interesting Daniel Wang interview

[Maelstrom]

What 12"?

[madr]

Originally Posted by Donger

um, you really think people aren't have an amazing time at those parties!?!? you have little faith! i always have fun when i go out in nyc.

I can compare NYC to London, but that's not what this thread is about. I didn't really party when I spent time in Berlin, so I don't have much to go on with that.

I don't know. Having fun and really getting down can be 2 different things.

[madr]

Originally Posted by Maelstrom

You're talking nonsense.

I do. I was misinformed. Sorry

[madr]

Originally Posted by Maelstrom

I fail to see what that has to do about anything anyway you pair of tools.

I thought i heard another other edit of eddy rosemond - wake up and move "funky" And somebody told me after telling him about this tread there was a beef between maelstrom and daniel over some edit.

Anyway i guess we were wrong. The edit i'm searching is just

Daniel Wang - "Like Some Dream (I Can't Stop Dreaming)"

Sorry !

[Maelstrom]

haha

Don't sweat it.

[danielwang]

- Part 1 of 4 -

Hello - I was on vacation all week without internet access, so i was spared this entire drama until last night, when i came home to Berlin and sat down at an internet cafe. I've hardly ever logged on to these DJ websites more than 10 times in the last 5 years, so i WAS a bit surprised, upon opening the link, to see that the comments came directly from Francois K., and that loyal friends such as Alex Pewin in London and Dario Bedin were defending and clarifying my opinions! 9 pages, 5000 views? Oh goodness, i thought. Now i've got no choice. Better register as a member, sit down, and start typing!

I don't have the entire exchange in front of me; i'm writing at home and posting this in a few hours via USB Memory Stick. So i'm not sure exactly to whom or what i'm responding. If there are discrepancies, please excuse them. In truth, i feel POSITIVELY RIDICULOUS trying to explain! (What poor Michael Jackson must go through on his website...) I'm just one DJ among hundreds, and this world of DJ's, forums... is of no consequence at all. I've heard Francois spin records for maybe 3 or 4 hours in the last 6 years, so if i refer to someone's DJ set in my reply below, it's not specifically F.K. - it's a mix of memories of the last few times i was at Body+Soul before 2003, and what has been generally happening in New York since that time. Furthermore, Francois is one of the first people who (by playing Rinder+Lewis' "Lust" in 1992) truly inspired me to dig more deeply into classic disco! Dario's optimism keeps hundreds of people inspired around north Italy, and i couldn't leave Alex alone to the task.

So here i am, in all civility and good will. But i won't pull any punches - i dont know WHO out there is finding this all entertaining or enlightening or absurd, but since i don't plan on staying online for long, i shall use this one chance to clear up what i mean. Perhaps a few sentences will follow in a few days, but basically, this is my reply.

FIRST - yes, i agree and apologize, i've certainly been careless with words. How often have i bit my tongue and thought, "Daniel, why can't you just shut up and smile? Why do some sentences end up sounding a bit... bitchy?" (Does this mean i'm a diva, a bitter queen? I thought i was a friendly type.) I've often wished i would say a little less and do a lot more. And trust me, after 5 years in Berlin, i still miss New York - certain parts of it. But i only have to read a few of the comments on these websites to remind myself that you can't make sense to everyone, anyhow.

And certainly... well, it hardly merits refutation, but of course i didn't move to Berlin because "i couldn't make it in New York". I honestly never felt "slighted" not hearing my own tracks in the sets of other big-name DJ's - they don't even belong there. I cringe when people still play that first Balihu EP! (Danny Krivit played a track of mine to a room full of voguers at Roxy once in 1997, and that was enough fun. I never knew or heard if Francois played my Balihu records, and i never really cared... i was happy just hearing him play that Rinder+Lewis reissue.) The story about Metro Area's early releases was told to me by Morgan Geist, and more than an exact quote, it was more like a rephrasing of what generally happened with Metro Area, a metaphor for what we know is the chasm between commercial/ dominant "New York" dance music and all these independent producers like myself. Well, a totally queer disco band called Hercules+Love Affair has made it big, so there's still hope for some of us, isn't there?

