BEFORE THE DJ BECAME THE SHOW I came up during a time when the dance floor wasn’t just somewhere you went to hear music. It was somewhere the music took you. Paradise Garage. Zanzibar. The Catacombs. David Mancuso’s The Loft. The DJ was in the booth. You weren’t standing there facing the DJ, watching every move they made. You were dancing. You were vibing. You were feeling what the DJ was giving you. The focus wasn’t on watching the DJ perform. The focus was on what the music was doing to the room. I was fortunate enough to hear DJs like Larry Levan, DJDavidMorales, Tee Scott, Tony Humphries at Zanzibar, MerlinBobb4, Timmy Regisford (TheShelterNY) and others back in the day. They knew how to build a room through music. They let records breathe. They worked a rhythm, a vocal, a groove until the whole room was inside it. And those long blends mattered. A long blend lets you live inside two records at the same time. The percussion from one track can keep moving underneath the vo...