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      Jim Ladd, Free-Form Radio Trailblazer, Is Dead at 75

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      An institution of the airwaves in Los Angeles and beyond, he capitalized on the freedom the FM band offered in the 1970s to blaze his own path.Jim Ladd, a maverick Los Angeles disc jockey who helped pioneer free-form FM radio in the 1970s, and who went on to become a rock institution and an inspiration for Tom Petty’s song “The Last DJ,” died on Dec. 17 at his home near Sacramento, Calif. He was 75.The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Helene Hodge Ladd, said.With his laid-back manner and his considerable equestrian skills, Mr. Ladd was known to longtime listeners as the Lonesome L.A. Cowboy, after a 1973 song by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. His expansive musical knowledge, saucy humor and outspoken political views made him a celebrity in rock circles — not only in Los Angeles, where he had storied runs at KLOS and KMET, but also nationally, thanks to his long-running hourlong syndicated series, “Innerview.”“Innerview,” which made its debut in 1974, featured interviews with countless rock luminaries, including the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin and Elton John. It was heard on some 160 stations around the country.The same class of rock deity could often be found lounging around Mr. Ladd’s treehouse-like home perched on the wooded hillsides of Laurel Canyon. His house drew friends like Stevie Nicks, George Harrison and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who featured Mr. Ladd on his second solo album, “Radio K.A.O.S.” (1987).More interested in challenging listeners with new sounds than spinning the same old chart-toppers, Mr. Ladd was well suited to the early days of free-form radio, which was made possible by a 1964 Federal Communications Commission rule preventing AM stations from repeating more than 50 percent of their formats on commonly owned FM stations in a single market.Mr. Ladd was said to be an inspiration for the Tom Petty song “The Last DJ,” an indictment of commercial radio.This allowed countless D.J.s like Mr. Ladd, on stations around the country, to shatter the Top 40 format on FM and take control of their own programming in an era when experimentation in rock was ascendant and rock itself was hailed as a force for social change.“Free-form radio was an approach to the music, and the show itself, which resulted in a highly personal and completely spontaneous new art form,” he wrote in his 1991 memoir, “Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial.”“Most of us never thought of it as a job,” he wrote. “A job was something ‘straight people’ did to earn ulcers. For us, it was more of a calling. We were guerrilla fighters for a generation of creative explorers, inmates who took over the asylum for just one purpose — to play with the public address system.”Mr. Ladd got his first access to this public address system in the late 1960s at KNAC in Long Beach, Calif., where he challenged listeners’ ears by playing the latest underground tunes and challenged authorities with his political passions, for example by stacking songs like “Universal Soldier” by Donovan, “The Unknown Soldier” by the Doors and “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die” by John Lennon as a musical protest against the Vietnam War.“The music at that time was filled with radical new ideas and a unique generational perspective,” Mr. Ladd wrote. “Alternative points of view not heard on the six o’clock news came through the music loud and clear. Songs about the peace movement, civil rights, Vietnam, drugs and the generation gap — and massive quantities of sex.”James William Ladd was born on Jan. 17, 1948, in Lynwood, Calif., the oldest of three children of Obie and Betty Ladd. His father was a bank loan manager who won three bronze stars as a medic in World War II; his mother was a banker.Mr. Ladd was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersHis family moved to Vacaville, Calif., near Sacramento, when he was a child. After graduating from Vacaville High School, he returned to Southern California to study at Long Beach City College before joining KNAC.Mr. Ladd spent the early 1970s at the powerhouse Los Angeles rock station KLOS before moving to a rival station, KMET, where he remained until 1987, when the station changed its format and began showcasing smooth jazz. In his book, he derided the new sound as “a computer-programmed Valium tablet, dentist-office music for yuppies.”Even as FM rock stations moved toward more rigid playlists in the 1980s, Mr. Ladd fought to maintain his independence, in both music and message, often running afoul of station management. With his outspoken ways, he was said to be an inspiration for the 2002 Tom Petty song “The Last DJ,” an indictment of commercial radio that featured lyrics like “Well, the top brass don’t like him talking so much/And he won’t play what they say to play.”In the liner notes for the album of the same name, Mr. Petty thanked Mr. Ladd for “his inspiration and courage.” “Let’s say it may have been partially inspired by me,” Mr. Ladd said in a 2015 video interview.“I don’t want to say it’s about me,” he added, “but I am very, very honored, obviously.”Mr. Ladd made stops at multiple stations over the years. In 2011 he joined SiriusXM satellite radio, where he was a host on the Deep Tracks channel. He remained there until his death.In addition to his wife, Mr. Ladd is survived by a brother, Jon, and a sister, Veronna Ladd.In a 2000 interview with The Los Angeles Times, when Mr. Ladd was back at KLOS, he broke out a handful of papers: the station’s playlist schedule, which mapped out the songs to be played over the course of the day — until his slot at 10 p.m., which remained blank. As in the old days, he could play what he chose. The only thing listeners could count on was Mr. Ladd serving up his trademark catchphrase, “Lord have mercy.”When asked why he was allowed to follow his own muse when other D.J.s at the station were not, Mr. Ladd responded, “Stubbornness, stupidity, doggedness.”The station’s program director, Rita Wilde, quoted in the article, offered a different take: “Not that many people, if you gave them the freedom, would know what to do with it.” More

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      The 45 King, Who Produced for Jay-Z and Eminem, Dies at 62

