Obsession is not an unfamiliar word to any serious or avid music fan. I assume many people reading this have dealt with it on one or multiple levels in music. I had always penciled myself in with music obsessives, people who loved to talk for hours on end about new releases, singles, genres, controversy, musical politics, et al. But lately, something has been feeling off about this pairing. Presently, it seems more likely that music is obsessing and dominating over me, instead of the other way around. And perhaps I’m a little uncomfortable with how good it feels.

I’ve enjoyed the recent intelligent and thoughtful musings on Stylus’ Soulseeking articles; I’ve marveled at the amount of ways music critics and bloggers can scholarly expound on musical and extra-musical elements that would have seemed esoteric to me, and I’ve watched heated message-board discussions develop with a sense of weariness and wonder. But when it comes down to it, I’d rather immerse myself headfirst in music than feverishly write about. I was a musician and music lover long before I wrote about it, and I commonly find it hard to distance myself emotionally from it. This is something a standard critic must do, in order to objectively interpret meaning and evaluate quality. Therefore, you can see how it would be to a critic’s advantage to be able to obsess and defiantly rule over the music itself rather than the other way around.

It’s no secret that I’m a zealous fan of dance music, from disco to house to techno to anything that can fall under the broad umbrella of “minimal.” Obsessing over every little detail, from sub-labels and sub-genres, to signature hi-hat sounds and keyboard patches has become a requisite part of the territory; removing this focus is like trying to appreciate and analyze a slide of germs without a microscope. It’s an intensity that I find seeping elsewhere. While listening to the new Superlongevity compilation on the bus recently, I glanced down at my skin and found myself counting the hairs on my arm. And look, there’s a tiny blemish near my elbow. By the time I’m squeezing each of my fingers, measuring the slightly different sentiment each one produces, the music has attained a strong emotional control over me.

Admittedly, there is something a bit wrong about this, being so tied up in one area of life, obsessively hunting down new music, information, and then going to see people play it. Surely, I should focus more on my job, my friends, and my physical well-being more than trying to find out the best Afro-disco singles from the 80’s. Or discovering that Daft Punk’s logo nearly rips of the Strictly Rhythm logo:

Yet music is the most consistent source of joy in my life at the moment, and for the moment I have no problem letting myself be overwhelmed by it, no matter the anti-social ramifications (this being America, not Germany.) Things like the buoyancy of a great DJ set, the nomadic surprises of crate-digging, that spunky drive you feel upon following scents of a sub-genre towards its actual taste; these things excite me more than they should. Perhaps it’s the archivist in me that sees these obscure vinyl releases, new and old, as forgotten fragments of feeling. That these abandoned feelings, dreams, beliefs, and hopes belonging to remote people and communities can trickle down from a piece of vinyl to my hand and into my head. What a joyous panic these thoughts bring me! A whistle and a fever, then I see a wall tethered to spinning circles. A knock on the wrong. A vision finally spread into two. Two skins into a flare. Oh the joy of discovery! Oh the pain of obsession.

[Michael F. Gill]

Nobody I know ever saw Larry Levan. But can you really separate him from the Paradise Garage as a venue? I mean, the club unexpectedly closed in 1987, and Larry battled drug abuse until 1992 when everything finally caught up with him … so his personal history was always distinct from the club, and the era. As much as he did as a DJ, nobody can deny that a movement is never about any one person. Either way, because I’ll never see him spin, and I’ll never be clubbing at the Garage back in the 80’s, all I can do is try to understand what happened and try to appreciate it.

The spirit of what it is that I, in an incredibly limited personal sense, appreciate about that place and time is alive and well. Not just in some metaphysical sense, but in my own city: San Francisco.

Notoriously secretive about where he finds his art, typically 70’s gay porno, and endearingly pure about his motives, DJ Bus Station John has been all the rage on the internet for about the last month. Why? Well, anyone who can supply big screen b-boy projections, cheap drinks, early electro rarities, legit italo tracks, funky disco, and danceable champagne soul can find at least one person, in a room packed with people losing their shit, to go home and spread the word.

