PARTY: Among certain hip people in New York the word “party” has nothing to do with a dinner, or a birthday, or fishing, or hunting, or politics; rather, it has to do with going out to a discothèque, dancing for hours, and having a good time. They say to each other, “Let’s party.” Or—and this is the coolest way of saying it—“Let’s party down.” Songs have been written in which the word “party” alone, chanted against a funky beat, is the refrain. A man we know named Vince Aletti spends much of his time “partying,” and, as can be imagined, he has a lot of fun. Vince Aletti loves to dance, knows just about all the good current dance songs, and writes a column on discothèque music for a national music-trade magazine. When popular-music critics write uncomplimentary articles about discothèque music, Vince Aletti, in turn, will write articles defending and promoting discothèque music. He has written articles defending the Trammps, Archie Bell and the Drells, and others. Last winter, in his column, he mentioned
what a great song for dancing “Love to Love You Baby,” by Donna Summer, was, and because he was the first person to write about that song and it became a big hit the record company gave Vince Aletti a gold record.
Every Saturday night, Vince Aletti goes dancing at a place in lower Manhattan called The Loft. On a recent Saturday night, he invited us to come along. On our way, he told us some things he thought we ought to know about The Loft. He said, “The Loft is open only on Saturday nights. It isn’t like a regular discothèque; it’s more like a private party. You just go and you meet your friends and you have a good time.” (Vince Aletti is a very shy, retiring man in his late twenties, and it occurred to us that he would never go anyplace where his friends wouldn’t be. Once, we introduced him to a man from the Midwest, and the man grabbed his arm and said, “Hey tiger, how ya doing? God love ya.” It made him wince visibly.) Vince Aletti said that the people who go to The Loft to dance were called “guests”; that most of them started coming in at one o‘clock; that to get into The Loft you had to show an invitation; that to receive an invitation you had to have a friend who was already a member submit your name; and that The Loft sometimes stayed open until seven o’clock in the morning.
We arrived at The Loft at a quarter past midnight, and for half an hour after that were the only customers there. Vince Aletti didn’t have to show an invitation to get into The Loft. The doorkeeper knew him and greeted him this way: “Hi, Vince, what’s happening?”
The Loft is not like any other discothèque we’ve ever been
to. It is made up of two floors. The downstairs is a recreation area. It has sofas and a bar, where fruit juices, fresh and dried fruits, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and cookies are served without cost. Upstairs is where everyone dances. There are pretty, big balloons and paper streamers hanging from the ceiling. Above the dance floor, in a booth fashioned after an old Wurlitzer jukebox, is the disc jockey, whom we could see from below dashing around and arranging records. Vince Aletti told us his name was David Mancuso and that he was the proprietor of The Loft. Vince Aletti then led us up a narrow stairway to meet him.
Vince Aletti disappeared.
David Mancuso told us, “I have tried to make this place like a club I used to go to ten years ago called the Territorial Club, on 125th Street. I had just come to New York from Utica, and that club was just like what I thought a club in New York would be. It had a very warm and sincere atmosphere. The people were nice, the refreshments were nice. It was halfway between a bar and someone’s house.”
At half past twelve, David Mancuso played the first record of the evening. He said it was a song called “Sweet Sixteen” and that it was written by the Diga Rhythm Band, which is headed by someone who was and sometimes still is the Grateful Dead drummer. People started coming in. Vince Aletti reappeared and said, “I feel like I’m on a receiving line, because everybody who comes in here I know them, and I’m just greeting people.” Then a song called “You Should Be Dancing” was played. Vince ran off to dance. Months ago, he told us that this was one of his favorite songs.
By two o’clock, the upstairs was filled with dancing people. Downstairs had many fewer people, and we went down to get a look at some of the guests. Quite a few people were wearing track or jogging outfits in bright colors. We saw one man dressed in what appeared to be the uniform of an officer of the Royal Navy, a couple dressed as Bedouin Arabs, and one man dressed in white ladies’ platform shoes, white girls’ knee socks, white jockey shorts, and white undershirt. We went back up to the dance area.
The record that was then being played wasn’t by any group we recognized. It was just the sound of drums—about what you would expect to hear in a documentary film about primitive people. All the lights were off and people were dancing and making funny noises in the dark. The lights went on and everybody cheered. Then they went off again and everybody laughed. Then the music changed to a song by a group called Double Exposure. We saw Vince Aletti, and he was dancing vigorously to Double Exposure’s song. He also danced vigorously to a song by a singer named D. C. LaRue and a song by the Emotions. He was less enthusiastic about a song by the Spinners called “Rubber-band Man.” He said, “I like it when the Spinners get into it, ’cause it’s kind of cute, but then it gets too cute.” Then the disc jockey played a song by a group called Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. It is now Vince Aletti’s favorite song, and when he danced he got so excited that he clenched both fists and thrust them into the air.
—September 27, 1976