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      The 62-year-old Bronx native infused a distinctive jazzy flavor in his beats. He contributed tracks to Queen Latifah’s debut album and produced Eminem’s “Stan,” among other hip-hop classics.The 45 King, the influential New York City hip-hop producer who worked with Queen Latifah, Eminem and Jay-Z, died on Thursday. He was 62.Born Mark Howard James, he took the moniker The 45 King because of his fondness for sampling old, obscure records. His death was announced on social media Thursday afternoon by a fellow hip-hop producer, DJ Premier.Information on the cause or place of death were not immediately available. An inquiry sent to James’s manager was not immediately returned.“His sound was unlike any other from his heavy drums and his horns were so distinct on every production,” DJ Premier wrote, referring to James as DJ Mark The 45 King.James, born on Oct. 16, 1961 in the Bronx, was a pioneer in the 1980s New York hip-hop scene and worked with early rap stars like the Funky 4, according to his website. He was known for his jazzy beats, showcased on his first hit track, the highly sampled “The 900 Number,” released in 1987. He slowed down a saxophone solo, “dropped the results over an irresistibly funky break” and the result exploded, according to AllMusic, adding that the horn line was “forever ingrained in the collective hip-hop psyche.”James worked closely with Queen Latifah, a fellow member of the music crew known as the Flavor Unit. James produced the hit song “Wrath of My Madness” on her debut album “All Hail the Queen” in 1989 and also contributed other tracks.“Thank you for teaching me taking me under your wing, teaching me about this thing called hip-hop, and so much more,” Queen Latifah wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.James also produced Eminem’s “Stan,” released on the 2000 album “The Marshall Mathers LP.” The rap tells the story of a perturbed superfan named “Stan” and is set to a throbbing beat sampling Dido’s 1998 track “Thank you.”“I took a first verse and made into an eight-bar hook for Eminem,” James said in a 2021 interview clip posted to social media by Eminem on Thursday.“Legends are never over,” Eminem wrote on X, formerly Twitter.James’s other hits included Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” which sampled the musical “Annie” and a remix of Madonna’s “Keep It Together.”James credited much of his success and production style to the time he spent in the 1980s working for DJ Breakout, a Bronx hip-hop luminary.“I like to say I got lucky,” James said in the 2021 interview with the YouTube channel Unique Access Ent. “I was in the right place at the right time.” More

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      On Europe’s Dance Floors, Music Too Fast for Feet

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      Since Europe’s clubs reopened after pandemic lockdowns, young partygoers have been drawn to a hard, driving style of techno. It’s changing the way people dance.It was Friday night, and the clubgoers at the Sputnikhalle nightclub in Münster, Germany, were primed to go hard. Decked out in black clothes and sunglasses, despite the dim light, the young crowd chanted the name of Héctor Oaks, a Spanish D.J., as he began playing his signature muscular, fast techno. Standing on top of the club’s risers, the crowd barely tried to keep up with the beat. Instead of moving their legs, many just oscillated their hips.Neele Hoyer, 21, a college student attending the event, explained that most other German techno fans of her age had developed affinity for such breathless music. “It’s gone totally mainstream,” she said. Dancing to such a fast beat could sometimes be strenuous, she added, but “this is what’s normal to us.”In recent years, Oaks, 32, has become a prominent figure in a broader trend in electronic music. While conventional techno is often played at around 120 to 130 beats per minute, Oaks and other D.J.s often play at 145 or above. The resulting hard-charging, breakneck sound has become the defining sound of Europe’s dance floors since the lockdown phase of the pandemic.Dancing to such a fast beat could sometimes be challenging, said Neele Hoyer, a college student. However, she added, “This is what’s normal to us.”Valentin Goppel for The New York TimesAlthough fast electronic music is not new, its broader dominance is. A data analysis by the German public broadcaster RBB this summer found that the top electronic music tracks of 2022 had much faster tempos than similar songs in 2016. Specialist dance music publications like Mixmag and Beatportal have noted the trend, and many of the buzzy D.J.s of the moment, like Ukraine’s Daria Kolosova and the Polish D.J. VTSS, are known for cranking up the speed.“I see it everywhere,” said Casper Tielrooij, the founder of Dekmantel, a label and annual electronic music festival in Amsterdam. “It’s not only techno, but jungle and trance and drum and bass.” He argued that although the zeitgeist had started to change before Covid, the faster, harder genre of techno had “exploded during the pandemic” and tastes were partly being shaped by young people who had spent their late teens or early twenties in lockdown.Luigi Di Venere, a techno and house D.J. who often plays at Berghain, the Berlin techno club, said that “there’s this idea that they need to speed things up to make up for it, and in case it happens again.” He added that the less “organic” and more “robotic” fast music suited a generation of clubgoers more connected to online culture.While conventional techno is often played at around 120 to 130 beats per minute, many D.J.s in Europe are playing at 145 or above.Valentin Goppel for The New York TimesHe argued that the brisk sound is partly sustained by a kind of feedback loop: As some D.J.s play faster, their co-headliners imitate their style to keep up the energy in the club. “You can’t just be a grandma and go, ‘Tra-la-la, 120 B.P.M.,’” he said, adding that he believed the trend still hasn’t reached its peak.In an interview, Oaks said that he began developing his sound in 2013, by melding traditional techno sets with other genres, including trance. Music played at a higher speed, he said, causes dancers’ hips, rather than their feet, to resonate, fostering a movement more akin to hovering than dancing. “I’ve thought about this a lot,” he added.He recalled that the music he played was an outlier on the European club scene a decade ago. But he partly grew a following at Herrensauna, a