🎉 One Hundred Episodes In: A Living History of Dance Music

The Twelve Inch 00 : An introduction to... almost everything

When I published the very first episode of The Twelve Inch Newsletter on February 16, 2024, I knew I was starting something that would stick with me. I’d written before, mostly in Dutch, but never on this scale, and never with the intention of committing for the long haul. Yet here we are: this is episode number 100.

Eighty of those are the weekly deep-dives you know, plus some shorter pieces on the songs and stars orbiting the edges of the story. One hundred pieces may sound like a lot, but my list of tracks to cover is easily ten times longer. I’ll be here a while. 😁

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Welcome, I’m Pe Dupre and I’m really glad you’re here. This is “The Twelve Inch”, my newsletter that tells the history of dance music between 1975 and 1995, one twelve inch at a time.

If you’ve received this newsletter, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter and want to subscribe, please do so. That way you will not miss any of my weekly episodes.

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From the beginning, I’ve imagined the newsletter as having two layers. The first is the weekly zoom-in on a single track or artist. The second, starting now, is the broader articles that tie everything together. These new episodes won’t follow a strict chronology but will dig into specific questions, labels, timeframes, and people. Think of them as the connective tissue between the weekly stories, part of a bigger “living book.”

I’m not the first to tell the history of dance music. Bill Brewster’s Last Night a DJ Saved My Life explored it through the role of the DJ. Tim Lawrence’s Love Is the Message situates the music within wider cultural change, following a path set by Peter Shapiro’s Turn the Beat Around. Alice Echols’ Hot Stuff is another essential. These are brilliant books, but I still felt something was missing.

Dance music history isn’t only written by DJs and artists. It’s also shaped by the people behind the scenes, the label founders, contract signers, record pressers, and promoters who carried the sound to the world. To follow their stories is to follow the growth of the music itself.

Beyond the broader history of labels and industry figures, there are dozens of specific themes I want to explore. To give you some examples:

• What exactly was the LGBTQ connection in disco and dance music?

• How did the disco backlash of 1979 unfold, and what did it mean for artists?

• What was the contribution of Latino Americans to disco?

• Were punk and disco really mortal enemies, or did they share more than we think?

I’ll also be diving into recording techniques, record pools, promotion and radio, and zooming in on Europe, even behind the Iron Curtain. And that’s just for the disco years…

The beauty of Substack is that it allows this to unfold as a “living book.” Each episode is thoroughly researched, but history isn’t static, perspectives shift, new sources appear, and sometimes it turns out we’ve been wrong. I want to leave space for that evolution. My research is ongoing, and when I uncover new insights, I’ll revisit and update earlier write-ups.

The first subject? Casablanca Records & Neil Bogaert, perhaps the most important disco label & entrepreneur of all time. Some stories will need more than one episode; others will stand alone. Together, they’ll form a timeline that’s constantly expanding and being revised.

Starting next week, these broader histories will appear alongside the weekly episodes you’re used to. They will not necessarily follow a weekly schedule. The weeklies will stay free for the first month; the longer research pieces will mostly be behind the paywall. If you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, this is an extra reason to jump in and support my work.

Thanks for following me through the first hundred. Here’s to the next thousand, and to building this living history of dance music together.

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💬 Let’s Talk

I’ve sketched out a rough schedule of the subjects I want to cover, but I also want to hear from you. What are the questions you’ve always had? Even the ones you thought might be too small or too silly?

👉 Just hit reply and share them with me (and the community), or drop me a note directly 😁. You never know… your question might spark an entire chapter.

Thanks for reading along so far, and I hope you’ll stay with me for what’s coming next.