Berlin is not all paradise; it's just, relatively speaking, a better place for me, for now. Brennan Green, always one to see things clearly, said that to me as well. He likes his cramped studio in Flatbush, and the biggest, coolest flat in Berlin means nothing if you don't have people around whom you love, if you can't exchange a pleasantry with the green-grocer. I moved here because the rents were cheaper, and because i was searching for something more (especially in my personal life) than what i had and knew. I never expected the accompanying intellectual and spiritual rewards to be so rich, however, and maybe that's why i sound a bit dismissive of certain aspects of New York, and the people who continue to defend it as the greatest. The highs and lows, the glories and miseries of New York are TV fodder for European audiences, but they're real life if you live there. Let's not fool ourselves; New York can be awful these days in its priciness, superficiality and self-congratulation, even if the push AGAINST all that becomes some kind of moral affirmation for those who perceive themselves as being "on the good side". (Cielo Club, where i think F.K. still has a party, demanded $21 from me for the mandatory COAT CHECK! No stuffing sweaters into coat pockets please, $3 per item. Can anyone living in downtown Manhattan imagine that for $3, in Berlin, i can take a bus from my apartment in city center to Tegel Airport within 40 minutes? I used to leave 4 or 5 hours in advance to try to reach JFK on time.)

Someone commented on this forum - "Just pledging your allegiance to some city, or being born and raised here, doesn't automatically make you "better" or "more real" - thank you. I admire Francois for standing against elitism and sending his children to a N.Y. public school - but i hope, from the child's point of view, that it won't be denied the prose of Proust or the basic 800 Kanji for the sake of political correctness. It's typically American to react against the so-called elite - let's see if Obama can disguise his elitism enough to win the election...

Anyhow - sorry for sounding negative sometimes. But allow me to say, so much positivity (a reluctance to criticise others, or to simply speak one's mind) is not really in itself so positive. It's also a kind of misplaced political correctness, a kind of affirmative action for music genres, inventing new standards to make sure we include more citizenry - or a kind of carelessness which prevents real gems from shining. Thank goodness the critics at the New York Times and New Yorker aren't afraid to "slag" shows. How many times have i been shocked at the cynicism or vulgarity of a concert, a movie, a night out at some club - and how grateful was i to hear someone else express exactly what was on my mind! and do in it a way that made sense of it all.

As for expressing oneself more elegantly - unfortunately, i spent much of my adult life avoiding being too eloquent. It's no fun sounding clever like Umberto Eco, which is why i ran from what might have been a safe academic career. Shall we be perfectly frank, now that i'm writing in the precise and truthful mode, rather than in the mode of a colloquial DJ-interview in pan-European abbreviated English? Certainly I've too often considered: if you're so clever, Daniel, why didn't you go compete in the academic arena, or go into public service for the common good? Well, maybe i'm too lazy or sensitive for polemics and politics, or maybe i wanted to be a happy person first. I don't know yet what happens from here, but obviously, i preferred spending a lot of time thinking about music and sound, and what they mean...

[danielwang]

- Part 2 of 4 -

Perhaps i've sometimes avoided being eloquent and logical in defending my particular musical beliefs and DJ practices for fear of sounding pretentious or dogmatic, so instead, i've come across as coarse and vague. Here now, i shall remove the verbal camoflouge. Should i "explain" why so much of what i heard at clubs in New York struck me as profoundly unmusical? (It was bad in most, but often irregular at Body+Soul - disappointingly so.) Is this really only a matter of personal taste, or can we agree on some ground rules about what constitutes listenable music? What if i summarized it like this? - because so many of those tracks and mixes which i heard there (in what is being defended as "one of the centers of the dance music world") offered no hint at an understanding of the fundamental principles of harmony, which are so deep as to be found in all living plants and quantum particles. Does that suffice? Should i tell the DJ (not specifically F.K. here) how painful it is to listen to his eclectic dubstep, minimal this, so-called Afro-Brazilian that (i dont mean Jobim!), which lack motif, progression, organic rhythm, any modicum of melody? (It was always was painful from the start - now i'm merely using more proper terms to describe what i feel.) I'm afraid i sound like some old fogey with Bach and Debussy scores (which i can't read properly anyhow) in one hand and a Primer on Jazz Drumming in the other... But let's not react against these concepts only because they sound formal. None of the "real music" which we truly love would exist without them.