Berlin-based queer party known for its harder sound. The Herrensauna D.J.s’ 2018 appearance on the influential Boiler Room platform, which hosts livestreamed sets, was a “turning point” for his kind of music, he said. “After that, you could see everything switched.”Héctor Oaks said an appearance on the streaming platform Boiler Room was a “turning point” for his kind of music.Valentin Goppel for The New York TimesThe style’s success was likely fueled by other developments, including the proliferation of online D.J. streams, like Hör, during the pandemic’s lockdowns. According to Di Venere, because these streams were often shorter than normal club sets, D.J.s were pushed to squeeze in as much energy as possible, and the high-octane results became a staple at Europe’s illegal pandemic-era raves.Since coronavirus-prevention measures were relaxed last year, the sound has now transitioned to the continent’s clubs, including in smaller cities like Münster, which has a population of around 300,000. Oaks is now regularly booked at venues in Ibiza, for instance, which were previously known for their softer, warmer sound.Tahliah Simumba, 25, a Scottish musician who D.J.s as TAAHLIAH, grew her following during the pandemic with pop-inflected sets that often culminated at 170 B.P.M. In a recent phone interview, she said that TikTok, the video app, has been crucial in shaping post-pandemic club culture. The app, which focuses on snappy clips, has a large user base of techno fans, and its short videos favor fast-paced music.She added that, as a younger D.J. raised in an online environment, her sound was largely developed in isolation from the dance floor. “I try not to be held back by hierarchical idea of what D.J.ing is,” she said. “I want to be having as much fun as possible, and what is D.J.ing, after all, other than playing music you like?”Instead of moving their legs, many dancers at the Sputnikhalle just oscillated their hips.Valentin Goppel for The New York Times More

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      Mary Turner Pattiz, Rock D.J. During FM’s Heyday, Dies at 76

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      She was known as “the Burner” for her seductive delivery, but off the air she was anything but a wild rock ’n’ roller. She later became an addiction counselor.Mary Turner Pattiz, who as Mary Turner was a silky-voiced disc jockey at KMET, the album-oriented rock station that was the soundtrack of Southern California in the 1970s and early ’80s, before leaving radio to become an addiction counselor and philanthropist, died on May 9 at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 76.The cause was cancer, said Ace Young, a former KMET news director.KMET was a hard-rocking upstart in the early 1970s, with its laid-back jockeys delivering a steady flow of new music from bands like the Who, Pink Floyd and Steely Dan, along with slightly naughty patter — a bit of sexual innuendo, endless stoner jokes — that was a welcome counter to the Top 40 hits churned out by AM stations.They were proud renegades, mixing surf reports with news coverage of events like the Mexican government’s spraying of its illegal marijuana crops with paraquat, a deadly poison. (When Jim Ladd, a late-night D.J., told his listeners to phone the White House to protest the practice, 5,000 callers jammed the White House switchboard.) Their bright yellow billboards were ofteninstalled upside down. They had a signature cheer, “Whooya” (the “w” was silent), that all the jockeys worked into their programs; the neologism was a refinement, Mr. Young said in an interview, “of the coughing sound we made when we smoked too much pot.” Ms. Pattiz — then Mary Turner — was known as “the Burner,” a nickname said to have been given to her by Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band, for her seductive delivery and good looks, and she had the prime nighttime spot, from 6 to 10 p.m.When major bands came to town to perform or promote a new record, they made a stop at KMET to be interviewed by Ms. Pattiz. She was soft-spoken and conversational, a gentle interlocutor who once teased Bruce Springsteen by asking, “Do you really know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way, where they play guitar all night and all day?” (She was quoting “Rosalita,” a song from Mr. Springsteen’s second album.) Most important, she let her subjects talk without interruption. For his part, Mr. Springsteen was so taken with her that he asked her on a date, and at his performance at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., the night after the interview, he dedicated the song “Promised Land” to her.“You guys can’t see what she looks like,” he told the audience. “She’s real pretty.”She was also extremely private, circumspect about her personal life, her background and even her age. If she dated a rock star, her colleagues weren’t aware of it.“The image of a rock ’n’ roll woman on the hippest radio station during those wild years was not the real Mary Turner,” said Michael Harrison, a former host and program director at KMET who is now the publisher of Talkers, a trade publication about the radio industry. “The real Mary Turner wasn’t wild. She was smooth and professional. It was show business.”Mr. Ladd, whose show followed hers, said: “You would listen to her, and you would fall in love with her voice. She was deceptively soft. She would say a joke and two minutes later you would get the punch line. And like all good interviewers, she knew when to keep her mouth shut.”By 1981, two rock interview shows she hosted, “Off the Record” and “Off the Record Specials,” were being syndicated by Westwood One, a company founded by the media entrepreneur Norman Pattiz, whom she married in 1985. They were broadcast in every major market in the United States and 40 countries through the American Forces Radio and Television Service, giving Ms. Pattiz a worldwide audience of more than 20 million. Members of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury of Queen all opened up during her freewheeling sessions. Mr. Mercury declared that he found his early music disposable, “like a tampon.” Keith Richards was eloquent on the ineffable magic of the Stones’ chemistry, and Mick Jagger admitted to extreme burnout while on tour.On Ms. Pattiz’s 10th anniversary at KMET, she was honored by Tom Bradley, then the mayor of Los Angeles, in a ceremony at City Hall. A few months later she left the station.Her final show, on Aug. 6, 1982, is in the permanent collection of the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. The hard-driving playlist included “Hang ’Em High” by Van Halen, “Back in the Saddle” by Aerosmith and, appropriately, “Rosalita.”