Club Kids - Black Dog Publishing

CLUB KIDS
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INTRODUCTION
Club Kids: Underground Culture is a stunning
visual study and rigorous critical analysis of
social trend. The recent emergence of high-end
clubs, which favour fashion, rather than music,
have become sanctuaries for misfits. Club Kids
analyses the way in which the club regulars
condense all the aspects of their underground,
eclectic, emerging culture, into a few nocturnal
hours. Fashion magazines like Grazia and
Vogue are commiserating the death of
Boombox—the premier hotspot of London (if
not the world)—and as the doors close the club
leaves in it’s wake a gang of startling fun-loving
hedonists who have defined contemporary
culture with their distinct take on music,
fashion, art.
create range of high-end but accessible clothing
in acid colours or strictly monochrome with
metallic and day-glo finishes. Host and stylist
Kabir combats the mundane at every turn with
his high-octane styling for publications like
i-D and Dazed.
prints for TopShop) the book profiles the main
players in todays Club Kids whilst appreciating
those who have gone before—New Romantics,
Acid House, 90s Rave, Cyberkids, Indie Girls
and Boys, Nu Ravers and Nu Gravers to name
but a few.
Being immortalised on websites
(seeyourseflout.com/lastnightsparty.com)
and in compulsive personal style blogs this
live-for-the-moment phenomenon defies it’s
seemingly one-night transience. Club Kids
is a reaffirmation of the tireless efforts of the
children of the night to be more than just a
passing trend and celebrates their ability to
rework the old and create new.
The book also profiles the Club Kids of 90s
New York who made the headlines when party
boy du jour, Michael Alig, murdered his drug
dealer and was sentenced to life imprisonment,
and his contemporaries, like Leigh Bowery,
who continue to inspire the current generation.
At the forefront of contemporary Club
Kid culture are the industries of art, music
and fashion. Performance art reigns as
performers like The-O (a glitter-coated,
power ballad mimer) take to the stage. In fact,
for contemporary club kids, each night is a
performance in itself. Included in the book
are fashion designers Casette Playa, Gareth
Pugh and Henry Holland, who, between them
With an analysis of the importance of the
social aspect of clubbing—individually
expressive, yet somehow identical, Club Kids
have a compulsive need to be an distinctive
while simultaneously conforming to their
peers—the book celebrates trend setters past
and present. From the neon immersed Club
Kid publication SuperSuper to the bold graphic
design of Kate Moross (who is now designing
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Club Kids is a lavishly illustrated, visual
overview of the young people who shape our
societies trends and celebrates the underground
night culture—seeped in glitz and glamour—
which has broken through to the mainstream.
In New York’s post-Warhol world of
celebutantes Club Kids have flourished. James
St James’ book Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous
but True Tale of Murder in Clubland is a
gripping account of his adventures in New York
clubland and was made into the cult film Party
CLUB KIDS
INTRODUCTION
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Monster starring Macaulay Culkin and Chloë
Sevigny. The underground post-new-wave
aesthetics of New York bands like VIP and are
charted in Club Kids. And nfamous New York
clubnight Misshapes is profiled in the book.
The weekly Sunday night affair has been hosted
by Madonna—where she also DJed— and is a
regular celebrity haunt, including the likes of
Cindy Sherman and Agyness Deyn. The club
has reached a crescendo with the publication
of Misshapes Book, a comprehensive
photographic account of the Club Kids who
frequent the night. Across town Sophia Lamar
hosts Club Ruff, a weekly all night affair
boasting live performances and the best Djs in
town.
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CLUB KIDS
ESSAY
The cardboard box in the hall-way contained the legless torso of Angel Melendez, a 26 year old
drug dealer of Colombian origin. His skull had been smashed by three hammer blows and he had
been asphyxiated. He’d been dead almost a week now. Before putting Angel’s body into the box,
Michael had wrapped it in a sheet and two plastic garbage sacks after Freeze had sprinkled it with
baking soda, to "absorb some of the odour". Then they slid the cardboard coffin across the parquet
floor and out through the front door, before humping it into the elevator. Dumping the body was
going to be difficult, which was why they’d left Angle decomposing in the bathtub so long.
They were both sweating: Freeze from fear and exertion, Michael because he’d done some more
heroin to steady his nerves. Then again, Michael would have done heroin anyway, whether he’d
been ditching a corpse or shopping for make-up. That’s why Angel had been allowed to stay at the
apartment. Because, like Freeze, he sold drugs.
In fact, that was the only reason that anybody put up with Angel. Nobody really liked him,
apparently. Angel they’ll tell you, wrinkling their noses, Angel was tacky. You know, he wore those
stupid Pumas with platform soles, like, this high, and those white leather pants, and those fucking
wings. And that white leather cap with the peak down over his eyes? Puh-leese. He looked like a
reject from the Village People. And he was always dressed the same ... You know, he was just tacky.
