Book Launch : “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983

Book Launch “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983” by Tim Lawrence

Telekom Electronic Beats and Echo Bücher proudly present:

The launch of the long-awaited new book Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor by Tim Lawrence, author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture and Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene.

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York’s party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues, as well as breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discreet post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.

Tim Lawrence will do a reading from the book, followed by a moderated Q&A with TEB’s editor-in-chief Sven von Thülen.