“Well, listen you guys, it has been a lot of fun spending every single weekday night with you for the last 10 years,” she said as she concluded the show, “but the old Burner’s got to be moving on.” And then she played her final tune, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”Ms. Pattiz in 2005. She worked at KMET in Los Angeles for 10 years before signing off with one last hard-driving playlist in 1982.R. Diamond/WireImage, via Getty ImagesMary Caroline Turner was born on Feb. 4, 1947, in Baltimore. Her father, William Turner, was an aviation representative for an oil company. Her mother, Carol (Steuart) Turner, was a homemaker.She studied communications at Indiana University Bloomington, thinking she might work in television, but instead found a job as a promotions director at KSAN, a progressive radio station in San Francisco. She did a little of everything there: engineering, hosting a weekend talk show and filling in for other disc jockeys. It was the days of free-form FM radio, when the D.J.s played music from their own collections, and to their own taste.“It was an exciting time back then because you didn’t operate under any rules,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1982. “You could play anything you wanted, say anything you wanted, and who cared? FM at that time was a joke, especially to Top 40 people. We were the hippies, and they were the stars.”She worked briefly at KSFX, a competing station in San Francisco, and then auditioned for an opening at KMET in 1972. At the time, she was one of only a handful of women working in radio. (Among the others was Alison Steele, otherwise known as “the Nightbird,” a sultry star on WNEW-FM, KMET’s sister station in New York City.)Ms. Pattiz said she found her gender to be an advantage, despite the overzealous fans who lurked in the parking lot after her show and the stalker who frightened her so much that she never left work without her two German shepherds and a male colleague.“I think being a woman helped more than anything else,” she told The Los Angeles Times. “The time was right for it, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”Although Ms. Pattiz continued making her “Off the Record Specials” until the early ’90s, she mostly left the radio world — and her colleagues — behind after her marriage to Mr. Pattiz. The couple then became known for their philanthropy and for their regular appearances courtside at Lakers games.Ms. Pattiz also began working as a drug and alcohol counselor, having confronted her own struggles with substance abuse. In 2006 she earned a master’s degree in psychology from the California Graduate Institute (now the Chicago School of Professional Psychology), and in 2008 she earned a Ph.D. In 2010, she became chairwoman of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., taking over from Mrs. Ford’s daughter, Susan Ford Bales. Most recently, she served on the boards of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and its Graduate School of Addiction Studies.“When she left broadcasting she had no interest in discussing the subject whatsoever,” said Elliot Mintz, a longtime media consultant and a friend of the couple. “She became totally committed to improving the lives of people caught in addiction.”Mr. Pattiz died in December. Ms. Pattiz is survived by a brother.“The Mary Turner of the Betty Ford era was the real Mary Turner,” Mr. Harrison of Talkers said “The Mary Turner of KMET was a figment of our rock ’n’ roll fantasy.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Annie Mac’s Before Midnight: A Dance Party With an Early Bedtime

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      The Before Midnight parties promise all the thrills of a hedonistic night out, but with a respectable finish time for older dance music fans.It was Friday night, in a 2,000-person capacity nightclub in London, and the dance floor was packed. A heavy-duty sound system pounded out house music and a huge disco ball turned overhead. Only one thing was off: It was 9.30 p.m.A woman in the crowd gleefully yelled to the throng of people around her: “I’m 15 weeks postpartum and I’m in the club!”The party, called Before Midnight, is organized by the Irish D.J. Annie Macmanus, who plays under the name Annie Mac: It promises all the thrills of a club — just with an early bedtime. Starting at 7 p.m. and wrapped up by 12, Before Midnight is one of several recent variations on the hedonistic all-night sessions in which dance music is usually enjoyed, aimed at older fans juggling children and careers.“There’s an inherent belief that clubbing is for young people,” Macmanus said recently by phone. “There’s now a generation of people who experienced clubbing in its most popular guise, and still want to do that, but don’t feel like they belong there anymore.”Macmanus explained that Before Midnight was born out of her desire to fit a music career around her duties as a mother of two children, ages 6 and 9. Late-night D.J. sets didn’t mix well with their weekend activities, she said.“It felt like I had jet lag,” Macmanus said. “It just wasn’t accommodating for where I’m at in my life right now.”Annie Macmanus, who D.J.s as Annie Mac. Before setting up Before Midnight, she fronted BBC radio’s flagship dance music show.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesMacmanus said this reckoning coincided with her decision, in 2021, to stand down as the presenter of the BBC’s flagship dance music show, on BBC Radio 1 — a gig she had held for 17 years and which cemented her name as a musical tastemaker in Britain.Before Midnight was her next act, she said, a fresh project to restore some work-life balance. The premise was simple, she added: “a definitive club night that’s just like a normal one, only earlier.”The first night, held last year at the Islington Assembly Hall, a London music venue, was a one-off experiment. It sold out, and, at the end of last year, Macmanus announced a 10-date Before Midnight tour of Britain and Ireland. The tour’s two remaining London dates are also taking place at Outernet, a new, subterranean nightclub in the city’s West End that is the largest live events space built in central London since the 1940s.Before Midnight is particularly popular with women, who Macmanus estimated make up about 75 percent