CAUTION: EXTREME SOLIPSISM AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CARE.

Rod, when he's not busy avoiding updating his blog or writing binoculars columns or being the coolest motherfucker on the planet, recently unearthed a copy of the first ever Disco Family Plan, the newsletter/poster (11 x 17)/tipsheet that Woody McBride did starting in '91 to help spread the word on house/techno/et al in the Minneapolis area (and, not incidentally, to promote his own events as a DJ and later promoter). DFP was his pseudonym at the time; he later changed it to M.O.R.E. Productions (Minneapolis Organization of Rave Enthusiasts). Woody's a good guy and I've always liked him a lot, though he was fairly annoyed at how my piece on the Halloween '92 rave bust in Milwaukee turned out--he thought it glorified drug use, which wasn't really the idea--and this thing reminds me why. I wish I had a scanner, but in lieu of that, allow me to retype as much as I can, verbatim:

GET DOWN

FOR THE WEEKS 9/26-10/9
DISCO FAMILY PLAN.
MINNEAPOLIS UNDERGROUND MUSIC CHART.

THE ESSENTIAL 20
This list covers a spectrum from House to Techno
1. DOMINATOR - Human Resource on R&S
2. GOD of ABRAHAM - MNO on AM/PM
3. SUCH A FEELING - Bizarre Inc. on VS
4. THE SNOW - Coll on Torso Dance
5. THE RIOT EP - on Underground Resistance
6. ANYTHING YOU LIKE - B1 on SSR
7. EVERYBODY'S FREE - Rozalla
8. DIRECT ME - Reese Project on Network
9. XEROXED - Zero Zero
10. LIFT EVERY VOICE - Mass Order
11. DEEPER - Susan Clark
12. VORTEX - Final Exposure on Plus 8
13. F.U. - F.U.S.E. on Plus 8
14. WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME - Utah Saints
15. EPILEPSIA - Epilepsia on Hit House
16. VAMP (rmx) - Outlander on R&S
17. ARTIFICIAL FANTASY - Meng Syndicate
18. MENTASM (rmx) - Second Phase on R&S
19. TRONIKHOUSE EP - on R&S
20. MEDITATION - Meditation on Beat Box
This List was compiled from the top twenty lists submitted by the contributors below being local DJ's, radio people, & retailers who specialize in dance music. Songs are listed by title, the artist, and then its label, if known. Get down. Get down. Get down.

Week 1 CONTRIBUTORS
Kevin Cole/Depth Probe
Jon Schultz/Saloon
Gregg Wolfe/DJ Dance Shop
Jeremia Wells/DJ Dance Shop
Thomas Spiegel/mobile DJ
Ron Clark/Audiocon
Rod Smith/Northern Lights
John Tasche/WMMR
Craig Thron/Let It Be
Melissa Rasmussen/Girl/Boy Bar
Woody McBride/DFP
Ryan Peck/DFP

THE TOTALLY STOKED MENTAL TRACK OF THE WEEK
- EPILEPSIA BY EPILEPSIA ON HIT HOUSE RECORDS

HOUSE TECHNO TRANCE

SMASH SEXISM
FIGHT RACISM
END QUEER BASHING

FEATURED PLAYLISTS
KEVIN COLE/DEPTH PROBE
1. ZEROXED - Zero Zero
2. ANYTHING YOU LIKE - B1
3. A CASE OF FUNK - Nightmares on Wax
4. EPILEPSIA - Epilepsi
5. THE BURIAL - Sound Clash
6. DOMINATOR - Human Resource
7. ARTIFICIAL FANTASY - Meng Syndicate
8. F.U. - F.U.S.E.
9. THE SNOW - Coil
10. FREE/FAITH - Rozalla