My first encounter with him was at a club called Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in the Tenderloin District for a weekly event called Tubesteak Connection. Anyone who has lived, or had an extended stay, in San Francisco knows that the Tenderloin is the neighborhood where sex workers battle pimps and the marginalized heroes of yesteryear beg for change and cigarettes. Even if you have a car, taking a cab is a good idea.

After paying my three bucks, I walk in to a small, dimly red lit room full of drinks clanking, Munich Machine posters, vintage gay porn flickering on a television, and shirtless man dancing to their heart’s content. To me, Aunt Charlie’s isn’t a dingy gay bar downtown, it’s one of the only places that I’ve been where you can hear serious early dance music without any sense of self-seriousness. There’s no retro value in any of the mashups, because there are none. Bus Station’s style is simply classic to classic via the fade. It’s a night all about track selection, not about the DJ’s ego, and what you are there for is the trip that he wants to take you on. And it’s great because this is a night where he shows the disco dorks and the disco devoid a perfect place to hook-up: the dancefloor.

Well versed in all of the relevant Mutant Disco, I-Robots, and countless numbers of Italo Disco compilations, I was floored by Bus Station. By the end of the night, and several very strong and inexpensive drinks later, I went home recognizing only one song: ‘Lectric Warriors – “Robot is Systematic.” But the thing about it all was not that he just played random twenty five cent finds off of Prelude Records or TSR, but every song is amazing … each one better than the last. First Choice, Invisible Man’s Band, Carol Hahn, Fascination, Gina and the Felixix, and Aural Exciters sit next to ‘Lectric Warriors as the night’s token “oh-yeah-you-obviously-know-this” tracks. Um, we do?

But more than anything, it’s about the music and the energy of the night. It’s not about obscurity, or DJ worship, but it’s about the way that he works the crowd and the environment that he provides. On one hand, the nights are definitely about hooking-up. After all, each event is at a gay club with porno on both the flyers and the projection screens. And I don’t want to ignore that aspect of Bus Station’s nights. I don’t want to gloss over the subcultural context and simply opt for the commodification of someone else’s culture. But on the other hand, each event has a certain honesty, a certain what-you-see-is-what-you-get, about it that would prevent scenesters from ever completely infiltrating. And honestly, DJ Bus Station John doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who’s going to sell out his crowd for a shot in the Cobra Snake or Last Night’s Party. When you’re at one of his parties, you definitely get the feeling that you are in his world, and you’re welcome there but it’s not about you, or even him for that matter. As I mentioned above, Bus Station seems to embody everything that I can only speculate about the Paradise Garage: movement, energy, a safe community, and fun. Pure, unadulterated fun. So, you can feel good about putting down the black hair dye and grabbing your dancing shoes.

[Cameron Octigan]

“My heart in time.”

That’s the phrase I’ve been saying over and over in my head recently. It’s sort of a calming mantra as one looks over the engulfing terrain of dance music. Possibly more than any other popular genre, people who love dance music are notoriously picky, finely tuning their desires to a specific sub-genre, where only a certain set of sounds, textures, production values, and emotions will satisfy what they are looking for.

But it is the alternate meaning of the above phrase, the one that reminds me of the journey to find this perfect alignment, which has been comforting me lately. For if you look at it on the surface, keeping up with dance music sounds like a nightmare-ish job no one should force upon themselves. With hundreds of new pieces of vinyl out every week, and three decades of potent disco, house, and techno music hidden inside a deluge of 12 inches behind us, there is rarely a time where you can pause to catch your breath, or for your wallet to recuperate from taking a chance on mail-ordering a Finnish double album of minimal electro. And if you thought file-sharing would provide some relief to sorting things out—think again. Users can share hundreds of pieces of ripped vinyl in the same directory, with no notification as to what genre it is or what year it came out. Not to mention the number of possibly killer singles that I’ve never seen physically or digitally (Reverso 68’s “Piece Together” single comes to mind).

