Steven Meisel - Four Days in LA by Vince Aletti

In some of the earliest articles published about the nascent disco subculture, Aletti described Mancuso as an “introvert” who happened to like “bringing people together.” He described him as “part-technician, part-crowd psychologist”-perhaps the finest summary of d.j.ing ever written. Mancuso strove to make his parties both racially inclusive and gay-friendly. This was in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots and the civil-rights movement night life was still largely segregated. But Mancuso was less interested in nonstop mixing than he was in conjuring trippy, contemplative, all-night vibes. could get a crowd to dance to it.Īdventurous d.j.s experimented with ways to make the transition from one song to the next feel seamless-a kind of never-ending peak. It didn’t matter whether a song was soul, funk, or rock-whether it was a hit or a total obscurity. At the time, disco didn’t describe a specific sound or a unified scene. In the years that followed, he retained some of the sunny effervescence of the sixties, but he also became enamored with modern dance music, and he began to throw eclectic, anything-goes parties in his NoHo apartment that combined the spirit of both. Mancuso, who was in his twenties, had grown up in Utica, New York, and he set out for Manhattan in his late teens, immersing himself in the hippie counterculture of the East Village. The Loft was a Manhattan dance party run by David Mancuso, an antiques dealer and music fanatic.

and soul music, and he carved out a niche writing about major artists in those genres, such as the Jackson 5 and Mary Wells.

Aletti, who grew up outside Philadelphia, preferred R. In the early seventies, when Vince Aletti was a young music critic in New York, looking to make a name for himself, the biggest music magazines at the time- Rolling Stone, Creem-were dominated by coverage of white rock-and-roll acts.

Steven Meisel - Four Days in LA by Vince Aletti