LONDON'S CALLING AGAIN

By D. James Romero

March 30, 1997 12 AM PT

D. James Romero covers youth culture for The Times' Life & Style section

LONDON — It’s 1 a.m. on a cold weeknight outside Heaven and the man with the megaphone says in no uncertain terms that “Nobody else is coming in!”

And still they wait, 300 clubbers clinging to the walls of this on-again, off-again danceteria on a dark, dank alley not far from the National Gallery and the famed Strand of nobles’ homes.

In this historic city of pop, who is it, exactly, this flock has come so hellbent to see?

An American, of course--a guy many Yankees probably never heard of. His name is Derrick May. He’s a legendary deejay. And in Heaven, there is nary a hipper form of pop god these days than the American deejay.

This may sound strange, but it’s a familiar story, really.

It involves the Brits’ infatuation with African American music and other forms of U.S. pop and their unwitting ability to turn it into something mainstream and marketable. The Beatles did it in a big way to rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-’60s. The Sex Pistols and the Clash did it with American punk in the ‘70s. And now the English are selling us dance music--”techno” of the type May himself made in Detroit back in the mid-’80s. Of course, they still revere the real thing--much more than Yanks do. But in many ways, British dance is off on its own orbit.

The energy of club culture is what has reestablished London as the new hot spot in pop. Ask any record company executive--a breed desperate to find a replacement for the sagging sales of Seattle “alternative”--and he’ll probably tell you which dot on the map holds gold: “London is swinging,” says Gary Pini, managing director of Sm:)e Communications, a dance subsidiary of New York’s Profile Records.

“In the ‘60s it was the place to be,” he says, “and now it is again.”

London may indeed hold the key to pop’s future. Over the last decade, the city has built a bustling scene around dance music, from its high-energy clubs to its fast-moving record companies and booming radio airwaves.

“They have so many more clubs and are so much further ahead with the music,” says Egil Aalvik, program director at L.A.’s Groove Radio (103.1 FM), a station on which nearly every other song played is a British dance single.

London is indeed home to the world’s most vibrant club scene, a scene composed of big, diverse, class-leveling night spots such as Heaven, Hanover Grand, Turnmills and the End. There are also dozens of smaller spots that host specific genres of dance--trip-hop, ambient, drum-and-bass--on any given night. TimeOut, London’s weekly guide, lists no fewer than 80 venues that host dance nights.

Inside Heaven, the dance floor is wet hot as hundreds pump to May’s swift turntable mix of fast-paced techno. Upstairs a group stands around two computer screens, surfing the Internet, as deejays spin funky “break-beat” techno, of the kind pioneered in . . . California.

Many credit this kind of club culture with uniting London’s young.

“Everyone’s on the same level here,” says 19-year-old club-goer Sara Beaver. “It’s like a carnival.”

Later in the week, crowds gather at the pub-like Turnmills to witness the Chemical Brothers’ lauded club night, the “Heavenly Social.” At the Social, there is hardly a piece of floor not danced upon. Dealers openly peddle $10 tabs of ecstasy, and the deejays pass a joint. The music is unashamedly eclectic as jocks spin everything from Stevie Wonder to the rock-infected Brothers.

Weekends at the Hanover Grand in Oxford Circus are host to a well-dressed crowd getting sweaty to thumping American and British house music. The stage is decorated with “Hanover Grand” in white lights and the decor is trimmed in burgundy velvet. There’s a discoey vibe that is strangely ecstatic and fancy-free--as if Studio 54’s ghost lives on in London .

The End is a high-tech, 600-capacity spot on the edge of Soho with stainless steel trim, crisp sound and plenty of energy drinks at the bar. During the week, dance star Goldie’s Metalheads label hosts a drum-and-bass night that attracts a gaggle of groupies to the deejay booth. There, pioneers of this beat-swift techno, deejays Kemistry and Storm, tag-team on the turntables and spin a seamless set of this smooth yet tough sound.

