As previously mentioned the Roxy club in New York closed this month. It opened in 1979 as a popular roller disco and, since 1991, had hosted a gay club on Saturday nights. Now it has been sold to developers - as the New York Press notes: 'sprawling redevelopment has engulfed much of the neighboring land on West 18th Street in recent years, and Roxy’s prime location directly below the soon-to-be renovated High Line made the former truck warehouse an irresistible target'. As it came to an end, the DJ played as the final record 'This used to be my playground' by Madonna.
In the early 1980s, the club was a critical stepping stone for hip-hop from Bronx scene to global phenomenon. As Jeff Chang describes it in his essential 'Can't stop ,won't stop: a history of the hip-hop generation':
"When Kool Lady Blue finally found a new home for her "Wheels of Steel" night, her club became the steamy embodiment of the Planet Rock ethos… To its ecstatic followers, the Roxy would become "a club that changed the world." In June [1982], Blue hung out a sign at the rink: COME IN PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. Her gamble was immaculately timed. She opened the club with all of the scene's leading lights at the beginning of a hot summer when graffiti and b-boying and hip-hop music was on everyone's minds.
"The regulars were Bam [Africa Bambaataa ]and Afrika Islam, and then Grandmixer DST, Jazzy jay, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and I'd rotate them," she says. "We had no booth. The DJ would be in the center of the floor on a podium. Everyone could see what he was doing, and he was kind of elevated to rock star status." On both sides of the DJ, large projection screens displayed Charlie Ahearn's slides of Bronx b-boys, rappers, and scenemakers. Nearby, the Rock Steady Crew convened all-night ciphers on the beautiful blonde wood floors.'"
Although it was "billed as the anti-Studio 54", the club attracted David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Talking Heads et al, facilitating the cross over of the music to a wider audience. One regular recalled "The crowds were very diverse. That was why I was so excited to be there. Suddenly this racially mixed group was having a good time partying in a room, which was a very rare thing. On the level of music and art, people were able to bridge all these boundaries."
The club was used as a setting for the 1984 film 'Beat Street', including the classic break dance battle between the Rock Steady Crew and the New York City Breakers (see next post for clip).
Charles Donelan has sent in this fascinating questionnaire covering his dancing odyssey through some legendary clubs in New York and elsewhere with a cast including Madonna and the Jesus & Mary Chain. Charles writes regularly on arts and entertainment for the Santa Barbara Independent, but really should get working on that book on 1980s New York!
Can you remember your first experience of dancing? First ever was probably to some classic rock cover band in the junior high cafeteria. Or was that the gymnasium? But really dancing—for me that started in New Haven , CT , USA around 1979. People danced to the new wave and punk music of the time, but that was where I also began to hear the first Sugarhill records, and to dance to James Brown, Fela, and Parliament/Funkadelic at parties in dining halls or at people’s apartments. This was fun but still essentially random, just college kids messing around.
By the time I moved to New York City in 1982 I had discovered the Mudd Club, Danceteria, and the Peppermint Lounge, where people were dancing to the Bush Tetras, the Feelies, James White, Konk, ESG, and other new wave bands of that era. But this was also when “The Message” broke, and a lot of other great early hiphop, and I can remember hearing it for the first time on club dance floors at places called things like “Fallout Shelter” that closed after a month and thinking this is big. At first people did the same new wave style dance to the hiphop beats, bent at the waist and knees, crossing their arms and legs rhythmically, low in front, and popping up at exciting moments, and spinning 360 or 720 degrees. When I started working as the elevator boy at Danceteria in 1983 (flyer left), the second floor dance area had a range of steady DJs who were all in Rockpool—Mark Kamins, Ed Bahlman, Walter Durkacsz, and Johnny Dynell—and they all had the signature New York sound—a mix of hiphop, disco, rock, funk, and what we now call “80s,” all filtered through these really loud, really noisy sound systems and mixed with way too much cheap phase shifting etc. All the kind of cheesy effects that you can still hear on something like Armand Van Helden’s New York a Mix Odyssey CD.
Around 1983 everyone started to go to the Roxy roller disco on Thursday nights to hear Afrika Bambataa. There was crazy break dancing going on there, with an “Everbody”-era Madge right in the middle of it [Madonna's was the last record played at the Roxy's gay club earlier this year - even if she didn't turn up personally - Neil] . Malcolm Mclaren hired young teenage doubledutch rope jumpers from Harlem to perform at 3 in the morning to premiere “Buffalo Gals.” My gf and I were in the Roxy VIP with Daryl Mac, Run, and John Lydon. If you want an idea of what the sound was like, think the loudest system ever, turned up. Each week they premiered a song—I can remember being there for the premiere of “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” To make the people really dance, Afrika played just the first two bars of “Hey Mickey!” for five minutes.
2.What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing? Connecting with other people. There are certain things that only come out on the dancefloor, and great music takes people far out of themselves. I have met and befriended individuals through going out dancing who have changed my life, and my interest in nightlife has had an impact on my career. But the most significant things that happen while out dancing are the excitement of the moment and the intensity of the memory impressions that it leaves.