Does the following make sense to anyone reading? - Some classic disco songs, like a typical Rod Temperton jam, might start on a 2-bar locking groove (Four-One Four-One like F-C-F-C in "Love Break") or maybe a minor chord with a floating 7th or 9th chord as textural decoration; they move up into a Fourth or Fifth from the Root Note, to a major chord with nice voicings, then the bass and brass and strings gently bring you back to the initial groove... If New York is still the dance music center of the world, i can't think of many DJs there who even consider such things when they go into a studio or play records. New York WAS one of the centers because it used to have loads of people who could think and play like that; remnants of this legacy became a packaging for New York's DJs today to sell their own acts. An entire night of dance music with melodic and chordal progression as a Ground Rule, not just interspersed disco classics - is that too much to expect?

Of course, merely following the rules doesn't result in inspiring music. Many records from the 1950's to mid-1980's were at least sonically exciting and technically competent, if not compositional masterpieces. But today, there's a LOT of literally atonal, violent dreck in the dance music world, and it seems that a good DJ ought to be able to say "Here are 8,000 pieces of almost all dreck, but i've waded through them and culled 50 gems for you tonight." When did we last feel that in New York, and with whom? (This is an open question, not a rhetorical one.)

Q is for quality, as Amanda Lear said, which is better than quantity. One good jazz standard like "Invitation" by Bronislav Kaper or "Misty" by Erroll Garner is worth more than 1000 remixes by MAW. There are MORE than 1000, and the two are quoted as being proud of the fact. I shall not repeat Vince Montana's comment about MAW in an interview with Pierre Chiarelli, because some prefer to concentrate on "the positive aspects" of the New York dance music scene, and don't seem to mind the numbing 1-bar repetition of "Love And Happiness" by River Ocean in their sets. Did that sound a bit sarcastic? Sorry. I've said it before - "good music" is something between you and God. I don't mean a Christian or Muslim god! I mean something between your conscience and subjective aesthetic sense, and objective technical and musical factors. All the screaming and cheering dancers in a club don't make a piece of music better or worse. It is what it is.

HERE then, more explicitly and importantly, is my point: when the DJ doesn't know or feel certain fundamental musical truths INTERNALLY (whether they can invoke "music theory" or not is irrelevant), he or she relies on "crowd response". The crowd is cheering - it must be a good song! Drop the kick drum, mess up the EQ for a while - the crowd is cheering again - it's a new classic! I'm a great DJ! Oh dear. You can see what all this has lead to: a sort of harmonic mass extinction. (Let's not even discuss here what the REALLY big-name DJ's play.) A plague spreads - the sound of commericial clubs in London, Ibiza, Moscow. Death Valley Rave in Holland. Tresor, Berghain, any club in Berlin. And also certain clubs in New York. (Or specifically, the EQ technique of Joe Clausell at Body+Soul, who - let us not deride the individual! - i remember being so kind to offer me a ride in his 4x4 to East 14th Street years ago.)

This use of (emphasis here!) Brute Sonic Force to "beat the children into submission," as my departed drag queen friend London Broil used to attribute to Junior Vasquez, is in itself perhaps morally neutral; yet isn't it also "evil and reprehensible", to the proportionally same degree, if we consider "good" music to possess "intrinsic moral and spiritual worth"? It's like American military policy - Might makes Right. The "dance music community" largely hates George Bush, yet approves the same kind of assaults on one's own eardrums. Hmmm. I'm not a Beatles fan, but i must propose here, Give Peace a Chance. I might even prefer The Sound of Silence. How often have i thought - the propensity of the masses toward hard electronic music today is probably proof of the latent Fascist potential in ANY population. Is it unpardonably elitist of me to retreat into a world where exclusivity and intimacy triumph over mass hysteria?

