x-post. I do not remember what the dj was playing there that night before the Cramps came onstage. I just recall they came onstage at 1 am or so and it was a Sunday night/Monday morning.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 20:14 (twelve years ago) link
dmr, you might have googled this Dynell interview already:
http://finn-johannsen.de/2010/07/19/rewind-johnny-dynell-on-%E2%80%9Cjam-hot%E2%80%9D/
For those who are not that familiar with the New York club scene of that era, how would you describe a typical night out then? What were the characteristics in terms of DJ sets, locations and crowd?
As I said before, even though I was playing in a lot of the newly emerging New Wave clubs, I was playing mostly Disco music. By the early eighties though the Disco/New Wave lines were blurring. Mark Kamins, the main DJ at Danceteria, was making a name for himself as a New Wave DJ and producer but his roots were in Disco and he flawlessly mixed the two genres. I think that he almost single-handedly changed that scene. His second floor was packed every Saturday night with uptown kids and downtown kids grooving together to a whole new soundtrack. DJs like Jellybean Benitez at The Fun House and others picked up on it as well.
Arthur Baker, John Robie and Tommy Silverman would bring us records like “Planet “Rock” and “Hip Hop Be Bop” to play and suddenly the black vs. white, rock vs. disco thing was irrelevant. English groups like New Order were there too and it is not a coincidence that their songs suddenly had a Disco beat. I remember one jaw grinding morning one of them saying to me sarcastically, “Maybe Mr. Dynell will play our records now”. I did and still do.
― Hawaiian mime montage (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 31 January 2012 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
I have never heard this before, and it is totally (rhumba) rocking my world. This wasn't 'til '83, though;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ipWOLCAzM
― Hawaiian mime montage (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 31 January 2012 23:03 (twelve years ago) link
that was a great interview
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 04:16 (twelve years ago) link
If Tim Lawrence were to ever write the promised second half of Love Saves The Day, I'm sure there'd be playlists from all of these clubs. Is this still in the works?
― JacobSanders, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 04:46 (twelve years ago) link
Not the Mudd Club, but Club 57:
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/east_village_80s_dany_johnsons_club_57_mix/
― tokyo rosemary, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 04:57 (twelve years ago) link
ahhh awesome thanks
dany says:Nomi Song - Klaus NomiPsychotic Reaction - Count 5I’m Cramped - The CrampsLet There Be Drums - Sandy NelsonI Want Candy - Bow Wow WowLove is Like an Itching in My Heart - SupremesGroovy - Joe Dodo and the GrooversThe Girl Can’t Help It - Little RichardBongo Rock - Incredible Bongo BandPlanet Clare - B-52sOut of Limits - The VenturesI Know but I Don’t Know - BlondieWarning Sign - Talking HeadsGravity - PylonCan’t Be Funky - Bush TetrasMonster Jam - Spoonie Gee and the SequenceMidnight Boogaloo - Ray BarettoI Know a Place - Petula ClarkThe Nitty Gritty - Ricardo RayTear the Roof off the Sucker - ParliamentBertha Butt Boogie - Jimmy Castor BunchJungle Fever - The ChakachasDance - ESGLightning Strikes - Klaus NomiI Like It Like That - Pete RodriguezL’elephant - Tom Tom ClubDo It Any Way You Wanna - People’s ChoiceRockin’ It - Fearless FourLightning’s Girl - Nancy SinatraPeter Gunn - Duane EddyDevil With a Blue Dress - Mitch Ryder & the Detroit WheelsLucky Number - Lene LovichKookie’s Mad Pad - Edd ByrnesThe Boat that I Row - LuluLand of 1000 Dances - Cannibal & the HeadhuntersBell Head - Liquid LiquidTaki Rari - Yma Sumac
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 05:07 (twelve years ago) link
there was a Roxy playlist in The Record Players but A) I have it loaned out right now and B) I think while there's probably a lot of crossover with the downtown clubs on stuff like "Planet Rock" and ESG the Roxy had its ultimate roots in the Bambaataa / Herc / funky breaks thing and these places didn't?
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 05:12 (twelve years ago) link
from 1982-84 Bambaataa and proteges Red Alert, Afrika Islam Jazzy Joyce et al spun at the Roxy on Fridays
the Roxy was the best club around then due to the mix of people - uptown teens and downtown hipsters
Mudd Club was hard to get into! for me anyway. made it in a couple times, saw Sonic Youth/Swans destroy the joint. Anita Sarko was the main DJ, she played more eclectic/new wave stuff than straight disco/R&B iirc
― demolition with discretion (m coleman), Wednesday, 1 February 2012 10:56 (twelve years ago) link
Okay holy crap, that Dany Johnson playlist looks ridiculously fun! It will be soundtracking my work this morning.
― Hawaiian mime montage (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 1 February 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
Is there any tradition of US punk/ new wave clubs DJing reggae, as per Don Letts in the UK?
