Retro

Rip It Up, Issue 201, 1 May 1994, Page 41

Retro

A Look Back (In Shame?) At the 80’s Dancefloor Sound.

One Night Only, Queen’s Birthday Weekend, Sunday June sth, at The Box/Cause Celebre (2 Rooms) High Street.

Hard on the heels of the 70s Disco Revival comes the 80s Funk Revival! Yes, back in the days when everyone else was dancing (if you can call it that) to Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper and Kenny Loggins a hardy group of tragically hip were funking out to Luther Vandross, Prince, New Order, and Level 42.

Some of the clubs of the time were Quays, Zanzibar, the Six Month Club, the Brat, Playground, Asylum, Siren, and Club Berlin (what a debacle that turned out to be!). The inter-table phone system at Club Manhattan was fun for a night but one wouldn’t want to make a regular habit of it. No-one really danced there, preferring instead to chase around the tables to check if that babe on your phone was as foxy as she sounded. Invariably she wasn’t.

The guys weren’t much either with their thin leather ties and Saks suits as shiny as they were expensive. Don Johnson had a lot to answer for as the Miami Vice look went ballistic in the mid-80s. No-one shaved and the guys all desperately grew their hair as quickly as possible until they too had the much-desired gelled pony-tail. Soon you couldn’t step on the dance floor without being whipped in the face.

By the late 80s fashion picked up slightly as a brave few tried the leather and latex look of London but the ‘scene’ wasn’t big enough to sustain it. By now Rap had reared its head and the clubs were overrun with teens Fighting For Their Right To Party. This made the twenty-somethings look terribly old and something had to give. All of which makes it strange to want to celebrate the 80s, a time when radio wouldn’t play Prince, when Ardijah were better than the Dance Exponents, when everyone wanted to try cocaine and knew someone who could score (but just not this week, mate), when you didn’t think twice about Safe Sex (it didn’t exist), and you could understand rap lyrics.

Yes, it was the worst of times, but it was the best of times. Which is why we’ll be celebrating the 80s this Queen’s Birthday Weekend at The Box/Cause Celebre on Sunday June sth. It was originally intended to bring back all the old DJs who were actually there when it happened but sadly we are all old and could never really mix that well (by today’s standards) anyway.