clair056

Back in December 2013, The Wire magazine featured this blog in its 'Unofficial Channels' column: (from The Wire, December 2013 -  nb John Eden is incorrectly described here as the publisher of Datacide, though he is a contributor to it) The item was based on a short interview with me by Dan Barrow, which I've reproduced below as it sets out some of my thoughts on 'History is Made at Night' in a bit more detail: How did you come to start the blog? What kind of interests fed into it? I stated the blog in early 2007. The name came from a byline on a poster for ‘The Last Days of Disco’ - at the time I was unaware of the 1930s film, History is Made at Night.  The origins of it go back to the mid-1990s, when I first started writing about the history of dance music scenes – for a while I had a column in Mixmag on this called Back in the Day, and I also had stuff published in Eternity and Alien Underground zines. I guess every generation thinks they are the first to discov...

Grew up reading about the late 1960s and early 1970s, all those heroic struggles of resistance and repression.They seemed like ancient history to me as a teenager but actually were only 10-15 years away, a time period that seems like yesterday to me today. Now I'm older but not necessarily wiser I like to think I'm less caught up in the historical romance of great events and when I read about Kent State, or the Panthers, or Bloody Sunday, what I see are just kids, cut down by the state (in this case the US and British states), leaving behind grieving friends and families.  Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, killed by Chicago police in 1969 - aged 21 (referenced by Jay Z in the line 'I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died' in 'Murder by Excellence' - Jay Z was born on that day, 4 December 1969).  Jeffrey Glenn Miller (age 20), Allison B. Krause  (age 19), William Knox Schroeder (age 19),Sandra Lee Scheuer (age 20) - killed by the Ohio National Guard at Ken...