To actually illustrate how ridiculous things get, let’s take a trip to one of Brooklyn’s most notorious vinyl/thrift shops, The Thing. You walk downstairs and are greeted with many, many tall shelves of discarded vinyl that are nearly unapproachable due to the amount of crates and boxes on the floor.

You turn to the left and can barely walk down the aisle, because the crates are stacked so high.

And then you end up turning to the right because the quasi-organization looks initially soothing, even if the sheer volume induces a sigh or two.

So why would one want to become a fan of dance music? Who has the energy and the time to sift through the millions of disco and house records found at places like The Thing, hoping to find those few nuggets that could mean so much to them? To me, although dance music is notorious for changing on a micro level at a maximum pace, the key is patience, letting time pass, and understanding how much more you will be able to hear in the next few years (or even decades!) at a relatively slow, but constant pace.When I was in college one of my music teachers told me, in regards to creating music, that every note is a tiny dripping of emotion, a little fragment of yourself that may or may not be sharply defined. Therefore, the idea behind creation is that you have to constantly pour out a torrent of notes, textures, or sounds in order to find the pieces of inspiration among the litter. It’s not too drastic a shift to make the same comparison to trying to find the music that you love.Now of course wheat-from-chaff sorting occurs in every musical genre, but dance music’s functional nature enforces this notion to a personal and artistic level. Dance music works for you, it works for DJs to create an uninterrupted flow of disparate musical pieces that nevertheless work together as one. That’s why being a good DJ can be so damn hard: you have to think at an individual track level as well as in terms of the overall mix. It’s like crafting a perfect mixtape in real-time.But with greater ambition can come greater rewards, and to me there is so much rewarding artistry in being able to orchestrate a DJ mix, to create a study in composite sonority. There is also something humbling in finding people who produce music that can gives up part of its notoriety in order to become a small, sometimes anonymous part of something bigger (it’s no wonder why DJs often have bigger egos than producers.) What brings things full circle is that despite the hyper-individuality of a DJ mix/set, in the end he or she is nothing without the community of producers. Both groups are riding on the communal exchanges of influences, the diverse emotional smears, and the reactions each provoke out of each other. So when I question myself on why I bother going to intimidating places like The Thing, endlessly listening to one minute web-clips of vinyl, or searching thoroughly for information on record label X, scene Y, style Z, I rationalize myself by saying:“I collect feelings, I travel to find pieces, fragments of desire, pain, love; feelings that ignite me and open me, open myself up to new experiences. I’m trying to build a bibliographic control of my life and identity, and combing through rubbles of vinyl, and sorting though a flood of emotions is one way I can help achieve that.”

[Michael F. Gill]

Dance Music per se came comparatively late in my life. Dancing to music occurred to me a good deal sooner—apparently as soon as I could stand, I was holding the stereo with both hands and shaking that baby ass. The first music I reacted to was hip-hop, followed by synth-pop and clubby goth like Siouxsie and the Sisters. Going out, junior high school dances aside, I was never one to hug the wall, preferring to contort myself like “an angry lesbian,” as a friend once put it. While this description hopefully no longer applies, I still feel absolutely no shame or self-confidence issues when I go to out to dance.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that other people, shocking as it is, don’t feel the same way at all. Dancing comes naturally to me, something that I do because it feels absolutely amazing. Whether it’s, say, The Pixies or the latest micro-whatever single that’s playing is beside the point. Hey, it doesn’t even have to be that good—just loud (but not too loud) and have some decent bass. BUT NOT TOO LOUD! People, seriously, turn the bass the fuck down. It sounds better when it trickles down your back like a tongue than when it vibrates the floor like a passing dumptruck. Most songs mixed with a dancefloor in mind already have a clean, full bass sound anyway, so your knob-twiddling is unnecessary.

