Resonant Frequency #78
Category: Music & Recording Created on Saturday - 04.16.11 @ 9:56 PM Written by Mark Richardson - Pitchfork.com
A parlor game inspired by LCD Soundsystem: If you could actually be there for any moment in music history, what would it be? The first time Kool Herc extended a break? At Abbey Road when the orchestra was added to "A Day in the Life"? James Brown's immortal night at the Apollo? Those early Suicide practices that James Murphy joked about? My choice is a modest one, in that, had I been alive and living in New York City during a certain period, there's a chance I could have made it happen. I wish I'd been to one of David Mancuso's parties at the Loft in the 1970s.
I've been working my way through Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton's excellent new book, The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries. A companion to their 2000 study Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey, The Record Players is a collection of interviews with DJs, most of which were conducted for the earlier work. Many of the most important DJs since the 1960s are included. There are northern soul champions (Ian Levine), early disco jocks (Francis Grasso), hip-hop pioneers (Herc, Grandmaster Flash), and house, techno, and acid house DJs, all the way up the present day. Each has a story to tell about a particular phase in dance music. But the stories that draw me closest involve New York in the 70s, when Philly soul was turning into disco, and the idea of a particular DJ being the reason you go to a particular club was becoming a thing. And a common thread through the first half of the book for those who came up in that special time and place is that they there were inspired by the Loft.