I was never really that into “dance music” as a genre. I mean, I like a lot of electronic music, and I certainly enjoy dancing if I’m feeling properly motivated, but “dance music” in and of itself was never my bag. Not only am I generally more predisposed to rock music of the guitar-as-weapon variety, but I also just tend to like songs. With the rise of house music and everything that followed, it just felt like the human element was kind of syphoned out of it. House music and Rave and techno and drum’n’bass and all that can certainly be cool in certain circumstances and in small doses, but it seems more purely functional than anything else, although that’s only my largely dilettantish opinion.
Whole nations disagree with me, on that point. Dance music in New York City has always had a thriving subculture with denizens of all stripes taking the genre myriad different directions in much the same manner Punk Rock and Hip-Hop similarly splintered into different subdivisions. I was tangentially privy to a lot of that in the late `80s and early `90s, when I was more ensconced in music journalism, first as an intern at SPIN and, shortly after that, during my tenure at a periodical called The New York Review of Records, which I’ve discussed here a few times.
That latter magazine, the NYROR (although no one really called it that), was helmed by this editor named Brad, and Brad was always hustling. Beyond his own magazine, he was freelance writing for a host of other outlets and was also a deejay. He had steady gigs at The China Club on the Upper West Side and, if I recall correctly, a multi-floored place called M.K. on Fifth Avenue and 25th Street, but he also “spun” in weird one-off spaces and at some clothing store in SoHo. Not only would I be subjected to whatever newfangled dance music Brad was playing at these places when he commandeered the sound system at the magazine’s “office” (i.e. his diminutive apartment on the northern border of the Upper East Side), but he frequently had me delivering him copy while he was deejaying.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one ancillary bonus to working at this `zine was the sudden access to guest lists not only of the rock clubs of the era like the New Ritz, The Cat Club, The Marquee, Roseland Ballroom, Tramp’s, Wetlands and the like, but also the dance clubs like The Sound Factory, the Limelight, The Tunnel, The Palladium and arguably lesser-known spots like Big City Diner, The Lovesexxy Lounge, Nell’s, Building and a few others. Between going to these places and hearing what Brad insisted on playing back the office, I was soaking up a lot of this music, while, at the same time, far more preoccupied with noise-rock, post-punk, hardcore, British indie pop and metal. But that was me.
Brad actually brought a few of these cats to the “office,” sometimes, as well, which meant I had gents like A Guy Called Gerald and Acid House progenitor D Mob hanging out while I was trying to do some inane editorial tasks.
As a result, some of this music wormed its way under the battlements of my usual taste, prompting me to seek out singles by select acts like 808 State, Mysterious Art and … I’m aghast to admit it, I event sprang for that Technotronic single, when it was still a big new thing.
Despite these dalliances, while I was now fully aware of burgeoning dance music scene, I still wasn’t all that into it. I respected it, but it wasn’t really for me.
Cut to 2024, and New York City is a markedly different place from what it was in the `80s and `90s. Much as with so many of my favorite rock clubs, so many of the dance clubs of yore are now all gone, long shuttered and squeezed out by the tirelessly spreading spill of gentrification. Dance music itself has sort of morphed further into EDM, a seeming catch-all term for all variants of electronic dance music that is no longer some furtive underground pursuit or niche subculture. It seems to evolve at a furious pace, rendering the dance music acts I liked from later years like The Prodigy, The Orb, Orbital, Underworld seem ridiculously dated. I couldn’t tell you much about the EDM music of today, but then, what little I’ve heard of it doesn’t suggest I’m missing too much. So much of it seems now dominated by DJ douchebags like The Chainsmokers, whose music I wouldn’t play at a dog, but hey … that’s me.
In any case, I stumbled upon the video below, and while it again is exclusively devoted to the music and the nightlife of a community I wasn’t really involved in, I found it to be really fascinating. Here is New Zealander podcaster Shae Sterling taking a walking tour of the westerly reaches of Chelsea in Manhattan with legendary Brooklyn DJ Frankie Bones for a tour of lost dance clubs like The Roxy, The Fun House and beyond. Enjoy…
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