There was no other way to describe him. That’s what they say, the people who took Angel’s drugs
at Michael’s parties.
The trouble with Angel, they say, was that he never really fitted into the scene. He was a hangeron—he followed Michael everywhere —and unsympathetic at that. They say he would bark at
people who didn’t have money or power. And worse, he was saving money. The difference between
a good dealer and a bad one, they say, is that a good dealer, like Freeze, doesn’t do it for the money
- a good dealer does it because he likes the drugs and the scene. He’s his own best customer. That’s
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ESSAY
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why people didn’t like Angel. They say his dream was to make $100,000 and get out, go into
business, make films, you know, something like that. So he never got high on his own supply. He
was a bad drug dealer. He was a capitalist.
Now Angel had made his last deal; his dream was over. His legs were already being washed down
river, wrapped in a couple of garbage sacks. the rest of him was stuffed in this cardboard box that
had once contained a Zenith colour TV; Freeze had found it in the basement of their apartment
building on West 43rd Street. It had been a tough week for Freeze and Michael, living with a
corpse in their bathtub. For a start, they couldn’t take a shower. And Michael, fuck him, Michael
kept telling people what they’d done, practically boasting about it. But it was nearly over now.
Once they got to the Westside Highway, everything would be okay. They were in control.
Immediately after the murder, Michael and Freeze didn’t know whether to shit, shave or shampoo.
They couldn’t call the cops because the place was full of drugs. Anyway, the rent on the apartment
was being paid by Michael’s boss, Peter Gatien - the owner of Limelight, Palladium and Tunnel,
the three biggest and most successful nightclubs in New York. Gatien didn’t need more drug
trouble; Limelight had already been closed down seven months earlier, in September 1995, after
a police raid. All right, it had been a pathetic bust - three arrests for selling small amounts of
marijuana, and the only connection to the club was that one of them was a Limelight busboy. The
club was re-opened a week later, after Gatien had paid $35,000 in fines, posted a $150,000 bond
and employed an outside security firm to devise an anti-drug plan.
But this was murder, involving two drug dealers and Michael Alig, king of the Club Kids and
scene-maker extraordinaire, New York’s best-known and most successful party promoter - and
the principal creative consultant of Gatien’s club empire for the past six years. Alig knew that
undercover agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) were still investigating Gatien’s
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CLUB KIDS
clubs, trying to put together a drug conspiracy case against the club magnate. The last thing
Gatien needed right now was a trail of blood leading from a dealer’s butchered corpse to his
doorstep.
Alig called his friends, asking them what he should do. Although some of them might have said,
"Get a lawyer, call the police," most of them told him to "get rid of the body". He tried to find
someone to help him take care of "this terrible mess", but, for once, there were not takers. Finally,
he and Freeze worked out a plan themselves. Freeze went to Macy’s and bought two large chef ’s
knives and a meat cleaver. According to Freeze, "Michael told me that if I gave him ten bags of
heroin, he would take care of this part. So I did, and he went into the bathroom alone and cut off
both of Angel’s legs. Then we put each leg into plastic bags, and then into a duffel bag, and carried
them, one at a time, to the river and threw them in."
Then they had to dispose of the rest of Angel’s body. By chance, a cab was waiting right outside
the block when they came out of the elevator into the lobby. The doorman of the swish Riverbank
West apartment building supposedly commented on the foul smell emanating from the box they
were carrying, but maybe that’s just a little Hitch-cockian detail Alig added later as he boasted to
his friends about the killing. He loved a sick joke.
But the cab driver certainly helped them lift their load into the boot, then tied the lid down
because it wouldn’t close: the box was too big. Alig and Freeze rode downtown with Angel’s
mutilated body and got out where 25th Street meets the Westside Highway, right by the Hudson
River. When the cab drove off, they hauled the box to the river’s edge and threw it in. Imagine
their faces when they peered down at the filthy spume. The box was floating. They had sealed it so
thoroughly that the card-board coffin was air-tight.
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SECTION
There was so much money swirling around New York during the mid-Eighties that the economic
boom generated a new trend in New York nightlife: the mega-clubs, multi-floored or cavernous
venues that held up to 3,500 people. Wall Street was booming, big was beautiful. People were
working hard and they needed places to let off steam, to drink, to dance, to get high. But nightlife
trends can come and go quicker than a puff of dry ice, so in order to fill their dancefloors night
after night, month after month, the mega-clubs needed promoters to organise weekly events and
draw regular crowds.