Of course, in the end, perhaps this is only about personal taste (why do i prefer Karen Carpenter over John Lennon? because i'm queer and INTONATION MATTERS to me); taste is nothing but the result of how a child's synapses (some highly sensitive to music, some as dull as a piece of driftwood) are formed by various influences over time. One person's idea of genius is another's laughing stock; what some consider campy and gay, i might consider a sincere expression of my world-view.

[danielwang]

- Part 3 of 4 -

As for the Globe-Trotting DJ life, and comparing New York to other cities - when someone books you to play, your impression of a city, of a country's music scene, is rather specific to that promoter and to those 6 or 7 hours in the club. What makes a country or city a "good place to play records"? The sound in Japanese clubs is often excellent. I even wrote that article (published in Faith Magazine UK and Groove Magazine DE, etc.) about their attentiveness to room acoustics and lighting. But Japanese audiences are a bit like Japanese wives. They never criticise you directly, they offer you fantastic food and, excuse me! but they are taught to make you feel like a hero. Part of this is real kindness and response, part of it formality. Of course i'm also a fan of the Japanese whom i've encountered. They are never there to confront you like an army; they are there to receive, like sea sponges. This is a Confucian trait - "In the company of two other men, I shall have something to learn from at least one." If they don't enjoy your set, they somehow still spiritually profit from the lesson. No, not like some New Yorkers, with their high demand for gratification.

BUT what has surprised me is discovering how many other places in the world - Athens, Istanbul, Oslo, Hamburg - have sophisticated, appreciative, even very multi-cultural audiences (blacks! Latins! Asian immigrants!), and this casts even greater doubt on the supposed specialness of New York or Japan. DJ'ing and traveling is just like observing quantum particles - your position affects what you see, and your very own presence can interfere with the truth. (Has anyone read Wendy Carlos' website? I'm afraid i sound like her. No, i admit it, i think she is one of the greatest minds in music; i'd be glad to sound like her.) If you've been hyped as representing capitals like New York or Berlin, you might attract one type of crowd. If your show communicates a consistent, inner honesty and not hype, you might attract another. I DJ'd for 15 wonderful dancers in Bucharest, Romania last month. I had a joyful evening with 5 or 6 "heads" in Aachen (northwest Germany) a few years ago and again in Thuebingen (stone castles and cuckoo clocks) in 2008. If you want rockstar-like affirmation of fame and power, then you need at least 300, 500, or 2000 people cheering you on, as if you were doing something important. I don't think Francois or most of us here are that kind of DJ, but many DJ's need that feeling like a drug. Me, i'm happier with 30 people in a small room. If i get more, like once a year in Tokyo, then that's nice, but one must not confuse quantity with quality, or confuse DECIBELS of cheering with DEPTH of enjoymemt.

More on the topic of New York - whether it is still great, and who has the right to claim that. While working at A1 Record Shop in East Village, i discovered the instrumental 12" of Voyage's "Souvenirs" in the "Flea Market $1" bin. Wow! i thought. Such perfect structure, such ecstatic arrangement. Admittedly, the mechanical kick drum and the flimsy bass are NOT "funky". But it's still an incredible record. Why, going out in Manhattan for years since 1988, had i NEVER heard anything like this played in clubs? (Does anyone remember that the Sound Factory Bar on 21st Street used to be "Private Eyes"?) Why did our mafioso manager Aldo practically throw it at me, saying "No one will buy this anyway, it isn't a New York classic?" Years later, someone told me - did you know, that Souvenirs instrumental was an anthem at The Saint? It was like, "Love Is the Message" for them! Obviously the DJ's AND their dancers had died from AIDS, or moved away after too long in the city. Furthermore, when Alex Pewin and Joel Martin (from Quiet Village) gave me CD's and playlists from the Saint, i found they were full of soul music (not just "white disco music"), but of a different kind from what is considered "Loft" or "Garage". Maybe there were still more secret New York worlds which we don't know about. And then there were things happening independently in Europe - Daniele Baldelli and Cosmic, to say the least. The man was truly brilliant, and his tapes prove it.

