DAILY NOTE228 Of

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2013

NICK CATCHDUBS, JERSEY BOY / MELVIN VAN PEEBLES INVENTS RAP / DEITCH PROJECTS

SQUEEZEBOX!GAY ROCK 'N' ROLL IN '90S NEw YORK

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THE DAILY NOTE LAST NIGHT

The Red Bull Music Academy celebrates creative pioneers and presents fearless new talent. Now were in New York City.

The Red Bull Music Academy is a world-traveling series of music workshops and festivals: a platform for those who make a difference in todays musical landscape. This year were bringing together two groups of selected participants producers, vocalists, DJs, instrumentalists and musical mavericks from around the world in New York City. For two weeks, each group will hear lectures by musical luminaries, work together on tracks, and perform in the citys best clubs and music halls. Imagine

a place thats equal parts science lab, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Kraftwerks home studio. Throw in a touch of downtown New York circa 1981, a sprinkle of Prince Jammys mixing board, and Bob Moogs synthesizer collection all in a 22nd-century remix and youre halfway there.

The Academy began back in 1998 and has been traversing the globe since, traveling to Berlin, Cape Town, So Paulo, Barcelona, London, Toronto, and many other places.

Interested? Applications for the 2014 Red Bull Music Academy open early next year.

MASTHEAD ABOUT RED BUll MUSic AcADEMY

The content of Daily Note does not necessarily represent the opinions of Red Bull or Doubleday & Cartwright.

One of our great hopes with the Daily Note is that well be able to provide a Rashomon-esque story of New Yorks artistic history. from illicit house clubs to hip-hops art-world crossover to that special brand of extinct record store that acted as Cheers for the musically minded, the sheer number of stories to tell is a gift or a curse, depending on where youre standing. we are, of course, firmly on the gift side, and if youre reading this, its a pretty safe bet that you are too.

So here we are. weve got an oral history of SqueezeBox!, the drag party that birthed Misshapes, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and about a billion other like-minded nightclubs, plays, films, and radical performances. If youre looking for a window into a corner of New Yorks secret late-period counterculture, this is it.

Todays issue also features Melvin Van Peebles going through his fascinating life story in a single page, the story behind the Danceteria logo, and Nick Catchdubs (of fools Gold) writing about his musical education from a New Jersey vantage point. Little by little, were filling in more pieces of the puzzle.

Editor in Chief Piotr OrlovCopy Chief Jane LernerSenior Editor Sam Hockley-SmithSenior Writer/Editor Vivian HostContributing Editor Shawn ReynaldoStaff Writer Olivia GrahamEditorial Coordinator Alex Naidus

Creative Director Justin Thomas Kay for Doubleday & CartwrightArt Director Christopher SabatiniProduction Designer Suzan ChoyPhoto Editor Lorenna Gomez-SanchezStaff Photographer Anthony Blasko

All-Seeing Eye Torsten Schmidt

Contributors Nick CatchdubsAdrienne DayLaura FordeBob GruenTina PaulTricia RomanoNick Sylvester

Cover Photo Tina PaulDJ Miss Guy at SqueezeBox!, Don Hills, 1994

Clockwise from top: Hands in the air at

the Flying Lotus show; photo by Dan Wilton. Ken Scott discussing Ziggy Stardust at the New Museum; photo by

Anthony Blasko. FlyLo hard at work; photo by Christelle De Castro.

54

FROM THE ACADEMY

Red Bull Music Academys studios are kitted out with a virtual dreamscape of gear: Moogs galore! Modular synth heav-en! To help the Academys participants navigate this collection of mind-blowing equipment is an all-star crew of musi-cians that includes producers Patrick Pulsinger, Morgan Geist, and Flying Lo-tus. We asked Studio Team members Ki-eran Hebden (aka Four Tet), Todd Osborn, and Stephen Bruner (aka Thundercat) about what gear turns them on, whats been happening in the Academy studios, and how the participants are handling these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

KIERAN HEBDEN:

Most of the participants Ive encountered are way more proficient than me on the equipment. It transpired very quickly that there was nothing much that I could show any of them about recording or us-ing a computer.

I dont care about gear. These days I work on a laptop and nothing else at all. Everybody I know who gets really into equipment stops playing musicthey just play with equipment, especially synthesiz-erspeople collect those things and dont make records.

The whole dynamic at the Academy is that there are no mentors or teachers, and the participants are not students in any way. Its more that everyone here is totally on the same level, nobody school-ing anybodyeveryone is just sharing in-formation.

TODD OSBORN:

Im showing the participants how stuff works. Mostly basic modular synth stuff, like the big Moog. There are five or six os-cillators on it, so when a participant starts playing with it and its a mess of noise, I tell them to narrow it down to just one oscillator. Thats good because they figure out its not like a plug-inyou have to fig-ure out how synthesis works. Then they can apply it to plug-ins and all the things theyre going to be working with, because most of them arent going to go and buy a huge modular synth, but it helps in under-standing why the other stuff is formed the way it is.

The participants mess with the equip-ment and then they always revert back to the things they know. People get hindered by thinking, If I only had this thing I could do so much more. Here its all open to them and then they say, Oh, I didnt re-ally need that after all. I can do good stuff with what Ive always used. It takes away the mystique of gear you cant afford.

THUNDERCAT:

I got to use the Moogerfoogers. I realized those are some of the best pedals Ive ever worked with. Obviously someone was drunk there and they meant to say moth-erfuckers. That is some real country-fried-ass shit. Ive never been one to play with pedals a lotthe couple pedals that Ive had would get stolen, just straight up. I used to carry an old Mu-Tron [Phasor] II around with meits literally carrying an antique, something that is really coveted. If you blink, someones going to say, Oh, sorry, I thought it was mine. After I lost a couple of those I stopped bringing so many pedals with me. But using those Moog ped-als, I love them. I was onstage with them last night [at the Flying Lotus show at Ter-minal 5] and I was just losing my mind.