3. You. Dancing. The best of times… Nell’s on West 14th circa 1986-90 had a great, small, dark basement dancefloor. It is perhaps best known as the place where Tupac’s New York sexual assault charges began. Nell’s had a really strict door policy, but it was still done by coolness, rather than how much money people planned to spend. The cover charge was $5, and they took it from pretty much everyone, at least for the first year. For at least the first two full years we had the run of the place on Thursdays, which was the best night. The DJ, who is still working, and is a wonderful dancer, was Belinda, and I am convinced that she was responsible for breaking Eric B. and Rakim to the right people in New York . Her signature song was “For the Love of Money,” she played a lot of hiphop, and it was the most exciting dance floor you could imagine. It often had combinations like Tupac, Kate Moss, a Haitian drugdealer, Prince, his bodyguards, the Beasties, and Linda Evangelista all dancing at the same time in a group of no more than 200. That was fun.
So was the next big place to open, which had a much harder edge to it. Mars was in the Meatpacking district and it was opened by Rudolf of Danceteria and Yuki Watanabe, his Japanese backer. This place looked out on the Hudson River through metal pilings and had a neon sign over the dance floor that said DRUGS. The records that broke there include the the late 80s Public Enemy hits, the Soul II Soul record, “Keep on Movin’,” which was incredibly influential in New York, and a whole bunch of other classic hiphop of the late 80s and early 90s.
The best of all New York clubs in the 1980s was the World. This was an abandoned Ukrainian dance hall in the lower east village that was 100 feet from the Toilet, the city’s most notorious heroin spot. The World had a super-strict, totally countercultural door policy, and hosted the U.S. debuts of such talents as the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Pogues. I think that dancing to Street Fighting Man at the Jesus and Mary Chain show at 3 am because the band still had not gone on, and being happy about it, might qualify as the best of times ever.
4. You. Dancing. The worst of times… Afterhours at Save the Robots on Avenue B… with real vampires.
5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented? New York City , see above, and in Southampton , New York , in the potato barns turned nightclubs of the late 1980s and early 1990s. These parties were good, with mostly pop music, but this is also where I got my earliest exposure to techno. Places I traveled to where dancing occurred include London, from about 1981 on, where I went to whatever clubs I could find in timeout; does anyone remember a place in an old theater that had a raked dancefloor? That was something. So was Leigh Bowery (pictured). I saw a very good Pogues show at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden in 1986 I think, and I danced to Haircut 100 at the ICA on or around New Years of 1981. Then there’s Los Angeles , where I went to a vintage warehouse rave in the early 1990s with people who would not do that today. LA has a funny dance club/nightlife history, with 80s hair metal giving way to hard house somewhere around 1993, and lots of the same people somehow attending. The most recent great dance scene I have witnessed was in South Beach Miami for Winter Music Conference 2007. Miami has some of the energy of New York back in the day.
6. When and where did you last dance? I danced on Saturday night at the Wildcat Lounge in Santa Barbara , California to hard contemporary house. It was Memorial Day weekend, a big holiday here, and I felt I saw almost everyone I know, because Santa Barbara is a small town.
7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance? Caravan by Duke Ellington.
1983 Halloween flyer for Danceteria, New York from the excellent Danceteria blog - where there is a whole archive of flyers from this period.
Legendary New York club Roxy closed earlier this month. I'll post some more about its history soon - it hosted a gay club and roller disco up until the end, but also had a key role in the development of Hip Hop. For now here's some footage of the last night.
Long ago and far away (well mid 1980s Luton) there was a great punk band called Karma Sutra. I hung out with them and made a few squiggly noises on my wasp synth on one of their 1985 demo tapes. Now 35 years later said demo tape and others from that time have appeared on vinyl as an album 'Be Cruel With Your Past And All Who Seek To Keep You There' put out by Sealed Records (listen/buy it here). It comes with a great booklet with interviews and flyers. For me Karma Sutra were a portal into anarcho-punk and its associated activism, perhaps in particular hunt sabbing as I explain in the following
I’d had the Crass records, the Conflict badges, and a mohican, I’d been on a Stop the City demo too but my real initiation into the world of ‘anarcho punk activism’ didn’t come until September 1st 1984 when I went to a Hunt Saboteurs benefit gig at Luton library theatre arranged by local band Karma Sutra. Headliners Antisect from Northampton were one of the more metal tinged punk outfits, with heavy guitar riffs and gruff vocals growling “why must I die?” (The “I” in question being a laboratory animal of course).
If the extremism of
noise and content was impressive it wasn’t unexpected. What really amazed me
was what was going on off the stage. I’d been to loads of gigs where I’d steamed
in with my mates, bought some drinks, watched the bands, and left with the only
interaction with others being some slam dancing at the front. Here there were
people talking, and busy bookstalls from the Hunt Saboteurs and from Housman’s,
the London radical bookshop, with a selection of anarchist papers and other
publications (I later found out that several people from the Luton scene were
working the odd shift there, and eventually I did the same myself).
