Читать книгу Street Knowledge - King ADZ - Страница 27

For me, I first really understood the power of the DJ when I was in a small club (Snoopy’s) in S’arenal, Majorca, in 1986. For some reason I was stood near the DJ booth and I watched him cue up a record. He began to play ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’, not at the beginning but at the end of a 12” mix, and as this was pumping out he quickly cued up a different version of the same record then dropped that in, and with that one swift move he had created a live remix. What the fuck did he just do? I was hooked.

If you went back to 1970 in New York, the year dot for DJing, you’d find it all began with a man called David Mancuso. He started holding private parties at his loft apartment in New York that year at 647 Broadway. The first party was called Love Saves The Day. These invitation-only parties became so popular that by 1971 he decided to do this on a weekly basis at 74 and then 99 Prince Street from 1975-1984. The Loft was inspired by Harlem rent parties of the ′20s and ′30s and if you were a member and had no money, David ran an IOU system so you could pay the following week. It was all about being able to be with your friends, dancing and having a good time. It was a true social experiment where all walks of life got down next to each other. This is why it was important. And then there was the sound system. David designed his own unique sound system which was his secret weapon. It wasn’t about volume, it was about quality.

The Paradise Garage opened in NYC in 1976 at 84 Kings Street, the home of legendary DJ Larry Levan. Originally a parking garage, hence the name, it was largely inspired by the loft parties: no food, alcohol or beverages were on sale, and it was not open to the general public.

You had to be a member to get in. As word spread, people would queue round the block each Friday night, hoping to be able to get in with a member, almost prostituting themselves in order to gain entry. Now that’s a club. This was the birthplace of ‘Garage Music’.

‘The club was down some dingy backstreet by the docks. From the outside it was not what I was expecting. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to witness inside the club. The place was rammed. The clientele were almost all black, all male and very gay. The club was made up of numerous rooms; it was impossible to get any idea of how big the place actually was as it was so chock-full and difficult to get around. This was like no nightclub that I had ever been in before. The unseen sound system was pumping out tune after tune of which I’d never heard the like before. Mainly they were stripped-back extended mixes of shuddering electro tracks with soul divas’ voices on top; they almost made the Giorgio Moroder records I knew sound like kids’ stuff. Track after track, all seamlessly segueing into each other. Never a drop in the energy level. This was something else altogether. It was literally an ocean away from cheesy Euro disco or the soul-boy sounds that dance clubs would have been playing in the UK… On leaving the place I noticed that it was called “The Paradise Garage”.’

Bill Drummond ex-KLF

Over the sea in Europe, in 1976, a club called Amnesia opened on the Balearic island of Ibiza. DJ Alfredo Fiorito took over as resident DJ Amnesia in 1984 and changed the face of DJing. Turn to p122 to continue the story.