Weve been down in the studio talking trash and going crazy. Now Im just look-ing to have an orgy in the studio and may-be sacrifice a childthat will make the experience complete. [Laughs.]

Recording is perfecting a momentperforming is creating one.Erykah Badu, April 30, 2013UPfRONT

RECORDED LIVEFOR RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY RADIOTUNE IN AT RBMARADIO.COM

TONIGHT

UPCOMINGEVENTS

MAY

07MYKKI BLANCOLE1f LAUREL HALOVENUS-X

GLASSLANDS

MAY

09

MAY

08

MAY

19MAY

20

CULTURE CLASHfOUR NEw YORK SOUNDS. ONE wINNER.

fOUR TET & SPECIAL GUESTS

MISTER SATURDAY NIGHT VS.DOPE JAMS

GIORGIO MORODER fIRST EVERLIVE DJ SET

ROSELAND BALLROOM

wEBSTER HALL

INVITE ONLY

DEEP SPACE @ CIELO

MAY

10METRO AREAGERD JANSONBOK BOKL-VIS 1990

DARK DISCO @ 88 PALACE

MAY

21BRENMARNICK HOOKSINJIN HAwKEMORE

TAMMANY HALL

MAY

22DRUM MAJORSMANNIE fRESHBOI-1DAYOUNG CHOPDJ MUSTARDMORE

KNITTING fACTORY

JAMESZOODeN BoSCH, NetHerLANDS

Gil Scott-Herons The Bottle feels like disco/boogie to me. It really swings and the vocals are

amazing. jameszoo.com

OCTO OCTABrooKLyN, Ny

Dr. Yorks You Cant Hide is probably my

favorite record that was produced in Brooklyn. Its on ruby-red vinyl and was written by a guy

who decamped to Georgia to start a cult based around ancient Egypt. While he isnt really a good guy, the record is still dopeit has constant panting over the entire tune. soundcloud.com/octoocta

ALE HOPLiMA, Peru

My favorite disco record would be Bad Girls by Donna Summer. I love her fusion of disco, rock

riffs, and synthesizers it was more electronic and dance than other

disco bands. lasamigasdenadie.bandcamp.com

GET DOwN, GET DOwN

Participants on their favorite disco

and records.

At Daily Note weve paid a lot of mind

to house and techno, but theyre certainly

not the only genres that can fill up

the dancefloor. We asked a few Red Bull Music Academy 2013 participants about

their favorite vintage dancefloor cuts.

Launched in late 2008, Que Bajo?! occupies a unique position in the landscape of New York nightlife. Run by Uproot Andy and Geko Jones, the night is ostensibly a Latin party, though its musical offerings are anything but traditional. Folding in bits

of dancehall, African rhythms, and modern electronic sounds, Que Bajo?! is a place where the lines between the First and Third Worlds are blurred under the banner of a loud, sweaty, and undeniably fun dance party. The crew will be strutting its stuff this Thursday, May 9 at Rose-land, at the Red Bull Music Academy Culture Clashwhere it faces stiff competition from Just Blaze & Young Guru, Trouble & Bass, and Feder-ation Soundbut ahead of that, we asked the Que Bajo?! cofounders to tell us about five tracks that inspired their party and represent its ethos.

EL GENERALTe Ves BuenaHailing from Panama, El Generals Spanish versions of Jamaican dancehall reggae tunes laid the groundwork for what would become reggaeton in Puerto Rico, dembow in the Dominican Republic, and the wide adoption of the dembow rhythm in Latin America and beyond. So much of what we play at Que Bajo?! traces its roots back to El Gener-al, and we still play his original songs today.

LOS GAITEROS DE SAN JACINTOLa Vaina Ya Se FormFolkloric Afro-Latin music is one of the strongest influences on the Que Bajo?! sound, especially Colombian folk from the Caribbean

coast, which has given birth to cumbia and so many other important rhythms. This tune is one that we were familiar with early on, but only when we went to the actual Carnaval de Barranquilla did we realize how much of a Carnival an-them it really is. Since then, the Uproot Andy edit has become a Que Bajo?! classic as well.

wILEYEskimoBefore starting Que Bajo?! we were both residents of the Dutty Artz crews New York Tropical party, which featured large portions of grime and dubstep courtesy of Matt Shadetek and DJ Rupture. Both of us were also closely follow-ing the evolution of Londons electronic music scene, which was so furiously innovative at the time, seemingly spitting out new

subgenres every week. Eskimo is simply an essential tune by one of the most influential producers in that scene, and his influence on Que Bajo?! is especially evident in the way Andy used synths in his early productions.

LOS PIBES CHORROSCumbia VilleraCumbia has traveled all over the world by now, but one of the most unique and lasting variants is cumbia villera from Argentina. Los Pibes Chorros keytar melodies were begging to be combined with the synth bass of our favorite electronic music, and served as the essential inspiration for

Andys Brooklyn Cumbia, another early Que Bajo?! staple.

PRINCE NICO MBARGAAki SpecialThe popular music of 60s and 70s Africa, which borrowed heavily from Latin and Caribbean music, was always another big part of Que Bajo?!. This Nigerian highlife tune was remixed on Uproot Andys very first mixtape and the orig-inal is also a classic on Colom-bias Caribbean coast, where it is known as El Akien and is one of the foundational tunes for what became champeta, another sound that is often heard at the party.

RIDDIM NATION

The DJs behind Que Bajo?! detail a few of the rhythms that first inspired their

global soundclash.

