A line somewhere in the middle of Party Lines, “By calling this a myth I do not mean to suggest it is false,” crystallises the book’s outlook rather neatly. Author Ed Gillett is actually quoting someone else, one Caspar Melville, on the origin story of acid house, but this lively, partway polemical history of British dance music culture and its relationship with the prevailing establishment displays a kindred spirit.
Most of what Gillett covers in Party Lines has been written about in other books, from the ‘blues’ house parties held by Caribbean migrants in the 1960s to the heavy-handed policing of the grime and UK drill scenes in the current century. (There are many things in between which don’t speak directly to the endemic racism of British officialdom, as those examples do, but the influence of Black music on domestic dance history in general means its spectre is invariably nearby.) Here, though, there is an effort to look beyond popular narratives: the idea that from 1988 onwards clubland was entirely powered by MDMA is treated sceptically, for example.
More than anything, Gillett outlines just how exhaustingly unpermissive this island is, and has been, for people who wish to cut loose – homophobia and classism play large parts too, but ultimately most of the population are suspect – and how much of what passed for counterculture has now been subsumed by capital, with pirate radio stations bought out by conglomerates and Ministry Of Sound having a presence in the Millennium Dome.
Sequenced in roughly chronological order, the hellish economics involved in trying to run a nightclub in recent years are compounded by the impact of COVID, Party Lines’ penultimate chapter topic. I imagine this one was written as events unfolded, and UK club doors reopened this time two years ago, yet oddly it feels all the more from a bygone era: criticism of DJs like Nina Kraviz for taking bookings in countries with relatively lax social distancing laws has now been pretty much memoryholed, for better or worse.
Party Lines, Ed Gillett (Picador)
Price: £20. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER