Disco may have died, gone undercover or been lying in wait along with other 1970s fixtures like oil crises, economic malaise and wide-legged pants.
In any case, it is being recalibrated for "SiriusXM", the satellite radio station, which is starting a four-on-the-floor channel called "Studio 54" on Aug. 15th, the company will announce on Wednesday.
"Studio 54 Radio", available on channel 15, will be a round-the-clock broadcast of dance and disco hits, rare remixes and deep cuts, many from the collection of D.J.s and habitués of "Studio 54", the era-defining Manhattan club run by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager.
John "Jellybean" Benitez, the producer known for early Madonna songs like "Borderline" and "Holiday", who went from patron to D.J. at "Studio 54", will serve as the channel’s executive producer.
"People are still dancing to these songs 30 years later", Mr. Benitez, who is firmly in the disco-never-died camp, said by phone Monday from Ft. Lauderdale, where he was preparing for a club gig.
"The music of the 1970s and early ’80s", he added, "still lifts today."
Mr. Benitez is soliciting tracks from other D.J.s from the disco era and will open his own vault of tens of thousands of CDs, 45s, 8-tracks and reel-to-reels for the station, relishing the opportunity to play music that has not been heard on the radio before – dance versions of songs that weren’t even commercially available at the time.
"None of these songs have music videos, or very few of them, so as soon as you hear the song, it really triggers an emotion rather than a visual", he said, before launching into a nostalgia reverie.
"You could be in high school, in college, you could be dancing on a speaker in a nightclub. It touches people in a way that current music doesn’t."
Along with the chance to brush up to Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol, that was part of the appeal of "Studio 54":
"It was all emotion", Mr. Benitez said.
"It was all about dancing and having fun and being free, and being uninhibited and letting go. Most people went to clubs, they left their troubles at the door, and went on the dance floor. It was a very tribal, communal kind of feeling."
The station will milk all the feelings of "Studio 54" in its weekly interview program, "The Marc and Myra Show", hosted by Marc Benecke, "Studio 54’s" former doorman, and Myra Scheer, the onetime executive assistant to Rubell, who died in 1989.
Their guests will include seemingly everyone who still has a disco-glitz story to tell, from the club’s original head of security to its waiters and busboys – no editing allowed.
"It’s the only place you’ll be able to hear what actually happened there", said Mr. Benitez, 53, who first went to the club in "the summer of ‘77 – when the Bronx was burning", he recalled.
"I was with another D.J., named Tony Carrasco. We’d come down from the Bronx, and we were determined to get in there. It was an eye-opening experience, for sure. You had straight people and gay people, white people, black people, movie stars, sports stars and people from the Bronx and Queens. Everybody was a celebrity there, everybody just looked fabulous."
On their first attempt to get in, Mr. Benitez and Mr. Carrasco waited in line with the plebians.
Dressed in "probably the flyest thing I owned at the time", Mr. Benitez said, "I went right up to the front and just looked Steve right in the eye and said: 'You gotta let me in.' And he said: 'Who are you with?'"
They got in; within a few years Mr. Benitez was manning the decks inside the club:
"As a D.J. at 'Studio 54', you got to take a lot of risks", he said wistfully.
"Those people had to act like they’d been before, so they danced to everything."
source: nytimes