But, back to the point—most people don’t seem to have this willingness to shake it that to me is second nature. It’s hard work getting many to dance—understandable at a wedding but a little less comprehensible at a night of DANCE MUSIC spun by a DJ. So, what are you here for then?

Do you not like to dance?
Have you checked your pulse lately?

Are you afraid of what you look like when you dance?
Look at us. We look like morons. Ain’t no stopping us, now.

Did you come only to get fucked up?
Dancing increases your blood-flow. You will get more fucked up if you dance.

Did you come only to try and get laid?
Standing at the bar is far less sexy than losing your inhibitions. This I can guarantee.

I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to be on the floor if they’re at a club. We all need to take it easy once in a while, and sometimes it’s best just to sit and chill for a spell. That’s more room for me to engage in my half-baked jazz moves. But please, if you’re going to be answering your cellphone in the middle of a crowded dancefloor, take that shit elsewhere.

Ultimately, more so than concerns about appropriate behavior on the floor, it’s the fear of dancing that boggles my mind. Put it another way—if the superficial concerns of what you look like are keeping you from dancing, then it must be hard even to put on clothes and face the world. Do you think most people in a club environment are judging you on your dancing ability?

It’s much more likely, if they are stupid enough to go that route, they are disparaging how you look in general. In fact, they’re probably one of the onlookers like yourself. When one is dancing, you’re not paying much attention to the appearance and skills of others. Feeling the beat and moving in accordance are far more important.

In my time dancing and DJing in this country I have noticed a disturbing lack of response to a solid beat. If you’re only looking for what you know, then the creative void of radio should suit you just fine. If you can only dance when you are inebriated, then do us all a favor and get royally messed up. If you don’t dig on dancing at all, then please free up the space for the living, breathing, dancing, dreaming human beings out there. There are those of us who love to feel our bodies (and the bodies of others, natch) get pure, scandalous thrills off of drums, synths and heavy (but not too loud) bass.

Like Pharoahe Monche said, “if you holdin’ up the wall then you missin’ the point.”

[Mallory O’Donnell]

Last July I moved to “my city by the Bay” from Gainesville, Florida. When I got here, I was desperate for some good dance nights, or shows, or something. So, I wrote my friend Philip to ask his advice, seeing that he had just moved away. Much to my dismay, he tells me that there is really no techno/tech-house/micro-house type scene, and there are even fewer nights. But while I’m at it, I should check out Tweekin’ Records in the Lower Haight. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it seemed that San Francisco must have more to offer than a small town in Florida. To be fair, America isn’t the first place that comes to mind for that sort of music anyway, and when I go to Amoeba the domestic house section is usually near the end of my list …you know, just in case there are some used Trax classics. But over the months I’ve realized that I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

New Year’s comes and I am disappointed with DJ celebrities, some of the best, and dying for a night with bass that will slug me in the chest. So, I check my email, and there is a message from one Chantilly Bass. She found me somehow, and figured out that we live in the same city. She tells me that I am crazy, and that this city is basically ready to blow up. Apparently I needed to learn about [Kontrol], Dirtybird Records, and, specifically, Claude Von Stroke. You may remember him for his track “Chimps” on the last Get Physical comp, or for the John Tejada remix of “Deep Throat.”

So, the following Wednesday we head to Blur for a night hosted by SF’s own Jeniluv and Cat. The guests of the night were Claude Von Stroke, Alland Byallo, and Justin Martin. Basically, Blur is this little bar on Post Street that has some of the cheapest drinks and best surprises around here. Once I went to see Juan Maclean DJ a house set, another time I went to go see Star Eyes spin an amazing, basically epic, set of Ghetto-Tech and Baltimore Club. So, I walk in and all of my wildest, most ridiculous, tech-head dreams come true. The place is packed with enthusiastic techies bouncing up and down in unison to the San Francisco specific brand of house and minimal.

