8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

The Larry Levan Bump

August 31, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Pitchfork:

Bands that once defined ‘70s punk rock at CBGB’s began making music that would appeal to the dancefloor (at The Paradise Garage) located but one mile west of that notoriously filthy venue. Blondie cut “Heart of Glass” and “Rapture”, while Talking Heads locked into a groove to smooth out the spastic tendencies of frontman David Byrne, and the aquatic funk of “Once in a Lifetime” became a Garage favorite. Meanwhile, Levan used to tune the room’s sound to the Clash’s “The Magnificent Dance”, and even rock royalty like the Rolling Stones and the Who vied for club play.



It speaks to Levan’s DJ sensibilities that it didn’t matter the genre of music—punk, pop, funk, disco, R&B—as long as it moved the crowd, it worked for him. And if Levan loved something, such as Pat Benatar’s brooding metallic synth-pop power ballad “Love is a Battlefield”, he would play it multiple times in a night, until any and all resistance was overcome.



Well before YouTube and Shazam provided metrics to forecast a song’s popularity, one only needed to peer out on the Paradise Garage’s dancefloor to see what was going to be a hit.


It’s always inspiring to hear these near-mythical stories of Larry Levan and other DJs from his era, and how they had the ability to create ‘hits’ within their cities and circles. As this story explains, Levan’s pull was augmented by his taste-making relationship with legendary NYC radio host Frankie “Hollywood” Crocker, and the two worked together in a perpetual search for the next big thing. This symbiosis may be particularly of a time … is there any similar relationship with such influence today? The web has given all DJs and artists a global audience, but has this decentralization diminished the importance and effectiveness of building scenes (and ‘hits’) organically within a city or region?

This piece’s stories also made me think of the classic New Order “Confusion” video showing Arthur Baker rushing to the Fun House to give Jellybean Benitez the reel-to-reel mixdown – hot off the presses! – to gauge the dance floor’s reaction:

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Talking Backward
  2. Why Streaming is the Future of DJ’ing
  3. Foreign Dissent: International Punk Rock in a Digital Age

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: DJs, Music History

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

img-0 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."
 
  Learn More →

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll

A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Hissy Tapes
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
Parenthetical Recluse
Poke In The Ear
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD

 

TRANSLATE with img-2 x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

img-3

img-4 img-5 img-6
TRANSLATE with img-7
COPY THE URL BELOW
img-8
img-9 Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE img-10
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

Newsroll

Dada Drummer
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Garbage Day
Kneeling Bus
Lorem Ipsum
Midrange
MusicREDEF
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?

 

TRANSLATE with img-11 x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

img-12

img-13 img-14 img-15
TRANSLATE with img-16
COPY THE URL BELOW
img-17
img-18 Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE img-19
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Climate Action Resources
+
Carbon Dots
+
LGBTQ+ Education Resources
+
Roe v. Wade: What You Can Do
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers

Copyright © 2023 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in