Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979 [Hardcover]

"Thanks to an impressive amount of research Tim Lawrence ...creates an evocative portrait of the Big Apple DJ demimonde of the 1970s." Peter Shapiro, The Wire "Will surely stand as the definitive history of dance music's early years." Joe Madden, Jockey Slut "Packed with detail ... without turning dull... riveting storytelling." Ethan Brown "A densely detailed and heartfelt account of the era." Time Out New York "Lawrence's astounding research and wide focus make this [disco's] definitive chronicle so far." Minneapolis City Pages "Lawrence has accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of cuing up every famed and arcane component of disco's ethos and executing a narrative possessed by a seamless grace that's comparable to the work of the legendary DJs who are duly chronicled... [A] most significant examination of this watershed period within our pop-cult heritage." Philadelphia CityPaper "Fabulous reading, and this book looks destined to become a classic, opening up a whole lost world of night-time dance culture to generations for whom previously it was merely a rather imprecise legend." Taipei Times "one of the sharpest books on dance music to date, striking a balance between you-are-there club descriptions, socioeconomic analysis, and musical critique." The Village Voice "brilliant, until you've read this, you might as well know nothing, nada, zilch." British mag I-D "Packed with interviews with the key players, it's as good an introduction as you'll find to an all-too-often overlooked period in musical history." Q Magazine And says, "[A]s Tim Lawrence illustrates in Love Saves The Day, the story of disco is richer than its battered reputation lets on... [A]n exceedingly well-reported history... Love Saves The Day works as an eye-opening history of a movement that found a nation taking time out to dance." Andy Battaglia of The Onion "Lawrence has documented the scene with a fan's affection and a scholar's thoroughness..." Newsday " is everything a good history should be --accurate, informative, well-organized and thoughtful. It is also everything a quality read should be --fresh, thoughtful and provocative..." The Chicago Free Press " ... as good an introduction as you will find to an all-too-often overlooked period in musical history."--Q, June 2004 "Essential reading for anyone interested in discovering teh origins of DJing, clubbing and the music we dance to."--Easyjet Magazine, April 2004 "This brilliant study of the birth of disco and the spawning of a million different subgenres of same is crucial reading for anyone who thinks they know their club culture. Because until you've read this you might as well know nothing, nada, zilch... This illuminating work features early sightings of some of today's established movers and shakers, often while still ambitiously adolescent, with every page featuring a surprise discovery, every dark corner a new beat."--i-D Magazine, June 2004 "Love Saves the Day is a fully comprehensive, well-composed analysis of dance culture during it's most crucial and subliminal time during the seventies. Tim Lawrence has done his homework and his dynamic delivery also possesses a delightful, intimate style. This book can be enjoyed on numerous levels... Love Saves the Day is a revealing, captivating and enlightening read."--Straight No Chaser, Autumn 2004 "[A] fine, groundbreaking history filled with fresh information and thoughtful perspectives on the disco decade, the result of his hundreds of interviews and exhaustive research. Scores of photographs and signature discographies nicely complement the text." --Library Journal Tim Lawrence's disco culture tome is one of the sharpest books on dance music to date, striking a balance between you-are-there club descriptions, socioeconomic analysis, and musical critique."--Tricia Romano, The Village Voice "Lawrence provides the first really in-depth look at the key years when dance music emerged from the so-called underground into the mainstream... [His] original and deep research alone makes Love Saves the Day essential reading for anyone who wants to know the who, what and where of disco's earliest years and why a musical style came to symbolize and entire decade."--John-Manuel Andriote, Lambda Book Report "Lawrence has accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of cuing up every famed and arcane component of disco's ethos and executing a narrative possessed by a seamless grace that's comparable to the work of the legendary DJs who are duly chronicled... [A] most significant examination of this watershed period within our pop-cult heritage."--Frank Halperin, Philadelphia CityPaper "Lawrence's astounding research and wide focus make this [disco's] definitive chronicle so far."--Michaelangelo Matos, CityPages (Minneapolis) "THE book on club music in America--a massive volume that contains more information about the New York scene than we'd ever hoped to learn! The book fills in gaps that we've always been unsure of, and tells the full story of the evolution of New York dance in the 70s--going way past the hype!"--Dustygroove.com "[F]abulous reading, and this book looks destined to become a classic, opening up a whole lost world of night-time dance culture to generations for whom previously it was merely a rather imprecise legend."--Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times "Lawrence brings a fan's enthusiasm and a scholar's rigor to Love Saves the Day, which deftly documents and celebrates a much-derided yet enduringly influential genre of popular music."--Kevin Riordan, Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, NJ) "Essential reading for anyone interested in discovering the origins of DJing, clubbing, and the music we dance to." --Easy Jet Inflight Magazine "[A]s Tim Lawrence illustrates in Love Saves The Day, the story of disco is richer than its battered reputation lets on... [A]n exceedingly well-reported history... Love Saves The Day works as an eye-opening history of a movement that found a nation taking time out to dance."