Original “rules” from The Sound Factory. #VII is priceless/fabulous.
Submitted by Chris Martin
Alvin Munk remembers a night when he was so overpowered by the experience of dancing — in a club so hot that the walls sweated — that he simply blacked out. He does remember walking out hours later, soaking in sweat and hoping that when he got older he would be able to get a club gig like Collier’s. “To have a home base like that. It sounds like a cliché now, but it really was magic. Heaven was special.
Dancers at Heaven Photos from: http://epiphany2005.blogspot.com/2005/12/ive-been-to-heaven.html?zx=6e458e001db29f08
Club Heaven: Detroit, Michigan 1980’s-1995
It is difficult to find reliable information about Detroit’s legendary nightclub, Heaven. Maybe because it was located in Detroit or maybe because most of its patrons were black and gay. Maybe because people have only recently started to realize how important the club was in the timeline of Detroit’s musical heritage. Still, information about Heaven remains elusive and is inextricable from the biography of the club’s resident DJ Ken Collier. Most of the current musical luminaries of Detroit techno cite Heaven and Ken Collier as early influences on their sound, and the history of Heaven needs to be uncovered and dusted off if we are to figure out what happened between the heyday of motown and the invention of techno.
All photos by Robert Carrithers, who can be found online at http://www.robertcarrithers.com
Club 57, 57 St. Mark’s Place, NYC 1979-1983
The late 1970’s and early 1980’s have gone down in counter-cultural history as the time when New York City was at its most challenging, energetic and artistically innovative. The city was broke, rent was cheap and there was plenty of space to create and party for those who were not afraid of tagged up subways, muggers and the used hypodermic needles littering the streets of the Lower East Side. A well-defined narrative names the important artists, musicians and scenesters of the time, as well as the places where they hung out and partied: Max’s Kansas City for the rockers, Studio 54 for the wealthy and famous cocaine people in glittery clothing; The Mudd Club for new wave hipsters and CBGB’s for anti-fashionable downtown punks and students. For some reason, Club 57 is rarely mentioned although it was an important meeting place and venue for much of what made the downtown scene so vibrant during that era. Artists such as Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and occasionally Jean-Michel Basquiat hung out there, lots of crazy performances that straddled the boundary of art, poetry and music went down. There were wacky activities like Tuesday night monster movie showings, Elvis birthday parties, lady wrestling and reggae mini golf in the basement.
WNYC presents “Vanished Venues” Oct. 18-23
Beginning on October 18, NPR station WNYC will be dedicating it’s Soundcheck showtime to presenting a “week-long series about the rise (and fall) of great nightclubs and concerts halls that helped shape New York City’s cultural life.”
Monday’s show was about Max’s Kansas City. You can tune in or stream the archive on the WNYC site: http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2010/oct/18/
Amazing footage of the Boccaccio. At 2:10 the mayor of Destelbergen speaks to reporters about the nuisance of the club…which remained open sometimes from Sunday evening all the way until Monday evening. Even after closing, he says, club patrons would continue to hang out in the neighborhood around the club. The mayor calls in the Rijkswacht (National Guard?) and forces the club to close on Monday night. Eventually, the owner of the club, Dirk De Maesschalk, pushes the DJ off the decks to catcalls from the clubbers. A reporter asks him “why did you shut off the music” and he replies “because the neighbors are complaining.”
It was never my intention to become the father of some music style. But one thing i have to say: I play music, I don’t make music, I select the music and try to create an atmosphere with ups & downs. Thats what is missing nowadays, there are no intro’s anymore or a nice ending, only beatmixing. In past you could play, a strange undanceble record just to clear the dancefloor and start again from zero. There were always weirdo’s who kept dancing while that undanceble record was playing. I loved the atmosphere in those days it was dirty, decadent, strange & uneasy.” -Ronny Harmsen, former DJ at Ancienne Belgique
—Interview by Benny de Konick for In&Out Magazine, exact date unknown but late 80’s.
New Beat Flashback. This video depicts the opening night of Club Prestige and interviews some of the key people in the New Beat scene.
All photos of Prestige taken by DJ b-fficient, posted in Club Prestige facebook group at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69336791544
The New Beat of Belgium: Boccaccio, Ancienne Belgique, Club Prestige: 1985-1989
The Belgian musical movement known as new beat was in its hey day during the late 1980’s, a contemporary of the British orbital rave and acid house scenes. Like acid house, new beat brought more and more people into the clubs, received national media attention and spawned commercially successful musical acts and nightclubs that reached an ever widening audience. What made new beat significant is the fact that it was a home-grown scene, a rarity in Belgium which is so often influenced by it’s nearest neighbors France and The Netherlands, as well as England and the United States. When new beat started to make waves in mid-eighties Belgium, it heralded the first time that modern Belgian music received significant radio play or appeared in great numbers in the Belgian pop charts. The sheer amount of records that could be called “new beat” that were produced from 1986-1989 is in the thousands. Three nightclubs were at the center of the new beat movement —the Boccaccio in Destelbergen (a town just outside of Ghent), the Ancienne Belgique in Antwerp and Club Prestige, also in Antwerp.
(Source: sites.google.com)
Light-up dancefloor at the RoXY for the “Night Fever” theme, early 90’s. Photo from http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/nightlife-club-roxy-amsterdam-in-90s.html
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
