Clubland

April 14, 2003
To anyone who's ever wondered what went on in the 1990s' most notorious nightclubs, Village Voice
reporter Owen has a highly engaging answer. He weaves together three strands of masterful reporting, focusing on Peter Gatien, the nightclub impresario who owned Limelight and the Tunnel in Manhattan; Chris Paciello, the gangster who started Miami Beach's Liquid; and "club kid king" Michael Alig, the party promoter and Gatien employee who murdered his friend Angel Melendez. Alig's drug-addled story is the most grotesque and chilling: a few weeks before he hacked off the legs of his dead friend, he had thrown a "Blood Feast" party in which some guests "came covered in raw liver and slabs of beef." The author has apparently settled down now; "life is too precious to waste spending your time lurking around VIP rooms and getting high." At one time, though, he was a true believer in clubs and raves "as perfect but temporary democracies of desire," and is saddened by the crime that came to surround them. He has a distinctive writing style, recklessly mixing metaphors—one woman is "the proverbial tough cookie laced with arsenic straight from the pages of a hard-boiled novel"—and packing his chapters with noirish "wise guys" and "feds." It's a treat for fans of true crime, but armchair party animals will also appreciate the lengths to which this reporter goes—the book opens with Owen seeking, buying and tripping on the drug ketamine. Agent, Todd Shuster. (May)Forecast:This book will appeal to fans of mobster lore, celebrity DJs and drug culture. Both James St. James's 1999 book
Disco Bloodbath and this year's film
Party Monster, starring Macauley Culkin, treat Michael Alig, the character who takes up about a third of
Clubland. Neither were mega-hits, but the story has a solid niche audience.

Starred review from May 1, 2003
Even those who have never ventured near the velvet ropes of a club will find this book hard to put down. Freelance writer Owen (Washington Post, Village Voice, Spin) presents a brutally honest look at the 1990s club scene, focusing on the various phases of New York's infamous Limelight club and its enigmatic owner, Peter Gatien, and branching out to other establishments from the Big Apple to Florida. He introduces a colorful cast of characters whose inherent greed kept these clubs operating at a glittering, decadent, lucrative, and dangerous high-with music, dancing, drugs, sex, corruption, and even violence at the core. Owen describes the backgrounds and motivations of the major players-from Gatien to the vicious thug who rose to hobnob with celebrities, the promoter with a taste for macabre theme parties, the various levels of young partygoers lured by outrageous glamour, and finally the network of informants and undercover officials who brought down these drug-infested empires. Owen's research is superb, his writing outstanding, and his story a sobering, frightening tale of modern urban culture. For all circulating libraries. [Party Monster, an independent picture starring Macaulay Culkin as infamous club kid killer Michael Alig, covers very similar terrain.-Ed.]-Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2003
Ah, club culture! Was it really all glamour, heroin, and flashing lights? Owen considers that and other questions in his contribution to the continuing story of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He has a lot to work with, including real-life " Pulp Fiction" characters like Michael Alig, nowadays "stoned and puffy with jail food fat," but "the prince of perversion" when he was a party promoter in high demand. Alig had equally alluring playmates, of course--Mafia dandies, drug lords, and zany "club kids"--but his career screeched to a halt when he "chopped up his buddy's body." Owen came to his subject as a result of a " Vil"lage Voice assignment to do an article on ketamine, an animal anesthetic and clubgoers' "mind-bending party favor." One thing led to another, and presto!--this chronicle-" cum"-true crime story in the gaudy, Mardi Gras-like trappings of a phenomenon that straddled the disco and rave cultures. A gripping story, pleasantly sleazy and well told.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)