PLUGGED INBehind the scenes

with the Red Bull Music Academy Studio Team.

Participants getting creative in the studio. Photos by Dan Wilton and Christelle De Castro

76

FROM THE ARCHIVES

melvin van peebles: Ill tell you my life story in five minutes. I was born in Chicago, a child prodigy, and I finished college when I was 20 years old. But to finish college, because my parents were poor, I took a course. I didnt know what it was, but it meant I was an officer in the Air Force. So when I was 20 I was flying jets. I did that for a number of years, then I lived in Mexico where [my son] Mario was born. Then I lived in San Francisco and fell in love with cinema. I wrote a book and someone got on my cable carhe was a grip man, you know, who used to pull the cable cars, a big metal piece and so forth. The guy said, You know your book is just like a movie. So I said, Shit, Ill go into the movies! In those days, Hollywood wouldnt take a black person to work, so I was discouraged and went to Holland, where I was getting a PhDIm an as-tronomer and mathematician alsoand while I was there the French Cinematheque saw my work and said I was a genius. Finally somebody who understands me! So I went to Paris and made my first feature there, and little by little I learned to speak French. But theres one little thing: I didnt have any music. I couldnt afford anyone, so I numbered all the keys on the piano because I couldnt read or write music, then I played it and wrote the score. Then I made another movie later called Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song and that began taking off. At that time, what we call the black revolution was going on in America, but the music was not revolutionary. It was still blues or just straight jazznone of it talked about what was really going on. Since I couldnt sing I just talked about what was going on myself, and this became hip-hop and rap, and thats the story.

So out of the maybe 25 professions you masteredand Im just guessing here, I may have missed somethe common thread is storytelling, narratives. Were you a good story-teller at school? Well, I was always full of shit, if thats what you mean. We call that storytelling elsewhere. Im very political and you have to keep your audience interested to tell the story. When I won the festival in San Francisco with my first French feature, I had no money and went back to New York, where I was living on a park bench. The first night, I heard this noise and it was people singing up to their women in the Womens House of Detention. At this womens prison, people couldnt yell out, but their loved ones could yell up. The women would blink some kind of light so their people would know it was them. So I thought, Wow, this would make a great song. I composed this song: Hey, fourth floor, sugar, that your light? Make some kind of sign so I know its you. The people would open their hearts

up to their loved ones. It was wonderful, it was poignant, but no one was capturing this. So I started capturing these sorts of stories and put them into an album and that was the beginning of lyrics saying something once more. Vocals in the early 60s were simply accompaniments to music, sort of Hey baby, bap-do-da. I wanted to tell a story, so I brought the orchestrations down; that way I could tell a story.

Another time I was sitting in a little restaurant and someone went by, and everyone said, Hey, look at that! But I turned around too late, shed gone. But that gave me an idea for a sto-ry, which we call Catch That on the Cornerthe story of a blind guy who fell in love. Hes asking his buddy to describe the girl hes in love with. Turns out his girl isnt a girl at all, but his buddy doesnt know how to tell him that. Hey baby, whats that on the corner? Hes talking to his buddy. Somehow, A&M Records took my music and the Last Poets started doing it, Gil Scott-Heron started telling stories again. Not just, Ill meet you at the bar in five minutes, but stories.

I wanted to do political work, and then that evolved into rap. What I tried to do, and whats now happening, [was use] the events of everyday life of us in the ghetto. It changed ev-erything. Not only was it about something, it made money. At that juncture, the doors that were closed to [Big Daddy] Kane, LL Cool J, and everyone opened because the American dollar says if you can make money, then you can say whatever you want to say.

Theres a quote of yours saying that whatever you do, whatever cause youre fighting, its important that the big boys win if you win. Can you elaborate on that? The trick is, you figure out a way to do something you want to do, but if it can make money, they will carry the message. The people were so hungry to hear themselves, to see their thoughtsones that sometimes they didnt even know they were carryingthat when I projected that, they bought it.

Theres something pretty intricate about what you just said, which is essential for anyone who ever tried to con-vey a message in any form of storytelling. You sit there with a blank piece of paper, thinking you have nothing to say, but I can talk about everyday things because thats my everyday life. What you do is say, How can I put it in a form that will get to, maybe not every audience, but my audience? We talk about blaxploitationall of that came from one of my films, Sweetback. Now I have to go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, theyre giving me a huge restoration of my

film, which is a huge honor. But when that film came out, only two theaters in the entire United States would show it; not two cities, two theaters. But I knew my audience it and was so suc-cessful that then, of course, everyone else took the film. The worst thing is when you do something for others and they dont like it anyway. Then youre fucked.

When you say your politics are to win, who do you win against? Whoevers fucking with me.

Thats pretty straightforward. Its not complicated. I was on a bandstand once with Patti LaBelle and someone in the audi-ence was giving me a hard time. So I jumped off the stage. They assume that because you are who you are, they can say things they wouldnt say in a bar or wherever and youve got to take it. No, no. First rule is: dont write a check with your mouth that your ass cant cash. I had nothing to lose. Nothing to lose.

Modest as you are, you were also the first black trader on Wall Street. This was another first. Youve done a lot throughout your career, but I guess the Wall Street thing is a special one. Hmm. What happened was, I lost a bet. I was sitting with some very, very rich friends and the guy was talking and I could do the numbers in my head. He said, You can do that? And he got the calculator out and realized I was right. One of the guys sitting with us, who was particularly Machiavel-liana big marker on Wall Street and a troublemaker, toobe-ing so big, he got me a job trading on Wall Street.

