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Sunday 5 April 2009

Larry Levan and a whole host of other people

A couple of Popbitches ago this marvellous piece was featured:

>> Miami splice <<
Sam/LiLo: not the new Larry Levan
Honk writes:
"A friend was in a Miami club this week where
Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan were booked to DJ.
They shared a single laptop between them, indeed
Lohan seemed to be 'rocking' a room of 600
using nothing more sophisticated than iTunes.
And it showed, as her four-second attention
span meant guests were treated to something
akin to the 'intros' round of a pub quiz. Lohan
disappeared to a crouching position behind
the decks for a good 10 minutes whilst she er,
blew her nose and Ronson took over. She at least
tried. 15 minutes later, they'd packed up, the
club emptied immediately, and a real DJ took
over and played to a near-empty club."

I wrote an article about Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson. Why, despite not being amazing role models, are brilliant because their relationship can serve to teach some home truths. Like: not all girls need to be super-feminine to get laid, but that's cool. Or that really generically astoundingly hot girls do fancy other girls. Or that people don't have to define their sexuality anymore.

The shortened article is here. The full article is remarkably defunct now, as a whole load of shit happened. But I wouldn't want to write any further on that in case the whole thing changes again.

Changes is the name of a song by Larry Levan. He was a DJ and producer in the 70's- 80's.




He's credited as the founder of dub, and dubstep is meant to be a derivative of dub. But I think it's a bit like taking that little plastic thing on the tip of your shoelace of your Nike Air Force IIs and putting it in your nose. Dubstep takes a small, irrelevant element of dub and makes it really dangerous for no particular reason other than to look a bit hard.

Larry used to play at the Paradise Garage in New York. People used to have sex on the dancefloor. Men used to wear heels and big hair and women were mostly made of sequins. The Paradise Garage probably reeked of poppers. When I was 14, my mum found some poppers in my bag and made me pour them in the sink. She muttered "Smells like Studio 54".

Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when Jenn-nay is in a bar doing lines and KC and the Sunshine band is playing? Well, yeah, a bit like that. I think Jenn-nay had a cooler life than Forrest. Like when Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird is playing and she's about to jump out of a window a gajillion storeys high? That was cool. She was played by Robin Wright Penn who was married to Sean Penn who was married to Madonna and is also known to hang out with Lindsay Lohan. Who got compared to Larry Levan.

Madonna used to go the Paradise Garage. The promotional video to Madonna's first song, Everybody, was filmed there. Not that Youtube will let me find it. Wikipedia says: "The song introduced classic Madonna themes like individuality, dancing and singing as forms of self-expression, as well as the optimism that dominated the first five years of her career."

And now I kind of wish, oncemore, I could do my dissertation on Madonna. Enjoy:


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