Hunt Sabs benefit at Luton Library Theatre September 1984, flyer advertising Antisect, Karma Sutra, Ring and Danbert Nobacon. Not sure if this was the actual line up on the night - in my diary I noted seeing Antisect, Karma Sutra, The Sears (from Walsall) and The Remnants (Luton punk band). The night ended up with somebody being stabbed in the hand, though not seriously injured, I think linked to skinhead trouble - earlier a skinhead had jumped on stage and given a nazi salute. As discussed below, violence from far right skinheads was an ongoing threat at this time
I chatted with someone
about hunt sabbing and within a week I was standing in a field in
Northamptonshire at 8 am in the morning at the beginning of the fox cub hunting
season. It was the start of a couple of years of intense activity, with
countless hours spent in the back of a white van hurtling between punk gigs,
hunts, demonstrations and protests. I'd been politically involved in various left wing movements before but this was a different intensity of activism.
Of course these were
tumultuous times across the world – the days of Thatcher vs. the miners, of
Reagan and the new Cold War, of uprisings against Apartheid in South Africa.
And in towns and cities across the UK, some of the most determined opposition
to the state of the world came from groups of young, invariably black-clad
punks. This article is a snapshot of one of those scenes, in Luton, but similar
stories could be told about many other places.
Punk in Luton
Thirty miles north of
London, Luton in the mid-1980s was still an industrial town dominated by the
Vauxhall car factory, as it was to remain until General Motors stopped making
cars there in 2002. There had been a punk scene in the area since the early
days: The Damned played one of their first gigs at Luton’s Royal Hotel in 1976
and the Sex Pistols played at the Queensway Hall in neighbouring Dunstable in
the same year. Luton’s first punk band, The Jets, featured on the famous Live
at the Roxy album in ’77.
The best known punk band
to come from Luton was UK Decay, formed in 1979. The band had some association
with Crass - in December 1979 they played with Crass and Poison Girls at a gig
in a tin Nissan hut at Marsh Farm in Luton, and their final record – the ‘Rising
from the Dread’ EP - was released on Crass’s Corpus Christi label in 1982. But while
UK Decay released the great anti-war track ‘For my country’, they weren’t
really part of that anarcho-punk protest scene as such. Along with
Northampton’s Bauhaus they were developing a proto-goth aesthetic, referencing
horror themes and plundering Edgar Allen Poe and Herman
Hesse for inspiration. Indeed the reference to them as ‘the face of punk
gothique’ by Steve Keaton in Sounds (February 1981) is credited as being one of
the originators of the term ‘goth’ for this emerging sound.
UK
Decay were influential stalwarts of the indie charts, and among other things
supported The Dead Kennedys on their 1980 UK tour. For a while they were
involved in a short lived punk/new wave record shop in Luton town centre,
Matrix, which closed down shortly after a party where the Kennedys and other
party goers ran amok in the Arndale Centre car park.
By
1984 UK Decay had split up, giving rise to a couple of splinter bands (Furyo
and In Excelsis) and the post-punk scene too had begun to fragment. The town’s
sub-cultural outcasts tended to congregate at one pub in particular - The
Blockers Arms in High Town Road (of which more here). Among the punky types there
were different factions, albeit overlapping and coexisting peacefully – some
slightly older first generation punks, early goths, what would later be called
indie kids, and what might be termed ‘anarcho-punks’.
Luton Marsh House Free Festival, September 1984 with Newtown Neurotics, Attila the Stockbroker, Nick the Poet, Karma Sutra, Black Mass (St Albans anarcho punk band) and Snatch - a memorable day, it poured with rain towards the end and loads of us got up on the stage for shelter and joined in singing with Attila.
There
were no strict borders between these groups - every individual had their own
combination of politics, music tastes and hairstyles - so it’s perhaps
misleading to talk of a discrete, separate anarcho-punk scene. But within this
continuum there was a definite current that was more overtly political and
musically more into the bands like Crass and Conflict.
I
don’t think most people like this would have defined themselves then as anarcho-punks
or even necessarily as anarchists, but there was a shared, loose
anti-authoritarian politics, with a strong focus on being against war and militarism
and for animal rights. People were typically vegan at a time when supermarkets barely
catered for vegetarians - these were the days of homemade houmous.
It
would be misleading too to use the term ‘Crass punks’. Crass had certainly been
very influential earlier on but they were coming to the end of their active
life, playing their final gig in 1984 – a miners’ benefit in Aberdare. At the
thrashier end of things Conflict were now the most influential band, but the
scene had become much more musically diverse. Bands like Chumbawamba with their
harmonies, Slave Dance with their situationist squat funk sound, and No
Defences with their tricky time signatures were a long way from being Crass or
Conflict copyists.
In
Luton, the house band of the scene was Karma Sutra. They had been included on
Conflict’s 1984 Mortarhate compilation ‘Who? What? Why? When? Where?’ with
their track ‘It’s our World Too’ and were later to release an album ‘The Day
Dreams of a Production Line Worker’ on their own Paradoxical Records. Another
Luton band on a similar wavelength, Dominant Patri, had already split up by
1984. The other main ‘anarcho’ band in the town at the time was Penumbra Sigh, who formed I
believe in 1985, and there were also like-minded bands in nearby towns, such as
Medical Melodies in St Albans.
