Saturday, December 17, 2005

I've Been to Heaven.........






Every Friday and Saturday night that is.... Club Heaven was located on the corner of Woodward and Seven Mile roads in Detroit and was basically the after hours joint to go to through most of the late 80's and 90's. Folks would start there evening at the Glass House down on Six Mile, for dinner and drinks... This was always starting the evening right, as people were grateful to be out of work for the week and would be ready for a party to start. From there everyone would go to Bookies for more drinking and definitely dancing to the beats of Greg Collier, and Melvin Hill. Bookies 870 Club was famous in the 70's and early 80's as the premier punk club, featuring Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Patty Smith to name just a few. In the mid 80's the club morphed into the best house music club in the city.

At 2am every night the club would close and the kids would flock over to Club Heaven for some of the best house beats ever often dancing till the sun came up. Heaven was Detroit's version of the Paradise Garage, it was all about the dance. The club was broken up into three rooms one huge dance floor with giant speakers at one end and two smaller rooms for folks to gather in... one of which was only for a select few....

Spinning every week was Ken Collier, the Godfather of house! Look up every DJ of stature today and you are likely to find Ken listed as an inspirational force in their development. "If Heaven was a club it would have two floors, one for Ken and the other with Frankie Knuckles... and heaven would be a sea of sweaty men getting their groove on to old school house beats!"
I was one of the Heaven faithful for years.... it was not uncommon to see the famous there from time to time, from Dennis Rodman to the groove is in the house kids from Delight! They might get a momentary "oh wow" before Ken would change up the tunes and people would converge in a rush to dance... Through out the evening circles would form and informal dance offs were held to the cheers and jeers of the crowed! To see and be seen, to dance and maybe find something more was the promise of Heaven.

The images from tonight post are the cast and crew of the House of Charles. Its to my knowledge some of the only images from the Heaven dance floor ever. They were taken for the premier issue of Kick Magazine, which was a pet project Curtis Lipscomb and definite outgrowth of our work on the MOC Motivator. `Ken came in early one saturday, lit the floor and the turntables while I photographed a bit of the flavor of the evening to come!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I go looking trying to find Heaven and run into you.

Good thing

Unknown said...

I've been trying to find info on Club Heaven as Carl Craig recently mentioned the club in an interview and found your account most informative, thanks so much!

EpiphanyNoir said...

Glad you found it interesting! If you need more fell free to email me!

Anonymous said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_BmXq39qmyY

Anonymous said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_BmXq39qmyY