Mashit

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of one of my heroes (and another one of those dance music legends suffering from a SERIOUS respect defecit), Patrick Cowley.

As much as Giorgio Moroder, Cowley introduced electronics into a genre that had been until-then composed primarily with traditional instruments, in effect inventing electronic dance music.*

Born in Buffalo, NY in 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco in 1971, where he began studying synthesizer at the City College of San Francisco. Though he was originally more interested in prog rock and the like, he soon found himself immersed in San Francisco’s disco scene: he began working as a lighting tech at the City Disco on Montgomery and Broadway, and soon he was running lights and playing organ for up-and-coming disco legend Sylvester. All the while he was working on quirky synth projects in his spare time, and eventually he played some of this stuff for Sylvester and the rest of the band. Sylvester’s pianist (and sometimes Cowley rival) Michael Finden:
“He had a tape which he let us hear and Sylvester became very intent on somehow integrating this synthesized music into our basically R&B sound at the time. It was really quite astonishing to hear his work at that point in time because he really created a whole new sound and technique which was very fresh for 1978.”**

Continue reading ‘R.I.P. Patrick’