In return for a complimentary guest list, drink tickets, a budget to decorate the venue and,
depending on the numbers, anything upwards of £1,000 a night, promoters will supply the
"fabulous" people - the VIPs, pop stars, models, artists and performers, as well as a clique of
up-and-coming wannabes and the hardcore clubbers with strange hair-dos, make-up and bizarre
fashions - who "dress" the venue.
The fabulous people, in turn, ,keep a club buzzing and attract the "normals" - businessmen,
tourists, yuppies, the B&T crowd ("bridge-and-tunnel" people from the outlying Borough of
Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, or from New-Jersey). Ironically, these un-fabulous normals keep
the industry afloat by paying full-price admission and spending freely at the bar. Essentially, their
dollars cover the rent, wages, insurance, maintenance and profit of a nightclub. And, of course, they
also subsidise the fabulous people, who will not come unless they get "comped" (free admission),
free drinks and access to the VIP room.
As the vital link between the clubs, the fabulous and the normals, successful promoters are in an
unusually privileged position. They enjoy all the trappings of fame and success - wealth, groupies,
drugs and expensive health care - without having to endure the drawbacks - stalkers, paparazzi,
autograph hunters, invasion of privacy and charity events. They occupy a very special place in the
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CLUB KIDS
BETH DIT TO
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CLUB KIDS
BETH DIT TO
Meet Beth Ditto: the Coolest Woman on the
Planet. Sex. Drugs. Squirrels. You probably
haven't heard of Beth Ditto, but a glance at
the opening page of her remarkable CV will
provide a clue as to why she's now, officially, the
coolest person in rock'n'roll.
Beth is a larger-than-life lesbian activist from
the Deep South. During childhood, she recalls
being so poor she had to eat squirrels. But
now, her punk band, Gossip, is on the verge
of completing a rags-to-riches journey to the
dizzy heights of global stardom.
In recent days, Beth has been compared to
Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin and Debbie
Harry. The New Musical Express describes
her as a future "rock goddess". Noel Gallagher
reckons she's "fookin' immense". At the age of
25, she's just signed a major record deal, and is
about to become very, very famous.
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"Beth has got a voice that's just absolutely
phenomenal," says Krissi Murison, the deputy
editor of NME, who recently interviewed her.
"It's amazing. She has the sound of a soul or
gospel singer, which the Gossip throws over
the top of a sort of funky punk soundtrack.
Everyone I know who's heard them has been
absolutely blown away."
High praise indeed. Yet Ditto's appeal extends
far beyond the "riot-disco" sound, cutting a
swath through the indie club scene of Britain
and the United States. On both sides of the
Atlantic, her brand of outspoken feminism
and outlandish fashion sense creates almost as
many headlines as her music."The refreshing
thing about Beth is that she actually stands
for something," adds Murison. "She's one of
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the first really talented lesbian musicians that
we've seen for some time. In both her clothes
and her music, she's pulling down stereotypes
about what lesbian woman should look like,
and stand for."
Despite her size (at little more than 5ft, she
weighs in at 15 stone), Ditto is also described
as a style icon. "She's glamorous and sexy, and
is completely obsessed by clothes. The queer
politics, as she puts it, is also a big thing for
her, and she's not afraid to stand up and shout
about it."
Success has arrived at a gallop for the Gossip.
Just over a year ago, they were a little-known
punk band whose albums had achieved critical
acclaim, but had limited commercial success
beyond the indie clubs of Portland, Oregon,
where the band had been based since 1999.
Then they released "Standing in the Way of
Control", a slow-burning hit that inspired the
Sony label to snap them up. They were swiftly
tipped for greater things and invited to spend
the summer touring with the poly-sexual disco
troupe Scissor Sisters. It wasn't long before
Ditto made her first appearance on MTV. A
few weeks later, Jonathan Ross invited the
Gossip on to his chat show, to perform the
title track of their third album, an attack on
Republican opposition to gay marriage.
Then, on Tuesday, Ditto was chosen by NME
as number one on its annual "Cool List" of
zeitgeist-catching musicians, beating Pete
Doherty into 28th place, and providing a blow
for female equality as one of five women in the
top ten.
CLUB KIDS
KATE MOROSS
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“I get up late but not because I'm lazy, I just
tend to go to bed late,” says graphic illustrator
Kate Moross, also: “I’ve had to grow balls to
deal with money”; “I can embarrass myself
quite a lot” and “I went to a séance the other
day! I wasn't allowed to sit in the circle ‘cause I
was messing about too much, they were calling
out for some spirit or something and I kept on
knocking on the walls. I got sent upstairs!”