See, the house here isn’t really house. In a conversation with Mr. Von Stroke last Friday he explained it to me like this, “techno is too serious and house is too gay.” While “Balearic” is probably a better word than “gay,” the relevance of that statement is intuitive. It’s true at times. Minimal house, especially in a city where house music is often equated to OM Records or the RuPaul remixes of the Castro, is a big part of the SF house scene that gets only a little attention. Don’t get me wrong, the first place I heard Madonna’s “Hung Up,” gleefully losing my shit, was in the Castro, and the gay dance culture there means a lot to a lot of people. Without it, San Francisco wouldn’t be the city that it is, and I am glad that things are the way they are. However, tech-house nights have been virtually non-existent. Secondly, it doesn’t even seem necessary to debate whether or not techno gets too serious. Honestly, that’s part of what I love about it, so I’m not going to deny it. In fact, I originally wanted to write this article about technology as a mode of production within techno, and how it is changing the landscape. There has always been a link between techno and technology, techno and abstract thought; it lends itself to that kind of contemplation freely. So, having someone behind the wheels of steel who understands that on a fundamental level is exactly what I want when dancing; the aesthetic of tech, the fun of house, and the humor to appreciate both simultaneously.

Also, Von Stroke runs a label called Dirtybird Records, which has put out records by CVS, Justin Martin, Sammy D, Worthy, and John Tejada. Single-handedly, the Dirtybird team has restored my faith in dancing.

Well, almost single-handedly…there is also a night in town called [Kontrol], which is fantastic. Since I moved here, they have brought Isolee, John Tejada, Pier Bucci, Damian Lazarus, and a handful of others. Now what’s impressive about this monthly is that the residents are often better than the headliners. My friend Chantilly and I spoken about this at length. It’s quite a feeling to leave an Isolee show and know that your local DJs were performing on exactly the same level as someone who has done so much for techno. These guys are really impressive, and they’ve always kept it minimal, dark, and incredibly fun. There aren’t many places you get to hear (a)pendics.shuffle, Pantytec, and Kammerflimmer Kollektief within a few moments.

So, after my first night of Dirtybird and [Kontrol] at Blur, I make it home at 7:30am just in time to have some coffee before I get ready for school and collapse on my bed. At the same time, I’d have it no other way. My body is half dead, but my dancing shoes have found new life.

[Cameron Octigan]

Most of us would agree we need less clutter in our lives, and a certain degree of physical and/or emotional space from people, the media, and even the things we love in order for them to retain their sense of purpose and freshness for us. Life itself is an unflinching eye, eternally staring at us without a pause, and while are able to close our eyes and hide from the world at any time we’d like, it seems our own personal space is getting smaller by the day. With the internet giving us fingertip access to such a plethora of information, we have the ability to see the widest ranging scope of art and ideas than ever before. Of course, it’s incredibly exciting, but at the same time you don’t have to look further than this site to see burnout becoming a more common facet of our musical lives.

So while this discussion is neither new nor unique, and as I am writing this someone is able to legally or illegally obtain (but not listen to) every record Motown and Stax ever committed to wax within a day or two, I still find myself and my desires rather insatiable. Sure, I have some distant fears that the other shoe might drop some day, and there are a couple of times a season where listening to music seems like an overwhelming chore rather than a supplement. But I’ve been asking myself, “Why is my passion still undiluted even after seven years of downloading abuse?” At this point in my life, my answer lies in electronic dance music: it actually helps me cope with the lack of space in my life.

I wasn’t always such a techno booster, I grew up listening to the adult contemporary radio stations my mom would have on while driving me to school, and then when I actually began to seek out music in my teens I listened to Top 40 and rock. What I’ve come to learn is that popular music is often too focused for me, where there are very few times where it is not actively trying to engage you and get your undivided attention. You could run the gamut from Mogwai to Nelly to Sheryl Crow to even Beethoven, and 90% of the time the albums are filled to the brim with clearly structured songs or soundscapes. I am a sucker for a good pop song as much as anyone else, but these types of songs and albums all demand an immense amount of energy, desire and interest to go through and get acquainted with. I find there is no sense of space, no freedom for one to think when you’ve got an abundance of vocals and melodies to focus on, and a lack of pieces that are based on texture and tone. And so I, just like many others, have felt a sense of burnout with pop, indie rock, and even experimental music. It’s wasn’t the quantity of music I consumed though, it was the quantity of notes that lead me to fatigue.

