57th Street Boogie

West 57th Street, Manhattan — where disco didn't die, it got tighter, stranger, and started pointing somewhere new.

In 1979 the press declared disco dead. On the dance floors of Manhattan it was very much alive — just changing shape. This show follows one small independent label, Prelude Records, and the musicians and remixers who turned strings into synth bass and built something that didn't have a name yet.

Patrick Adams, François Kevorkian, Hubert Eaves III and Kashif. D Train's You're the One for Me went to number one because Larry Levan played it at Paradise Garage until the room agreed. That's how records were tested then.

The show ends in 1983 with a studio project, no face on the sleeve, no fixed lineup — a groove that 808 State sampled six years later, already inside acid house. I found records like these in a shop in Peckham. You'd hold them up to the light and try to work out who was really in the room.

— Simone