Amongst other things, Kate Moross describes
herself as a workaholic which, if you’ve ever
checked out her project list, must seem an
understatement to the average eight–a–day
worker. Starting out three years ago, Kate began
designing eye-catching flyers for a selection of
London’s hippest club nights and merchandise
for bands like Punks Jump Up, Gossip and
Comanechi. Inevitably, it didn’t take long for
Kate’s work to become as highly sought after
as her client—she’s since deftly upgraded to
the world of commercial illustration. Consider
that she’s only 21 and has found time to fit
in a degree at Camberwell, and you could be
forgiven for any astonishment.
“I've just finished my dissertation, I handed it
in on Thursday!” she says, her voice dripping
with relief. “It's hard at uni when they give you
fake projects asking you to work to a brief as
if you were working for a client, when you’re
actually doing that. I submitted Cadbury's
with my second year work. I felt like a bit of an
arsehole but I'd worked so hard on it, I felt I'd
justified myself,” she’s talking, of course, about
the huge purple billboards you’ve probably
seen splashed across the country, proclaiming
that ‘the milk in your dairy milk is—yep, milk’,
possibly her largest scale project to date and
big news for any designer. “It was weird getting
KATE MOROSS
texts from people, my stepfather was on the
train to Bristol or something and saw loads, he
emailed my mother; I think that was the first
time he'd ever used a Blackberry! One minute
it was just a little picture on my screen and
the next minute its twenty feet wide—I was
slightly disconnected from it at the time but
the feedback from everyone was great.”
Kate’s work is all about rules—whether
that means breaking them, bending them,
mixing them into strange combinations or
strictly towing the line. “I live for briefs,” she
explains, at the tail end of what has been a
busy year. “I like restrictive briefs in terms of
brand guidelines and rules about colours and
rules about sizes and things. Imposing rules
on graphic designers is always fun because
you are restricted but at the same time those
restrictions can create really big portals of
ways to create work.” Her style is a split
between psychedelic, free, hand drawn and
coloured organic designs and structured,
spatial shapes and patterns—either way, it’s
consistently well informed.
“I base my work originally around Gestalt
theory, which very simply means that the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
That's where isometry comes from, it's like
you can work with just a triangle and make
those triangles into a house. It’s kind of the
whole basis behind drawing—everything is an
illusion, just a collection of lines on a page but
your mind makes it into the image or the words
or whatever it is that is there.”
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Her coming work for Topshop—part of
an imaginatively named Kate Moross line
—encompasses another of her interests,
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CLUB KIDS
club ponystep
I was sent a new(ish) magazine the other day.
Called Super Super, it's on issue six, and it is
a hyper-dayglo-snazz-tastic mangle of dangly
pendants, stone-wash trews, luminous hoodies
and smiley faces. It is shiny, bright, hilarious,
a mess. And it is rave. More rave than Candy
Flip, De La Soul and Mr C in a vat full of
ecstasy at the Hacienda's Hot night. Can you
feel it?
Yes, yes, I know that everything eventually
comes back into fashion, but it's still strange
to witness the reclamation of what was once
known as acid house. High-top trainers, lime
green bum bags, African print leggings ... it's
an all-out retina onslaught. It's even stranger to
hear the aural attack of rave again, though it's
now deemed electro, or nu rave, or new Jack, or
whatever you want to call it, man, are you on
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CLUB KIDS
CLUB BOOMBOX
The wild hues, neon and fancy dress of club
legend are back again. Help, cries Carola
Long. From neon slogan T-shirts to hot pink
eyeshadow, clubland fashion is shimmying off
the dancefloor and on to the shop floor. The
flourishing London club scene centred on
nights such as Boombox in East London is
the crucible for a crazy, dressed–up Eighties–
meets–Nineties look hitting the mainstream
with the impact of a thumping bassline.
You can try closing your eyes and hoping it
will all go away and leave you and your Marni
smocks in peace, but the trend has already
reached tipping point. Or, as Steve Slocombe,
founder of the club kids’ fashion bible, Super
Super magazine, puts it: “The colour genie is
out of the bottle.”
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CLUB KIDS
CLUB STUDIO 54
From Bianca Jagger's entrance to the club
on a white horse on her 30th birthday, to the
massive neon sculpture of the man in the
moon with a cocaine spoon under his nose,
Manhattan's Studio 54 is more frequently
associated with the excesses of the disco era
than any other club. Clearly designed to
financially capitalize on the late 1970's disco
explosion, for a time Studio 54 was a fabulous
success. The Studio 54 name and stories of
decadence and debauchery are continually
revived as 70's nostalgia, but the true glory
days of the club were brief.
Studio 54 was located at 254 West 54th
Street in a building that had hosted an opera,
theatre, and television studio at various times
in its history. Former model Uva Harden
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