How did you find it? It was quite interesting. As an artist, you write something and youre never sure youve made it, but on Wall Street, if youve made a bad trade, by the evening you know. I could trade zillions of dollars all day, but I never made a mistake. No, thats not true. I made mistakes. Many of the peo-ple working Wall Street were minorities, but they never got to the position I was in. So if I made a mistake, they would protect metherefore I ended up never making a mistake.

Part of the American dream is getting all those riches. So how did you resist the temptation of staying there? I got laid anyway. I got girls. What the fuck do I need Wall Street for?

Interviewed by Torsten Schmidt at Red Bull Music

Academy Barcelona 2008. For the full Q&A, head to

redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures.

MELVIN VAN PEEBLES

Renaissance man, revolutionary, storyteller, shit-talker.

Q&A

PHOTO lAnDER lARRAAgA

9

feature

8

How SqueezeBox! changed the sound of New York clubsgay and straight.

the year was 1994. Rudy Giuliani had just been elected mayor of New York. It was before the city was gripped by terror, before Times Square was recast as a Disneyfied playground for tourists, before mod-els and bottles infiltrated, soured, and sterilized its clubs. After four years of Mayor David Dinkins mea-ger one-term run, New York City still had its gritty and dangerous parts, with many pockets of Manhat-tan not yet gentrified to the teeth. Williamsburg was a Polish/Hispanic/Hasidic neighborhood; hipster was not a pejorative description for every kid from New Jersey wearing tight black jeans; and the Meat-packing District still had actual meat-packers.

WORDS TRiciA ROMAnO

PHOTOgRAPHY TinA PAUl

Miss Guy onstage at Don Hills, 1995.

Opposite: The SqueezeBox! crowd goes wild, 1995.

1110

feature feature

nd the gay club scene, though not yet as iconic as in its 80s heyday, was starting to coalesce into some-thing that could claim a spot in New Yorks rich nightlife history. As techno became de rigueur in Brooklyn warehouses, muscle queens danced all night in big Chelsea superclubs, and Michael

Alig led club kids on dystopian drug binges at Limelight, an-other music subculture emerged downtown in Tribeca, on the far edges of the west side of Manhattan at a tiny, divey rock club called Don Hills.

Bored with the options for gay men and women, rock n roll fashion designer Michael Schmidt teamed up with Pat Briggs of the industrial band Psychotica, drag queen Misstress Formika, and DJ Miss Guy to create SqueezeBox!, one of New York Citys last great parties.

SqueezeBox! gave gay (and straight) revelers a different kind of outlet. Every Friday, pretty boys, glam girls, rough rockers, and cool celebs converged upon Don Hills, wearing their dirty, filthy, punk-rock best. The party birthed bands, revolutionized the drag scene, and served as a hothouse for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which went on to become an off-Broadway hit and a big Hollywood movie.

The darkest days of the AIDS epidemic had passed, but the gay community remained on edge, remembering lost friends at the mercy of the caustic and careless mayor Edward Koch. They didnt have a friend in Rudolph Giuliani, either, who upon tak-ing office instituted a veritable war against nightlife, wielding an early-century cabaret law to close clubs down at will.

But SqueezeBox survived. And long after it end-ed, the clubs influence was clear not only in quint-essential pansexual New York parties like Moth-erfucker, Misshapes, and Berliniamsburg, but in the rock revival and electroclash movements that would soon rule over Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is the story of SqueezeBox!.

Michael Schmidt (co-promoter of Squeeze-Box!): In 1994 I had a friend named Patrick Briggs, who had been a friend of mine for ten years and was managing a bar called Don Hills, a rock n roll bar. He called me up one day. I make clothing for entertainersI didnt really do clubs at that time, and I had never done a club before. He said, Were running this club and we want to do a gay night. Would you be interested in maybe putting something together and promoting it? I said no. It wasnt really on my radar of things I would con-ceivably want to do, but after thinking about it for a while, I thought that would be an opportunity to create the very club we all complained didnt exist.

Michael T (DJ and co-promoter of the club night Motherfucker): With me and with cer-tain gay people that are similar to me, youre sort of in this purgatory state where you go to a lot of straight clubs. Sometimes Ill go to gay clubs and have a good time. But thered definitely be some-thing missing from gay clubs. All you would hear is house music, all you would see is Chelsea boys, all you would see is the typical drag number, which could sometimes be phenomenal and other times be whatever. It was bland. It was something that I didnt fully connect with, nor did I want to.

Larry Tee (DJ, founder of the club night Berliniamsburg, and creator of the Electroclash Festival): SqueezeBox! was for those who did not feel comfortable in the Sound Factory or Roxy. It really was the alternative to that big room, cha cha, tribal nonsense, brain-numbing, washing-machine stuff at the end of the 90s. SqueezeBox! was the perfect antidote.

Schmidt: There had been a club in the late 80s called Rock and Roll Fag Bar, run by my friend Dean Johnson, which was amazing and great and much needed and fairly short-lived. It was incredibly fun, although they didnt have live bands. No gay clubs ever had live bands. I was sick of seeing drag queens lip-synching. So I thought, What if we put a rock n roll band, a punk band together, and we have queens singing? Thatll be the show.

DJ Miss Guy (SqueezeBox! resident and singer of the Toi-let Boys): Michael asked me who I thought should be the drag MC and my two choices were either [Lady] Bunny or Misstress Formika. I didnt know Formika well at that point but Id seen

him around and wed met a few times and I thought he was great and funny as hell and I loved him.

Schmidt: As soon as I saw [Formika] perform, I said This is the one, this is a star. So I asked her if she would be the hostess and she could sing with a band every week. Well, she had never sung before.

Misstress Formika (drag performer and host of Squeeze-Box!): I said that Im not a trained singer and to be honest with you Ive only sang twice in my life and that was in high school for school plays. But Im willing to give it a shot.

