{"id":104860,"date":"2016-11-15T18:27:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T23:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=104860"},"modified":"2016-11-15T18:34:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T23:34:33","slug":"love-saves-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/love-saves-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Saves the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

David Mancuso<\/p><\/div>\n

When I moved to New York I wished that its legendary dance scene, the one from the seventies and eighties that people never shut up about, was still alive\u2014that I could pop in at Paradise Garage or The Gallery or The Loft, maybe wearing tan polyester\u00a0poplin\u00a0leisure pants or something pleathery with lots of studs in it, and writhe the night away. I don\u2019t know why I wanted this. It takes three drinks to get me to look at a dance floor with anything other than fear. But\u00a0I\u2019d listen to the music from this era on my 160 GB iPod Classic (still ticking, thanks be) convinced that I\u2019d been born too late,\u00a0dreaming up names for twelve-inch house and disco tracks while I walked around. \u201cSusurrations of the Heart.\u201d \u201cAvenue Days, Boulevard Nights.\u201d \u201cOur Ribbon Cutting (Snip-Snip Vocal Mix).\u201d There were other even stupider ones, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019d pass by the old locations of these clubs and think, Well, Dan, that\u2019s where it all happened, alright. I was a disco tourist, guilty of romanticizing a New York I never knew: one that wasn\u2019t made for me, one whose return was made more impossible every day as people like me (straight, white, male) moved here in untenable droves, and I knew that. But I forgot it whenever I put on Dexter Wansell\u2019s \u201cLife on Mars<\/a>,\u201d or Loose Joints\u2019 \u201cIs It All Over My Face<\/a>,\u201d or Ashford & Simpson\u2019s \u201cStay Free<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those tracks are all\u00a0on David Mancuso Presents<\/em> The Loft<\/em>, a two-disc compilation that I kept in heavy rotation the first year I lived here. Mancuso, the impresario behind The Loft and thus someone who can legitimately claim to have thrown some of the best parties ever, died this week at seventy-two<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Others\u2014people who were actually there, rather than pretending\u2014have told his story better than I could; actually, in an interview with Red Bull Music Academy this summer, Mancuso told it pretty well\u00a0himself<\/a>.\u00a0His Loft, which started officially in 1970 with a party called \u201cLove Saves the Day,\u201d wasn\u2019t a commercial space. It was a private party every Saturday night, catering largely to the LGBTQ community and boasting, where sound quality was concerned, the kind of audiophile production values that can turn dance music from a hobby into a religion.<\/p>\n

If religion<\/em> is too strong a word, philosophy <\/em>definitely\u00a0isn\u2019t. Along with Nicky Siano and Larry Levan\u2014who ran The Gallery and Paradise Garage, respectively\u2014Mancuso defined and protected a utopian vision for club culture, one that bears repeating. As the electronic-music site Resident Advisor notes<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

The private party kept an egalitarian ethos at its core. “I want a situation where there are no economic barriers, meaning somebody who didn\u2019t eat that day or only has a few dollars in his pocket can eat like a king, drinks are included, you see your friends,\u201d Mancuso told\u00a0Disco Music<\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s no difference if you have a lot of money or a little.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mancuso\u2019s death affords us a chance not just to remember that ethos but to reconstruct it at 140 beats per minute seven nights a week, because god knows it could use some reconstruction right now, times being what they are. If you\u2019re trying to change the world\u2014even if you, like me, are just another New York\u00a0transplant\u2014you could do worse than pick up a pair of Klipschhorn speakers, two turntables, and some hot-fire Patti Labelle promo pressings. Mancuso said The Loft\u2019s guiding principle was \u201csocial progress\u201d: as we head into a long, cold winter, it should be our\u00a0party line, too.<\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I moved to New York I wished that its legendary dance scene, the one from the seventies and eighties that people never shut up about, was still alive\u2014that I could pop in at Paradise Garage or The Gallery or The Loft, maybe wearing tan polyester\u00a0poplin\u00a0leisure pants or something pleathery with lots of studs in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[16030,55,23676,25719,7643,24994,25721,25722,125,25723,11989,1718,2427,2428,11539,25720,6948],"class_list":["post-104860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-audiophiles","tag-dance","tag-dance-music","tag-david-mancuso","tag-disco","tag-eighties","tag-house-music","tag-larry-levan","tag-new-york-city","tag-nicky-siano","tag-obituaries","tag-records","tag-seventies","tag-sixties","tag-the-gallery","tag-the-loft","tag-turntables"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLove Says the Day: Remembering David Mancuso<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The creator of the original Loft party has died at seventy-two\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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