I had the chance to chat with nightlife maven, Larry Tee, the man who literally owns electroclash, the movement that triggered the electro explosion of this decade. While Tee’s name is synonymous with the early 00s sounds of electroclash, he has managed to stay relevant with a music career spanning over three decades. In his career Tee has become something of a hipster Nostradamus, since the 1980′s he has remained strong on the scene and seems to have an incredible foresight for the next cool thing on the horizon. Tee’s on the brink of releasing a new album which is studded with stars of internet fame (including Jeffree Star, Perez Hilton and much more.) Here Tee divulges about the 1980′s NYC club kids of Michael Alig fame, the roxy era, and the electroclash heyday.
RW: What got you into DJing?
Tee: Well i became a DJ in Atlanta after the disco era happened. New wave was starting to come in and there weren’t any DJ’s playing it. There was all this great stuff, early New Order and Depeche Mode and I couldn’t dance to it or hear it so i had to start DJing myself. I love going to clubs in Atlanta, back then Rupaul hosted a party and we once had a fake wedding. Lady Bunny showed up at my birthday party and just announced that she was Lady Bunny. She was really thin and pretty then, now she’s a hag but still full of life. But Ru was always stunning in and out of drag.
RW: What can you indulge about the Disco 2000 parties of Party Monster fame?
Tee: It was like a broken record playing over and over and over again… there was lots of drugs, there was always a back area where people would have sex. It was a lot of people wearing whole body outfits saying “give me a drink, this club sucks.” There wasn’t much content with the club kids and there wasn’t much music in the scene. They wore great make up, they could drink like no one else and they always wanted free drugs. It wasn’t really very cute, pretty depressing I would say. But I hosted the hot body contest every week which was sensational, we would get people to come up for a chance to win $50 and they’d get totally naked. It was outrageous and fun.
RW: What is your favorite party you’ve thrown?
Tee: I had a party when I first came to New York called love machine, Rupaul and Lady Bunny were the MCs. Every week the supermodels would come. Linda, Christie and Naomi would all come at the same time in the same cab and just hang out in the same corner of the club every week. It was pretty amazing because I’d just gotten to NYC six months earlier and suddenly i was in charge of a thousand people. I would be DJing and someone would say you’ve gotta play Liza Minelli’s new song, Liza is here!
RW: How about the heyday of electroclash, what was it like being there?
Well it was a particular thrill on my birthday when Chicks on Speed and Adult all came out and sang happy birthday. This was during the Electroclash fest that I put on. Over the course of that 24 hours I lost $80,000, which was about what it cost to do that festival. That was bad, but then my club in Williamsburg took off and now i own a condo and live right above Agnes Deyn. I even wrote a song about her! It’s called Agnes Deyn. It’s sort of like the song Supermodel I did in 1992, it’s my tribute to the supermodel that I love right now. I’ve only seen her in the lobby once, she was locked out and with her dogs. So I grabbed my dogs and we talked for a second or two but i didn’t tell her about the song. I didn’t wanna say “Hi I wrote this song about you…and it sounds like Mr. Oizo being chased down the street by a bunch of bees!”
RW: Tell me about your new album!
Tee: I’ve got everyone on it. Amanda Lepore sings a song called “My Pussy”. Roxy Cottontail does a song called “Let’s make Nasty”. Of course the single “Licky” with Princess Superstar. Perez is on my album he sings a song called “My Penis”. I have Jefferee Star on the album, I remix “Shoes” by Kelly…it might as well be called girls gone wild the musical, it’s so much fun.
RW: When you were helping create the scene of electroclash, what was the vision?
Tee: One of the great things about electroclash was that a lot of people had the idea of making dance music with rock n roll attitude but most electroclash groups had a very distinct personality. They were also political and it didn’t matter if you were gay or straight. I remember thinking this is a very modern form of music. At the time in the indie world there was a lot of cute straight dudes that didn’t have much to say. Indie bands for a while all looked like replacements for boy bands, like they replaced ‘N SYNC with the Artic Monkeys and there you go.
RW: Ok so tell me about the Licky video
Tee: We put up a blue screen, I came up with the idea ‘cuz i wanted to do something sexy and fun that we could afford to do. So we rented the equipment and brought the other girl in from Texas. She’s a model and her name is Josie Ann. She had a really good sense of humor and would do about anything we asked but she did not wanna lick Nelson, my dog. He’s so cute I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to lick him! The shoot was fun we brought in this hunky model that had been to my house just a few weeks before the shoot. Oh and the whipped cream was vegan, Josie Ann was vegan so we got vegan everything.
RW: One thing that was present in electroclash and not other electronic music is the powerful women behind it. Why do you think this is?
Tee: When electroclash started happening there was huge backlash by the house, techno and IDM communities. It’s all a big boys club. Then suddenly here is all these powerful women like Miss Kittin, Chicks on Speed… I mean there was a girl and a fag in Fischerspooner! I got such a lashing from those guys…I think the reticence from the dance community was because the last thing they wanted was a bunch of girls coming in and bumping them out of the way. I was doing everything I could to promote electroclash because I thought it was fascinating. I think there needs to be more of a voice of women in music in general. Who doesn’t wanna rock out to some girls? When I did the electroclash fest I took out all women: Peaches, Chicks on speed, Tracy and the Plastics. It was a lot of fun, I bet more fun than being with a bunch of dudes. Peaches in an indoor heated pool with her top off was worth the entire price of the tour.
RW: What are you listening to right now?
I do love a lot of the stuff I’m hearing. I love a lot of really amazing girl groups that are singing more songs as opposed to electro which was more attitude and fever than singing. I like The Twelves, Chairlift, Lykke Li, Little Boots, Little Ginger. I remember in the New wave era, a lot of the early stuff was stiff and noisy then out of the next wave people suddenly started writing beautiful songs. I think we are heading into the beautiful song stage with the funky stuff rather than the glitch sounds of bloghouse. Once something like bloghouse is put into a more musical context it should mean a lot of great music coming up. A lot of it’s just going to show up any day now.
RW: You’ve said in interviews before that you really want to be a hipster, but you aren’t. Do you still feel this way?
I wanna be cool. Don’t we all wanna be cool? I’m sure that is something that makes me the center of the party, wanting to be cool or be around a lot of people. I’ve always been cool, but I’ve always been a dork. I’m never gonna get it down right; I’ll never be in a an indie rock boy band I’m afraid. I have a7-year-old girl singing on my album; I’ll always want to do something a little dorky.
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Larry Tee- I love You
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I just happened to stumble across your blog post and glad to have found your page. I’ll be back… keep blogging, thanks.
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[...] Penis” with vocals from Perez Hilton, but don’t let that scare you, the beat is badass. Remember when Larry and I chatted about this track? He described his album as “Girls gone Wild, The Musical.” After [...]