Jesse Saunders is credited with making the first beat track
Well they would come and hear me play and then go back to their clubs, The Playground, and they would do the same thing. And they started putting together their own beat tracks. Which is OK but I’ve never been one to sit back and play a bunch of beat tracks. They called themselves having the same kind of parties at The Playground that we were having at the Warehouse or the Powerplant, but they really weren’t. because they were into playing a lot of beat tracks all night long, and to me that’s all they were, were a bunch of beat tracks.
And they didn’t overlay them with songs?
No not necessarily, no. They would play a bunch of beat tracks all night. And the type of crowd I played for was much more sophisticated than that. They wanted to hear songs. Granted I can break it up here and there a little bit, but for the most part they wanted to hear songs. And if didn’t play enough of them then they had a problem. The audience I had were very true, very loyal and they would never come down on me about it, but I knew exactly what they wanted. I could read them really really well. I couldn’t stand there and play beat tracks all night long.
What were the other differences between the clubs?
The Music Box was a heavy drug crowd. And they were more into like the Angel Dust, those dark scary drugs. I’m not saying they didn’t do drugs at the Powerplant because they did, but the kind of drugs the kids did at The Powerplant were more like MDA and ecstasy.
How important was ecstasy to the scene?
Ecstasy wasn’t around. I mean it was but it was MDA. But I don’t want you to say that it was revolving around the drugs, whatever they were, because the main focus was the music and the dancefloor. The drugs that people took, recreationally, or why ever they took them. I mean I know why: they took them because it was a part of the evening. But I didn’t have people walking out of there and years later ending up in rehab. It wasn’t like that at all. The audience that I had was a working class crowd, and on the weekend this is what they did, to hang out, it was part of their evening.
But were there enough people taking ecstasy, with its empathetic qualities, for it to make a difference to the atmosphere?
Yeah, there was enough that it made a difference. Yeah sure. But then you had that other half of people on the outskirts of the crowd, that was doing stuff like cocaine. When they can’t... those people that wanted to smoke Sherman sticks, or happy sticks [joints dipped in PCP], as dust as Angel Dust. Sherman sticks were those Sherman cigarettes dipped in something like Formaldehyde. I mean I wouldn’t allow those type of things to happen in my club. But the crowd that went to The Music Box they got into that.
How was the music different over there?
Ronnie was doing a lot of his own edits as well, and a lot of his edits were very repetitious. very high energy and very repetitious. He would take a song and take a certain part of the song, and he’d run that for ten minutes, before the song even played. And then he’d go into the song or go back to another ten minutes and just play one particular part. But The Music Box, the whole atmosphere was a lot darker than what we had.
What was the Powerplant like physically?
It was about 9000 square feet. You first came into it you came up these stairs and there was a big lobby area where we had like our kitchen set up and coatroom area. Couches and bankette seats where people can actually sit back, and chill, things like that. Nice venetian blinds on the windows, that whole thing. And you came around this corner into where the dancefloor was, this big open area. And at the end the booth was slightly raised at the back. I guess it was kind of a T-shaped room. We kept it the colour scheme of the place was very muted: charcoal grey, exposed wood floors, and we really just concentrated on the sound. The sound to me was the most important.
When did people realise that they were creating something new; that this music was something that wasn’t just old soulful underground disco?
They didn’t. they didn’t know what they had until it was gone. As much as I loved the Powerplant and as much as I tried to give it I was also beginning to move into production, which was something I really wanted to do. And all of a sudden the crowd began to change a bit, and then it began to slack off. And for me, I looked at it as this has to be a blessing in disguise. things slacked off, I can close the club down, this’ll give me more time to do the things I want to do, for me.
I closed it in September of ’86. And there were all sorts of rumours flying around, that we were busted by the city because of drugs, which wasn’t true, that the IRS shut me down for tax evasion, which was not true. Just all kinds of weird rumours. And these rumours got started by people from the Music Box.
There was no competition. The Music Box is what the Warehouse turned into after I left it. See there was no competition. I had already been
there. I had already worked that room.