5) Love Sensation (Acapella), 2013
Paradise Garage: A Tribute To Larry Levan. That was what the flyer said for the club night. I had a rare Bank Holiday Monday off, so managed to rope pals GN and OL into coming out. Both of them were guys I'd had romantic dalliances with that had fizzled into nothing, friendships without chemistry to take them further. I thought they might enjoy it, even though they didn't know each other. It wasn't labelled as a gay night but disco is gay music, why not come along and dance and maybe cop off with a guy, and it means I don't have to go alone? GN loved disco as an exercise in camp pomp, OL loved disco as purist authenticity fetishism. I just loved the music - the compilations with Levan's named grated on to them, the dodgy recordings on Youtube.
The promoters, Melting Pot, are known in Glasgow for being audiophiles, and their nights attracting an older crowd. In our early 20s, we were a good ten years younger than most of the people there. But the thing about people who go clubbing in their 30s and 40s is that they are committed. They haven't settled into a boring heteronormative life of nappy-changing and DFS furniture sales: music is important to them enough to make the effort that clubbing takes when you're older, it's different to being 19 and being able to just head out whenever. These people are serious about their fun, and it shows - some of the most up-for-it crowds I've ever seen are at Melting Pot nights.
Meanwhile, at work I've got new managers who've come in and they're some of the worst human beings I've ever encountered. Not just personality clashes and adverserial aims but vile personal politics and complete social disinterest. We are all miserable for the six months it lasts. My brother is still living with me, but now he's old enough to be responsible for himself and it turns out that for now he's just a lazy, irresponsible, thoughtless shit. I'm trying to look out for him as a friend and a brother and a surrogate parent but all he wants to do is fight me and seemingly make my home life as dismal as possible.
Paradise Garage doesn't start particularly well, if I'm honest. GN and OL are getting on but not comfortably. The DJ plays "Vogue" and "Two Tribes" and while they sound great and people get up to dance, it feels a cheat: maybe Levan would have and did play these but it's not what we came looking for. We go to the bar in the other room, and when we come back it's much better: straight into the 80s Post Disco Proto House anthems, "You're The One For Me" and "I Feel For You" being particularly irresistible as anyone would expect. There's airings for early Levan canon too - "Heartbeat", "Don't Make Me Wait" and "Weekend", plus lots of Salsoul-style opulence I don't recognise.
There's an afterparty at a warehouse and all you need to do is turn up and know the secret word which is only being given out at the club. GN is too tired so OL and I head down ourselves when the club finishes. The warehouse DJ is playing the late 80s/early 90s birth-of-house anthems - "No Way Back", "Good Life", "You Used To Hold Me" etc - it sounds incredible. The crowd is sparse and flagging but at this point I've been drinking for five hours and this music is wonderful so we manage to carry on until about 5am, when a new DJ takes over and, having missed the theme, plays the already-rinsed "Inspector Norse" which we take as a cue to go home.
When people talk about Levan and Paradise Garage they tend to focus on one of two things. They either talk about Paradise Garage as a refuge for opressed people, a haven of escape and liberation, where people who lack social privilege could enjoy themselves without the pressures of discrimination feeling present in the way that ambient racism and homophobia can permeate everyday life. Or, they talk about Levan's technical skills - the way he DJ'd and edited, how he made songs sound better through audio techniques and sound design. But the link between the two only becomes explicit when you're on the dancefloor. That when you're enjoying yourself, relaxed, dancing, under the influence, safe in the company of people like yourself, listening to songs that tell stories and explore feelings broad enough that you can relate to, made of textures that make your skin tingle: that can all feel like bliss. Especially if it's your escape from the drudgery of a life that's turned out more frustrating than expected.
The last song the DJs plays before the club closes is the acapella of "Love Sensation." On another night, it would be an act of audacious kamikaze, but tonight it's a communal celebration. Every voice in the venue is singing along, and most of them don't even sing it as "Ride On Time" but as the original (GN and OL do, which is why I notice). "Love Sensation" is so bound up in the history of dance music that it feels like a core text, so it feels fitting that it's the last song at an event celebrating the joy of dancing and its culture. 300 people are roaring along to it, I'm having a great time, and all the things people say about the history of dance music, of clubbing and its pleasures, they make even more sense now.