A Gay Manifesto
Carl Wittman
Carl Wittman, A Gay Manifesto, 1969Open in Goodreads ↗
1
the technologies of pleasure
Disco, Chicago house, Detroit techno and the making of MDMA
-
-
Disco
Albert Goldman
In his portrait of the era, Disco, author Albert Goldman compared its decor to a Witches’ Sabbath, with a huge painted Devil flanked by a host of angels locked in sexual communion.
Open in Goodreads ↗ -
Whole Lotta Love
Led Zeppelin
Grasso helped pioneer the technique of seamlessly mixing one record into another; he would layer the orgasmic moans from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ over heavy percussion, cutting the bass and treble frequencies in and out to heighten the energy level, segueing from dirty James Brown funk and sweet-voiced soul to rock’n’roll, then on into hypnotic African drums and chants.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Love is the Message
MFSB
MFSB’s ‘Love is the Message’ was its inspirational height, a careening wash of strings locked to a compulsive bassline and a manifesto of joy and hope: it became the anthem of black America and a nationwide number one hit in 1974.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Ten Percent
Double Exposure
The first commercially-available 12-inch was Walter Gibbons’ remix of ‘Ten Percent’ by Double Exposure on the Salsoul label.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
I Feel Love
Donna Summer
From the mid-seventies onwards, a series of records began to emerge that used electronics to revolutionise the form: Giorgio Moroder’s compulsively metronomic production of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, the opulent sleaze of Cerrone, Patrick Cowley’s wide-screen productions for gay diva Sylvester.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Showroom Dummies
Kraftwerk
On 1977’s Trans Europe Express and 1978’s The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk styled themselves as glamorous robots, ‘Showroom Dummies’ in identical suits tapping out motorik rhythms on computer keyboards.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Trans Europe Express
Kraftwerk
On 1977’s Trans Europe Express and 1978’s The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk styled themselves as glamorous robots, ‘Showroom Dummies’ in identical suits tapping out motorik rhythms on computer keyboards.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
The Man-Machine
Kraftwerk
On 1977’s Trans Europe Express and 1978’s The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk styled themselves as glamorous robots, ‘Showroom Dummies’ in identical suits tapping out motorik rhythms on computer keyboards.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Saturday Night Fever
John Badham
The release of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977 had brought disco to the mass market, caricaturing it and ironing out its depth and complexities in the process of commodification, largely shedding its black and gay context.
Open in IMDb ↗ -
Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night
Nik Cohn
The fictional tale Saturday Night Fever was based upon, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nik Cohn, was a portrait of working-class youth who poured their frustrated dreams into a frantic outburst of weekend lunacy.
Open in Goodreads ↗ -
E2: E4
Manuel Göttsching
Although ‘garage’ music, which took its name from the Paradise Garage, later came to mean uptempo house music with a gospel-style vocal, Levan had an incredibly eclectic taste, playing anything that captured the devotional, life-affirming feeling he was after: disco, soul, funk, reggae, post-punk rock, European electro-pop, even German kosmische synthesiser epics like Manuel Göttsching’s ‘E2: E4’.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Heartbeat
Taana Gardner
As pure mood enhancement, his mixes of Taana Gardner’s drugged-out, metallic ‘Heartbeat’ or the Peech Boys’ shimmering ‘Don’t Make Me Wait’ were without peer, staking out new frontiers for disco in the early eighties.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
On and On
Jesse Saunders
Jesse Saunders’ ‘On and On’ was the first to be commercially released on vinyl in 1984, but around the same time, Frankie Knuckles was playing tapes of exquisitely fragile Jamie Principle tunes like ‘Your Love’.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Your Love
Jamie Principle & Frankie Knuckles
Jesse Saunders’ ‘On and On’ was the first to be commercially released on vinyl in 1984, but around the same time, Frankie Knuckles was playing tapes of exquisitely fragile Jamie Principle tunes like ‘Your Love’.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Acid Tracks
Phuture
The result, ‘Acid Tracks’ by Phuture, would make the Roland 303 a revered icon of dance culture and create house music’s first sub-genre: acid house.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Blade Runner
Ridley Scott
They shared a vision one step removed from Cybotron’s portentous dystopian imagery, and an outlook shaped by playing video games, watching Ridley Scott’s android fantasy Blade Runner, and the idea of a new computer world replacing industrial society as framed in both Kraftwerk’s records and futurologist Alvin Toffler’s book The Third Wave.
Open in IMDb ↗ -
Night Drive Thru Babylon
Juan Atkins
To some extent it was a product of their environment: Juan Atkins’ ‘Night Drive Thru Babylon’ was a soundtrack to a cruise through the desperate, decaying streets of inner-city Detroit, an economically devastated landscape which had never really recovered from the riots of 1967.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved
Alexander Shulgin
Although he was prodigiously productive, cooking up a whole stream of new compounds, by 1966 his relationship with Dole had soured: the substances he was interested in, psychedelic drugs, were neither marketable nor respectable, particularly considering the climate of the times, with America gearing up for a nationwide moral panic over LSD. He resigned and established his own laboratory at his home in Lafayette, California, in an outbuilding down his garden path, an alchemist’s lair from where he would generate a relentless flow of new mind-altering drugs for the next thirty years, hundreds of which are detailed in his autobiography-cum-pharmacological cornucopia, PIHKAL (‘Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved’), and its follow-up, TIHKAL (‘Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved’).
Open in Goodreads ↗ -
Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved
Alexander Shulgin
Although he was prodigiously productive, cooking up a whole stream of new compounds, by 1966 his relationship with Dole had soured: the substances he was interested in, psychedelic drugs, were neither marketable nor respectable, particularly considering the climate of the times, with America gearing up for a nationwide moral panic over LSD. He resigned and established his own laboratory at his home in Lafayette, California, in an outbuilding down his garden path, an alchemist’s lair from where he would generate a relentless flow of new mind-altering drugs for the next thirty years, hundreds of which are detailed in his autobiography-cum-pharmacological cornucopia, PIHKAL (‘Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved’), and its follow-up, TIHKAL (‘Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved’).
Open in Goodreads ↗ -
Tainted Love
Soft Cell
They had already had a hit in Britain; the minimalist, pre-techno pulse of ‘Tainted Love’, an electronic cover version of a Northern Soul classic which had become the best-selling British single of its year.
Open in YouTube ↗ -
Memorabilia
Soft Cell
One track, ‘Memorabilia’, was a disco sequence reverberating with disorientating echo; Cindy Ecstasy was invited to add a louche, breathy rap defining her interpretation of hedonism.
Open in YouTube ↗