“We don’t do, we just are,” drawls James St James of the club kids at the beginning of Party Monster, the cult 2003 movie based on his own IRL tell-all book, Disco Bloodbath. Exactly what he means by that is: outrageously dressed, drug-addled, and wildly fabulous, running amok in New York City in the early 90s, and just as likely to be throwing wild parties in underground clubs like Limelight as they were to be taking over subway stations and ransacking burger joints for impromptu raves.
The club kids’ antics have gone down in subcultural infamy, and while their reign may have been fairly brief, the moment in time and the figures at the heart of the movement continue to inspire a new gen to this day – just look to weirdo drag performers like Charity Kase, Yvie Oddly, and Bailey J Mills, and catwalk shows like the ones Charles Jeffrey puts on for just a tiny measure of their incalculable influence.
Now, St James is getting set to dish the dirt on the era, as season two of his Night Fever podcast lands on the World of Wonder network. Alongside co-hosts Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the OG club kid will go deep on New York nightlife spanning the 70s, 80s, and 90s, calling on hard-partying friends to help him remember each era – among them Drag Race icon and girl about town Michelle Visage, OG party queen Susanne Bartsch, and trans punk rocker Jayne County, who recounts the moment the first brick was thrown at Stonewall.
Across seven episodes, expect the three hosts and their guests to balance important queer history and stories of cult figures with a whole host of juicy titbits and anecdotes about their deliciously sordid, hard-partying days – with hopefully a splattering of the incredible fashions they were renowned for thrown in for for good measure. With the first episode landing next week, on August 8, whet your appetite below with a look at Night Fever’s teaser.