So.. let's THINK TWICE before we accept anyone's version of how it REALLY was back then, and IF in fact the specific New York dance music scene today is the best or ONLY possible claimant to this legacy. (Hanging out at Horse Meat Disco in London with tall leathermen, seeing Parisian suburban kids dancing Tektonik on Youtube in 2008, i think: there's nothing quite like this in New York right now. For your entertainment, there is a VERY expensive, VERY ridiculous waterfalls-under-the-Brooklyn-Bridge thing there made by a Finnish artist who lives in Berlin. Is New York.. the center of it all?)

One problem is, music makes you feel like the King of The World. Like religion, it makes you feel that You Are Right. If all this propaganda tells you that disco, hip-hop, everything started in New York, and one feels so connected to dance music, then one's association with DJ'ing can change into a kind of rah-rah patriotism. Look at all these sweaty faces! These authentic immigrant restaurants and our polyrhythmic DJ mixes! One might call this "The Benetton Ad Misconception", where a multitude of skin colors masks the fact that the actual merchandise is not so unique, really.

At the risk of digressing into themes somewhat outside the pure realm of DJ'ing, i must share some things i've learned since i moved away. What does a liberal-minded but proud downtown New Yorker think when you tell them, the Gay Rights Movement was NOT exactly invented at Stonewall in 1969? In Berlin, the sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld was proposing equal rights for homosexuals to the Kaiser in the 1930's. DJ culture? Tell them that in the same era, people in Germany were playing giant metal discs engraved with melodies (Spieluhren - in effect, the first phonographs) and dancing to them all night long. That a Berliner transsexual named Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who fought against Nazis and fascists, actually collected hundreds of these huge metal discs the way a DJ collects vinyl now. Tell them that forerunners of "DJ culture" pop up in Hamburg and in France in the 1960's, that maybe Tee Scott (bless HIM too!) or some New York DJ was not the first person to build his own mixer (this contradicts a phrase in my interview with him, but who knows!)... Tell a New Yorker, what they consider the Proof of Greatness of their city is an unpleasant mix of the legacies of colonialism and extreme capitalism, that Rio de Janeiro is not much different, and that life could be better elsewhere; they might have trouble accepting it. I'm not proposing that everyone move house; i'm just illustrating a mentality of superiority which i once had when i lived in New York, which many people there still hold onto.

Tell any American that there exist German versions of the Cole Porter classics (Get a Kick Out of You, Under My Skin) translated to and sung in German by the Berliner diva Hildegard Knef, and that Knef's interpretations are possibly richer and more sophisticated than the standard Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks, and they will probably deny that it's possible. If it's not American, if it's not in English, how can it be? (I wish i knew British or French jazz history better, because i'm sure there are more examples there too. Help me, Joel Martin!) Ella had the gorgeous tone (and in fact admired Knef), but Knef had a rich, worldly expressiveness in her voice, next to which Ella's renditions from 1956 seem almost naive. Don't get me wrong, i'm the biggest fan of Ella - that 1973 Carnegie Hall album is the best!

Now, in the same fashion, if you tell most New York club-goers (let's say, a Shelter/Timmy Regisford fan, and forget about Body+Soul for a moment, which is just a stand-in for What Started This Discussion About New York in the first place) that there exist dance-worlds outside of his/her world, they won't believe it either. When i was venturing into the voguing scene, meeting such elegant, brilliant black people who had danced all their lives, i thought: this is the final stop! I was wrong. They have merely danced more or less the same way for a long time now. Still, these black queens were unafraid to speak their mind about the DJ - i can hear Mohammed Omni smirking to me, "Oops! Here comes that voodoo-robot white-devil music again, child! Let's get OUT of here!" I won't divulge which DJ he was referring to. How fearless and correct he was!

