case study : Studio 54 /  by JoFF Rae

Studio 54 was a popular New York nightclub from 1977 until 1980 established by founders and creators Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York City, the space was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming CBS radio and television Studio 52. 

In 1977 the theater was transformed into a nightclub called Studio 54 by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, with Jack Dushey as a financial backer.

They operated the company as Broadway Catering Corp. It took only six weeks to transform the theater into a nightclub and cost $US400,000 before its grand opening on April 26.

Rubble and Schrager hired Scott Bromley as architect, Ron Doud as interior designer and Brian Thompson as lighting designer. Jules Fisher and Paul Marantz, two well-known lighting designers, created the dance floor environment and created moveable, theatrical sets and lights using the copious existing TV lighting circuits and fly system from the previous use of the building as a CBS TV Studio.

In December 1978 Rubell was quoted in the New York newspapers as saying that Studio 54 had made $7 million in its first year and that "only the Mafia made more money". Shortly thereafter the nightclub was raided and Rubell and Schrager were arrested for skimming $2.5 million.

Studio 54 closed with a final party on February 4, 1980, when Diana Ross personally serenaded Rubell and Schrager. Ryan O'Neal, Mariel Hemingway, Jocelyn Wildenstein, Richard Gere, Gia Carangi, Jack Nicholson, Reggie Jackson, and Sylvester Stallone were among the guests that night. Schrager and Rubell pleaded guilty to tax evasion and spent 13 months in prison.

Event planner Robert Isabell had four tons of glitter dumped in a four-inch layer on the floor of Studio 54 for a New Year's Eve party, which owner Ian Schrager described as like "standing on stardust" and left glitter that could be found months later in their clothing and homes. Frequent regulars at Studio 54 included Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Halston, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Debbie Harry, Grace Jones, Michael Jackson, Calvin Klein, Elton John, Tina Turner, Divine, Margaret Trudeau, Sylvia Miles, Francesco Scavullo, Truman Capote, Margaux Hemingway, Janice Dickinson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Diana Ross, Cher, Salvador Dali, Diana Vreeland, John Travolta, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Brooke Shields and Martha Graham.

Performers at Studio 54 during its first few years of operation included Grace Jones, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Gloria Gaynor, Sylvester, Amii Stewart, Stephanie Mills, The Ritchie Family, The Village People, Anita Ward, Two Tons o' Fun, Jocelyn Brown, France Joli, Cheryl Lynn, Jean Carne, Claudja Barry, Klaus Nomi and Linda Clifford.

Netherworld Dancing Toys - For Today /  by JoFF Rae

Video for "For Today" by New Zealand Band Netherworld Dancing Toys.

Netherworld Dancing Toys

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The group formed at the University of Otago. The band members included Malcolm Black, Nick Sampson, Graham Cockroft, Brent Alexander and later Annie Crummer and Kim Willoughby. The original brass section was composed of Otago students including Alistair Perry, Matthew Trbuhovic and now chief information officer for NSW health Michael Rillstone (Mick Rillstone). The band's name is from a Roxy Music song "Spin Me Round" from their Manifesto album: "A nether world dancing toy/I'm wired for sound..." .

The band drew full houses frequently at Dunedin venues, notably the Captain Cook and Oriental Taverns, and were a popular student dance band. Musical influences were varied ranging from Dexy's Midnight Runners-styled brassy new soul, to classic Motown and ska. The band quickly developed a suite of original music which was distinctive in sound despite several brass section lineup changes.

In 1983, they played at Sweetwaters and in 1984 they supported Blam Blam Blam on tour and a double sided LP of the concert at Mainstreet, Auckland was released.

Don McGlashan produced "The Real You"/"Standing In The Rain"/"New Zealand Love Song" which was released in November 1984.

In 1985 "For Today" reached No3 in the singles chart and the Netherworld Dancing Toys won five categories at the 1985 New Zealand Music Awards. Malcolm Black and Nick Sampson won the 1985 APRA Silver Scroll for "For Today".

In the early 2000s their song, "For Today" received renewed prominence when it was used as an advertisement for New Zealand Post and at one stage for a driving safety campaign, and is also included on the soundtrack of the film Sione's Wedding.

