philip sherburne

I'd rather be raving

Instead, I'm sick in bed (ok, sick at desk), reading Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979, which charts the rise and fall of the New York underground disco scene. (Reprising a paper he gave at the EMP Pop Conference last year, Lawrence goes so far as to investigate the colloquial origins of the very word "underground" in its countercultural context, a nice bit of "unpacking," as we used to say in grad school.) It's a fascinating, at times gossipy (in the best way) account of the scene and its major players -- Mancuso, Levan, et al -- and reading firsthand accounts of the origins of DJ tricks like beatmatching is nothing less than thrilling. When he gets to descriptions of the dance floor itself, the immersive, atemporal space of it, it just makes me want to be there. And thus (and also because I've been neglecting the visual lately), this photo from Barcelona's Moog club, June 2003.

Coming up: shameless raving about Octet, International Pony, and the next wave of electro-pop.