Disco, DJing, and HiFi equipment in in 1979

March 1, 2019 4:57 PM

In this photo taken of a DJ booth at a New York City club in 1979, what do you know about the DJ equipment shown, especially the components on the racks? How has this equipment changed since then? How would a DJ like this have broken into the business in 1979 to work at such a club?
posted by crapmatic to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

That is Larry Levan at Paradise Garage, and it is a custom design by RLA (Richard Long & Associates). The design of the system is available online, but it includes a custom Rane / RLA 3-way rotary mixer, 1/3 octave band EQs, crossovers, and some tape loop gear (the latter isn't generally seen in modern booths). The stacks behind him are mostly amps, and modern clubs have stacks that look a lot like this, except with digital equipment instead of analog. Amps haven't gotten a lot smaller in the last 40 years.

Larry Levan himself was a pioneer, he developed a technique that was different from what other scene DJs like Frankie Knuckles or Nicky Siano were playing out. He was offered a residency at Paradise Garage, which was an invite-only club with no booze or food, and helped revolutionize and define the modern dance club. When you hear the word 'garage' in relation to electronic music, they're referring to this DJ, and this club.

This is one of the most important DJ booths in the history of dance/house music, and I encourage you to spend a bit of time googling and poking around the various wikipedia articles and podcasts and long-form essays about the man and the club.
posted by Jairus at 5:45 PM on March 1, 2019 [46 favorites]

I can only speak for the turntables, which appear to be Thorens TD-125s. Not sure what kind of tonearms those are.

These turntables would not be used for DJing today, as they are belt-driven with low-torque motors and spring-suspended. Scratching would be impossible on these. Slip-cueing might work but I doubt the motor has enough torque for it. Even back then, it was more common to use high-torque direct drive turntables (like a Technics or Denon) for DJ duty, or maybe an idler-driven broadcast turntable like a QRK or Gates. My college radio station had Technics 1200s when I was there 15 years ago, for example.
posted by TrialByMedia at 6:59 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

TrialByMedia has the decks right. The tonearms are either SME or Ikeda. Most clubs back then used Technics 1100s or 1200s, because Thorens are nearly impossible to mix on. 1200s are still the gold standard today in club DJing.
posted by Jairus at 9:22 PM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Interesting that the document posted by Jarius talks about how every aspect of the system from the speakers to the electronics, were custom built - yet it makes no reference to the turntables (which we might consider as the most fetishised pieces of hardware by DJs) - other than as input devices.

Here is Larry Levan live at the Paradise Garage.
posted by rongorongo at 1:12 AM on March 2, 2019 [6 favorites]

Here is a detailed article talking about Larry Levan -and the various other people who helped establish the Paradise Garage - its approach as a club, its sounds system and the way in which Levan DJs. It answers your question "How would a DJ like this have broken into the business in 1979 to work at such a club?" pretty well, I think. Basically he got his break by playing in The Loft club, when it was empty, in 1972 - and then came under the tutorship of Nicky Siano - who just happened to be one of the world's most ground breaking DJs in his own right.
posted by rongorongo at 8:37 AM on March 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you're looking to fully nerd out on the time, Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day is a must-read. It is the dance club history you never knew you needed with a lot of detail on how everybody got where they got, and a fair amount of technical info too. Highest possible recommendation.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:55 AM on July 29, 2019