The Connection in 2004
Saturday, the Old School Reunion — a dance party benefiting the Nashville LGBT Chamber of Commerce and commemorating our onetime after-hours strongholds — takes place in the Blue Room at Third Man Records. DJs include respected locals Jane Dupree, Lance G, Josh Jones, Daddy Bob, Ashley Power, Keith Windham and at least one special guest to be announced. But what is it that we’re celebrating?
Picture the Nashville nightclub scene of the late ’90s and early Aughts, where Y2K and 9/11 served as giant-ass signifiers for the end of the Clinton era and a stark shift in attitudes toward leisure. The clanging pots-and-pans dubby sound of the X-Beat era had given way to circuit parties — dance parties lasting 24 hours or more — fueled by the fraternal twins of crystal meth and GHB, and the parties themselves started to contract to a smaller, more manageable scale.
We still had the Mother Church of nightlife, The Connection — at least for a little while, before its owners retreated back to Louisville. You have to start with The Connection to get to the story of the after-hours scene, because its existence is anathema to the current micro-focused nightclub experience. It was monstrous, billing itself convincingly as the largest club in the country, with a big theater for drag shows and pageants, a monster dance floor for the biggest in big room house (DJs’ terminology for circuit anthems and U.K.-influenced progressive house with vocal-focused diva turns made in reaction to X-Beat, not to be confused with the sounds that were polarizing the EDM world in 2013 and 2014), and a country bar in front for those for whom line dancing did not mean coke-enhanced dance parties.
Last call at 2:30 a.m. was always a bummer, but it served as the pivot point of the evening. You could go to Cafe Coco or Waffle House if you were hungry. You could certainly go home, or to someone else’s home, and see whether that syncopated boom-boom was the music or the throb of your heart as it careened into what might be love. But let’s say that the music still called to you, that the visceral response that tickled the back of your brain when a disco diva whispered “Maybe tonight, yes?” couldn’t be satisfied by dancing within the boundaries for alcohol sales set by the state of Tennessee. After The Connection, The Chute, The Mix Factory and Graham Central Station had to shut down for the night, we had other options: after-hours clubs.
Some saw fit to tar the entire after-hours scene with one brush, describing its clubs as freak-laden drug dens and havens for polymorphously perverse free-for-alls. These incredibly judgy, reactionary phrases sounded like the rhetoric of people who would never set foot in a proper club to begin with, or worse, people who couldn’t imagine going to a dance club without adult beverages. For those kinds of folks, it was never about the music. The music is what made those nights special, and it keeps the memories of the years when we had The Zone, eXceSs (and its basement sub-club, Orbit), Katatonic and Kiss at the 508 Late Night Lounge alive and close to the heart — and never far from the part of the brain responsible for the shaking of ass.
While traditional nightclubs stuck to house hits, big room boomers, remixed R&B and Eurobeat, after-hours spots had the freedom to get weirder with it, delving into subgenres that got stranger, or more aggressive, or more euphoric. Freed from the commercial considerations of alcohol sales and buoyed by the still-new technology of CD burning — which allowed DJs to bring more variety to their sets as well as streamline the amount of stuff they had to bring with them to the club — whole new vistas were opened up.
If you wanted harder sounds, like proper breaks and maybe some tweaky acid or aggressive house, Katatonic fit the bill nicely. If you thrilled to the prettier side of trance, or the more feminine twirls of Hi-NRG, then Kiss was your destination. And eXceSs/Orbit was where moving between floors popped you into completely different scenes, where speed garage battled against epic circuit vibes, only for a funky Miami-style bass line from Deep South to come in to settle any scores and keep the people dancing ’til after the sun came up.
This was before hookup apps, you must understand. Before perjurer and social eugenicist Rudy Giuliani killed off New York’s nightlife, leaving its death throes to spread throughout the country. Before the extensive proliferation of cellphones and social media. Before bottle service and bachelorette parties took root everywhere. Before the rally and resurgence of drag, thanks to a rebranding by the RuPaul empire that saved the modern gay club as we know it.
This was a time when staggering out into the sun and seeing folks driving by on their way to church felt like a victory against the forces of normalcy and boredom.
Email music@nashvillescene.com