Miss Guy: Formika was if he wasnt feeling confident, he was faking it and no one would have ever known. He was an auto-matic star. Hes one of the best.

Schmidt: [Opening night] was on April 15 of 1994. It was really scary. Because you dont know how all of those things are going to be responded to. You dont know if people are going to show up. But we had the Lunachicks play. All the elements were in place. I knew it could work, but you dont ever know if people are going to pick up on your vision or not. So you kinda lay it out there and see. And people went wild.

Thomas Onorato (doorman for SqueezeBox!, Misshapes, and Motherfucker): You couldnt lip-synch, you had to per-form with a live bandwhich at the time [was] revolutionary.

Schmidt: We had all the best drag queens in town, they all performed with the band.

Formika: The first year it was really difficult to get queens to come and sing. I had Lina there and Candis [Cayne] thereall these people that dont really sing. I would convince them and say, No, you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. They would come in and they would turn it out, you know? I would sit there all afternoon from like three in the afternoon till seven or eight at night the day of the show. I would listen to the queens and talk to the bands and say, They cant sing it that fast, slow it down. We would take punk songs and make them into ballads; we would take ballads and make them into punk songs. Howev-er we needed to re-orchestrate the songs so the queens sounded good, thats how we did the songs.

Michael T: It brought drag to a different area than before. We had drag that was not necessarily pretty, and drag that was sing-ing live and singing rock with live musicians, and drag that was being performed to a mixed audience and not just a gay male audience. In that sense it gave a lot of performerslegendary people like Joey Arias, Sherry Vinea platform.

Formika: The queens in New York were definitely ruling. We were ruling so much in New York for the drag scene that queens like Justin Bond and Jackie Beat moved here. Everybody wanted to be a New York drag queen.

Schmidt: I put a whole sort of package together. Miss Guy, the DJ, was my roommate and he was one of the best DJs I knew. He had a very eclectic collection of music. He would go from

old-school punk rock to a Brigitte Bardot song, or he would play the Cramps into Led Zeppelin and Buddy Hollyit just wasnt done back then.

Miss Guy: Id only been DJing six months when we started Squeeze-

Box!. I used to play the Plasmatics and the place would be packed and going wild. I had never seen a party where that happened before or since. I really went all over the place and it worked. It was a time where there was no Inter-net really, and no digital music, so in those days you went to hear a DJ and you went to hear their collection. Now people can Shazam what the DJ is playing and buy it on their phone.

Formika: In my 20 years in nightlife, I always found that the best parties that last the longest and are the most legendary are those that start off with just a group of friends, and their friends, having a good time. A slow build is the way to go about that. Any party that starts off with a bang has nowhere to go but down. We had nowhere to go but up.

Michael T: They would open around 9pm. They had a few opening bands, which led to a headliner, which then led to the late-night show. So it was kinda between the headliner and the late-night show when the dance version of the party would really begin to percolate.

Onorato: SqueezeBox! was one of the parties in the larger scene where people actually danced on the dancefloor. Where

it wasnt a mosh pit and it wasnt people just hanging around waiting for a band.

Miss Guy: I think after that you had gay bars in the East Village playing rock. More rock DJs coming around in that world, where-as before there really werent any.

Larry Tee: Motherfucker and SqueezeBox! were definitely kiss-ing cousins because they shared a lot of the same talent. Mis-shapes was their gay grandson who did not want anything to do with them. They were more likely to be in Helmut Lang than Michael Schmidt.

Michael T: The two biggest influences for Motherfucker were SqueezeBox! and Green Door, which was happening around the same time. Green Door was the straight version of SqueezeBox!, but it was totally East Village, total rock n roll. It was defi-nitely shooting for a Maxs Kansas City vibe. There were clear-ly gay people, and there were straight people, and then there were people you werent sure about. And there was just that energya certain type of energy thats created that cannot be pre-programmed or falsified.

Jake Shears (lead singer of the Scissor Sisters): [Squee-zeBox!] had a wild mix of women, gay guys, people that were transgender, drag queens. It was a queer crowd. It wasnt necessarily just a gay crowd. Thats the magic combination. If

you can get all those people in a scene and in a whole world where everyones got a like-minded attitude and is not necessarily wholly gay, thats something. Then

you have a real party that actually means something, because its not just one thing or another. Its actu-

ally more than just sexu-ality. Its an attitude. Its a philosophy.

Larry Tee: If its kind of gay, assholes dont want to hang out there. Its asshole repel-lent. Bottle service [types], they dont want to hang out with some faggots.

Schmidt: [At SqueezeBox!] we had a sign at the door that said This is a gay rock n roll club, if you cant han-dle us, fuck off. So from the get-go it was made very clear to anybody that came that we were not going to put up with any bullshit from anybody.

Formika: We were always very outspoken. Misshapes was just an outfit party.

Theyre fun and great for what they are, but they had no sub-stance. If things were going on in the city that were wrong, people at SqueezeBox! were informed. We had a few protests against Mayor Giuliani.

Schmidt: SqueezeBox! is a response to really two things. The AIDS crisis had really taken all of the talent out of the city. It demolished the scene. It needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. And there was also the need to bring the straight and the gay communities back together because there was a lot of alien-ation there.

John Cameron Mitchell (creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch): It was the club that I had always been waiting for my whole life. I could just barely tolerate the music in most gay places until that point. But in terms of a full-on queer rock n roll place that was performance-based but also a place where, you know, you could slam with cute boys without fear of break-ing their hairthat was the place to go. You know, it was kinda scary. You never knew what was gonna happen. It was like punk rock just got invented by gay people at that point. There was always the Buzzcocks and Jayne County and everything. So it was from heaven.