We found an "other world" around 2001 in a Chinatown loft, where Eric Duncan and Thomas Bullock were spinning, when we realized that we wouldn't find joy on a Sunday afternoon in Tribeca. (One could consider this DJ Harvey's belated influence on downtown New York, as if by remote telepathy.) For a brief moment, we were even thrilled at the audacity of some "Electroclash" party in Williamsburg. How funny this seems now.

[danielwang]

- Part 4 of 4 -

It's not a personal criticism of Francois or Danny Krivit if i say that the character of their party or city has changed. Danny spent so much time playing records to me, i could never repay his generosity. In the end, we all stand LARGELY on the same side, although in rather different ways, with different nuances of taste... The forces of nightlife and urban planning are larger than what any single doorperson can manipulate. Not all of us can afford the open space or financial risk, or have the desire to share our musical vision every weekend. If a club changes, it's only the law of nightlife and publicity: "Places we had loved - we'd pass their door one evening and see, where we had once thronged to those ecstatic rites of Dionysius, a mob of teenagers and couples from Queens whose place it was now." So wrote Andrew Holleran in 1978. Berlin's crowning glory faces a similar problem. The former Ostgut space was illegal and free, the new space (Berghain) demands quite a mortgage, and only big-room techno assures big crowds full of Easyjet tourists. If not for alternative gay events like Pet Shop Bears or the Moebel Olfe bar in Kreuzberg, my queer friends and i might be feeling lost in Berlin, too.

But, in the end, I DO believe in some inherent quality about music and rhythm which is independent of culture and upbringing - i've met a LOT of young people in Europe who have never spent a minute in New York, but who have a deep appreciation for classic disco and jazz-funk music. It's great hearing them DJ, free of the preconceptions of "what is or isn't a classic" which burden so many New York DJ's. I heard some Polish boys in a tiny town play Sister Sledge's "Greatest Dancer", which NO one would ever play in New York (too obvious!). They heard it as groovy music, not as a cliche. Everywhere, one finds certain people with a kind of inner musical grace. They're probably born with it. Sometimes this bit of grace and raw talent is totally unrefined, but it's so obviously there...

And then, you meet the DJ's with MASSIVE collections. They spin at big, important events. (This could be many people who log on to this website!) They own and know every record... yet they don't see the importance of discrimination. (There's a BIT of nutrient in even the cheapest breakfast cereal from a discount supermarket, isn't there?) Thus their huge collections, and effort at "musical eclecticism and diversity" in their sets come across more as an anxious flailing-about - an attempt to compensate for what is perhaps an inner spiritual void, like going to a frat-boy's bedroom and seeing the rows of action film DVD's - the lack of a clear, distilled INTERIOR VOICE which finds its expression either via some instrument, or via the pre-existing recordings of others.. or both.

With their dashikis and dredlocks (OR italo haircut), their rare LPs or latest 12"s, some DJ's try to convince you that their Identity is Authentic, that their understanding of music is practically inborn... that's the kind of noise which i encountered so often in a certain New York scene, which i found so.. dreary. Close your eyes and listen - the chords on the record are either all wrong, or non-existent, no matter how aggressive the congas. The melody is not even in key with the bassline. It was unbearable, to me at least. I realized, if this kind of dance music is the dominant genre everywhere, then i am free to leave New York and live elsewhere, as long as i know in my own mind what's good and right. I had no delusions that the Berlin scene would be any better. Anyhow, Pretense to Authenticity is hardly exclusive to dance music - every day, trained orchestras in penguin-like uniforms try to replicate the glory of the past. They have the conservatory diplomas, they have the partitions.. they must be offering you the Real Classical. Or, quite-correct jazz-bands in Middle Europe playing Gershwin's "Summertime". (Chopin, for one, would improvise on the piano like Erroll Garner... which is different from what you get at any Chopin concert today.)

