Time for Larry Levan Way

Any DJ who knows anything will know who Larry Levan is. The pioneer of club/dance/whatever the kids are calling it music. Infamous for his 80s sets at the NYC club Paradise Garage.

Levan was a gay black DJ, killed by AIDS, whose rep transferred to the gay white Sydney friends who I knew who had experienced his genius - and that rep transferred to countless others and that rep lives on.

This is the faaabulous street party to promote the project to rename a NYC street in his honour (petition - sign!).

DeBlasio - make it so!

[Also. someone is trying to make a movie. Hell yes.]

It features STACKS of old farts (just like myself :]) getting down (via François Kevorkian, David DePino, Joey Llanos and Jocelyn Brown - they get down too! + some of the DJing reminds me of me at my most inept, but it doesn't matter!) to the greatest hits of the Garage. And it is f-ng, life affirming, insanely wonderful. I love this crowd. Just viewing this crowd is joyful.

BEHOLD THE INTERSECTIONALITY!

Video of the day starts with Jean Michel Jarre, which if you understand Levan's deejaying is sooo appropriate. Then right into my fave track of forever. Kill. Me. Now.

"Oooh, make me move. Make me feel like my whole world is on FIRE."

"You make me feel. Mighty, mighty real."

".. the light of love will shine on us, forever and a day."

"And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?"





++ here's The Final Night Of Paradise Garage September 1987

+ a far less house-ey, far more disco Paradise Garage 1979