As I switched to listening to house and techno, I’ve found my mindset rejuvenated to a sense of excitement and wonder that usually only happens to neophytes. Most people are aware of dance music’s focus on rhythm and texture above notes and songs, and to me this focus on texture also opens up a third dimension that stimulates contemplation. I could probably write endlessly about the comfort and security I feel when I hear a four-on-the-floor kick drum, how it’s a reliable, unobtrusive friend whose steady rhythm perfectly complements and/or enhances traveling anywhere in the world. It’s the foundation by which even the most alien or arrhythmic soundscape can seem effortlessly listenable. Everything from industrial techno to noodley jazz-house is grounded to a steady beat, anchored in repetition. From this launching point, I find myself freely able to daydream while still being inside the groove and cognizant of the track’s direction. Dance music encourages passing thoughts, it seeks to gently harmonize with your brain, not interfere with it. I have enough stress, responsibility, and sensory stimuli to deal with in life before music is even in the picture demanding my concentration. House, like any good friend, seems to intrinsically inspires me to creativity and inspiration by leaving out all the notes, vocals, and clearly delineated sections. It’s as if my mind is filling in all the blank spaces with thoughts.

The way I see it, rock and pop is always aiming quench your thirst, to fulfill you. But in my mind, the more we think of music as a savior to redeem us, as something that will lift our spirits up from the tedium of the world, the harder it becomes to achieve the desired excitement and stimulation. Fulfillment breeds dormancy, and this leads to people complaining that there is nothing new out there, even if they are a victim of their own set ways. I believe the key to avoiding fatigue in the arts is to permit yourself some emotional breathing room, always allowing space for desires and passions to develop when you listen to music. I have found this metaphysical space in dance music, where freedom and creativity are spawned from the enduring strength of active indifference.

[Michael F. Gill]

While I originally didn’t think of this section as a clubbing travelogue, it makes sense for that to happen as a lot people’s attitudes and thoughts about dance music have been shaped by, or arisen from DJs, clubs, and scenes. Yet I also think that in our digital and downloading era there is a new group of listeners who have been drawn in the past five years by minimal techno, electro-house, and the Kompakt family, and whose connection to the scene is mainly the CDs and friends/bloggers talking about it online. Perhaps I am bit sensitive to this coming from the U.S. instead of Europe, and that I remember myself back at the turn of the decade, wishing I knew more people who were into techno, or at least someone who wouldn’t scoff at the words “German house.” Anyhow, in the past six or so years that have passed, my relationship to recorded house/techno and live house/techno have become increasingly disparate.

The main struggle I’ve felt is that recorded house and techno has still yet to match the potential of live techno. I’ve heard the arguments before, that house is not an albums genre, that comparing anything live to anything recorded is like comparing apples and oranges. It’s true that producers are often creating and releasing tracks on vinyl that are mainly used as DJ tools, i.e. functional music that works towards the mindset of a DJ set, and are thinking of different things when creating an album. The old joke among producers is that no one listens to techno at home, because it’s out of context of a DJ mix, and the sound and environment are completely different. So I will admit that I don’t think recorded techno will ever be able to replace or surpass the visceral feeling and spontaneity of being at a club, but I do think there is potential for more aspects of it to be included in recorded music. 80 minute CDs are not enough to hold the immense freedom a DJ has when they have the whole night ahead of them to spin.

