Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain

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A passionately argued and intensively researched addition to the ever-evolving narrative of UK dance music culture. * Matthew Collin * From time to time, a narrative arrives so focused both aesthetically and politically that it’s impossible not to be pulled in by its narrative. In the introduction of his superb book ‘Party Lines’, author Ed Gillett lays out the vision for his exciting history, namely: ‘to deconstruct some of the myths around raves emergence and early years’ and further ‘to expand the narrative towards the present: where previous retellings tend to lose some of their urgency after the Criminal Justice Act is passed.’ A truly thrilling journey through the politics, culture and successive social revolutions of British dance music: a landmark book, and a reminder that the dancefloor is always political. * Dan Hancox *

Britain’s largest and most infamous free party took place on May 22 1992, when 30,000 people danced to Spiral Tribe for an entire week on Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire, an event that, Gillett believes, shaped “modern British social history as a whole”. It prompted draconian reforms of the Criminal Justice Act, with the police granted powers to shut down events featuring “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. If you’ve never owned a rotary dial telephone, then you’ve probably never seen a number card installed in the center of the dial plate. (Touch Tone phones had a slip of paper at the bottom of the keypad.) This enabled anyone who was using the phone to immediately know what number they were calling from. 6. Large Print Dial Overlays Money Matters Neurodiversity Preparing for University - Subject Reading Lists Reading For Pleasure Stationery Can't talk about New York (as I'm in Australia), but when I was a kid the Brisbane phone numbers had a one two digit alpha prefix, then a 4 digit number - eg my grandparents were J 2871, and my aunt LX 1710. These letters were merely mapped on to the dial (note that Australian phones go from 1 to 9 then zero): Ed Gillett: In the book I talk about AI and climate change. The threats posed by AI to dance music are the same as with any other cultural pursuit. I guess the interpersonal nature of DJ’ing and the experience of being in a club might help certain sections hold out for longer. But we’re not far from the point that AI will be able to mimic basically any genre. Dance music is synthetic by its nature, it’s designed to be functional and often quite minimal in the elements it uses – there are very few fields of endeavour more suited to AI.

Fantasy is right. Some teens used the service to talk about sex, and later when moderators were added, used veiled language. “I listened in once, and I can’t even begin to tell you what they were talking about — with strangers!” a mother of three from Wellesley, Massachusetts, told People . Others defended the chats as preventative. “You can’t catch anything over the phone,” insisted chat line operator Betsy Superfon. In 1971/72, I lived in a grotty flat on Westbourne Park Road, a couple of streets away from Island’s studios. We bought out veg on Portobello Road, saw films at the Electric Cinema, but rarely ventured further west to Ladbroke Grove or north past the motorway overpass to the nether reaches of the market. For a short while I sold Frendz on the streets - I was very bad at it - but that involved going to the office which was up that way. I recall seeing completely burnt-out saucepans for sale on a market stall, which puzzled me. All of which is to say that we didn’t have really any interaction with the West Indian community and I don’t recall any obvious presence on their part. The place was crammed with hippies and boarded up rows of houses, but squatting was not yet widespread, although there was talk of it. Around the same time, party lines hooked up to computer modems and people could type to each other as well as talk. The technology’s popularity allowed a brief resurgence. One party line hosted a wedding, where the bride, groom, and officiant were at different terminals in Manhattan. Instead of throwing rice, the 1,000 callers who tuned in typed apostrophes. “It was very beautiful,” said a party line owner, “and very profitable.” Gillett might have put the voices of partygoers higher in the mix; ideas such as the “communal world-building of the dancefloor” deserve more grounding. A comparative element would have been helpful too: are the English angstier about collective revelry than people in other countries? Party Lines invites many perhaps unanswerable questions. Like its subject matter, it’s buzzing, restless, bolshily insurgent. A passionately argued and intensively researched addition to the ever-evolving narrative of UK dance music culture.

Around the country, kids dialed numbers like 550-TEEN for access to party lines, otherwise known as group bridging services. The operators of these lines charged participants on a per minute basis, for example, 95 cents for the first minute and 45 cents for each additional. Dancing to music: what could be more joyful? Rhythm and sweat, release and abandon, feeling rather than thinking, being yourself and becoming someone – or something – other. Dancing gives us, however fleeting, a glimpse of freedom. It can tilt reality. This appalls puritans and fundamentalists. Too many young people “prefer the dark night to daylight”, complained James Anderton in the 1980s. “They dance like there is no tomorrow, and they spread the virus of drug abuse wherever they go. They are not of this world. They believe in very different things to you and I.” The history of dance music has been hugely mythologised. Were there any particular cliches you wanted to avoid?A scheme widely used in the Bell Telephone System for four-party full selective lines (under both manual and automatic operation) used a suffix letter, generally from the set J, M, R, and W, to designate which of the four ringing signals applies to the station. These letters were chosen to not be easily mis-heard when spoken (with regard to manual operation).