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

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.

Reviews

"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"[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 *
"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 *
"[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 *
"[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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *