I’m the author of three books that trace the history of DJ, music, dance and art culture in New York City during the 1970s and early 1980s—Love Saves the Day: A—Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992, and Life & Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83. Together they amount to an unprecedented, in-depth account of the importance of NYC’s DJ, music, dance and art culture during the 1970s and early 1980s. They’re all published by Duke University Press. My label, Reappearing Records, releases associated compilations.
I became a co-founder of Lucky Cloud Sound System after Loft host David Mancuso proposed to me (as well as Colleen Murphy) that we start to host Loft-style parties in London. The first of these took place at the Light in June 2003 and in 2005 Colleen, my good friend Jeremy Gilbert and I formed Lucky Cloud Sound System and purchased David a sound system that came close to matching his NYC set-up. Working alongside David until 2011, when a doctor advised him to stop travelling, amounted to a whole new education. Lucky Cloud continues.
In May 2017 I had the good fortune to attend Joy, a Loft-influenced house party hosted by Nari along with Douglas Sherman, Takaya Nagase and Yuji Kawasaki. The experience made me realise that I wanted to start an intimate, invite-only, musically-open party that started early on a Saturday evening in London. I ended up teaming up with Cedric Lassonde, Cyril Cornet and Jem Gilbert of Beauty and the Beat (as well as Lucky Cloud) to launch All Our Friends in January 2018. The party, where I DJ alongside Ced, Cyril and guests, means the world to me.
I’m also a professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London, where I started to work in 1999. Jem and I became fast friends and collaborated on all sorts of projects, including Lucky Cloud. We both lost half our jobs early into the pandemic. That led us to start Love Is the Message, an epic podcast about music, the dance floor, sound systems and counterculture (so the dark cloud of redundancy came with a radiant silver lining!).
As for my background, I was born in Ealing, London, in 1967, but grew up in the suburbs. My dad, a German Jew, had fled Nazi Germany on the kindertransport as a 15-year-old in 1938 before he eventually got his first job as an English teacher in Wokingham, some 40 miles west of London. Raised in Hendon, north west London, my mum was one of three daughters of East European Jewish parents who ran a lampshade shop in Soho. As I grew up I realised that I could only feel fully comfortable and alive in a city.
My journey to the dance floor wasn’t the sweetest. My dad died suddenly when I was 19, half-way through my first year studying Politics and Modern History at Manchester University. My mum passed away three years later. Although I’d had the good fortune to go to the Hacienda’s Hot night during the summer of 1988 that turned out to be a one-off and I only started to go out dancing on a weekly basis when I joined the rave scene during 1990. Soon after I became a diehard regular at Feel Real, a Friday night house party at the Gardening Club. That became the only place that I felt a sense of hope. The experience forged an attachment to party culture that has stayed with me ever since.
Disillusioned with a career in journalism, I eventually quit my job at BBC Newsnight. Wanting to connect with the memory of my mum and dad and also wanting to be closer to the epicentre of house music, I moved to New York City, enrolled in the doctoral programme in English Literature at Columbia University, went to dance to Louie Vega at the Sound Factory Bar every Wednesday and also bought vinyl at Dance Tracks every Friday.
I started to write Love Saves the Day after a supervisor suggested I write a “quick book” about the history of house music/rave culture. Early into my research Dance Tracks co-owner Stefan Prescott recommended I interview Loft host David Mancuso, who at the time was almost completely down-and-out, his contribution almost entirely unrecognised. The interview with David led me to switch my focus to the 1970s. It also marked the start of a social and intellectual friendship that framed much of the rest of my life and had a fair influence on David’s life as well.
I currently live on a council estate in Hoxton, London, with my partner Niki Orfanou. I have two daughters, Carlotta and Ilaria, who also like dancing :)