From Publishers Weekly
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.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Sex, drugs, murder, mayhem . . . and the hits keep coming. Journalist Frank Owen took a six-year plunge into the seductive and dirty world of Clubland--the cutting-edge music scene orgy of the '90s. We track the progress of high-flying club owners in constant competition to create the most extravagant, decadent, and mind-blowing venues. Predictably, these same owners are swallowed whole by their illusions as they themselves become victims of drug addiction while loosely managing a coterie of hustlers, drug dealers, and "scene-makers." Between hits of Ecstacy, animal tranquilizers, and cocaine, there is crime galore and the inevitable attempted payback in court. The dramatis personae all end up broken from the experience . . . the party over. A fine read by Gerard Doyle. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
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 Village 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. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Like a line of coke begs for another bump (or so we've been told), Clubland is a compulsive page-turner.” —Miami Herald
“Clubland satisfies by meting out the justice that many ‘90s party kids never got to see—or perhaps never wanted to. Clubland sees through the smoke, mirrors, and Ketamine.” —The Village Voice
“Positively riveting . . . to be enjoyed even by those who’ve never stepped foot anywhere more stimulating than a Howard Johnson’s.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Review
Like a line of coke begs for another bump (or so we've been told), Clubland is a compulsive page-turner.? ?Miami Herald
?Clubland satisfies by meting out the justice that many ?90s party kids never got to see?or perhaps never wanted to. Clubland sees through the smoke, mirrors, and Ketamine.? ?The Village Voice
?Positively riveting . . . to be enjoyed even by those who?ve never stepped foot anywhere more stimulating than a Howard Johnson?s.? ?San Francisco Chronicle
Book Description
For the past five years, journalist Frank Owen’s edgy explorations of the underbelly of American club culture and the personalities who inhabit it have become staple cover stories of The Village Voice. In 1995 he set out to write an article about “Special K,” the drug that had become the afterburner of choice for the after-midnight club scene. This is his genre-bending account of a six-year foray behind the velvet ropes, revealing a razor-sharp world of drugs, celebrity, money, mafia, and murder.
Gaining access to Manhattan’s legendary Limelight nightclub, Owen discovered a world where reckless hedonism was elevated to an art form, and where the ever-accelerating party finally spun out of control. In lurid detail he reveals the players who made the 1990s club scene notorious: Peter Gatien, the powerhouse behind the Limelight; Chris Paciello, who ruled the exclusive Miami Beach scene; Michael Caruso, whose cultural exchange with England’s rave scene included a mainline supply of techno and drugs; and Michael Alig, the party promoter who spawned such infamous parties as the “Blood Feast,” where the dress code featured slabs of beef and liver. They gave rise to a lethal drug ring operating in a lawless, black-lit realm of fantasy, and when the lights came up, their excesses had left countless victims in its wake.
Praised for his risk-taking, detailed, cheeky writing style, Frank Owen has spawned a hybrid of literary nonfiction and true crime, capturing a world that emerged in the spirit of “peace, love, unity, and respect”—and ended in tragedy.
From the Inside Flap
Outrageous parties. Brazen drug use. Fantastical costumes. Celebrities. Wannabes. Gender-bending club kids. Pulse-pounding beats. Sinful orgies. Botched police raids. Depraved criminals. Murder.
Welcome to the decadent nineties club scene.
In 1995, journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on Special K, a designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally notorious Limelight, a crumbling church converted into a Manhattan disco, where mesmerizing music, ecstatic dancers, and uninhibited sideshows attracted long lines of hopeful onlookers. Owen discovered a world where reckless hedonism was elevated to an art form, and where the ever-accelerating party finally spun out of control in the hands of notorious club owner Peter Gatien and his minions. In Clubland, Owen reveals how a lethal drug ring operated in a lawless, black-lit realm of fantasy, and how, when the lights came up, their excesses left countless victims in their wake.
Praised for his risk-taking and exhilarating writing style, Frank Owen has spawned a hybrid of literary nonfiction and true crime, capturing the zeitgeist of a world that emerged in the spirit of “peace, love, unity and respect,” and ended in tragedy.
From the Back Cover
"Immensely entertaining. It all plays like Saturday Night Fever remade with the cast of Goodfellas and directed in high Grand Guignol style by Luis Buñuel.” —The Boston Globe
"Positively riveting…to be enjoyed even by those who've never stepped foot anywhere more stimulating than a Howard Johnson's." —San Francisco Chronicle
"The French Connection remixed for the ‘chemical generation.’”–The Guardian
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