by Anthony Melendez
I can't take it anymore. Whenever I walk into a bar that's playing house music, I ask: "How can you dance to this stuff?" People will roll their eyes and say, "Get with it, man," and stumble onto the dance floor to jump around and flap their arms like maniacs. That's not dancing--that's a nervous breakdown.
Everything's "house" these days. But just a few years ago, house was but one of the many sounds heard in gay clubs. Now it's taken over; you can't go anywhere without being bombarded by it.
In a recent issue of Hartford, CT's Metroline magazine, writer Geoff Huntington said he was tired of it too. "There's no drama in house music," he wrote. He said he wanted to sing and perform and get into the lyrics of the music he dances to. And I agree. House music is only a mechanical, unfeeling nonstop roller coaster of movement recorded as sound designed to set your nerves on edge.
I'll explore why house has taken over. But first, let's examine what used to exist in its place: our sound, the sound that celebrated gay life and gay liberation from the beginning, the explosive music called high-energy or hi-NRG.
What's hi-NRG? Ah, how quickly they forget. New York's Outweek magazine recently described hi-NRG this way:
"That foot-pounding, fist-shaking, endlessly rising high- speed dance music that carries you on a luminous sail, flying up and up through the sky. It's the stuff that made you feel the sun was going to crack through the dome of The Saint and come pouring down all over you without disturbing the night and the stars. Around the world, it made dance worshipers feel the same way, no matter where they were. For a while, we even thought of it as gay music, our music, because so many of its creators were gay."
There were producers Patrick Cowley and Bill Motley, New York disc jockey Shaun Buchanan, artists Patrick Myles and Sylvester. All gay. All hi-NRG. Throughout the '70s and into the '80s, hi-NRG was the sound. Sure, it had variations primarily what came to be known as disco, really just hi-NRG gone commercial.
But even commercial hi-NRG is still head and shoulders above house in terms of dance appeal: Bronski Beat. Erasure Yazz. Dead or Alive. Great, glamourous disco queens like Gloria Gaynor, Patti LaBelle and Evelyn "Champagne" King. And yes, Donna Summer.
But, as Outweek put it, "More than any other subdivision of dance music, hi-NRG was dominated by gay artists, gay producers, gay DJs--even gay distributors, as well as being lifted up the charts by the enthusiasm from the gigantic gay clubs of the early '80s."
Then AIDS hit. Cowley, Motley, Buchanan, Myles and Sylvester have all died. As the gay population decreased and fewer people made the rounds of the club circuit, the giant clubs faded away. Now New York's big dance clubs are gay some nights of the week, mixed on others, straight the rest.
Outweek wrote, "The closing of the gargantuan gay clubs resulted in less industry focus on what gay DJs were playing less industry investment in hi-NRG artists and, eventually, less product in the stores."
At about the same time, the "death to disco" movement hit big. As '80s conservatism took hold, anything that smacked of '70s decadence was reviled. The homophobic backlash of the Reagan era that took many gay rights groups by surprise also resulted in the antidisco sentiment that eventually permeated even the gay community. One result: house music.
The problem with house is that it's beat-heavy, not smooth. While that can be energizing, there's nothing to hold onto, flow with, no sound to ride along to. Worse is hip house that obnoxious hybrid of rap over a house beat. There was somethlng uniquely satisfying about dancing to hi-NRG, letting not only the music carry you, but the vocals as well. For those of us who like a little drama in our music, the lack of vocals in house is frustrating. Try dancing to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." And I'm not talking about the stereotyped moves from Saturday Night Fever. I'm talking about letting your body slip into the groove, tossing your hair back and moving. See what I mean.
Some people have said house music has allowed for a greater intermingling of the gay community, drawing from the black and latino gay populations as well. But hi-NRG also had roots within the black community, before moving quickly into gay clubs in the late '60s. During the years when Sylvester was king of the dance floor, there was a great deal of mixing of the communities.
So how about bringing back our music? Outweek reported a number of New York area clubs are holding hi-NRG nights. I've noticed some DJs slipping a few hi-NRG tunes into their repertoire. And a coulple of new releases on the Top 40 chart clearly have a hi-NRG beat. Maybe it is coming back. Hey DJs--take notice!