― good luck in your pyramid (Neil S), Wednesday, 1 February 2012 15:56 (twelve years ago) link
"one jaw grinding morning"
― andrew m., Wednesday, 1 February 2012 16:28 (twelve years ago) link
it might've been in the sandbox during the outage, but wasn't there a thread with old danceteria footage? guess i could go look instead of typing here...
― andrew m., Wednesday, 1 February 2012 16:30 (twelve years ago) link
x-post
The late Tom Terrell used to spin reggae and ska at the original 930 Club location in DC (and he was road manager for Steel Pulse in the US), and there were certainly others. There were lots of US djs influenced by what was happening in the UK. Depending on the dj and the particular Uk band or style of the moment this was often a good thing (when some US djs started embracing New romanticism while dropping American r'n'b and punk/new wave I got less interested in their appraoch)
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 16:30 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TueeQKzdB6s&feature=fvst
― scott seward, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 16:54 (twelve years ago) link
thanks, scott. that's it. thought someone (maybe dan?) started a thread for it, but i can't find it.
― andrew m., Wednesday, 1 February 2012 17:04 (twelve years ago) link
I'm also pretty sure there has been a thread for this insane Danceteria flyer collection but I might have seen it on Facebook and not ILX
http://lundissimo.info/imgs/danceteria/
http://lundissimo.info/imgs/danceteria/1983/images/830105-Schedule.jpghttp://lundissimo.info/imgs/danceteria/backs/830105-Schedule-2.jpghttp://lundissimo.info/imgs/danceteria/1983/images/830212-SonicYouth.jpg
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 17:11 (twelve years ago) link
wow "PS1 Party" ... didn't realize that had been going so long as an art gallery
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 17:12 (twelve years ago) link
the Pyramid Club from this era still exists but I don't really understand who goes there, I think it's basically one of those cheesy retro-'80s places like Culture Club
still has the same logo above the door on Avenue A though
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Pyramid-club1.jpg/300px-Pyramid-club1.jpg
― dmr, Wednesday, 1 February 2012 17:22 (twelve years ago) link
thanks Curmudgeon, interesting re. reggae.
― good luck in your pyramid (Neil S), Wednesday, 1 February 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link
wdw Diane from Scott's video
― Θ ̨Θƪ (sic), Thursday, 2 February 2012 01:47 (twelve years ago) link
I danced at the Pyramid once in early 1985, I remember the DJ playing The Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck".
― sleeve, Thursday, 2 February 2012 02:18 (twelve years ago) link
Ann Magnuson on the difference between Club 57 and the Mudd Club: "We were all about mushrooms and laughing like hyenas, while they were all about heroin and Nouvelle Vague films."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_38/ai_57475770/
― dmr, Thursday, 2 February 2012 07:09 (twelve years ago) link
We turned the club into a center for personal exorcism, devising theme parties (or "enviroteques," as one drug-dealing-conceptual-artist ex-boyfriend liked to call them). There was Putt-Putt Reggae Night, where we played miniature golf on a course made of refrigerator boxes designed to resemble a Jamaican shantytown; Model World of Glue Night, where New York's hippest built airplane and monster models, burned them, and sniffed the epoxy
― dmr, Thursday, 2 February 2012 07:10 (twelve years ago) link
danced at the Pyramid once in early 1985, I remember the DJ playing The Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck".
― I Can Only Give You Every Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 2 February 2012 19:48 (twelve years ago) link
I just watched Downtown 81, which follows Jean Michel Basquiat through various scenes in New York in, you guessed it, 1981. At one point he's walking around wondering where to spend the night, and then he says he gonna go to the Mudd Club. I can't tell if he actually does or not, he goes somewhere and watches a group perform in a service elevator as it moves between floors. It starts at about 4:30.<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KaT1Is_ci3E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
― teenage vulcan, Friday, 3 February 2012 19:35 (twelve years ago) link
It just closed a couple weeks ago, but the East Village West show at Royal-T was utterly fantastic: http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/east_vilage_west_ambitious_exhibit_of_nycs_fabled_70_80s_art_scene_/http://laist.com/2011/10/01/ann_magnuson_and_kenny_scharf_curat.php
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 3 February 2012 21:11 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1NqJkwpaWc
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 3 February 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
Just in case anybody missed it: scroll down this page, with the Club 57 mix streaming on top, and you'll soon see Dany's link to the mix download, which still works (or did for me a few minutes ago)http://soundcloud.com/dany-johnson/club-57-mix
― dow, Saturday, 4 February 2012 02:19 (twelve years ago) link
RIP Anita Sarko:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/arts/music/reflecting-on-anita-sarko-influential-dj-of-the-new-york-club-scene.html?smid=fb-share
― Retro novelty punk (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 27 October 2015 20:52 (eight years ago) link
That's so sad
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 28 October 2015 14:54 (eight years ago) link