Catch Disco Historian Tim Lawrence On His Tour In Germany

Tim Lawrence’s essential new book Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor 1980 – 1983 is out. Electronic Beats is sending him on a book reading tour in Germany.

As the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, New York’s party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by creative intensity. Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor 1980 – 1983 chronicles this tumultuous time. It picks up the story of New York dance music that Lawrence began with his first book, Love Saves The Day: A History Of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979. The book charts the breakthrough movements in art, performance, video and film that occured in the city’s subterranean party venues in the early ’80s.

In the book Lawrence interviews DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers to illustrate how the relatively discreet post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes developed and converged. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion and the spread of AIDS brought this special, short-lived time and place in American culture to a troubled end.

To support the book, Electronic Beats is sending Lawrence on a four-city tour of readings through Germany.

Here are the tour dates:

Dec 8 – Bochum – Folkwang University (Institute For Popular Music)

Dec 9 – Berlin – Echo Books

Dec 10 – Offenbach – Robert Johnson Theorie

Dec 11 – Hamburg – PAL

Read more: This is an excerpt from Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor 1980 – 1983

Read even more: Tim Lawrence remembers one of New York party culture’s founding fathers, the late David Mancuso