Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain

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It is quite correct to say this was done to make it easier for the human (mostly women by this time) operator. Transylvania-6 and -7 were NYC exchanges the most famous number was Transylvania-6-5000 used in the song by that name. (See note below.) That was before my time, but I remember it was the Hotel Pennsylvania near Madison Square Garden. (Its still there!)

This article was amended on 24 July 2023. An earlier version had misattributed to Ed Gillett the coining of the term “business techno”. Some chat lines attempted to appease parents by adding moderators who periodically reminded teens of the price per minute. Welcome to the party line, a group phone call where teens went to meet strangers in the mid 1980s. Think of it like a precursor to the internet chat room. Browsing through the Staten Island, NY telephone directory of January 1940, I found that certain phone numbers were printed with a suffix J, M, R or W. What do these mean? I've marked a few of them in the image below.You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. 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.’

It’s no great leap to segue British social history of the early 80s into that of the late 80s, as Gillett often does here. But his aim is to consciously stitch together events to account for the repressive, authoritarian, fun-sceptic place in which the UK finds itself in 2023. We got here, the author argues, by raiding Afro-Caribbean blues dances, sound systems and gay night clubs, by forcing travellers off the road – and by beating up miners and E’d-up kids. Many of the DJs, venues, radio stations and clubs are likely to be unfamiliar to soca fans and carnivalists, but parallels keep hitting you as you read accounts of the cat-and-mouse games played by promoters and revellers on the one hand and police and policy-makers on the others. Over every field of ecstatically happy people dancing to a common beat there invariably hangs a roiling cloud of suspicion, provoking a downpour of outrage from the tabloid guardians of public morals. Notting Hill Carnival is a bigger target. Potentially, it’s eminently exploitable, but it’s probably too diffuse and problematic to attract major investors. Whatever RBKC might like to think, it’s not owned by anyone, so it can’t be bought outright, and attempts to exert overt municipal or corporate control provoke fierce community resistance. Unlike music, Carnival is intimately tied to place and in Notting Hill it is, after 57 years, firmly embedded in a strong community, which is its greatest protection. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.His highly-acclaimed documentary work and writing have appeared on the BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian, Frieze, DJ Mag and The Quietus amongst several others.