Some have tried to shove disco and house into a tiny box and dismiss them as insignificant sounds of an age. That’s their right. But for others who understand the vastness of music’s capability to release, restore and fulfill, these two musical genres were and are Rosetta stones unlocking the key to earthly nirvana. They are roads to paradise.
Nowhere epitomized the levels of excellence that could be achieved in these art forms more than the Paradise Garage, a quasi-underground dance club in NY at its zenith between 1977 and 1987. Membership only, and primarily made up of gay black men, it was completely accepting of all races, all classes, both genders and fully embraced non-conforming sexual identities. All were welcome and all focus was on the music and the freedom to dance. Really dance.
The sound system, expressly designed and developed for the Paradise Garage alone under the direction of the club’s groundbreaking DJ, Larry Levan, was considered the best in Gotham. The quality of that sound helped establish Levan as a pied piper of a generation. His finely tuned sense of music and insatiable appetite for sounds that could turn 2000 young, vital and churning bodies into sweat soaked dance machines, in a famously booze free environment, were renowned. So intense and absorbing they felt virtually tactile, the music and its sound maintained both their clarity and purity. And it was the music that propelled the club’s influence to not only sweep west to the coast but also leap the Atlantic to ignite Europe and beyond.
There have been many compilations memorializing the music that made the Paradise Garage a torch of musical light; echoing peoples’ lives and giving them unfettered permission to soar. This latest tribute, Paradise Garage: Inspirations goes beyond resurrecting and re-serving original music. The twelve tracks in this collection are freshly produced reflections of the originals as conceived by people irrevocably impacted; either directly or tangentially, by the club itself. Many of their names are themselves iconic in the world of club dance. Reveling in electronic artistry, the project’s first track, You’ll Never Find a Love Like Mine, is the very last production of the acclaimed Frankie Knuckles and features the timeless, soulful and evocative voice of Lou Rawls. DJ Rolando’s take on Knights of the Jaguar retains every iota of the song’s racing urgency and frantic delight. Pungent with spunky indignation, Sunshine Anderson’s Heard It All Before would work beautifully as one of the #MeToo movement’s pluckier anthems proclaiming a new day. Loving You, again with input from Frankie K. in collaboration with Kenny Summit and Eric Kupper, doles out beat sweet angelic voices and hypnotic bass lines that distill the essence of the Paradise Garage and all of the music it celebrated. An hour and a-half of tingling chills, Paradise Garage Inspirations leaves you spend in wonder and extremely grateful to the consortium of gifted admirers who invested their talent and energies into bringing it to life.
All proceeds will be donated to the GMHC.
Fight Aids. Love Life