--Andy Battaglia, The Onion "The book is nothing less than revelatory, time-traveling to pivotal moments like the birth of beatmatching (and snark-baiting the bitchy, bitter jocks that fell off after failing to master the new technique) and describing the atemporal space of the dance floor itself. The book immerses to the point of excess - at times you want to set aside the quotes, throw on a boa, and set off in search of some sex, drugs, and 'Soul Makossa.' But the book's broader implications--especially the missteps of the record industry and the pressures put upon art, leisure, and self-expression in a time of socioeconomic unrest (a nice bit of 'unpacking,' as we used to say in grad school) --make Love Saves the Day as timely as it is tantalizing."--Philip Sherburne, Boldtype "[A] vivid and lively look at the clubs, promoters, dancers, record producers, musicians, and DJs who created seventies dance culture... Love Saves the Day delivers what a serious reader wants from a history of disco: it combines a fan's interest in the music, anecdotes, and gossip with a scholar's analysis of the movement's social and political impact."--Seminary Co-op Bookstore "[T]his book tells it all. The birth of mixing, the first cat to run clean doubles (not a hip hop DJ), the sound systems, the first 12 inch singles, record pools and the beginning of club and street promotion. So many myths exposed and so many questions answered. The facts are here, and so are the characters... So many legends finally get their stories told. The contributors were very candid and it shows cause there's a definite lack of the grandstanding and posturing that is often found in hip hop history books. You really feel like you get the straight story here... [I]f this shit puts food or your table, if you want a pair of turntables, if you wanna open a club, shit if you even want to smell a 12inch single, you have to read this book. I get a little emotional about this shit, but shit man these guys are the reason we are all here today. This is a must own." --Roctakon, Turntablelab.com "[E]verything a good history should be--accurate, informative, well-organized and thoughtful. It is also everything a quality read should be--fresh, thoughtful and provocative... Love Saves the Day is, as so many critics have noted, the definitive book on dance music in the 1970s."-- Lisa Neff, Chicago Free Press "[Love Saves the Day] does an excellent job of covering both the gay and straight discos of New York and Fire Island... [It] takes us back to a decade when the music was queen."-- Jesse Monteagudo, The Weekly News (Plantation, FL) "Lawrence has compiled a detailed, complex, fascinating, and unique history of disco dance music... Highly recommended."-- R.D. Cohen, Choice "[T]o some, a respectful history of disco may seem as perverse as a paean to strip malls. Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day boldly overturns that story... I, for one, won't be able to dismiss dance culture so quicly, and his book should become a fixture in the libraries of serious students of American pop."-- Philip Christman, Paste "This brilliant study of the birth of disco and the spawning of a million different subgenres of same is crucial reading for anyone who thinks they know their club culture. Because until you've read this, you might as well know nothing, nada, zilch."-- Susan Corrigan, I-D "Lawrence has documented the scene with a fan's affection and a scholar's thoroughness... His interview subjects, veteran DJs and clubgoers all, best convey in their own words what it was like to be on the dance floor at the Loft, the Gallery or the Paradise Garage when the crowd--drenched in sweat, screaming and whistling, arms in the air--gave itself up to rapture."-- Tom Beer, Newsday "[An] exhaustive journey through the pulsating dance floors of '70s New York."-- Mike Gwertzman, New York Post "[P]acked with detail ... without turning dull; [Love Saves the Day] offers a non-hagiographic treatment of dance-music icons... and, perhaps best of all, Lawrence's riveting storytelling puts you deep in the proto-disco moment... Love Saves the Day not only gets dance-music history right--it refocuses that history to include those unjustly excluded f...

Disco is the music that America tried to forget. By the end of the 1970s "Saturday Night Fever" rocketed through the marketing stratosphere, Studio 54 was dominating the front pages, and the charts were controlled by the likes of the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and the Village People. But then radio talk jock Steve Dahl publicly detonated a pile of 40,000 disco records during the interval of a Chicago White Sox double-header in July 1979, and by the end of the year some 20,000 discotheques had hastily closed. Opening with David Mancuso's seminal "Love Saves the Day" Valentine's party in February 1970, Tim Lawrence presses the rewind button and tells the definitive story of disco - from its murky subterranean roots in NoHo and Hell's Kitchen to its gaudy blossoming in midtown Manhattan to the out-of-town networks that emerged in the suburbs and alternative urban hotspots such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New Jersey.Tales of nocturnal journeys, radical music making, and polymorphous sexuality flow through the arteries of "Love Saves the Day" like liquid vinyl. They are interspersed with a detailed analysis of the era's most powerful DJs, the venues in which they played, and the records they loved to spin. "Love Saves the Day" includes material from over three hundred original interviews with the scene's most influential players, including John 'Jellybean' Benitez, Michael Cappello, Ken Cayre, Alec Costandinos, Steve D'Acquisto, Michael Fesco, Rochelle Fleming, Francis Grasso, Alan Harris, Loleatta Holloway, Francois Kevorkian, Frankie Knuckles, David Mancuso, Vince Montana, Giorgio Moroder, Tom Moulton, Steve Ostrow, Marvin Schlachter, Nicky Siano, Judy Weinstein, Robert Williams and Earl Young. It also contains a series of specially compiled discographies and a unique collection of more than seventy rare photos.