of the crowd. Jodie Brooks, 44, who has attended every Before Midnight party in London to date, was in the crowd this past Friday. “I just didn’t want the night to start at 1 a.m. anymore,” Brooks, who works in advertising and like Macmanus has two children age 6 and 9, said later by phone. “I never wanted parenthood to change me in that way, but, inevitably, it just does. You have to get up and do the Saturday-morning football practice at 9 a.m.,” she said.The coronavirus lockdowns of 2022 and 2021, which took clubbing temporarily out of the mix, made many people in their 30s and 40s re-evaluate how they wanted to spend their weekends. Some, like Brooks, emerged determined to get back on the dance floor, but on new, more wholesome terms. With Before Midnight, she said, “You can go for a really lush dinner at six. By eight you’re in the club,” and “by 12 you’re out.”Before Midnight is particularly popular with women, who Macmanus estimated make up about 75 percent of the crowd.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesOthers realized that they liked dance music, but not nightclubs. Adem Holness, who leads the contemporary music program at the Southbank Center, a central London arts venue, said that many of the venue’s offerings suited electronic music enthusiasts at a more mature life stage: Performances are seated, and finish in time to catch the last Tube home.“We have a menu of different options for people,” he said. “It’s about making the model work for all kinds of people.”In the last year, D.J.s and dance music performers including Fabio & Grooverider, Erykah Badu and Peaches have all played gigs at the Royal Festival Hall, a concert hall managed by the Southbank. “I’m seeing people wanting to experience really great music that you might think or assume belongs in a club, somewhere else, or in a different way,” Holness said.Before Midnight’s London dates are at Outernet, a new, subterranean nightclub in the city’s West End.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesUpcoming parties are scheduled for Manchester in northern England, Glasgow and Dublin, among other cities.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesBefore Midnight was also influenced by the experience of bringing club culture into a more rarefied space, Macmanus said. In 2019, she recalled, she played in New York at MoMa PS1’s Warm Up, the art museum’s summer series that sets experimental and electronic music alongside contemporary art and design. There, she saw a multigenerational audience dancing together, she said. “It had a big effect on me as a D.J.,” she added. “I’m always going to try and reach that type of a dance floor.”The Before Midnight concept was simple, Macmanus said: “a definitive club night that’s just like a normal one, only earlier.”Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesMacmanus added that an early-starting dance party wasn’t a totally original idea. Tim Lawrence, a professor of cultural studies at the University of East London who researches nightlife has been running a monthly London dance party that starts at 5 p.m. since 2018; in an interview, he said that events like Before Midnight were a way to “pluralize the culture.” During a 2017 tour of the United States to promote his book “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor,” Lawrence recalled, he attended an invite-only party in New York called Joy that started around dinnertime.Lawrence brought the concept back to London with him and co-founded his monthly dance party called All Our Friends. “It’s about confounding certain ideas that come with the all-night or late-night thing,” Lawrence said. The earlier timetable allows for a different approach to dancing, he said, which can “potentially be more expressive, more interactive and go a bit deeper on a social level.”But for Brooks, the advertising worker, the appeal of Before Midnight was much simpler: It was an opportunity to dance to the music that she loves, in a club like any other, and be home in time for bed.“You get all the joy and the love,” she said. “You get to be a part of something again. And you don’t feel out of place.”Confetti released just before midnight signaled the party was almost over.Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times More

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      Ray Cordeiro, a Voice on Hong Kong’s Airwaves for 70 Years, Dies at 98

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      Late-night radio listeners in Hong Kong associated Mr. Cordeiro’s sonorous voice with easy-listening standards and early rock. He worked until he was 96.HONG KONG — Ray Cordeiro, a familiar voice on Hong Kong’s airwaves who was one of the world’s longest-working disc jockeys, spinning records for more than 70 years, died here on Jan. 13. He was 98. His death, at CUHK Medical Centre, was confirmed by his manager, Andy Chow. Mr. Cordeiro, known to fans as Uncle Ray, worked until he was 96. His durability got him into Guinness World Records, though he later lost his title to a Chicago D.J., Herbert Rogers Kent.Countless Hong Kong residents associated Mr. Cordeiro’s husky, sonorous voice with early rock n’ roll and easy-listening standards, both when the songs were new and when they’d become sources of nostalgia.Mr. Cordeiro interviewed the Beatles, Elton John, Tony Bennett and other stars, cementing his stature as a local authority on Western popular music. But he was also one of the first D.J.s to introduce Hong Kong’s homegrown Cantopop to English-speaking listeners in the 1970s, said Cheung Man-sun, a former assistant director of broadcasting at Radio Television Hong Kong.