Thursday, May 22, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Books: Disco inferno

By Mike Prevatt

There are reasons most nightlife scenes in America's various metropolises don't possess the cultural relevance or social influence of those in New York and Miami. While Chicago and Detroit were the birthplaces of house and techno, respectively, their venues do not encapsulate the spirit and freedom embodied in the music. Los Angeles may have the celebrity heft to make any ol' heap of bricks famous, but its clubs lack the charismatic management of a Steve Rubell (NYC's former palace, Studio 54) to make its resident stars feel at home. San Francisco doesn't have the size, ambition or energy of its East Coast scene peers; Washington, D.C., has progressive house heroes Deep Dish (see music feature, page 24) and DJ/promoter Scott Henry, but the international nightlife barometer only seems to pick up on the old "Buzz" parties at Nation; and, with few exceptions, Las Vegas' multitude of thumping sin dens can't overcome their reputation in the industry as being musically stale and technically insufficient.

Gotham and South Beach have also never suffered from a shortage of look-the-other-way entrepreneurs, opportunistic misfits-cum-promoters and street-savvy hoodlums--the prime candidates with just enough greed and pride to bother with the messy nightlife arena. Frank Owen, a veteran reporter who primarily writes for New York City alt-weekly Village Voice, takes a look at such characters in his recent nonfiction book, Clubland, which thoroughly reveals the transgressive and criminal tendencies of such figureheads through the recounting of their successes and comeuppances. For Canadian nightclub pioneer Peter Gatien (Limelight, Tunnel), Miami tough Chris "the Binger" Paciello and amoral Pied Piper Michael Alig, there was never a cost too great in ensuring that their bastions of urban decadence weren't the hubs of club culture, or that their fame index wasn't skyrocketing like those of the venues they worked at--not even, in the case of Alig, a human life.

Gatien was in it for the money, the pesky consequences of facilitating narcotics be damned (he was acquitted in 1998 of distributing MDMA, found in "club drug" Ecstasy). Paciello was in it for the glitzy notoriety, as well as a respect he'd never earn in the suburbs of New York (he established Liquid in Miami with fellow working-class thug "Lord" Michael Caruso, as well as the late-'90s celeb stomping ground Bar Room). And Michael Alig was in it for the sensory overload, selfishly pushing taste and psychotropic transcendence beyond its limits until he lost all sense of humanity and perspective (Alig was found guilty of murdering fellow "club kid" Angel Melendez in 1997; it is the basis of the forthcoming film Party Monster).

It would be easy to view the British-born Owen as Glowstick Nation's version of Hunter S. Thompson, especially as the book opens with the author buying and ingesting the drug ketamine (Special K). His experiences in nightclubs, his sensitive but forthcoming dealings with their employees and his vivid descriptions of the mostly depraved atmosphere at their events during the '90s paint the picture of a proactive and downright ballsy reporter. But he also displays sufficient understanding of the law, music, youth culture, morality, sociology and economics to succinctly relay the dynamics of nightlife. His thoroughness and credibility breeds interviews from every major player; he even flies the Melendez family in from Colombia to the Voice office for fact-checking purposes. In this age of story fabricators like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, Owen's accountability is welcome.

Owen is at his best when describing how the utopian ideals of club and techno culture inspired both its visionaries and admirers to create a harmonious sanctuary from an otherwise inhumane and isolating society. He's poignant when articulating how those principles were forever marred by the ghastly and sobering truths he uncovered from 1990 to the present, expressing an uneasy coexistence between his profession and his preferred setting for escapism.

Some of the underworld politics and relationships he digs through are skim-worthy, and he occasionally falls prey to the sort of precious diction that makes the Voice so pretentious at times. At the same time, he can be a bit dry, given his beat and the paper he covers it for. But there's very little detail that disrupts a compulsory reality check such as Clubland, divulging the shady means to suspect ends that have little to do with peace, love, community and respect.