“Surely people who go clubbing don’t read”: Dispatches from the Dancefloor and Clubland in Print

Abstract

In the context of the UK dance club scene during the 1990s, this article redresses a presumption that “people who go clubbing don’t read”. It will thereby test a proposed lacuna in original journalist voices in related print media. The examination is based on key UK publications that focus on the musical tropes and modes of the dancefloor, and on responses from a selection of authors and editors involved in British club culture during this era. The style of this article is itself a methodology that deploys ‘gonzo’ strategies typical of earlier New Journalism, in reaching for a new approach to academicism. In seeking to discover whether the idea that clubbers do not read is due to inauthentic media re/presentations of their experience on the dancefloor, or with specific subcultural discourses, the article concludes that the authenticity of club cultural re/presentation may well be found in fictional responses.

Keywords

• music journalism
• gonzo journalism
• chemical generation literature
• electronic dance music culture (edmc)