Dave Haslam
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Discotheques originated in occupied Paris during the Second World War. The Nazis banned jazz and closed many of the dance clubs, breaking up jazz groups and driving fans into illicit cellars to listen to recorded music. One of these venues - on the rue Huchette - called itself La Discothèque. Then Paul Pacine opened the Whiskey a Go-Go, where dancers would hit the floor accompanied by records played by disc jockeys on a phonograph. Pacine went on to open other clubs in Europe, while in Paris Chez Régine opened in 1960, catering to the self-styled beautiful people. The upmarket thrills of Régine's enjoyed by the American jet-set in turn inspired New York's Le Club, although it didn't last long, closing soon after a new venue in New York took off in 1961: the Peppermint Lounge." --Dave Haslam, [1] [LRB | Vol. 22 No. 1 dated 6 January 2000 | Dave Haslam] "You can't escape the feeling that Eshun doesn't enjoy half the music he's writing about (two releases from Underground Resistance are praised thus: 'techno becomes punishing, a barbed-wire warzone of voltage endured and inflicted') and you yearn for him to write about the female voices that have done so much for modern music - soul sisters like Loleatta Holloway, Chaka Khan, Lauryn Hill."--Dave Haslam, reviewing More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction[2] "Some of the great days of disco, in 1976 and 1977, coincided with punk, but if you read any received history of popular music, you wouldn't know it. The inveterate rock bias in the music papers, magazines and academia has left much dancefloor history still undocumented. The trad agenda set by commentators in the sixties, heavy with value judgments - glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown - persists. Clearly, too, most rock writing foregrounds lyrics, whereas most dance music works through texture, beats and effects. Back in 1976, punk set itself against disco wholeheartedly. In July 1979, at the home stadium of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, thousands of disco records were set alight while the crowd chanted 'Disco sucks, Disco sucks!' The 1989 edition of the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music describes disco as 'a dance fad of the Seventies with a profound and unfortunate influence on popular music'." --Dave Haslam, [3] [LRB | Vol. 22 No. 1 dated 6 January 2000 | Dave Haslam]
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Dave Haslam is an author and DJ. Originally from Moseley, Birmingham, and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, where the rumours were that Toyah Willcox was his girlfriend. Having moved to Manchester in 1980, he DJ'd over 450 times at the legendary Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, UK including Thursday's Temperance club night in the late 1980s. In the 1990s he also hosted the weekly night Yellow at the Boardwalk nightclub in Manchester.
More recently he has written a book about the Manchester music scene, called Manchester, England, a book about superstar DJs called Adventures on the Wheels of Steel, and Not Abba; the Real Story of the 1970s. He currently holds an infrequent guest-only night, 'Sweet Sensation' at various venues in Manchester. He also presents 'The Weekender' on Xfm Manchester and has a weekly residency at South nightclub (Manchester) every Friday night. The night is called 'Another Planet' and Dave has regular guest DJs like Terry Hall, Chips With Everything DJs, Ben Livingstone and more.