Miss Guy: I remember John was hanging out there. We were introduced because he was good friends with the guitarist of the SqueezeBox! band, Steve Trask.

Schmidt: [John] asked me if he could perform a theater piece that he was workshopping with the band. I said, Well, I guess so, but you have to know this is real life for these people. You have to show a great amount of respect to these queens who perform here on a regular basis. If youre gonna work this out, make it real, make it your own. And he did.

Mitchell: Very quickly Steve Trask said, You can practice being a fake rock star, which I was writing about, and do a gig here, but you have to do it in drag. He said I couldnt do male char-acters. I had to do what was originally a supporting character of

Hedwig. Because it was really about Tommy the boyfriend, who was the son of the general, as I was. And then the supporting character was sort of thrust into the spotlight because it was a drag club and I had to do it in drag. So in a way SqueezeBox! forced Hedwig out of me like a toothpaste tube. It was just so scary. I had never sung in a band. I had never been in drag. So my first gig there was just, you know, full-on giving birth.

Formika: Oh, it was great. It went over really well, the first perfor-mance. I was like, Wow, they love that.

Mitchell: You know, glitter, glitter, glitter.

Schmidt: And then we started to get all kinds of crazy people coming in

and wanting to perform. I had been friends for a long time, be-cause of my work in entertainment, with a number of performers. Deborah Harry was a very big supporter of ours from the begin-ning. She performed with the band and with Misstress Formi-ka. Nina Hagen came, and Lene Lovich came, Joan Jett, Marilyn Manson, all of those people would come and perform with the band. You just never knew what was going to happen.

Formika: At one point Im downstairs with Courtney Love, the whole band from Green Day, were all drunk, and were all getting tattooed in the basement. I have a star tattoo on the bone on my hand and so does Billie from Green Day. Courtney didnt get a tattoo that night, she just hung out with us and like 15 other people from SqueezeBox!. We all got tattooed that night at four in the morning.

Larry Tee: It was astounding because every time I went there, I would see somebody like Blondie or Courtney Love. It was defi-nitely rock-star base for that time. It was like the place.

Michael T: You didnt remember who was there because you were fucked up!

Larry Tee: If you wanted to do coke, you went to Squeeze-Box!. If you wanted to do ketamine or ecstasy, you went to the Sound Factory.

Schmidt: It started to snowball. Youd be standing there and you turn to your right and there would be Calvin Klein, youd turn to your left and thered be John F. Kennedy Jr., standing and talking to some drag queen or some little punk kid. It was amazing. It was an incredible mix of the high and the low. John Waters called it the greatest club in America.

Formika: So many things came out of it. The Toilet Boys came out of it, Hedwig came out of SqueezeBox!it definitely started singing careers for a lot of the queens. Of course, Psychotica, Pat Briggs band, they had a big whirl from SqueezeBox!.

Schmidt: It was nuts. The capacity was 150. It was really tinyit was a hole in the wall. The bathrooms were horrible. It was a mess, but it was great. It was down and dirty and thats what you wanted in a rock n roll bar. You dont want something slick and polished with table service if youre gonna cater to this kind of crowd. You want something realand we gave it to em.

Formika: SqueezeBox! was, definitely, in my 20 years, the most decadent party that Ive ever worked at.

Miss Guy: I think that people realized that it was special. I certainly did.

JOHN wATERS CALLED IT THE

GREATEST CLUB IN

AMERICA.- MICHAEL SCHMIDT

Left: Miss Guy and the Toilet Boys, Don Hills, 1998.

Right: (L-R) Patrick Briggs (Torment), Evan Dando, Billie Joe Armstrong, Misstress Formika, and Courtney Love, Don Hills, 1994. Photo by Bob Gruen

Left: Misstress Formika at SqueezeBox!, 1994.

Right: Patrick Briggs and Michael Schmidt, 1995.

1312

COLUMNS COLUMNS

Plenty of musicians play guitars through effects pedalsbut until hearing the Brooklyn noise duo YVETTE, I had never seen a musi-cian use the guitar merely as a sound source to play the pedals. (The band was actually the impetus for GODMODE, my small record label.) I spoke with Noah Kardos-Fein, the singer and guitarist of YVETTE, about his unusual strategies and sounds.

RBMA: Can you describe your current pedal rig?

Noah Kardos-Fein: I use a combination of effects: octave, distortion/overdrive, multiple resonance filter (MuRF), a couple different ring modulators, quite a few different pitch shifters and pitch shift/delays, a few different digital and analog delays, tremolo, reverb, and loop-ing. These are all attached to a custom-made pedal board and road case, which is big enough to fit a small person.

RBMA: How would you say you play different-ly from other guitarists?

NKF: Theres a mutual relationship between my guitar and my pedals, whereas for most [other musicians] I think the pedals are slaves to the guitar. I often use my guitar to play my pedals. Certain notes played on the guitar will generate specific dissonant noises in the ring modulator, for instance. Then I use other ped-als to help color that sound.

RBMA: How does your pedal rig affect your songwriting?

NKF: Most of our ideas for songs start with happy accidents, where Im mindlessly running my fingers against the strings while a certain effect is on, and it generates an interesting sound or riff. I have this whole palette of dif-ferent colored paints in front of me and I only begin to see patterns or images emerge on the canvas once Ive started to aimlessly run my brush along it.

RBMA: Do any of your pedals have good sto-ries behind them?