So, enough cynicism and slagging fellow members of this absurd profession! Ha! "What Daniel Wang thinks" is hardly worth discussion, my dears. This "Daniel Wang" has, over some 15 years, made 4 or 5 recordings which he finds not so bad (with some simple but pleasant melodic vamp or sonic texture), which pale in comparison to what he truly admires, played by musicians who had all been at it for 20 years before they even went into the studio in 1978. Somehow this person has been squeezing a tiny living out of these facts. But he has never stooped to spewing out non-harmonic nonsense, or played records which he actually loathed,.. because he would never be able to live with himself if he did so.

He doesn't mind being perceived as retro or a stubborn fool, and so he is NOT going to present "Daniel Wang plays only post-2002 techno music tonight." (That IS a gentle poke at you, F.K., and a wink at the many of us who still thank you for all you've done for us in the past...) Well, if i were a different kind of human being, i'd be more productive, or at least financially better off... But i am TERRIBLY glad that i don't have internet at home, because forums like this are exhausting, neurotic, and ultimately have nothing to do with the reality of great musical recordings, which exist in their own world - once finalized, they exist separate from even the people who created them. And often, that moment can never be repeated. (This sounds mystical, but it's true.)

One must be able to hear the Thing for What It Is, and not confuse it with What You Want That Thing To Be, What You Want to Use It For (personal ambition, sexual seduction)... and so on. Now let us all make an effort toward the Good Things and stop being concerned over what a few DJ's think about the world. Staring at the computer is BAD for your health! That's all i have to say! (I wouldn't even have bothered saying it, if i weren't so concerned over what one of my once-mentors thought about me, and the fact that i just realized HOW MANY PEOPLE read these forums. It's freaking me out.)

By the way, i just logged on to finally post this LONG one-time reply, and reading some of the recent additions, i cannot help but agree and want to acknowledge the many small and wonderful things which still happen in New York. Good parties have been happening at 205 for a while now! "No Ordinary Monkey" is the party of a dear friend, Carlos Arias, whose gorgeous wife is a native Berliner (musical chairs, ja!)... DJ Spun, who books PS1 WarmUp, is such a gem; these guys DON'T play much of the nonsense described above. Yet many of these also sprung up as alternatives to the "house" scene which so dominated N.Y. a few years before i left. I'm glad they've taken root. We are family. Cielo still looks to me more like an Absolut Vodka advertisement than a real dirty dance floor, though - see Coat Check above. Maybe what was missing in New York, from my purely personal perspective, was something really QUEER... and dirty. Oh yes, how trivial all this arguing must seem to someone in Atlanta, or Cleveland, or Iowa. New York will always be the shining beacon for music lovers in America.

Finally, it seems that Ferenc's nonstop disco internet radio, Cybernetic Broadcast System, has just just ended a week ago - how can one not be amazed at the depth of his knowledge and his corresponding enthusiasm. He has exhausted himself by sharing everything with us - now that's an idealist for you! Salute to Ferenc - don't be sad; no human being could have kept it going forever. (Now we understand why you want to be a robot.) When someone like that proves how rich the musical world of a living room in Rotterdam can be, we might as well forget about comparing N.Y.C. and Berlin. I shall write NOTHING more on the topic!

Some recommendations:

DANCER FROM THE DANCE by Andrew Holleran, 1978. A sort of memoir of the Tenth Floor and Fire Island crowd, an earlier incarnation of the gay scene at the Saint. Not Garage, not Loft or Gallery - a different, very queer perspective on what dance music meant.

MUSIC, THE BRAIN, AND ECSTASY by Robert Jourdain, 1997. Not the drug, but the feeling of ecstasy. Although the author is prejudiced toward certain classical pieces which he knows better than jazz or popular music in general, he gets at the fundamentals of so many aspects of music - psychology, anthropology, mathematics.

INTIMATE NIGHTS by James Gavin, 1992. A book about the "Golden Age of New York Cabaret" - a different sort of nightlife in Manhattan from the 40's to the 80's which was, arguably, squashed out by the bass drum. (I found this book in a Berlin junk shop, next to 10 tomes which were literally all about Barbara Streisand.)

[baleariksoul]

Makes an interesting and thought provoking read.

Thanks!