Duke University Press Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979

Thank you Tim Lawrence. This book is the antedote to all the haters out there who still believe that "Disco Sucks" after the post-Comiskey Park backlash. This book is such an amazing and wonderfully readable document that I would recommend anyone interested in 20th century American musical history, or the [...]/black urban experience of the 1970's, or relatively recent New York history read it. Of course if you're interested in disco music or dance music the book is absolutely essential. This book goes much deeper than the usual Studio 54 cliches that people associate with the genre (although Studio 54 is included, of course) and discusses the origins of the sound and the largely unhearalded people who made this scene happen. David Mancuso is described as a pivotable person here, and the folks who were there will confirm it. The book begins in his legendary club, The Loft, and lovingly details his obsession with sound and the disco experience. Other innovators from the early 70's are also featured including Francis Grasso, Steve D'Acquisto, Bob Casey, and many more. The scene is chronicaled from humble beginnings through the glory years of the mid 70's and ends the decade with the backlash in full swing in mainstream culture but continuing to thrive in clubs like Paradise Garage and Better Days. Along the way you meet producers like Walter Gibbons and Tom Moulton who made some of the classic recordings of the era, and Lawrence takes the time to explain what is so remarkable about their work. You also get delightfully naughty stories about some of the key players in the scene including DJ's, artists, and of course, the patrons that illustrate some of the excesses of the time . Personally, I think that it's this superb combination of detailed research and bitchy gossip that makes the book so thoroughly readable and fun. I loved reading this book; the only drawback for me was that I couldn't help pining for the days when New York club culture was this incredible before AIDS and Rudy Guilliani conspired to very nearly kill it off (fortunately they weren't entirely successful). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

For a movement that came to define a decade, disco has never really gone through the historical grinder. As a cultural phenomenon, it's been appraised in the tangential terms of celebrity and bad fashion. As a musical idea, it's been written off as an embarrassment, a best-forgotten affront to the righteous enterprise of rock. Of course, disco did abound in stars, flares, and dicey musical excess. But as Tim Lawrence illustrates in Love Saves The Day, the story of disco is richer than its battered reputation lets on. Surveying the roots of a movement that would become an enormous lifestyle industry, Lawrence starts with the handful of downtown New Yorkers who set disco in motion in the late '60s. David Mancuso was a grizzled urban hippie who charted musical journeys in The Loft, a private apartment open to an eclectic mix of people—white, black, straight, gay—on utopian grounds. While the idea of the discotheque had already existed in New York, The Loft expanded it into a playground for dancing and prancing. A DJ before the distinction bore notice, Mancuso played floaty psychedelic records alongside string-swept soul and galloping African rhythms, placing an emphasis on mood and movement that signaled sounds to come. He was also a hi-fi fiend: He commissioned custom-made speakers and gear (including a $3,000 turntable needle) that goosed up drum sounds and reached previously unheard high-end peaks. While Mancuso had his disciples at The Loft, a growing number of gay clubs and bars forced the relaxation of male-on-male dancing laws, reveling in the newly open environment that would fuel disco's glamorous rise. The parallel lines of changing music and changing social norms bracket all of Love Saves The Day, an exceedingly well-reported history that reads as too focused on occasion. Regarding the music, Lawrence traces the disco sound through its roots in Philly soul and its debt to machine music flown over from Europe. He also surveys the birth of the DJ as showman, telling gossipy stories about names still getting their proper due, and tracing the lineage of turntable tricks most often attributed to hip-hop. On the social front, Lawrence proves most pointed when surveying disco's sexual and racial swirl. He keeps a steady eye on the gayness that circulated through disco, even at its suburbs-storming peak, and comes down hard on the hints of homophobia that stoked its storied backlash. Some of the abundant details seem geared to insiders only, but on the whole, Love Saves The Day works as an eye-opening history of a movement that found a nation taking time out to dance.

Das beste Buch über den Clubsound und DJ Kultur. Klassiker!!!

Insieme a 'Life and Death on the New York dancefloor', libro fondamentale se si vuole conoscere il mondo della Disco Music durante i suoi anni d'oro.

Très intéressant mais pas évident de cerner l'intégralité du contenu de ce livre. Il faut avoir un bon niveau d'anglais