NKF: One of the weirder pedals I use is a DigiTech XP-300 Space Station. I was on a lunch break at work one day and wandered into a gui-tar shop nearby, and I stopped in to look at the pedals for sale. The XP-300 is this big, gold, ugly thing from the late 80s and I was vaguely fa-miliar with it because of its reputation for being rare and making weird sounds. I ended up grab-bing it because the effects sounded so strange, but the icing on the cake was that the pedal had belonged to Robert Quine. It came with a cer-tificate of authenticity and everything. Quine played with Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Brian Eno, and Material. When Quine died his estate sold off his gear. I like to think that in some strange way, maybe Im channeling him and the kind of New York Noise approach to new music that he helped make famous.

-NICK SYLVESTER

A column on the gear and

processes that inform the music we make.

Many New York-engendered art movements have chance origin stories, but the Soho-based Deitch Projects came from a very different and deliberate pro-cess. In 1996, Jeffrey Deitch, a Harvard Business School graduate and highly successful art dealer and advisor, established a gallery in Soho which he quickly populated with the kind of ebullient and irrational art that in the late 90s came to characterize New Yorks edgy down-town milieu. The citys art market had suffered a depres-sion for some years before going gangbusters around 97, and Deitch was the godfather and patron of that scene.

The work Deitch favored, as Calvin Tomkins put it in a 2007 feature for The New Yorker, was by artists whose creative output was indistinguishable from their lives. This often made for a heady brew of performance art paired with exuberant, theatrical music, featuring the likes of electroclash/DIY/punk artists like Chicks on Speed and Fischerspooner. I see [the gallery] as a plat-form for creative community, Deitch told Tomkins. The extension of life into art and art into life... post-gay, post-black, post-feminist [in] orientation.

Whether or not Deitch achieved those goals is subject to debate, but theres no question he took a chance on work that few others at the time would touch. In 2006, he lent his space to artists Dash Snow and Dan Colen for one of their Hamster Nest installations, where Snow and Colen filled the gallery with shredded phone books and broken wine bottles, invited around 30 friends, and ingested copious amounts of drugs to fuelamong other less salubrious activitieswriting on the walls. Another installation, by the Austrian Gelitin collective, featured dinner for a few hundred guests with naked men uri-nating over the repast into one anothers hats. As Casey Spooner of Fischerspooner says of their Deitch perfor-mances, CNN covered it. Bianca Jagger sat on the stage in a white suit. Jeff Koons came backstage and gushed over it. The fire department shut us down, which [MoMA PS1 director] Klaus Biesenbach declared the death of Soho. It was ridiculous and amazing.

In 2010, Deitch was offered the directorship of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, closing up his multiple gallery locations when he moved out west. But his impact on New Yorks creative spheres is implicit in much of the work thats currently celebrated in some of the citys most august institutions. -ADRIENNE DAY

DEITCH PROJECTS

I saw new waves return to the 50s and 60s aesthetic as an absurdity that only Devos theory of de-evolution could explain, says Rudolf Piper, who together with partner Jim Fouratt founded Danceteria, one of the citys most famous nightclubs of the 1980s. Fouratt said at the time, We deliberately try to present serious music in a vulgar format, to use the original connotation of the word.

Stumped as to what to call their vulgar new venture, Piper, Fouratt, and David King recall passing the Garment Centers liveliest lunchspot, Dubrows Cafeteria, when lightning struck not far from the clubs original location at 252 West 37th Street. Fouratt exclaimed: Thats it! Danceteria!

The clubs dance-punk eclecticism defined the early 80s: DJs like Bill Bahlman, Johnny Dynell, Anita Sarko, and Mark Kamins mixed post-punk with disco, hip-hop with electro. Two years later, the multistory club moved to its most famous location, 30 West 21st Street, where newcomers like Madonna opened for the likes of Manchesters A Certain Ratio (in 1982). Art Attack Wednesdays featured highbrow artists such as Philip Glass and Diamanda Galas. The third floor included a

video lounge and a restaurant. Its all about mixing up these different kinds of people. Fouratt told The New York Times.

King, a British graphic designer best known for creating the logo of the anarchist punk band Crass, had been working in London for ten years before moving to New York in 1977. By day he drew illustrations for Psychology Today, covers for Penguin Books, and Christmas cards for MoMA. By night, he was in a punk band called Arsenal.

Inspired by an old photo of a White Castle waitress in a book about American cafeterias, King created the image of the Danceteria Lady. A zig-zagging eighth note covering her eyes gave the logo its new-wave edge: I had always been fascinated with the use of a black rectangle to supposedly obscure the identity of alleged miscreants in the tabloid press, King recalls. Kaufmann Bold, a whimsical connecting script, reinforced the campy Americana feeling. King extended the crossbar of the t to bisect the dot on the ia nice finishing touch.

We had several prototypes, most of them based on the drawings of Serge Clerc from Paris, Piper recalls, but ultimately this one hit the mark. -LAURA fORDE

The origins of iconic images from

NYC's musical history explained.

LO G OS

TOP 5NEw YORK CITY

CLUBS Of THE 80S

In the two decades that Time Out NYs nightlife section has been cruising the club scene, weve seen plenty of peaks and valleys. Right now, its at a seri-ous high point. Still, its hard to beat those pre-gentrified days of yore. While the 70s bequeathed us the Loft, Paradise Garage, and Studio 54, the 80s certainly had its own share of pioneering parties.

PRESEnTED BY

1MUDD clUB

This divey, multifloor hangout ran from 78 through 83. But with its genre-ignorant soundtrack, art-dam-aged clientele, and embrace of anything

that smacked of the new and the weird, the club perfectly captured the citys fin de sicle feel at the time.

2THE PYRAMiD clUBIn an era when much of New Yorks gay-perfor-mance scene was cen-

tered around lip-synch-ing imitations of Babs and Cher, the East

Villages Pyramid was a revelation: its onstage

shows merged drag-queen over-the-topness with a transgressive, sometimes-eloquent, often-touching vision of gay utopia, with a set list as likely to include Einstrzende

Neubauten as Sylvester.