JOHN SCHULTZ/SALOON
1. DIRECT ME - Reese Project
2. DEEPER - Susan Clark
3. EVERYBODY'S FREE - Rozalla
4. THE PROMISE - Subject 13
5. GIVE ME YOUR LOVE - Be Noir
6. THE SNOW - Coil
7. OPEN YOUR HEART - Cybil Jefferies
8. INTOXICATION - Rythem to Rythem
9. SUCH A FEELING - Bizarre Inc.
10. BOOM - The Grid

KAVA SUPREME/BOING! - SALOON
1. DOMINATOR - Human Resource
2. THE DUNGEON - Ibiza
3. TRONIKHOUSE EP
4. DETROIT 909 - KGB
5. DARKNESS - Holy Noise
6. OH SHIT
7. STOPPIN' US - Gypseymen
8. GOD OF ABRAHAM - MNO
9. HYPNOTIZE ME - House to House
10. BULL FROG (rmx) - GTO

DJ MISS MISS/GIRL/BOY BAR
1. UNITY - Unity
2. THE PROMISE - Subject 13
3. DIRECT ME - Reese Project
4. MIDNIGHT - Orbital
5. KEEP ON LOVIN' ME - Soul City Orchestra
6. THE AFTERMATH - Nightmares on Wax
7. WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME - Utah Saints
8. SOMEBODY KNEW - MK
9. V FOR VENDETTA - Fred
10. WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN - Definition of Sound

THOMAS SPIEGEL
1. ODURO - Watanabe
2. AIN'T NO WAY - Cheryl Pepsi Riley
3. LIFT EVERY VOICE - Mass Order
4. LOVE INJECTION - QXI
5. COOL HOUSE EP - Test Pressing
6. STRAIT TRIPPIN - Terrace
7. NO HEARTACHE NO PAIN - Sharvoni
8. COME INTO MY LIFE - Sonia Collins
9. MY BABY - Tony Shannon
10. FREE YOUR MIND - DAC

THE PLAN'S 11 (DJ LIGHT BRIGHT - DJ GROOVE SPOT
1. Epilepsia - Epilepsia on Hit House
2. Riot EP on Underground Resistance
3. Artificial Fantasy - Meng Syndicate on Hit House
4. Dominator - Human Resource on R&S
5. Anything You Like - B1 on SSR
6. Tune - Silver on R&S
7. Lift Every Voice - Mass Order white label
8. Direct Me - Reese Project on Network
9. Tronikhouse Ep on R&S
10. Bull Frog (rmx) - GTO on Beat Box
11. Cataclist Hillbilly - white label YIKES!

The content and format of the DISCO FAMILY PLAN IS [copyright symbol] and is protected by Murphy's Law.

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[all typos verbatim!]

I can't describe how thrilling it is to have this in my hands. When I got over my (mercifully brief) shock-the-squares phase of pasting my high school locker with Playboy centerfolds (well, they were mine; had a subscription in high school! became a massive fan of Q&A's and the Rockmeter critics--Christgau, Nelson George, Marsh, V. Garbarini & C.M. Young once the novelty of naked women wore off--those naked women, at least), I had a whole gang of DFP newsletters on my locker wall, and I wish I'd kept them. So this (the first DFP, apparently!) is quite a nice gift. Just to imagine a time when "Dominator," UR, Rozalla, "Deeper" (total badass trad-soul-house--and track 14 on FFRR's Only for the Headstrong: The Ultimate Rave Compilation!), F.U.S.E., Utah Saints, Bizarre Inc., et. al., were all considered more or less the same thing . . . mindblowing! But that's how it was back then, and apparently not just if you were a teenager in the suburbs who only heard about this stuff in a kind of thirdhand way--though luckily, I was already going downtown and uptown a lot, buying records and tapes at Northern Lights, listening to and taping Cole's Radio Depth Probe on KJJO-104, during that halcyon-ish year-and-a-half or so that it was a mod-rock station (RDP was on at midnight-2 a.m. Saturday nights). It wasn't until late 1993 and the convergence of, yep, two compilations, Profile's Best of Techno Vol. 3 and Moonshine's Speed Limit 140 BPM Plus 3: The Joint (STILL easily in my top 10 of that year), that I even noticed there was any kind of difference between the techno that used breakbeats and the techno that used four-to-the-floor--and the Profile liner notes helped clue me in, with DJ DB pleading for unity among the fracturing massive. But at that point, I had no idea there was any such thing--I just wanted to hear more of it.