“It’s rare and exceptional,” said Mr. Cheung, who did much to popularize Cantopop as a Chinese-language D.J. He said Mr. Cordeiro would translate the Cantonese lyrics into English for a weekly segment on “All the Way With Ray,” his long-running late-night show. “His spirit of loving music influenced the other D.J.s and raised the status of Chinese music,” Mr. Cheung said.Reinaldo Maria Cordeiro was born in Hong Kong on Dec. 12, 1924, the fifth of six children in a family of Portuguese descent. His father, Luiz Gonzaga Cordeiro, a bank clerk, left his mother, Livia Pureza dos Santos, and the children in 1930, according to Mr. Cordeiro’s 2021 autobiography, “All the Way With Ray.” Mr. Cordeiro attended St. Joseph’s College, a prestigious Catholic secondary school, where he credited a teacher with giving him a solid grounding in English. In his late teens, during Japan’s World War II occupation of Hong Kong, he spent years in a refugee camp in Macau, then a Portuguese colony, with his mother and sisters.After the war, the family returned to Hong Kong. Mr. Cordeiro briefly worked at a prison, then spent four years as a clerk at the bank where his father worked. To escape the tedium of that job, he played drums at night for a jazz trio. In 1949, Mr. Cordeiro got his first radio job: writing scripts for on-air hosts at a local station called Rediffusion. Within the year, he was hosting his first show, “Progressive Jazz.” His big break came in 1964, a few years after he’d become a producer for the city’s main broadcaster, Radio Hong Kong, which is now Radio Television Hong Kong. In London, where he’d gone for training at the BBC, Mr. Cordeiro interviewed rock bands like the Searchers and Manfred Mann — and the Beatles, who were coming to Hong Kong. “I heard it’s a swinging town, or city, or place,” Ringo Starr said when Mr. Cordeiro asked about their expectations of Hong Kong, according to a transcript published in Mr. Cordeiro’s book. Mr. Cordeiro’s stature at Radio Hong Kong skyrocketed when he came back and delivered tapes of the interviews to his boss. He said he was given all of the broadcaster’s pop music slots, which meant three other hosts had to be reassigned. Besides playing records, he hosted live music shows like “Lucky Dip,” on which local singers took audience requests. They mostly sang covers of Western hits, which had more cachet in Hong Kong then, but some of his guests — notably Roman Tam and Sam Hui — went on to become major Cantopop stars.In 1970, Mr. Cordeiro debuted “All the Way With Ray,” which he would host for more than half a century. He took requests; knowing that some callers saw his show as a chance to practice conversational English, Mr. Cordeiro often helped them with their pronunciation. Sometimes, so many people called in that the lines crossed and listeners found themselves talking to each other, said Dennis Chan, a longtime fan. He said he and some of the people he met that way struck up friendships.As the years went by, Mr. Cordeiro accommodated listeners’ requests for more contemporary music. But late in life, he shifted the emphasis back to the older music he preferred, always starting his show with Elvis Presley. As midnight neared, he would move further back in time, to the likes of Steve Lawrence and Doris Day. “He wouldn’t take too much time to describe the songs or their stories. Instead, he would let the audience listen to the music,” said Mr. Chow, Mr. Cordeiro’s manager since 1985. Mr. Cordeiro had open-heart surgery in 2010, but returned to the airwaves and kept up a five-nights-a-week schedule, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., until he retired in 2021. In his book, he said he had the best job in the world. “No matter how bad I feel, once I walk into the studio, I’m full of energy — and ready to go,” he wrote.Mr. Cordeiro never married and had no children, and he outlived his five siblings. Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old retiree, said he had listened to Mr. Cordeiro since he was 12. He said Mr. Cordeiro knew his voice and would greet him by name when he called. “I would tune into the program after long days at work, and feel like my good friend was still with me,” he said. More

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      Jerry Blavat, D.J. Who Channeled the Soul of Philadelphia, Dies at 82

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      A live-wire personality and an epic self-promoter, he got a generation of youth in the City of Brotherly Love on its feet with little-known R&B gems.Jerry Blavat, a bookmaker’s son from South Philadelphia who rose from head-turning teenage dancer on a precursor to “American Bandstand” to widespread acclaim as the most influential disc jockey in the Delaware Valley thanks to his third-rail energy, fantastical wordplay and finely honed instincts for the particular rhythms of his native city, died on Jan. 20 in Philadelphia. He was 82.His longtime partner, Keely Stahl, said the cause was myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that weakens the skeletal muscles.With his rat-a-tat patter and crooked Jack-o’-lantern smile, Mr. Blavat (pronounced BLAV-it) displayed otherworldly skills in promoting under-the-radar vinyl — and himself — in a career that began in 1961 with a 10:30 p.m. Thursday slot on tiny WCAM-AM in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.Christening himself the “Geator With the Heater” (“geator” being Blavat-ese for “gator,” an animal as voracious as the disc jockey himself) and the “Boss With the Hot Sauce,” he woofed, howled and rhymed his way to local fame, particularly among a generation of young Philadelphians in the 1960s, whom he affectionately referred to as “yon teens” (“yon” was a twist on “young,” which, in his view, sounded Shakespearean).“It’s hard to explain to an outsider what kind of energy and influence he had,” said the singer, songwriter and syndicated radio host Ben Vaughn, who came of age listening to Mr. Blavat’s show and later became a close friend. “He defined the sound and the sensibility of the city.”Purchasing his on-air time by selling ads himself, Mr. Blavat steered clear of program directors and rigid formats, and as a result he had the freedom to upend the conventions of early-’60s pop radio by spinning little-known singles, some of them several years old and many of them by Black artists who were largely unknown to white audiences.Among the many performers Mr. Blavat presented on his nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” were the Supremes. Jerry BlavatThroughout the ’60s, Mr. Blavat spun the latest singles by artists like Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Smokey Robinson. “Whenever we were in Philly and the Geator was playing our music, we always knew we’d have a hit,” Mr. Robinson wrote in a blurb for “You Only Rock Once,” Mr. Blavat’s 2011 memoir. But Mr. Blavat also made it his trademark to unearth underappreciated gems by R&B groups like the Intruders or Brenda & the Tabulations.His unflagging support of Black artists made an impression on many young white Philadelphians, some of whom would become stars themselves.