Malcolm Black is now a music industry lawyer. In The Mechanics of Popular Music, A New Zealand Perspective he says of the band's demise, "We were university graduates who had a number of different options and wanted security and a regular pay packet..." Graham Cockroft is CFO of Contact Energy.[1]

Light Surgeons - SOUNDFIELD /  by JoFF Rae

In July 2014 we were commissioned by WIRED Magazine to create a new interactive media art installation as part of Bentley Motors Night Call event in the historic Wind Tunnels at Farnborough Airport. This prestigious event celebrated British design and engineering excellence with the launch of Bentley's new Continental GT V8 S. This was the building where Bentley had tested its original V8 powered car design back in 1957 and the building had been abandoned for many years and only recently opened up for events. We instantly fell in love with the building and its history, however it was a very quick turnaround for such a large scale project and our ideas had to be achievable in a short time frame. Our response to this challenge was to explore the relationship between sound, space and energy while referencing the building's long history of aeronautical design and engineering. The resulting piece was a sound reactive video installation built with custom software in Openframeworks that uses a realtime fluid dynamics engine to distort and manipulate a set of vector fields. We designed and developed this custom software to allow us to visually map this huge space and to create a playful interactive piece that would engage the audience at the event while they walking through the tunnel. We used a set of six 20k Full HD Christie projectors with very wide angle lenses to cover the walls and ceiling of the tunnel in three separate bands along the lengh of the space. Each of these arches of light contained a pair of Naim Audio speakers and a pair of vocal microphones at their bases. As the software generated different virtual energy forces that slowly moved down the space, the audience were encouraged to interact with these visuals by releasing their own sonic forces into the room. The resulting audio visual emissions and graphic turbulence created in these vector fields drove a multi channel piece of sound design in Ableton Live using OSC and Midi messages. The resulting sound scape sampled, effected and distorted the audience's utterances and triggered additional lighting effects at each end of the space. The piece was only on display for one night at the launch event and we very much hope to be able to develop it further and show it again in the wind tunnels at some point in the future to a more public audience. Creative Direction: Christopher Thomas Allen & Tim Cowie Interactive Producer: Alice Ceresole Software Developer: Neil Mendoza Sound Design: Tim Cowie Camera: Andy Davies & Christopher Thomas Allen Editing & Post: Tim Cowie Assistant Producer: Maddie Yullie Supported by: Naim Audio & QED Productions Thanks to: Max Mirams, Patrick O'Shea, Paul Wigfield, Johnny Palmer more projects at : www.lightsurgeons.com

Apollo Nights - Mount Social Club /  by JoFF Rae

Facebook Event < here >

APOLLO NIGHTS
MOUNT SOCIAL CLUB
MOUNT MAUNGANUI
22ND AUGUST 

EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING 

*****EVENT IS FREE*****

From slow jams / hip hop to New Zealand's finest Electronic Dance music

Featuring

RXR
CRIME HEAT
RISKY 
RESINONE 
CHILL COLLECTIVE
ECHO INADA
WRECKAGE 

With a debut performance from

***TAIWERE***

RXR 

***UNRELEASED***

CRIME HEAT 

https://soundcloud.com/crime-heat-records

RISKY

https://soundcloud.com/riskynz

RESINONE

https://soundcloud.com/resin-one

CHILL COLLECTIVE

https://soundcloud.com/chill-collective

ECHO INADA

https://soundcloud.com/echoinada

WRECKAGE DUBS

https://soundcloud.com/wreckagedub

Radio 1's Ibiza Prom with Pete Tong - Act 1 /  by JoFF Rae

Published on 29 Jul 2015

Pete Tong takes charge of the BBC Radio 1 Prom & decides to employ the Heritage Orchestra to play a selection of Ibiza classics! The Royal Albert Hall has never seen anything like it!

Jules Buckley conducts the orchestra through dance masterpieces by Fatboy Slim, Eric Prydz, Shapeshifters, Robert Miles, ATB, Moby, Frankie Knuckles & Inner City with the help of Ella Eyre... and that was just Act 1!

Make sure you watch the full performance on the Radio 1 iPlayer channel as the show was bursting with dance classics - http://bbc.in/1JxeD63