Indulge me if you will, for I often have these ambitious dreams of DJs in the near future creating gargantuan, personalized live sets that last for six or eight hours, consisting of tracks/songs by other artists or their own original material, and tailoring them as a soundtrack to a person’s life and environment. This would be a substitute for the “album” format. Similar to opera or even symphonies, these long sets would be aural narrations of stories and experiences that are drawn out right before us. However, I also imagine these sets soundtracking a person’s life and emotions just like the sounds of nature would accompany a forest. Instead of a DJ playing off the creative energy of a crowd, he would be playing off the creative energy and surroundings of a person’s environment.

Stylus’ own Todd Hutlock is probably going to lynch me for forgetting specific examples, but there have been Detroit techno albums by Carl Craig and Juan Atkins’ Model 500 project that have been intended to be listened to while driving down certain highways. Why couldn’t the future of house and techno mixes expand out to create a soundtrack of a person’s day, or to soundtrack a journey through a certain location or neighborhood? With the advent of ipods, MP3s and other devices, 80 continuous minutes is no longer our musical boundary when we step outside to go for a walk or drive.

Most (if not all) people are creating their own choices in music and deciding which path their life takes them, even if it is something as simple as choosing a grocery store to go to. My theory is, instead of defining what your environment sounds like, why not relinquish control to an artist for a day, and let them give you their take on a specific environment, let the artist’s personal musical decisions, structure, and theories inform how you see your surroundings. I would reckon the passiveness this takes is similar to the passiveness one feels when they are absorbed into a DJ’s set at a club. I think it could definitely be a rewarding experience. And from this passive point, relationships can develop over time between the music and the person, not just emotional bonds, but visual and sensory ones too.

OK, I’ve just pinched myself to wake up from this rose-tinted dream of mine. I don’t think people are so willing at the moment to give up eight hours of their day to listen to a continuous mix of music, and I’m not sure artists/DJs have the time or desire to personally labor over personalized eight hour DJs sets when they could be making some money by doing the same thing in a club. Still, I continued to wonder about the theories, experiences, and mindsets that are driving live and recorded techno apart, and the missed potential that is possibly there for each side to grasp on to.

[Michael F. Gill]

A high, clicking percussion sound starts, followed swiftly by a nimble bassline. Everybody knows this one, several people whooping while others rattle tambourines, bang on cowbells and shake homemade noisemakers. The song is “Expansions,” by Lonnie Liston Smith, a piece of cosmic soul-jazz recorded for Flying Dutchman records in 1974, and one of the host’s signature songs. “Expand your mind to understand / We all must live in peace,” Donald Smith sings, and there is no doubt that everyone dancing on the packed floor is mouthing those words and feeling, if only here and now, that sentiment.

David Mancuso stands at floor level between two turntables placed on stacks of cinder blocks. He puts a record on, lets it end and then plays another record. As the night progresses, people actually clap at the end of certain songs. The volume level is the lowest I’ve ever heard in a “club,” but the sound is impeccably clear, speakers placed above floor level on all sides of the room. The bass is thick and resonant but not overbearing, and the treble and midrange are perfectly tweaked to allow dancers to enjoy the nuances of each song, rather than bludgeoning them with constant thumpage. Referring to himself as a “musical host,” not a DJ, David approaches the sound as a whole, concentrating on the experience of his guests rather than engaging in displays of mixing technique.

Of course, Mancuso has earned the right to call himself whatever he likes. His first “Love Saves the Day” party (the capitals are important here) was on Valentine’s Day, 1970, and he’s rarely stopped since. Begun in his own converted loft apartment (hence the informal name of the event) on 647 Broadway, north of Houston St., the initial house parties were just that—handmade invitations were passed out, the punchbowl was laced, balloons were inflated, and the dancing commenced. Later, the move to Prince St. and the rise of disco brought on a slightly more conventional approach, but the home-like atmosphere (one of the old school crowd reminisces about the showers at the Prince St. ‘Loft!’) remained. In the thirty-six years since David first brought friends together to eat, drink, and listen to records, much has changed. The music played tonight and then (a mix of African, jazz, soul, funk and rock) would coalesce into ‘disco’ and then ‘house’ and so on, until the average person on the street could hear the phrase ‘dance music’ and immediately have an idea what that meant. In 1970, such was not the case.