“I tell people everywhere I go that I’m the product of the Philadelphia music scene,” Todd Rundgren said when he inducted the band the Hooters into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame in 2019. “People ask me, what does that mean? I tell them it comes down to one thing: I grew up listening to the Geator. He played the music that would have been called race records at the time, the music that was made south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And that’s why so many white kids in Philly grew up wanting to sing R&B.”For Mr. Blavat, success rested on one set of ears: his own. “If I don’t dig it, it could be my father out there grooving on the record and I won’t play it,” he was quoted as saying in a 1966 profile by the novelist Bruce Jay Friedman in The Saturday Evening Post.He could be stubborn in his refusal to abide by industry trends — for example, he largely ignored the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. “I sensed that it just didn’t have enough soul for my kids,” he told Mr. Friedman. “The Stones, yes. The Beatles, no. So I’d go up to Fonzo’s restaurant and the upper-class kids would say, ‘How come no Beatles?,’ and I’d say it’s just not my schticklach, not my groove.”Gerald Joseph Blavat was born on July 3, 1940, in South Philadelphia, the youngest of two children of Louis and Lucille (Capuano) Blavat. His father, known on the street as Louis the Gimp, favored sharkskin suits and Stetson hats, had ties to the local Jewish mob and ran an illegal bookmaking operation, according to Mr. Blavat’s memoir. His mother worked in a jewelry store, as well as at Philadelphia’s naval shipyard during World War II.“My mother taught me love,” Mr. Blavat told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2011. “My father taught me the streets, the nightclubs, how to hustle.”An avid dancer from an early age, he used that hustle to talk his way onto “Bandstand,” a local television show featuring teenagers dancing to the latest hits, at age 13, a year shy of the minimum age requirement. (The show, hosted by Bob Horn, later evolved into Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”) With his flashy moves and electric personality, he was soon a neighborhood celebrity. His musical ambitions, however, lay far beyond the dance floor.Mr. Blavat at an in-store appearance promoting “The Discophonic Scene.” He didn’t just present acts on that show; he was out on the floor, showing off his moves.Jerry BlavatChasing any opportunity, he did stints as a road manager for Danny & the Juniors, the Philadelphia doo-wop group best known for the No. 1 hit “At the Hop,” while still in high school, and as the comedian Don Rickles’s valet. When he was 20, he used his outsize salesmanship to scrounge up enough sponsors to buy his first $120 hour of airtime on WCAM.Despite the limited reach of the station’s signal, word spread quickly. “Kids would park on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River, as close to the transmitter as they could, so they could listen to the Geator,” Mr. Vaughn said. “There was a whole scene going — dancing, heavy petting, everything you could think of. Just classic teenage rock ’n’ roll passion.”Before long, Mr. Blavat was hosting record hops drawing up to 2,000 teenagers in ballrooms around the city. In the mid-1960s, he produced and hosted a nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” similar to “American Bandstand” but with Mr. Blavat actually out on the floor, showing off his moves, and with the artists performing live and not lip-syncing.As the decades rolled by, Mr. Blavat remained a cherished and ubiquitous figure on the Philadelphia cultural scene, hosting radio shows on WXPN and other stations in the region as well as an annual celebrity-dotted revue at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the city’s marquee performance hall.His reputation would not remain entirely unsullied. His friendships with Philadelphia organized crime bosses like Angelo Bruno and Nicodemo Scarfo brought various allegations of mob-related activity over the years.In 1992, the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation called Mr. Blavat to testify in a hearing about mob influence in the state’s liquor business, including allegations that Mr. Blavat had paid a “street tax” to Mr. Scarfo to keep union organizers away from Mr. Blavat’s popular Memories in Margate disco on the Jersey Shore, and that he had served as a front for a yacht purchase by Mr. Scarfo.Mr. Blavat at a parade in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving Day 2021.Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images, via Getty ImagesMr. Blavat cited the Fifth Amendment, and in later interviews described his relationship with local crime figures as merely personal. “I’m a performer,” he said about his mob associations in a 1995 television interview. “I’m friends with everyone.”Such controversies did little to slow his momentum. Ms. Stahl said he continued to spin his oldies on local stations seven nights a week, and to drive all over the region to perform at record hops for his old fans, and in many cases, their grandchildren.In addition to Ms. Stahl, Mr. Blavat is survived by his sister, Roberta Lawit; his daughters, Kathi Furia, Stacy Braglia, Deserie Downey and Geraldine Blavat; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.Despite achieving nationwide exposure in the 1960s with “The Discophonic Scene” and appearances on “The Monkees” and “The Mike Douglas Show,” Mr. Blavat was never interested in making the compromises it would take to abandon his roots in Philadelphia, Mr. Vaughn said.“He had offers to go national,” he said, “but they told him that they needed him to be less Geator, because what he does doesn’t make sense outside of Philadelphia. Everything he says rhymes, and he makes up words that don’t even exist. In Philly, we didn’t even question it.”“To his credit,” he added, “he passed on every one, because he didn’t want to lose us.” More

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      New Year’s Eve D.J.s Haven’t Been This Busy Since 2019

