By Greg Wilson
David Mancuso’s London Loft party, ‘Journey Through The Light’, celebrates its 10th anniversary on June 23rd. Held Upstairs @ The Light in Shoreditch, it’s a party like no other, underpinned by a high-end audiophile sound system that has to be heard to be believed. Although its originator, now approaching his 70’s, hasn’t been able to make it in person during recent times, the party continues in his absence, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy his chosen stand in (he hopes to return for future dates though).
Mancuso’s legacy to dance music goes deep. He was there at the very roots of New York Disco culture, dating way way back to ‘Love Saves The Day’, his inaugural party, held at his home, a loft space in NY’s NoHo district, on Valentine’s Day in 1970.
It’s almost 10 years since I attended my first London Loft. This was in November 2003, a month before my DJ return, and just after I’d reviewed, for Grand Slam magazine, Tim Lawrence’s riveting history of 70’s US dance culture, its title, ‘Love Saves The Day’, of course, taken from that original Loft gathering 43 years ago – Mancuso, the book’s central character, at the very heartbeat of the era (I posted the review earlier this month: http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2013/05/love-saves-the-day/). Following this I wrote the piece below, ‘David Mancuso And The Art Of Deejaying Without Deejaying’, motivated by my discovery in Lawrence’s book of a direct link between Disco and Psychedelia, something which had only been hinted at in stuff I’d previously read about Mancuso. Although it was clear he’d been inspired by Timothy Leary, particularly the book that the LSD evangelist had co-written, ‘The Psychedelic Experience’, it was only on reading ‘Love Saves The Day’ that I learned there was a personal connection between them, and, in a eureka type realisation, understood the ramifications of this association.
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