I
sometimes operated the slide projector at gigs for Karma, and I occasionally
turned up at their rehearsal space with my wasp synth – you can hear it on one
of their demo tapes from the period recorded in Luton's Midland Road studio. But mostly I just travelled around with
them and others to gigs – squat gigs in London such as in the Ambulance Station
on the Old Kent Road, a pub in Brixton or a bus station by Kings Cross; gigs in
far off places like a CND benefit supporting Chumbawamba in Stockport, gigs in
nearby towns like Welwyn Garden City and St Albans; gigs with Conflict, Chumba,
Antisect, The Sears, Blyth Power, Flowers in the Dustbin, Slave Dance, State Hate, No
Defences, Sacrilege, Brigandage, Black Mass, The McTells, The Astronauts and many more. But
the music was only part of it and here I want to focus on some of the other
things we got up to.
Chumbawamba, Karma Sutra and Sacrilege, CND benefit at Scunthorpe Baths, 1 March 1985 (I remember burning my hand on the slide projector as well as some great music!)
Hunt Sabbing
‘It’s normally a
quiet Northamptonshire lane – but on this occasion it looks more like a
battlefield. Furious members of the Grafton Hunt are blocking the road with
their horses and refusing to move. Angry hunt saboteurs rev their cars, hoot
their horns and demand that the horses get out of the way… A battered van and
an assortment of old cars appeared and about 30 mainly young protestors dashed
down a track close to the wood. A genuine Cotswold hunting horn, blown by a
saboteur, did a good impression of the Grafton’s rallying horn, while the rest
of the party joined in with fake shouts and calls…There’s another whirling
confrontation and a young female saboteur is lying unconscious in a ploughed
field – knocked flat by a horse… another saboteur is thrown into a stream by
hunt followers, and there are more scuffles’ (When the hunters become the
hunted’, Alex Dawson, Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984)
The fine art of
preventing hunters killing foxes and other animals dated back to the formation
of the Hunt Saboteurs Association in 1963. Luton had been home to a
particularly militant sabbing group in the early 1970s, from which emerged the
Band of Mercy to take direct action including sabotaging hunt vehicles. This
group, which included Ronnie Lee, was to become one of the founding cells of
the Animal Liberation Front.
The mid-1980s Luton
sabs operated across the Beds, Bucks, Herts and Northantscountryside with occasional forays further
afield. Our nearest fox hunt was the Enfield Chace, in pursuit of which we
would head out of town having scoured Horse and House magazine for intelligence
of where they were to be found of a Saturday morning.
We quite often went out
with the Northampton group, sabbing the Pytchley, Grafton or the Vale of
Aylesbury fox hunts.. There was also a group in Bedford but even though there
were some sound people in it we didn’t entirely trust them because we suspected
that their van driver had dubious fascist connections (she later ended up as a Labour councillor in Milton Keynes, I guess people can change).
The biggest events were
national and regional ‘hits’, when sab groups from across a wide area would
converge on one hunt. Sometimes these would feature spectacular clashes, with
red coated hunters on horseback, hunt followers, police and a hundred or more
brightly haired sabs scuffling and chasing each other, and sometimes a fox, across
fields and through woods. I remember being in the woods near Sole Street in Kent, disrupting the East Kent hunt with sabs from Canterbury, Thanet, Brighton and Surrey in March 1985. It felt like being in a medieval peasants revolt with sabs carrying sticks charging at the hunters deep in the trees - it was the week that Kent miners returned to work at the end of their strike and class war was in the air.
Ideally the hunt would be delayed by stopping it
moving off, or blockading the kennels where the hounds were kept. At the start
of the 1985 season for instance, around 100 sabs blockaded the kennels of the
Cambridgeshire Foxhounds, preventing the van carrying the hounds from leaving
on time [I believe the pictures below are from that day, I recognise a couple of Coventry sabs in them].
The guy on the right rode his horse straight at me, so I was knocked on the ground a couple of seconds after taking this photo!
At other times,
sometimes with as much effect, it would just be a handful of us, hardly seeing
the hunters but distracting the hounds from a distance blowing hunting horns or
spraying anti-mate on the ground to obscure the scent of the fox.
There were also less direct tactics - there were tales of some sabs doing magic rituals to protect the fox before setting out on a Saturday morning. This was the first time I had heard of such 'magical activism' and shortly afterwards I was introduced to the work of Starhawk - hanging around court while watching one of the Unilever trials (arising from a mass animal liberation league raid on a Bedfordshire laboratory) someone was reading 'Dreaming the Dark: Magic, sex and politics' which described the work of witches in the US peace and anti-nuclear movements.
Whatever the numbers out sabbing the conflict was usually uneven with the hunting cavalry facing the animal rights infantry. On my very first hunt, a sab was knocked out by a horse from the
Grafton Hunt near Slapton in Northants. On another occasion I was knocked
flying by a horse, but escaped serious injury. A few years later, in 1991, hunt
saboteur Mike Hill was to be killed by a hunt vehicle used by the Cheshire
Beagles (and indeed in 1995 Jill Phipps, who I remember meeting at that first
hunt at Slapton, was killed by a lorry during an animal rights protest at
Coventry airport).
My first time hunt sabbing - a woman lies injured after being hit by a horse from the Grafton Hunt. Her friend comforts her - note Crass patch on trousers (Chronicle and Echo, September 10 1984).
The police generally
turned a blind eye to any violence inflicted by hunt followers on sabs, and it
was the latter who tended to get arrested if there were any clashes. For
instance in March ’85, eleven sabs were arrested as we tried to stop the Old
Berkeley Beagles hunting hares near Thame in Oxfordshire.