I mean, this was a time when Rozalla was being called "the queen of rave"! Rozalla--does anyone even remember her? Of course not, because the same thing happened to her that happened to loads of those artists--they signed to a major, which, having no idea what else to do with them, made them record a bunch of shitty mid-tempo R&B in hopes of a mainstream crossover that was never going to occur since they'd already been tarred with the "rave" brush (yeah right R&B or pop radio wanted anything with that taint--isn't that shit for stupid suburban kids on drugs who dress funny?) and promptly watched them die on the vine. I know this because I bought Everybody's Free, the album, the day it came out because I'd fallen for the singles and figured that this, this would be the album that brought rave overground. Obviously I changed my mind the minute I heard the thing. But what led me to this is simple: I was 17 and extremely naive; I was also wildly romantic, a condition that caused me to think like an A&R person. Seriously, the next time you see someone on ILM that looks/writes suspiciously like a record company flak about some new artist . . . well, they probably are, but keep in mind that there exist some teenagers who believe what they see on TV/read it the prints--even on blogs now--and want fervently for someone to "come along and united everything" or whatever; God knows I did when I was younger, yep, despite my talk here, there, and in the SOTT book I was King Rockist for years and years that way, figuring something/someone was gonna come along that Everyone Would Love and Erase All Musical Boundaries and Then There Would Be World Peace.

Really--I actually believed this! Even a month ago this would have been embarrassing to think about much less mention in public. But maybe it's because I'm in my hometown (albeit in a hotel room in a neighborhood I stopped spending any time in long before breaking up with the woman I was dating who worked/attended school around here) and my niece's birth has me all open and reflective that my earlier ardor seems less misguided than I long suspected it was. I don't mean so much in a "oh, how embarrassing, I was into that" kind of way--if anything, I've flaunted my dorkier passions as long as I've been able to. (My standard answer for the age-old "What do you listen to?" question is still "Cheesy rave music." It's a rather puerile answer, of course, and pretty stupid-sounding even if it were true, which it's obviously not, but at this point it's ingrained, and I should really get out of the habit, though I still think it beats "Oh, all kinds of stuff" on nearly every occasion.) But I do shudder a lot when I think of the kind of tunnel vision I would get about things; it's not that I cared about what I did, it's that it was completely impossible to understand how other people didn't, too, not to mention the fact that hip-hop's second golden era passed me by almost completely as a result of being force-fed G. Love & Special Sauce and/or wolfing down, um, Rozalla, however briefly, instead of figuring out that Nas or Biggie were any good at all until long after the fact.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I'd imagine Rozalla would have had any kind of future if she'd "stayed underground," either, but at least then she might have become something more in the Official Rave History Book than a footnote and/or cautionary tale. But whenever history is written the writer has to leave something out; things just get too damn unwieldy otherwise. And since we're talking about Simon and Gen E/Energy Flash here, it makes sense to understand that Simon probably figured out the whole "Queen of Rave" thing was a transparent marketing ploy a lot earlier than I could have given the circs. But this DFP helps me understand a little bit better why Rozalla might have been a candidate for the title--because for me at 17, dreaming of the nightlife I'd come to embrace and then abandon (though I did have a good time w/Pete Scholtes at the Eagle the other night, seeing Bob Mould and Rich Morel spin, maybe I'm not so jaded and old after all . . . ), and for the DJs/dance salespeople that put her between Reese Project and The Riot EP on their big list, such differences were trivial. They only presented themselves as different in retrospect. That's why early rave was, is, such a blessed time--it felt like anything went, or could go.