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How to Be a DJ in '90s New York City
by Mark Ronson
Capturing the music, characters, escapades, and energy of his DJ days, a profound memoir from seven-time Grammy-winning record producer Mark Ronson.
Lady Gaga, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus, the Barbie soundtrack—behind some of the biggest musical moments in the past two decades is one man: Mark Ronson. Night People conjures the undeniable magic of the city's bygone nightlife—a time when clubs were diverse, glamorous, and a little lawless, and each night brought a heady mix of music, ambition, danger, delight, and possibility. It's about the beauty of what you can create with just two Technics and a mixer, in a golden era before Giuliani, camera phones, and bottle service upended everything. It's also about a teenager finding his way—stalking DJ Stretch Armstrong and biting his mixes, crate-digging in every corner of New York, grinding gig after gig through a decade of incredible music—and finding a community of people who, in their own strange, cracked ways, lived for the night.
Organized around the venues that defined his experience of the downtown scene, Ronson evokes the specific rush of that decade and those spaces—where fashion folks and rappers on the rise danced alongside club kids and 9-to-5'ers—and invites us into the tribe of creatives and partiers who came alive when the sun went down. A heartfelt coming-of-age tale, Night People is the definitive account of '90s New York nightlife and the making of a musical mastermind.
"Thoroughly charming...An endearing memoir from a musician who's more than just Mark." —Kirkus Reviews
"A wondrous snapshot of a bygone New York." —Publishers Weekly
"In Night People, Mark Ronson tells his own sweet, intimate, and sometimes extremely funny story of what it's like to be inside an era of pure musical magic before anyone but you and your friends even know it's happening. His is a perfect New York tale — the kind that makes you jealous you weren't there, grateful for your own version, and racing to make a playlist so you can visit this world anytime you want. It's also about the power of obsession with the thing you love, and how it can drive you to find your people, the ones who will eventually introduce you to yourself." ―Lizzie Goodman, author of the New York Times bestseller Meet Me in the Bathroom
"Mark Ronson's transporting memoir is a New York bildungsroman about an uptown kid with a downtown heart that beats to hip hop while longing for a sound that's all his own. Night People reads like a playlist of life's hard knocks and small triumphs that somehow flows effortlessly on the page, not unlike his talent as a DJ to mix songs that kept the crowd shaking on the dance floor." ―Griffin Dunne, author of the New York Times bestseller The Friday Afternoon Club
This information about Night People was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mark Ronson is a nine-time Grammy winner (with five additional nominations). He's won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, two BRIT Awards (with five additional nominations), and has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy. He performed at Super Bowl 50 in 2016 with Coldplay, Beyoncé, and Bruno Mars, and has been a musical guest on Saturday Night Live three times since 2014, with Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Miley Cyrus. In addition to his own albums, and writing and producing work with other artists, Mark has contributed to the soundtracks of HBO's Euphoria, the 2016 Ghostbusters, the 2018 A Star Is Born, Suicide Squad, Disney's 2016 live-action Jungle Book, and the Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig.
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