3DAncETERiA

This hallowed hall ran at various address-es from 1979 till the early 90s, though when people say Dancete-ria, theyre usually referring to its West 21st Street, 82 to86 period. It was home to the recently deceased DJ Mark Kamins, and the spot was the cultural center for the freakier end of NYCs nightlife

spectrum.

4ROxY

It began life as a roller disco; it ended

its run as a cir-cuit-club mecca for

Chelsea boys. Somewhere in the middle, the

Roxy brought the South Bronxs bourgeoning

hip-hop scene south to mingle with downtowns hungry-for-something-new hedonists. It

worked: the club was packed with a gorgeous jumble of revelers,

and remains one of the major milestones in hip-hop culture.

5AREA

At Area youd find upscale gallery pa-

trons partying along-side smackhead paint-ers from the LES. But its ever-changing,

themed installations were as elaborate as anything in the Muse-um of Natural Histo-ry, according to one of its DJs, Johnny

Dynell. They were to-tal extravaganzas.

QUEENS

THE BRONX

STATEN ISLANDBROOKLYN

L A N D M A R K S

The places, spaces, and monuments of

NYC's musical past, present, and future.

PASt FeAtureD LANDMArKS

1 MAx NEUHAUS TIMES SQUARE2 THE THING SECONDHAND STORE3 THE LOFT4 MARCY HOTEL5 ANDY WARHOLS FACTORY6 QUEENSBRIDGE HOUSES7 RECORD MART

1

2

6

3

4

5

5

MANHATTAN

7

7

5

WHAT: DeitCH ProjeCtSWHERE: 18 WooSter Street; 76 GrAND Street; 90 N. 11tH Street, BrooKLyN;

4-40 44tH Dr., QueeNSWHEN: 1996-2010WHY: BouNDAry-

BreAKiNG Art GALLery/PerForMANCe SPACe

15

NEw york story

todd terry said house is a feeling. As far as Im concerned, that feeling will always be a school-bus seat slapped in 4/4 time with high-pitched chants of Its Time for the Percolator, The Witch Doctor, and the thoroughly sixth-grade-inap-propriate Ill Beat That Bitch with a Bat shouted over the top. Many years before I would ever hear dance music in a nightclub, I experienced it, thanks to the wonders of minimally supervised public-school transportation and older siblings with Fol-low Me on cassette.

Ive lived my entire adult life in the boroughs of New York City. My record label, Fools Gold, was founded in Brooklyn. But I am a son of New Jersey. And as a result of that geographical fact, all of my formative musical experiences are inherently Jersey onesyellow bus untz untz untz and beyond.

I was way too young to appreciate Skid Row and Bon Jovis hairspray heyday. Instead I spent countless hours listening to wonderfully terrible local metal and hardcore bands shred on 89.5 FM (Seton Halls Pirate Radio), then flicking the dial to the right and freaking out with alllll kinds of weirdos on 91.1 WFMU. By the time Midtown and My Chemical Romance brought pop-punk glory to the Garden State, I had already moved to NYC for college. But at least I could say I had the Out-sidaz and Lords of the Underground! And everyone else on the New Jersey Drive soundtrack. Theres something special about rapping along to Redmans Brick City shout-outs when youre actually in Newark. Driving past all the motels from Naughty by Natures OPP video along Routes 1 and 9 is far less special, though still kinda fun. (Word to the Loop Inn.)

These rosy musical memories dont just center around homegrown heroes. Red Hot Chili Peppers ruled the entire planet for a particular stretch of the early 90s, though Ill always associate them with the Woodbridge Mall Sam Goody, and certain maxi-singles that may or may not have been liberated from the aforementioned establishment in the front pocket of a pullover Starter jacket. I probably shouldnt worry about statutes of limitations on preteen misdemeanors when none of those chains even exist anymore. But the Garden State Arts Center is still standing! Long before they sold the naming rights to PNC Bank, I begged my parents for months to see a show, any show, at the Arts Center, and got my wish when a Soul Asylum/Jayhawks/Matthew Sweet hat trick of uncoolness became my first concert ever.

My wonder years probably werent all that different from most music-obsessed children growing up anywhere else in the country with access to a cable box. Yet there is a myth in popular culture that everyone in New Jersey somehow wants to escape the accursed Fuggeddaboutitlandia that raised them at the first possible chance. My state isnt the Sopranos. (When I watch old episodes I just get really hungry and remember that I should probably call my parents.) All the Bruce Spring-steen songs about cars and desperation and what-not never really applied to my life. At no point in my personal musical genealogy did I ever feel like I was missing out on something across the river.

But I get it. I live in New York now because I want to (and on a purely pro-fessional level, I have to), not because I fled New Jersey. I understand the chip-on-shoulder mindset though. I probably carry more than a little of that dogged sense of pride than I will actually admit. I definitely will continue to defend the genius of the first Wyclef solo album to anyone within earshot. (Its the Car-nival! Anything can happen!) When its all said and done, I would love noth-ing more than to have my face carved into a Garden State Rushmore some-where in the Watchung Mountains, right next to Todd Edwards, the Artifacts, and the Aly-Us guys who wrote Follow Me, to the sound of a kickdrum some-where in Linden while dreaming of a place where we can all be free-ee-eeah.

Nick Catchdubs is a DJ/producer, co-owner of the Fools Gold record label,

and bon vivant. Find him at catchdubs.com.

GARDEN STATE

Of MINDA New York DJ/producer rides for his Jersey roots.

PHotoS CourteSy oF NiCK CAtCHDuBS

WORDS nick cATcHDUBS

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