122. Ibid.
123. Ibid., p. 121.
124. Ibid., pp. 102–17.
Chapter 6. “SO WHY SHOULD I BE ASHAMED?”: Disco Goes Underground
1. Haden-Guest, The Last Party, p. 226.
2. Michael Gross, “The Latest Calvin: From the Bronx to Eternity,” New York Magazine, August 8, 1988, pp. 20–29.
3. Frank Rich, “The Gay Decades,” Esquire, November 1987, p. 98.
4. Ibid.
5. Vince Aletti, “I Won’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me,” The Village Voice, April 29, 1976, p. 158.
6. Liner notes to Streets, Beggars Banquet BEGA1, 1977.
7. Author’s interview with Bob Blank, January 7, 2003.
8. Savage, England’s Dreaming, pp. 433–34.
9. British label Stiff was associated with the punk movement and had plenty of records that alluded to the dance floor and predated “Contort Yourself”—Nick Lowe’s “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” and Roogalator’s “Cincinnati Fatback”—but they were more punk by association than by sound. The same was true for the label’s early Ian Dury & the Blockheads records like “Sex and Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Wake Up and Make Love With Me,” where the only punk element was Dury’s Cockney accent.
10. Quoted in Glenn O’Brien, liner notes to Irresistible Impulse, Tiger Style Records TIG60037, 2003.
11. For more on Max’s Kansas City, see Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin, High on Rebellion (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1998).
12. Steven Harvey, “ESG: The Family Jewels,” Collusion, No. 4, February 1983, p. 15.
13. “Why Are Lines Shorter For Gas Than the Mudd Club in New York? Because Every Night Is Odd There,” People, July 16, 1979, p. 33.
14. Ibid.
15. John Rockwell, “Rock Comes to the Aid of Art,” The New York Times, June 13, 1982, Section 2, p. 31.
16. Author’s interview with Bob Blank.
17. Robert Palmer, “Concert: Russell and Marti,” The New York Times, April 26, 1987, Section 1, p. 67.
18. Jonathan Fleming, What Kind of House Party Is This? (Slough, UK: MIY Publishing, 1995), p. 191.
19. Author’s interview with Bob Blank.
20. Ibid.
21. See Steven Harvey, “Behind the Grove: New York City’s Disco Underground,” Collusion, No. 5, September 1983, p. 29.
22. Haden-Guest, The Last Party, p. 211.
23. Cheren, Keep on Dancin’, p. 198.
24. Harvey, “Behind the Grove,” pp. 29–30.
25. Ibid., p. 30.
26. Author’s interview with Danny Krivit.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Chin, “The Disco Beatmasters.”
30. Ibid.
31. Paul Hofmann, “Inquiry in Drug Case a Worry to the Dolce Vita Set in Rome,” The New York Times, February 20, 1972, p. 16.
32. It is important to note that “Italo-disco,” a term coined in 1984 by Bernhard Mikulski of the record label ZYX, refers to a specific type of disco rather than disco of Italian origin. It’s just that the overwhelming majority of these records came from Italy. Nor does the term cover all Italian disco—disco records by Italians like La Bionda, Raffaella Carra, Adriano Celentano, and Umberto Tozzi, or most of those made by Italian production duo of Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi.
33. Another important French influence on the Italo sound was an obscurity called Black Devil Disco Club, an EP made in Paris by Bernard Fevre and Jackie Giordiano. Originally released in 1978, the record sounded like the house band from the Terre Haute Holiday Inn playing the Doctor Who theme with conguero Coke Escovedo sitting in for the session—oh, so Italo.
34. Author’s interview with Daniele Baldelli, courtesy of Daniel Wang, March 2003.
35. Ibid.
36. Another important, although slightly later, club in the same region was Gatto Giallo, where the DJ played a lot of Italo records. Since the Lake Garda area was popular with German and Dutch holiday makers, the music played at these clubs spread up to Northern Europe and were particularly influential on DJs/mixers like Dutch mastermixer Ben Liebrand.
37. Author’s interview with Daniele Baldelli.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. See Sheryl Garratt, “Sample and Hold: The House Sound of Chicago,” The Face, September 1986, pp. 18–23.
Chapter 7. “STAYIN’ ALIVE”: Disco Today
1. Author’s interview with Daniel Wang, March 11, 2003.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. None of this criticism is meant to single out Wang—he is far from the worst offender—or to suggest that his music, which is often wonderful, is tainted with moldy fig-ism. His comments are merely illustrative (not to mention well articulated) of a mind-set that is pervasive among a stratum of musicians, writers, and fans.
5. Author’s interview with Daniel Wang.
6. Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, pp. 243, 283.
7. Andrew Holleran, Ground Zero (New York: Morrow, 1988), pp. 21–22.
8. Simon Napier-Bell, Black Vinyl, White Powder (London: Ebury Press, 2001), p. 344.
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