2. The Fall: “Totally Wired”
Smash cut to two decades later, when Sante is living in New York, taking in the downtown scene and often swinging by the storied Times Square bar Tin Pan Alley, where her friend, the then-aspiring photographer Nan Goldin, was a bartender. One of Sante’s favorite things about Tin Pan Alley is that this jittery 1980 single by the English post-punk group the Fall was on the jukebox.
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3. ESG: “U.F.O.”
Another defunct nightlife spot that comes back to life in Sante’s book is the Roxy, “a roller disco in the West Twenties that one night a week covered the rink and welcomed the Manhattan hip-hop-post-punk interface.” She recalls a memorable night there when the rap legend Afrika Bambaataa served as D.J. and played this spacey tune from the great Bronx dance-punk group ESG “at least a dozen times in succession.”
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4. Public Image Ltd.: “Public Image”
In the late 1970s, writes Sante, the stereo at a friend’s First Avenue apartment “was our communal radio station,” where different friends would take turns introducing new sounds: “The first spin of the eponymous first single by Public Image Ltd. got us up and leaping — not pogo-ing, more like stags in the forest.”
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5. The Floaters: “Float On”
Another First Avenue favorite that “would get us all up and swooshily pantomiming,” Sante writes, was this singular 1977 hit by the Floaters, which is part otherworldly R&B slow jam, part personal ad — complete with each member’s astrological sign.
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6. The Pop Group: “She Is Beyond Good and Evil”
One of my favorite anecdotes in the book concerns the Pop Group, the English post-punk band that released this jaunty single in 1979. While hanging out in the First Avenue apartment around that time, one of Sante’s friends happened to spot the Pop Group from her window. “Hey, Pop Group! Come up!” she yelled to them. “So,” writes Sante, “the Pop Group, from Bristol, U.K., duly climbed the stairs and joined us for an hour or two of smoking herb” and listening to Jamaican 12-inch singles. “We never saw them again.” Only in New York!
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: “The Message”
“It was the summer of ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash,” Sante writes, setting the scene for a personally tumultuous time in 1982. “The Message” and its menacing refrain — “don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge” — hover over that section of the book like an aptly chosen song soundtracking a cinematic montage.