“I been livin’ in a world of fantasy, said I’m goin’ back, goin’ back to reality”

This is the second time I’ve been here, to a rented space above a Ukranian restaurant on 2nd Avenue in newly sanitized Manhattan. The first time was in February of last year, for the 35th anniversary party, and I was full of high expectations and uncertain notions of the experience to come. As we headed downtown, my girlfriend and partner-in-disco April asked me, and I wondered, “Do you think we’ll be the youngest people there?” Laughable now in light of our experience, it was a valid enough question at the time. Once we were there, though, forget about it—every time you try to get a bead on the Loft crowd, all you have to do is look around to have it changed. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, young, old, scene veteran, newbie, child, adult, people in wheelchairs, men, women, gays, straights, hairy hippies, and slim professionals, in all the world of dancing there is no crowd like a Loft crowd. Period.

The Sunday evening begins at 5 o’clock, airy but slowly pulsing instrumental jazz forming a backdrop as the revelers arrive, many sitting at the circular tables ringing the room, couples with or without their children, groups of friends, total strangers meeting and greeting. Out on the dancefloor, the serious few are already stretching and getting into a fluid, limber groove somewhere in between ballet, aerobics and jazz dance. Steadily, gradually and with unparalleled grace, David picks the beat up, widening the scope to take in Afrobeat, a sublimely funky hi-life track, percolating ambient techno, and a killer version of the evergreen “My Favorite Things.” The dancers begin to gather underneath an inspiring display of balloons, thickly woven together around a giant discoball like strands of DNA.

“Reach… reach… reach / You’re almost there…”

As the night progresses, David plays nothing but classics, great song after great song, to an almost frustrating degree—trying to leave to mop sweat off of my face or get a drink of water, I find myself pulled right back, unable to resist one jam or another. The dancefloor fills up and never thins out, but people here move and let others move with an unspoken respect. Stepping on someone’s foot in my ecstatic rump-shaking, I turn to apologize but they’re smiling and waving it away already. When the crowd of dancers is at its wildest and thickest, a circle clears near the discoball and I see a tiny girl, maybe five years old breakdancing to the cheers of the onlookers. After a few minutes, her father finally drags her away, laughing, knowing there was no need to worry—everyone around her giving her space, smiling and clapping as she tried to execute a 360, making sure no one stepped in without seeing her.

Though the dance scene has undergone a bolt of fresh energy in recent years, the influence has been one of a more skeptical, dark nature. Not necessarily a bad thing, given the times we are living in, but one which ignores a vast wealth of human emotion which resides at dance music’s core. Throughout the night we hear songs from sources as varied as Chuck Mangione, Depeche Mode and Stevie Wonder, but all resonate with love, optimism and a desire for the kind of communal joy that is the ultimate goal of any quality dancefloor. Much has been made in the critical writing on dance music culture of the inapproachability of this kind of spiritual unity. If the Loft doesn’t put the lie to that kind of thinking, then there is nothing on this Earth that could.

“Loving you/ Until the day that you are me and I am you/ Now ain’t that loving you?”

When we leave on that first night in February, we walk down the stairs opening onto 2nd Avenue, fallen balloons clutched firmly in hand. As the heavy door swings behind us, we discover that it’s snowing, and has been for a while. Walking through the pristine flakes, watching as they descend and liquify on the (comparatively) hot pavement, I am immediately struck by the difference between tonight and so many others. We evaluate everything so constantly today, so quickly and so indiscriminately even a believer like me is judging something while it happens. It’s only as I walk out into the black/white/red smear of Manhattan midnight that I come to realize I hadn’t wasted any time thinking about my experience as it occurred.

“Now that we found love what are we gonna do with it?”

[Mallory O’Donnell]