Sometimes the hunt could not be found at all, and there would be fruitless tours of country lanes in the back of a van. Where large numbers of sabs were gathered together with nothing to do the temptation to mischief elsewhere was strong. In March 1986, a big group of sabs who had originally gathered to oppose the Warwickshire hunt headed to Leamington Spa town centre. After a sit down in McDonalds, we moved to a couple of local fur shops, The Sunday Mercury reported (16.3.1986): ‘A crowd of 70 demonstrators caused disturbances throughout the afternoon in the centre of Leamington. Some burst into Brians Specialist Furriers in Regent Street and grabbed expensive fur coats from racks before hurling them outside into the road’. 12 people were arrested including three women from Luton who were detained over the weekend - one of whom was slapped in the face by police for refusing to answer questions. A ‘Leamington Dirty Dozen Defence Fund’ was set up to support them.
Report of Leamington Spa animal rights protest from Luton Animal Rights bulletin no.2, April 1986- one person was later jailed for 6 weeks for assault
On another occasion, in November 1986, Luton sabs headed off for a national hit near Leicester with around 150 sabs from Coventry, Leamington, Birmingham, Sheffield, Northampton, Rugby, Leicester and Lincoln. After chasing after the hunt, aided by CB radios, fog stopped play and the hunt went home early without a kill. The sabs headed into Leicester to join an anti-fur demo, with one of the Luton group being arrested for ABH after a scuffle during a sit in at a fur shop.
Not all sabs were punks of course, but our group was predominantly so, as were others. As well as the sabbing itself, keeping it going involved raising funds for van hire, petrol, materials and the occasional fine. Jumble sales and benefit gigs were the main source of income, including an amazing hunt sabs benefit we put on back at the Luton Library Theatre in 1985 with Chumbawamba, No Defences and Karma Sutra. Karma also played a benefit gig for the Leamington defendants at Luton’s Cock Inn (May 1986) along with Medical Melodies, Herb Garden and Kul.
1985 Luton Hunt Sabs benefit with Chumba, No Defences, Karma Sutra and Penumbra Sigh. What a great gig that was, No Defences' mesmerising performance was fortunately recorded for posterity
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.4, December 1986 - mentions Leicester fur shop demo following national 'hit': 'We went inside the shop and staged a sit-in, some people stayed outside the shop chanting. While inside some protestors had a slight scuffle with an irate shopkeeper'
Luton hunt sabs jumble sale 1986
Report from Luton Animal Rights newsletter no.1, December 1985 - 'On November 23rd we were one of eleven van loads of sabs who went to sabotage the Pytchley, another vicious gang of fox killers who were hunting near Northampton'
The donkey-jacketed Luton Hunt Sabs march through the mud near Pulloxhill in Bedfordshire, January 1985. I think this may be the day described in diary extract below
'26th January 1985: about 12 of us went in a hired van to Pulloxhill where the Enfield Chace were hunting. When we arrived the local sherrif, sorry police officer, tried to run us out of town. He said we had no right to be there, and told us to drive home. Needless to say we ignored him'
[This is an edited extract, with newly added pictures, from my article - Neil Transpontine, Hyper-active as the day is long: anarcho-punk activism in an English town, 1984-86 in 'And all around was darkness' edited by Gregory Bull and Mike Dines, Itchy Monkey Press, 2017. The full article goes on to look at more Luton activism covering animal rights, anti-apartheid, the peace movement, Stop the City, the miners strike and more. The book is an excellent collection of participant accounts of the scene including The Mob, Crass, Flowers in the Dustbin, anarcho-feminism and Greenham Common etc. You can buy copies of it here and recommend you do if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff]
One facet of early punk life in London (1976-77) was that there were no punk clubs, with the gap filled for some by lesbian and gay clubs - probably the only place where the first punks could go without being hassled. Most famous was Club Louise in Soho, where the teenage style terrorists of the so-called Bromley Contingent hung out - including Siouxise Sioux - as well as members of The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Slits. The place is described in Bertie Marshall's entertaining and acerbic memoir of the period Berlin Bromley (2006):
S.S. [Siouxsie Sioux] mentioned this exclusive little club in Soho that you had to be a member to get in and was populated by lesbians and the odd male lesbian watcher and a couple of well-known actors. We all went, led by S.S. through the streets of Soho to 61 Poland Street to a red painted door with gold plates. S.S. rang the bell and through a little peephole a voice said in lisping tones, "Are you members!" What, I wonder, did we look like through that little window; some nightmare WaIt Disney might have had! We got in. Sitting at a low desk in the entrance way was a very old lady with a pile of grey hair atop her head and long grey dress and grey fur coar- grey lady? Bits of diamonds here and there, she looked a thousand-years-old. "Ah, you must all become members, my dears," her accent was French. Three pounds bought us a little red and white membership card.
Michael the doorman was an American fag and Madame Louise's toy-boy. This was her club. We were all under twenty-one and looked it, but somehow they didn't care, we must have passed some test. Perhaps Louise wanted to attract a younger clientele? The small foyer led into a bar room, a large mirror ran along the back wall, very dim lighting so you could hardly see your reflection, long black leatherette sofa seating, small tables with red cloths on them, black chairs, red carpets.
