Early in the 1970s, unnoticed by lots of people, the old pop and rock establishment was starting to be challenged by a musical underground that would take two very different developmental paths. One would be a home for the dispossessed and angry – punk – and the other would reject the dismal social and economic depression and embrace hedonism – disco.
In New York, fuelled by an increasingly confident and visible gay community, disco was becoming a sensation that would be quickly embraced by the mainstream. But, before that happened, there was the best part of a decade when you had to be seen in the clubs of New York to be considered part of the in-crowd.
The names of these clubs have become legendary – Circus, Xenon, The Paradise Garage and, of course, the daddy of them all, Studio 54 and these are the places photographer Veretta Cobler (usually known just as Veretta) frequented to capture not just the characters but the excitement and abandon of these clubs where literally anything went.
What Veretta has captured here though is something more poignant because these years turned out to be something of a final fling before the hedonism had to take a back seat with the arrival of a disease that struck terror into the community – AIDS. At the time no-one was really sure what this mystery illness was but it seemed that a death sentence was being spread by liberated, unprotected sexual intercourse within both the hetero and homosexual communities - and the consequential victim of the paranoia it created was the disco club.
In truth, however, it may well be that places like Studio 54 had actually run their course in any case. Their elitism and the exclusion of anyone not deemed beautiful or outrageous enough to grace their dance floors was already raising hackles amongst those who found themselves unaccountably shut out..
2nd hand very good condition
Hardback
250 pages
30cm x 28cm