Book Details
| Title: |
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Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970 - 1979 |
| Author: |
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Tim Lawrence |
| Times Read: |
|
1 |
| Last Read: |
|
07.13.25 |
Other Books Read By This Author (1)
- Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor
Notes History
| Date Read |
Note |
| 07.13.25 | Well this one took a while but, just like the other book by Tim Lawrence that I've read, it was unbelievably rich in detail and research and resonantly educational. I started with the sequel which documents the NYC music scene from 1980-82 but this one covers disco, basically, and the roots that continue in both that follow-up and practically all modern american dance music today. If there's one big takeaway for me that's it, that the Saturday Night Fever side of Disco that I'd heard about as a kid and all the songs on the disco station on the radio were the mainstream commercial fad version of what started as and reverted to a fundamentally underground, multi-racial, mixed-sexuality scene of dance clubs and nightlife. By the time straight white america got a whiff, the real shit had moved on and did not care. Very interesting!
I did take a break half-way through reading this so the time window on this journal is not exactly accurate but I won't lie that it also took a while to get through. It reads very academic, chock-full of attributed quotes and catalogs a cast of seemingly hundreds of characters and their associated roles be it dancer, DJ, producer, label owner, club owner, press, etc. Above it all one thing is clear: the author loves David Mancuso. If there's one figure that's arguably the main character of this book it's David. His Loft parties, which I'd already heard and read about before this book but could not describe practically what they were like, still eludes me after these 450 pages, but I am closer to understanding. By all accounts it was a milestone experience and if I had a time machine that would be my first destination. So just like Lawrence's other book I suspect this one will sit and marinate with me for a long time to come. His reproductions of DJ- and time-specific selected discographies feel like rabbit holes in waiting. I never thought I'd be interested enough in disco to read a book like this but I'm really glad I did. |
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