It was empty except for a waiter we named 'Ballerina John', an Irish queen with really awful acne and long red hair that he kept flicking over one eye. John had been thrown out of dance school because of some sexual indiscretion in the toilets. Ballerina John came over and took our orders-five vodka and oranges. And because of the licensing laws, it was required that we were served food-food was a few slices of anaemic-looking Spam and shrivelled gherkins on a paper plate.
S.S. had found this place on one of her jaunts with pretend-girlfriend Myra. Most of us kept looking at ourselves in the gloriously long and flattering mirrors. From our table we could see a spiral staircase going down. "I love these mirrors," S.S. purred. "What's down there?" I asked. "A dance floor," S.S. said, retouching her nose with her powder puff…
What did I wear to Louise's the first time? Old men's pyjama jacket with a silver grey tie over black ski pants and black plastic sandals and white fingerless gloves. S.S. in one of her fifties Swanky Modes dresses, (Swanky Modes was a shop in Camden run by two sisters, designers of vaguely fetish women's wear). S.S. was wearing a b/w polka dot 'Betty Boo' dress; she would do impersonations of the cartoon character now and then. We'd catch ourselves in the mirror, suck in our cheeks and pout like mad. Sipping our vodkas, we could hear strains of music, Diana Ross and the Supremes ... S.S. decided that we should all trot downstairs... a small dance floor surrounded by low tables with red cloths and mirrors around the walls. We sat at a table under the stairs.
There was a smoked-glass DJ booth, where a young dyke played Bowie then Marlene Dietrich ... around the room sat a couple of butch dykes with feathered haircuts and three-piece men's suits. S.S. pulled me onto the dance floor to Bryan Ferry's 'Let's Stick Together'. I followed her in a demented jive, swinging each other around and around, yelping and cooing. We'd suddenly stop mid-jive and turn and look at ourselves in the mirrors, as though fixing and freezing our features forever at sixteen. With the help of make-up and the dark lights of the club we looked perfect and glamorous… Louise's closed at 3 a.m., which meant getting the night bus home, a cab was too expensive.
Marshall also mentions that the Roxy in Neal Street, Covent Garden - the first punk club as such - has previously been 'Chagarama's, the trannie bar', and recalls that as punk exploded and Louise's became too popular, some of the scene decamped elsewhere:
We discovered another club. Sombrero's was on Kensington High Street and a very GAY Disco, owned by a pair of Spanish queens, it had a raised dance floor of multicoloured Perspex that resembled a boxing ring and had waiter service. A lot of Oriental and Middle Eastern queens went there, it was very faggy indeed, gold chains and sprayed hair, little leather clutch bags, rich older queens and their younger pickings. It was home in the early 1970s to the glam rock scene, Mr and Mrs Bowie.
One time Johnny Rotten was hero of the week down at Sombtero's, he intervened in a knife attack against one of the door staff, stopped the queen getting it in the gut, by kicking the assailant in the nuts! Rudy, a rotund and chirpy Spaniard was the DJ, he played 70s disco. My favourite story that he told, was one night Marianne Faithfull came down and went to his DJ booth on the look-out for free drinks; of course Rudy obliged. She repaid him by singing a drunken version of 'Little Bird'.
Update November 2022 :
This post has received lots of attention over the years with some great anecdotes from former denizens of the Sombrero in particular recalling some of its fabulous characters (see comments below post). The main club night was called 'Yours or Mine'. It seems that David Bowie and Angie hung out there in early 1970s and it was here that they met Freddie Burretti and his friend Daniella Parmar. Burretti went on to design some of David Bowie's signature looks while Parmar's short blonde crop haircut was adopted and popularised by Angie Bowie. Jagger, Boy George and Marilyn are mentioned too. To get round restrictive licensing laws the place served food to all customers under the more generous terms of a supper licence - though seemingly nobody in their right mind ate the ham and potato salad on offer.
In 1980s Adam and the Ants recorded the video for their hit single Antmusic there, as Adam recalled: 'we hired my old haunt, the tiny Sombrero club in Kensington, and filmed us 'performing' the song to a crowd who are reluctant at first to dance to it, but eventually get completely into the song and surround us on the under-lit dance floor' (Adam Ant, Stand and Deliver: my autobiography' (2008).
Luc Sante is the 23rd person to complete the Dancing Questionnaire. Luc has written extensively on New York cultural history, and much more, and as you might expect has savoured much of that city's legendary nightlife as well as clubbing in Paris and elsewhere.
1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
In 1963, when I was around 9 years old and in St. Teresa's School, Summit, New Jersey, our teacher would take us once a week to the adjacent Holy Name Hall to teach us square dancing. The tune was invariably "The Old Brass Wagon," and Mrs. Gibbs may have sung it herself--I don't remember a record. One week, though, she plugged in the jukebox and played "My Boyfriend's Back," by the Angels, and encouraged us to frug. I'm not sure the experience was ever repeated, but it left a permanent mark on me.
2. What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
Oh gosh, that's a tough one... Possibly it was meeting Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Mudd Club, probably late 1978. I swear I knew at first glance that there was something exceptional about him. He moved in with one of my friends, and then another, and he and I were good friends until he became famous, circa 1983.
