voice - Megan Pugh

"Exceptionally accessible (the author’s passion for his subject shows through on every page; it’s easy to imagine how his knowledge and genuine interest opened many a door and got people talking, telling tales recorded here that might not otherwise have seen the light of day), the raw, new energy of the city is accurately captured and conveyed. No small feat.... Seriously, when’s the last time you read a book you could actually dance to?"
 

Lambda Literary Review - Tom Cardamone

"Life & Death defines New York's unnamed era of invention. When Boy George was nicking from the cloakroom at Blitz, and everyone else was at The Batcave, this is how it ran in NYC. With hundreds of interviews, deep research and enlightening playlists, it's almost as invigorating as being there."
 

DJ Magazine

"[A] compelling tale, beautifully told. As one who was fortunate enough to have landed in New York during this timeframe, Lawrence does a cracking job capturing a time when even listening to the city’s black radio stations at noon could change your life. It was a surreal, magical period of ground-breaking activity which now seems hard to believe could actually happen at the same time in the same city. Finally, here’s the proof."

Record Collector - Kris Needs

"Tim Lawrence's Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983, the definitive history of that fabled time in the city, is already taking on the status of a sacred text."

Paper Magazine - David Hershkovits

"[O]ffers fresh detail and insight on the clubs, DJs, parties and recordings that emerged from the scene. He even offers DJ playlists from different clubs."
 

Wall Street Journal - Andy Beta

"The focus here is clearly music. Mr. Lawrence even includes some D.J. playlists for the listener to investigate. But Life and Death is more expansive than that — it takes you deep into a time and place, the good-old-bad-old-days of pre-Rudolph Giuliani New York, which many have valorized for some time now. If the 1970s have been thoroughly examined, the early ’80s have been left relatively unexplored, and while Mr. Lawrence provides a lot of minutiae, he also delivers a story with some sweep."

New York Times - Michaelangelo Matos

"Lawrence has mustered convincing evidence for the case that Madonna was not the most important cultural creation of early 1980s New York. . . . Lawrence is most convincing when he documents the remarkable variety and genre-blurring fecundity of sounds available to tuned-in city dwellers, a diversity that was even more bracing when contrasted with the monotonous airwaves stifling the rest of North America."

TLS - Robert Anasi

"Reading Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor as a clubber in the city is to reflect not only on what’s been lost over the past three decades, but on how the sounds, events and characters at the center of Lawrence’s story still influence NYC’s nightlife. . . . [W]hat Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor makes acutely obvious, as both volume and prism, is not just the cultural value of the city’s party scene, but how it also serves as a moral compass – and how it still can."

The Guardian - Piotr Olov

"Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor is a remarkably intense piece of 'community history writing.' It breathes life into an iconic historical epoch and sociocultural scene without ever retreating into nostalgia or naive celebration. In fact, there's something unexpectedly electrifying about reading Lawrence's exceptionally well-researched historical studies. It is the sensation of remotely yet meaningfully becoming part of something hitherto only secretly known. One becomes slowly yet unequivocally aware of how that specific era's cultural and sociopolitical conditions, so thoroughly reconstructed in these works, resonate with the current sense of cultural and political impasse."

The Wire - Niels Van Tomme

"What a wonderful piece of work! I think this may be the definitive Bible for NYC and Dance Music during that era."

Man Parrish

"Tim Lawrence’s powerfully pulsating and enthusiastically researched book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83, vividly captures the cultural revolution I took part in that had New York City under creative siege! The book flows like a time-capsule master-mix whisking you from club to party in those few no-holds-barred fun-filled years as a multiethnic mash-up of us grooved together to the DJ’s beat while the world clamored to get on the guest list."

Fab 5 Freddy

"Tim Lawrence connects the dots of a scene so explosively creative, so kaleidoscopically diverse, so thrillingly packed with the love of music and the love of life that even those of us who were there could not have possibly seen or heard it all! Now we can. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983 is not only a remarkable account of a remarkable time, it is a moving memorial to all those who left the party much too soon.

Ann Magnuson

"Tim Lawrence brings the authority of his deeply sourced disco history Love Saves the Day to club culture's great melting-pot moment, when hip hop, punk, and disco transformed one another, with input from salsa, jazz, and Roland 808s. If you never danced yourself dizzy at the Roxy, the Paradise Garage, or the Mudd Club, here's a chance to feel the bass and taste the sweat."

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever - Will Hermes

08/01/2016
New York in the early 1980s was marked by urban deterioration and a poor financial outlook; yet this same landscape brought revitalized creative energy to club culture. Dozens of spaces from the Mudd Club to the Garage featured a fusion of many musical styles—postdisco, rap, salsa, techno, retro, punk, and more—spawning a vibrant dance scene and a new breed of DJs, promoters, musicians, dancers, and celebrities. Lawrence (cultural studies, Univ. of East London; Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979) goes into remarkable depth to portray this world which, during its few short years, gained expansive popularity and had a significant impact on art, film, literature, and culture. His meticulous research, with details on the leading figures, trends, events, places, and music that made it all happen, also provides critical/analytical commentary on the social backdrop of the times, the genesis of the emerging and eclectic music/dance styles, and the essence of this artistic renaissance. In addition to the well-selected photographs, notes, and bibliography, set lists, discographies, and a filmography add to the title's impressive breadth. VERDICT Cultural historians and those familiar with the 1980s milieu will find this informative and insightful.—Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

Library Journal