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      For the first time in years, New Year’s Eve parties are back in full swing, despite a possible equipment shortage and a tripledemic.Since October, Rashad Hayes, a D.J. from Brooklyn who prides himself on spinning, in his words, “every genre,” has fielded 12 offers to work on New Year’s Eve in New York City — triple what he was offered in 2019. So he did what any other enterprising artist who is suddenly in demand after surviving two years of Covid slowdowns and cancellations (and willing to work on New Year’s Eve) might do: He packed three sets in, at three different venues in Manhattan.“I would say if you’re not D.J.ing on New Year’s Eve in New York City, you probably need to get another profession if you’re a D.J.,” Mr. Hayes said. “There’s so many parties.”Although the pandemic and inflation continue to make socializing in big groups impossible for many New Yorkers, several leaders in the nightlife industry have expressed optimism about the demand for New Year’s Eve parties — and what this could possibly mean for the rest of the winter. Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.This weekend, Sameer Qureshi, who co-founded the hospitality company El Grupo SN, will finally get to throw the two-floor New Year’s Eve party at Somewhere Nowhere, the dreamy nightclub atop the Renaissance New York Chelsea Hotel, that he had planned to throw last year — until Omicron, the fast-spreading variant that announced itself in time for the 2021 holidays, stymied his plans.Last week, he walked through the hotel’s 38th floor, an Eden-like setting that Prince would have approved of had the musician favored forest green — the color of the plush European couches in the room — over purple. There was a cluster of disco balls on the ceiling, along with a sparkling dove-like creature and fabricated clouds hanging throughout. Flowers spilled from the D.J. booth and floral scents wafted through the vents.It was the only floor he could use for New Year’s Eve 2021. At the time, 80 percent of his staff had come down with Covid, and he was wondering if holding an event even made sense at that point.But this New Year’s Eve, the party in the sparkly pleasure dome on the 38th floor will expand to include the 39th floor, which has another lounge area and a rooftop that features heated tents. From there, guests have a clear view of One World Trade Center and Times Square, a potential draw for tourists, who have also returned to the city.“It’s the first year it’s probably going to be normal, you know, after so long,” Mr. Qureshi said.Madison Back, the chief executive of 4AM, a talent management and events company, said she had three times as many booking requests this year, compared to before the pandemic.Although New Year’s Eve is not the biggest event on some planners’ calendars — that could be Halloween or Pride Month — the night is inarguably a massive moneymaker for those involved. Ticket prices for clubs and lounges are often marked up to at least $100.Martin Muñiz Jr., known as D.J. Marty Rock, has two gigs lined up for New Year’s weekend. OK McCausland for The New York TimesMartin Muñiz Jr., a Bronx native who performs as Marty Rock, locked in a gig 200 miles north of New York City in Saratoga Springs four months ago, the earliest he had ever been booked for New Year’s Eve.But then this fall, more requests poured in, Mr. Muñiz said. In the end, he was able to book an additional job for the holiday weekend; on New Year’s Day, he will rush back to Manhattan to do a set at Bounce Sporting Club in Chelsea. “There’s a lot of venues and a lot of G.M.s looking for a lot of people, last minute,” he said.Some believe that the last-minute demand stems from party organizers hedging their bets, especially after the suddenness with which Omicron’s surge ended the hopes of a near-normal Dec. 31 in 2021. This year, there is the tripledemic of Covid, R.S.V. and influenza to worry about; in December, Mayor Eric Adams recommended that New Yorkers use masks again. The New York State Department of Health warned people to stay vigilant, too: “With New Year’s Eve celebration gatherings around the corner, it is important New Yorkers take precautions to protect against the flu,” it said in a statement.Ms. Back, of 4AM, said that at least for this holiday season, there is room for New Yorkers who want to take the risk and for those who are not quite ready.“I think other people have completely moved on and they’re doubling down and saying, ‘People want to party, people want to go out, we are going to invest in making New Year’s amazing and really promote it and sell our venue out,’” she said. “I think for others, they maybe fall into more of that casual category, and there’s a little bit more uncertainty there. They might be taking a wait-and-see approach to see how this goes.”For those organizing parties, equipment is also in high demand, especially at the last minute. Mixers, speakers and controllers — which are to turntables as laptops are to desktops — from brands like Pioneer DJ have been on back order for months. (A representative for Pioneer DJ said in an email that the company, reeling from pandemic-related supply chain issues, might not catch up with those back orders until well into next year.)“I’ve seen like a shortage of new equipment,” Mr. Muniz said. “Like a mixer drops, sold out. There would be a shortage of that. But a shortage of all equipment? I’ve never seen that.”For now, the D.J.s who are just starting out or who are playing private parties are more likely to be the most affected by the shortage.Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales for New Year’s Eve are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.OK McCausland for The New York TimesPlanners for bigger events often start plotting out New Year’s Eve by late summer, which allows some leeway for production delays and gives them a better shot at securing equipment and booking top-flight D.J.s. For George Karavias, the chief executive of Dream Hospitality Group, which owns nightclubs and runs events for several others all over the city, the equipment shortage has not been an issue.“It’s all about planning ahead,” he said. “You know, if you’re a promoter that books an event a week before New Year’s Eve trying to book a D.J., yes, you’re going to have issues because every D.J. is booked. And, you know, big or small or whatever name it is, New Year’s Eve is New Year’s Eve.”The first weeks in January typically slow down for nightlife as tourists leave, the glow of the holiday season fades and the chill of winter spreads. While it is difficult to definitively call the New Year’s Eve turnout a forecaster of what’s to come for the party scene, some of the outside factors that pushed people to celebrate may continue to be a barometer in 2023.“I think it’s just going to be a function of how the economy holds up,” Mr. Qureshi said. “How people are feeling, if they’re still spending, if they’re still craving the experiences after being locked down for as long as they were. And we’ll see what happens.” More