Basquiat at the Mudd Club in 1979
3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
From 1977 to 1982, roughly. Isaiah's, a reggae club in an upstairs loft on Broadway between Bleecker and Bond approx. '77-'79; the Mudd Club from its opening on Halloween 1978 until it started getting press three or four months later (and then there would be huge crowds inside and out); Tier 3 on White Street and West Broadway (tiny, but excellent sounds), 1980-81; Squat Theater on 23rd Street around '79-'81, irregular as a dance venue but *the* place for the all-too-brief punk-jazz efflorescence; the Roxy around 1982--a roller disco that once a week would become a sort of hiphop-punk disco, often with Afrika Bambaataa on the decks. And sometime around '77 or '78 a gay friend once took me to the Loft, which I'm sure you've read about; it fully lived up to the hype.
4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
White people attempting to dance to white rock, pretty much always the case until 1973 or so, when a great many people of my acquaintance suddenly "discovered" James Brown. And then the last three decades, when dancing opportunities have been few and far between.
5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
My first real dance experiences were all in gay discos, early '70s (I'm straight, but had a gay best friend): the (old) Limelight on Sheridan Square, Peter Rabbit's on West Street, and the amazing Nickel Bar on 72nd Street - where Robert Mapplethorpe, among others, would go to pick up young black men, and where the level of the dancing was so amazing I didn't dare attempt to compete.
Summer of 1974 in Paris: Le Cameleon on rue St.-Andre-des-Arts, a tiny African disco in a barely ventilated cellar - but it was the summer of "Soul Makossa." Nine years later I was back in Paris and Le Cameleon had moved to a much larger aboveground space--an exhilarating experience.
Also, besides the venues noted in #3, the Rock Lounge (sleazy, but good music) succeeded in the same space on Canal Street by the Reggae Lounge, circa '82; the World on 2nd Street a few years later (too sceney for words, but you could shut your eyes); assorted after-hours spots such as Brownie's on Avenue A (not to be confused with the legit rock club of the same name that succeeded it), although drugs were more of a priority than dancing or music in those places. Post '83 I can only remember the short-lived but excellent Giant Steps--a jazz disco--and a series of retro-soul clubs (don't remember their names, alas).
6. When and where did you last dance?
The New Year's Eve before last, a private party in Tivoli, New York, a pretty good techno mix.
7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
Tie: "One Nation Under a Groove," Funkadelic; "Got to Give It Up," Marvin Gaye.
The first article, from July 22 1982 is a review of a live event for Gary Crowley's Tuesday Club Capitol Radio show with live appearances from Culture Club, Bananarama and The Higsons. It includes a great picture of Joe Strummer with Jennie Belle Star, Jerrry Dammers and Chrissy Boy from Madness.
In terms of a regular night out at the Palace, Deborah Steele's article from Smash Hits, 15 August 1983 is more evocative. It is headlined with Steve Strange's description of the Palace (which had opened some 18 months previously) as 'A club for the people created by the people'.
'The Camden Palace... a place full of famous people trying to look ordinary and ordinary people trying to look famous... Many would go so far as to argue that Thursdays represent what British pop is all about - the people, the stars, the music, the fashions and the attitudes... Steve Strange (of course), The Palace's genial host, signing autographs, having his picture taken and looking very striking in 'Tom Bailey' goggles and blue tea towel wrapped round his head. He tells me his new image is going to be that of an American footballer. Also pretending not to be famous are Edwyn Collins from Orange Juice, Chris Foreman from Madness, Miranda and Jennie Belle Star, a couple of Hoovers and George and Andrew from Wham! Oddly enough, no-one really pays these 'stars' too much attention ("everyone's a star here", says Steve)...
'The quality of the sound is incredible (and loud too) and the light show has to be seen to be believed. Lazers, strobes, neon strips and great shafts of light beaming out of computer-controlled rotating gantries, it's like the famous spaceship scene out of Close Encounters. Add to that a massive video screen which descends every so often to show the latest pop videos and you can understand why so many people do nothing but dance all night... Whether it's the bar proppers, posers, pop-stars upstairs or the dancers on the floor, The Palace is about having a good time'.
The music from DJ Rusty Egan is described as 'largely electro-disco with a few old Roxy Music and Simple Minds evergreens', catering to a crowd in a diversity of styles - an 'assortment of Boy George clones, bleached quiffs, fish-net stockings, expensive suits and sunglasses'. People queuing round the block to pay an 'expensive' £4 to get in and £1.60 a drink.
Steve Strange with Jennie and Stella Barker of the Bellestars
cutting the cake at Camden Palace first birthday party (Smash Hits, 12 May 1983)
See also: Posing at the Picture Place, Standard, May 11, 1983 for a reminder of the dole/cash in hand day lives of the night time diy superstars - ''I’m wrecked', Nick announces as he downs his sixth pint of lager at about 2am. “I was so late waking up yesterday I had to take a taxi to the dole to sign on before I went into work.” Nick [not his real name, obviously] looks startling in a hat so huge it has to be seriously trendy, and is well aware of the irony of his remark. He is 19 and clears £80 a week in Vivienne Westwood’s clothes shop which also dresses him for next to nothing, another £15 on Saturday checking coats in a nightclub – oh, and of course £22 social security. “That’s just pin money,” he says. “It pays the rent.”... Mike uses his £25-a-week dole on top of what he earns in Kensington Market to fund his nights out. Among a repertoire of sharp practices people here admit to, fare-dodging is regarded as essential and one 18-year-old charges friends £1 for lifts in his car home to the suburbs'.