Clubs in the U.K. have become industries unto themselves and many, such as Ministry of Sound, Cream, Renaissance and Blue Note, have created namesake fashion lines, record labels, dance compilations and music tours. “They know how to market themselves,” says Darren Ressler, editor of the U.S. edition of Mixmag, one of half a dozen major dance-music magazines based in the U.K.

But the core of London dance music comes from carefully cultivated, defiantly independent record labels intent on keeping the music on deejay-friendly vinyl and away from uncontrolled exposure. Although U.S. record executives are waving cash under the noses of many London artists, they’ve seen it all before: Dance exploded here more than five years ago and today dominates the European pop charts alongside indie rock and American pop.

Last year PolyGram began distributing such lauded London dance-music labels as Metalheads and Mo’ Wax in the U.S. on a limited basis through its ffrr imprint, while other London labels such as React and Ninja Tune made their own way to the States. Commercial success in the U.S., however, has still been elusive, with only a handful of tracks (Everything but the Girl’s “Missing,” Robert Miles’ “Children”) making the list of top 50 dance singles for 1996.

“I guess we could quite happily live with our audience in Europe,” says Jonathan Moore, one half of the progressive British hip-hop act Coldcut and a founder of Ninja Tune. “We’re setting up an operation so that we can get stuff in America and we can keep control of it--to make sure the quality is good. We do this because we want to do it, not because we need to sell records.”

Yet other U.K. record companies, including Skint, Pork, Cup of Tea and Wall of Sound, have held out for licensing projects or simply have no distribution at all.

Wall of Sound’s Propellerheads are one of the most sought-after acts in this new wave of British dance. Despite the major-label offers to distribute both the group and the label in the U.S., both have so far declined to join the ranks of the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers and Underworld--British dance acts with major U.S. distribution and major media hype. Propellerheads, a duo anchored by ex-Stranglers saxophonist Alex Gifford, even turned down an offer to remix a U2 single.

“It feels to me like someone has stood up in class and said, ‘It’s all right, the teacher’s out, let’s do what we want,’ ” Gifford, 32, says.

The group has a strong reputation for mixing funky drums with strings and progressive melodies in such songs as “Go Faster” and “Take California.” Its remixes--Luscious Jackson’s “Naked Eye,” Soul Coughing’s “Super Bon Bon” and 808 State’s “Lopez”--have won wide praise too, becoming staples in L.A. on Groove Radio and “Metropolis” weeknights on KCRW-FM (89.9). But just as strong is the reaction to Propellerheads shows in and around London, which feature Gifford’s live keyboards and the turntable skills of partner Will White, 23.

“There’s a new breed of clubs that are right for our vibe,” Gifford says. “A block party vibe.”

Meanwhile, pop and pirate radio dedicates much of its time to dance. Pete Tong, head of artists and repertoire for ffrr in the U.K., hosts what is perhaps the most influential dance-music mix show in the world--Friday night’s “Essential Selection”--on Radio One, one of the U.K.’s biggest commercial stations. And at least half a dozen pirate radio stations have helped lift dance music, especially the ghetto-born sound of drum-and-bass, into the popular consciousness. Some commercial stations themselves, such as pop and dance outlet KISS-FM, started out as illegal pirate operations.

The result is that London has become a boogie-down nation and is far ahead of America’s own game. Popular culture flows through the city’s veins like the famous subway tubes that take thousands of young people from club to club each night. London is the globe’s musical switching yard, taking on influences from all directions--break-beat techno from California, “Goa dub” from India, high speed “gabber” from Holland--and exporting it to the world at large.

“Clubs are better, radio is better, distribution is better,” Mixmag’s Ressler says. “I was at Black Market record shop in London recently and guys in suits and ties were buying 12-inch vinyl and mix compilations like someone in America would buy Hootie & the Blowfish.”

But the question stateside is whether the U.S., so ardently a rock nation, will follow London’s lead.

“L.A. will become like London in the future,” says a faithful Aalvik of Groove Radio. “I have no doubt about that.”