Tracklist for #124
1.OpenYourHeart - Madonna.SteveThompson
2.Trapped – ColonelAbrams.RichardBurgess
3.TurnMeLoose - WallyJumpJr.ArthurBaker.Jr.Vasquez.BoydJarvis.
4.SoSweet - LoleattaHolloway
5.DonQuichotte - Magazine60
6.BeyondTheClouds - Mr.Fingers (JackTrax
7.I'llNeverLetYouGo - WillIAmS
8.SevenWays - Hercules.MarshallJefferson (DanceMania)
9.RideTheRhythm - FrankieKnuckles (TraxRecords)
10.TimeToJack –ChipE
11.ICan'tTurnAround - FarleyJackmasterFunk&JessieSaunders
12.J'aiD'AdoreDancing - MarkImperial.RalphiRosario.LarrySturm (D.J.International)
13.DancingInOuterspace - Atmosfear
http://www.theparadisegarage.net/pg/klewisonllevan.html
Excerpt from article by Kevin Lewis
From when it opened in January 1977, to its last party in the Autumn of 1987, the Paradise Garage was the clubbing focal point of New York. A place where dance artists like D-Train and Loleatta Holloway would come to perform. And the place where people like Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Grace Jones and Keith Haring would all hang out. It was the testing ground for labels like West-End and Salsoul, and producers like Francois Kevorkian and Levan himself. It was all these things, and much, much more. For the 2,000 regulars, Larry Levan was like a God. They even tagged his late-night sessions ‘Saturday Mass’. He did things with records that other DJs just didn’t do. He would tell a story with his music. Sometimes sending the crowd crazy, and minutes later, making them break down and cry. There was, and still is, no DJ like him. He was an insanely talented genius, both behind the turntables and in the studio. And he made the Paradise Garage the legend that it is.
“He was the inspiration for all the important DJs in New York today,” says Mel Cheren, owner of disco-giant West End Records and executor of Levan’s estate. “People like Junior Vasquez, Frankie Knuckles and David Morales became DJs because of Larry.” Judy Weinstein, director of Knuckles and Morales’ Def mix organization agrees: “He was brilliant. A true genius. He was, and still is, the best.” And, as for why, six years after his death, Levan and the Garage are still placed at the pinacle of the clubbing world, fellow disco producer and regular guest DJ at the Garage, Francois Kevorkian, says this: “The reason why it is so important is because everyone and their mothers were there every week-end checking it out. It was so obviously and blatantly superior to anything else going on. You had the best sound system around, the most talented DJ you can imagine with amazing records that no-one else could get. Things he’d made himself and things others had made exclusively for him.”
And yet it was more than just that. Levan was obsessed with perfection. He would spend hours re-arranging the speakers in the club until the sound was absolutely perfect. Then change it all again the next week so that the crowd didn’t get bored. “He was a technical wizard,” explains Weinstein, who got to know Levan working at Dave Mancuso’s NY Record Pool. “He could re-build a radio from scratch. He helped Richard Long create the Garage sound system. Larry would tell Richard what he wanted and if Richard told him that they couldn’t do it, he would keep on at it until it was invented for him. Larry would always find a way to make things happen.”
David DePino, Levan’s best friend and the DJ who used to warm up for him, remembers his perfectionism on a different level: “He never wanted it to become stale, he never wanted it to become regular. He always said, “The people won’t come. They’ve gotta know that it’ll be different.’ And they did. People never came into a stale place. I’ve seen nights where everyone was rushing around to get things open and they’d forget something like cleaning the mirror-balls. It’d be one o’clock and Larry would run on to the dance floor with a ladder to clean all six mirror-balls. The record would run out and everyone would be standing there waiting. Not booing, nothing mad, just waiting. And when he finished, he’d go up and put the next record on and people would go mad. They loved that. The fact that even though he was the DJ, he’d spend half an hour cleaning all the mirror-balls.”
He produced his music with a similar passion. There were times he would be in the studio week after week as he tested new versions of songs on the Garage crowd. Some records took over a year to complete.
His passion for DJ-ing lead him to play on three turntables working studio effects and his own special edits into the mix. He invented the now commonplace trick of a capella mixing. The presentation of the music and the pure entertainment of his crowd was paramount. He would use video clips on the huge screen above the dance floor to accentuate certain records and, as the night wore on, he would upgrade the turntables to ones with state-of-the-art needles for the ultimate aural experience on the floor.
Communication with the dance floor was his motivation. His message was one of love, hope, freedom and universal brotherhood. And the set of songs he played was the dialogue he used. He’d even leave gaps between certain parts of the journey. So if he played three songs in a row about music, and the next one was about freedom, he’d leave a short pause or drop in an effect.
“He built sets with stories that went into one another,” explains Kevorkian. “I’m not saying that he only played vocals, but there was a concept there was a concept that he studied and became an amazing practitioner of. He was able to truly use songs, and when I say songs, I mean songs. I’m talking about songs with a voice speaking to you and inspiring you, not some crappy sample repeating 175 times until you’re made to feel like you’re very stupid because it has to be repeated that many times until you understand it. Songs with lyrics. And he used those lyrics to talk to people. It was very, very common for people on the dance floor to feel like he was talking to them directly through the record. And it was a two way thing. Not just the DJ saying, ‘Here is the law,’ or the crowd saying, ‘We’ll only listen to this,’ there was an unspoken mental energy flowing back and forth. I think, more than anyone else I’ve known, he was the one that could pick this up more than anyone else.”
That ability to talk to the dance floor is one of the main reasons why Levan is still revered today. He created something so special between the hours of midnight on a Saturday night and whenever the club closed on Sunday afternoon, that the crowd came back religiously, week after week, for more.
“You had 1000-1200 people actually on that dance floor communing together,” continues Kevorkian. “Sharing their energies together to the music. Singing the lyrics and ad-libbing on top of the music. Today I see 1200 people on the dance floor each in their own little mental head-space. Isolated from each other most of the time. Sometimes clubs get off a little, but not at the level of the Garage. And if you haven’t seen it, I’m sorry to say, but you can’t understand it. It’s like telling me you’ve seen a bicycle ride and I’ve seen race-cars and rockets. It’s a whole different thing.”
“If there were 2,000 people in there every Saturday,” adds Depino, “a good thousand of them knew each other by name. And it was the same, year after year.”
The one thing, however, that really made Levan different from DJs today was that people actually loved him. Not just the hero figure. They loved Levan the person. They loved the fact that he would stop the music and spend half an hour cleaning the mirror-balls. They loved the fact that on membership days, when Michael Brody, the owner, would hold interviews for those wishing to join the club, Levan would open the back door, let the huge queue of hopefuls into the club and start playing the biggest records of the week (much to Brody’s annoyance). They loved the fact that he would put on a record, then run straight down to the dance floor and join in the party. They loved it when he hooked up his radio the sound system and played the Garage mix show on WBLS back to the crowd. They loved the fact that his passion for the party was completely all-consuming and that sometimes, he was just plain crazy. --Lee Lewis
