CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/20/2019

Vince Aletti signing 'The Disco Files' in the MoMA PS1 Book Space during Come Together Music Festival and Label Market

Saturday, March 23 from 3–4PM, Artbook in the MoMA PS1 Book Space and D.A.P. Publishing present Vince Aletti signing copies of The Disco Files 1973–78: New York's Underground, Week by Week during the Come Together Music Festival and Label Market at MoMA PS1.

Portrait of Vince Aletti by Peter Hujar (© Peter Hujar Archive)

In 1973, Vince Aletti became the first person to write about the emerging disco scene. His engagement with disco nightlife continued throughout the decade as he wrote his weekly column for Record World magazine, which incorporated top ten playlists from DJs across the US (such as Larry Levan, Larry Sanders, Walter Gibbons, Tee Scott and Nicky Siano) alongside Aletti's own writings and interviews.

As disco grew from an underground secret to a billion-dollar industry, Aletti was there to document it, and The Disco Files is his personal memoir of those days, containing everything he wrote on the subject (most of it between 1974 and1978) augmented with photography by Peter Hujar and Toby Old. This book is the definitive and essential chronicle of disco, true from-the-trenches reporting that details, week by week, the evolution of the clubs, the DJs, and above all, the music, through magazine articles, beautiful photographs, hundreds of club charts and thousands of record reviews.

Photocopies of Aletti's Record World columns circulated for years among DJs and music lovers, until they were finally collected in 2009 into the first edition of The Disco Files, an instant classic that quickly sold out. This new edition of The Disco Files brings Aletti's compulsively readable disco writing back into print, adding an interview with Fran Lebowitz originally published in the Village Voice in 1990.

Throughout his career, curator, writer and critic Vince Aletti (born 1945) has been at the forefront of music, culture and the arts. He wrote for Record World and Rolling Stone and covered the club scene in the late 1970s and 1980s for the Village Voice, where he would serve as art editor until 2005. In addition to curating numerous photography exhibitions, Aletti writes about photography for the New Yorker.

MoMA PS1 and iconic record shop Other Music present the third annual Come Together Music Festival and Label Market, offering live performances, film, workshops, and panels that celebrate the interactive ecosystem of local and international music communities, and a label market featuring more than 75 record labels. This season’s expanded event is presented across two days, including additional live programming and extended hours. Part of MoMA PS1’s VW Sunday Sessions performance series, Come Together reasserts the central and essential role that communities play in both the creation and consumption of new sounds, recasting the fading record store experience for the current moment. See the full roster of events here.

E-mail Artbook @ MoMA PS1 at booksmomaps1@artbook.com to pre-order your copy of The Disco Files 1973–78: New York's Underground, Week by Week.

VINCE ALETTI SIGNING 'THE DISCO FILES'
Saturday, March 23: 3–4PM
Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore
22-25 Jackson Ave (at 46th Ave.)
Long Island City, NY 11101