Getting totally addicted to Like Punk Never Happened: Brian McCluskey's Smash Hits Archive. Whole issues of the late 1970s/early 1980s UK pop magazine scanned in for you to browse at your leisure. So much stuff in there: photos, lyrics, gig listings, charts. Just the disco chart alone will keep me going for months.
So here's the disco chart from September 20 1979 (click to enlarge), complete with BPM for all you DJs. Looking at it they seemed to define disco rather broadly - reggae gets a look in with Matumbi and Eddie Grant. Could call it a black music chart, though Ian Dury and Roxy Music also feature. Guess it's all music that might be played in a disco, which is fair enough. Anyway The Crusaders' Street Life was number one, with Sister Sledge, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind & Fire and Rose Royce all present and correct, among others.
Have a dig around in Smash Hits and let me know what you find - there's treasure in there of all kinds (post-punk, disco, reggae, pop...)
Next up is Pete, a one man link connecting jazz, mod and techno rave scenes. He is currently involved in the Young Unknowns gallery project on the South Bank.
1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing? When I was 8 my mother sent me to ballet lessons on Saturdays - in baggy football shorts because she couldn't afford tights. A mate saw me coming out of a lesson and grassed me up to other kids at school. It was all very Billy Elliot except I wasn't much taken by the music to bother fighting my corner.
2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing? Dance has played a big part of my life since I was a kid in the 1950's, but I was in my 40's before the muse really took a hold. I'd become a world music fan in the late 80's then a guy came to share my flat who was big into techno, and for the first six months going to rave parties and clubs, my body just couldn't find a way to properly move with the sound. One night, seeing me struggling, a dancer whispered in my ear "Get between the beats". That tip stayed and the magic hasn't left me. I've since spoken to Africans who've said similar: "dance against the beat"
3. You. Dancing. The best of times… It was Xmas 1991 in a club called The Alarm (in Strasbourg where my nephew lived) and there it all fell into place.They had to drag me out of the place.
4. You. Dancing. The worst of times… An odd analogy springs to mind: In the same way a bad craftsman blames his tools, a good dancer can dance to any music. In my case there are limits - one is disco.
5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented? At 64 I've known many: Rock and Roll but I was a bit too young. At 15 it was Trad jazz , Ken Colyers Jazz club in Great or was it Little Newport St? I was happier with Modern Jazz, Mingus was a hero. I saw & bopped to Kenny Clark in The Blue Note, Paris in '62. Then the mod scene in which I felt at home, going to The Scene, in Soho, and The Lyceum. The 70's during my breaks as barman in Dingwalls, there was the The Average White Band.
There's so many: Chaguaramas, but I'm bad remembering names and that same venue became a Punk place [The Roxy] where I pogoed to Johnny Moped. The 80s I remember House at The Brain, but African did it most for me then, and I went to WOMAD three years running. Then on after it was Techno everywhere!
6. When and where did you last dance? Celebrating my 64th birthday in a Paris Bar called Rosa Bonheur, last August.
7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance? You must be kidding!
All questionnaires welcome - just answer the same questions in as much or as little detail as you like and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires). Quick disclaimer: please note that people who complete the questionnaires do not necessarily share the wider views expressed at this blog on politics, sex, drugs or disco!
Following the closure of the Roxy this month, New York City's last remaining roller disco is due to close in April 2007. A news report this weekend stated: 'Roller skaters are hoping the wheels at the city's only remaining roller rink won't screech to a halt. At a demonstration in Crown Heights Saturday, people came out to support the Empire Roller Skating Center, which has been sold and is slated to close its doors at the end of April. After nearly 70 years of fun on wheels, the building is scheduled to become a storage facility'.
In 'Night Dancin'' (1980), a guide to the New York disco scene, Via Miezitis described the Empire in its heyday: 'Rainbows, clouds and blue skies cover the walls. Neon criss-crosses and circles mirror balls hung from high gymnasium-like ceilings and transform them into phosphorescent planets in outer space. More rainbow-colored neon outlines a large, square railed-off skating area contained within the main rink; the neon is reflected on the ceiling and looks like a meteor or laser beams.
Over 1000 skaters cover thousands of square feet of roller rink. Human satellites, they orbit defying gravity, dancing and speeding effortlessly through space. Some resemble glider planes that float in the air; still others appear as precision performance jets as they whirl, dip, roll, fall and suddenly cut across the paths of other "planes." The Empire Roller Disco attracts the best roller disco skaters in the world, who perform their practiced and improvised disco routines regularly to disco beats spun by a regular disc jockey. The dee jay helps lead the skaters through the various peaks and dips of the speeding and furious energy high that is roller disco at its best'.
Quotes and images from 'Night Dancin'', text by Vita Miezitis, photographs by Bill Bernstein (New York: 1980). There is a petition against the closure of The Empire here.
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