Nicky Siano - Love is the Message

Image: Nicky Siano

If you're a fan of any kind of dance music, you owe everything to disco. The genre helped pave the way for house, which would then spawn techno and every genre, subculture and musical movement based on our urge to move since - even early hip hop will always be intertwined with it.

There's a few legendary figures who played a pivotal role in the early stages of it all, including four DJs who shaped the path of our inner rave forty years ago. The most famous is the now sadly departed Frankie Knuckles, alongside his great friend who was also tragically taken too young, Larry Levan.

Another figure was David Mancuso with his legendary loft parties, late night voyages into a wild odyssey of sound with the most exclusive guestlist in the whole of New York.

The final figure though could be argued to have been the most influential. He was the man who mentored Frankie and Larry, was resident at the The Gallery (check the trailer for the upcoming documentary about that institution above) and Studio 54, and shaped the ascent into popular culture of Loleatta Holloway and a certain Grace Jones.

That was Nicky Siano. The original superstar DJ, he was a precocious teenage talent that unified the dancers on the New York underground, leading the way as disco spiralled from a hidden secret on the gay community to a worldwide phenomenon. 

He still DJs to this date and regularly hits the UK. I was there when he last played Liverpool, delivering a tour de force of shrill, string lead disco in the intimate surroundings of Studio 2 for The People's Balearic Disco in September 2012.

His set that night was everything you want from a disco legend; lavish, opulent grooves of the highest order, and a gloriously camp journey through the past. I can remember particularity losing my shit when he teased in the aforementioned Holloway's glorious 'Love Sensation' (below).

He's returning to the city again two years later, to play the Baltic Social on Friday 26th September. I for one will be there down the front, screeching with joy like the queen disco turns me into. I implore you to do the same.

Want more info on the gig? All the listing information is here.

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