We all have memories of the music we grew up with. Thanks to technology, you can relive those moments by listening back to the artists and DJs that soundtracked them whenever you want. For many in the pre-digital era, this isn’t so easy. Especially when it comes to club music that never made it to radio or streaming services. Luckily, Pine Walk Collection is making this possible one tape at a time.

The project is an incredibly unique, detailed look at dance music from the late 1970s to 1990s, using over 400 cassette tapes retrieved from a bungalow in Fire Island, New York. Every genre prominent during that time – Disco, House, Euro Dance – can be heard on these tapes, available to stream exclusively on Mixcloud. Pine Walk Collection represents a seminal period of musical and cultural history, capturing the essence of nightlife, especially among the LGBTQIA communities of the time, in New York City and beyond.

For more on the project, we spoke to its lead, Joe D’Esponisa. He shares how the Pine Walk Collection came to be, the community that powers its Mixcloud profile and the culture the tapes represent.

“You can get snapshots of all of these musical shifts happening in front of you.”

Joe D’Esponisa

Tell us about the story of Pine Walk Collection.

Joe: I’ve been DJing since the early 1990s and in fact was a DJ in Fire Island during that time. In the 1980s, there was a couple that owned a bungalow and they were big music fans. When they weren’t liking the music at the clubs or after the clubs had closed they would have people back at their house and play these tapes they had curated from DJs they were friends with and DJs of the time.

Over time they collected a lot of these tapes which were either recordings from the nightclubs in Fire Island, some from nightclubs in New York City and also DJ club installations. At the time to make a little money on the side, DJs would promote themselves by making a monthly mixtape of new music of a certain style or theme. That is a pretty large part of what we have at Pine Walk Collection, particularly Michael Jorba’s monthly mix series. 

These guys lived in this house for 30-40 years before a new couple moved in. They were the excellent Nate Pinsley and Peter Kriss and they’re already heavily involved in the Fire Island community. They wanted to renovate the place and among the stuff they were looking to throw out, they found boxes of cassette tapes. When they first opened the boxes, being aware of Fire Island history, they decided to take a closer look and saw one or two DJ names that they recognised. So they actually called me up because I’m friends with them and said, ‘Hey, we have this box of tapes. We would love to just be able to hear them and put them up online so other people can hear them too.’

So I was the one who took the reins on that project for them. I already knew the ropes in terms of digitizing tapes. We started uploading to Mixcloud in July 2020. Much to our surprise, once word started getting around in the gay community around the world, the popularity of the tapes really took off. We saw our following on Mixcloud increase by about 10,000 and thankfully we’ve been able to sustain that.

How was the process of digitizing the tapes and seeking approval from the DJs? It must’ve been an interesting task!

I have a Sony cassette deck that is in very good condition. It’s a pro level deck and a digital recorder so I can leave it unattended. Once I got them into Adobe Audition, the quality level of these tapes, having sat in a non-weather-proof house on Fire Island for 40 years, was all over the shop. So it was a task to make them sound as good as possible. Reworking the EQ a little, trying to take out hiss. 

You’ve got 90 minute tapes mostly. 45 minutes on each side and there’s a gap between side A and side B. So I always try to take the two parts and splice them together to make it a continuous mix. But it gets cut off in one place and picks up in a different place and there’s missing material. So it’s a little bit of a puzzle trying to figure out a good way to slice these things together. So that it sounds seamless even though you’re missing part of the song.

Fortunately, I know many of these DJs, from having worked with them or at least peripherally. We’re all among the same DJ community. So I was able to get in touch with most of them and they were honored to be included. They gave their full consent and understood what this project was and the value of it.

What is the general significance of Fire Island in this story? It has such a rich and legendary party scene.

It has a lot of small communities, including The Pines which is one of two predominantly gay communities out there. In the ‘80s and ‘90s there was The Pavilion nightclub. It was the nexus of gay nightlife culture on Fire Island. That’s where all of the top DJs from New York at the time who played at Studio 54 and The Saint would come to play during the summer.  I think from my period of playing out there, parties started at midnight and would go till 8am or 9am in the morning, with after parties after that. Fire Island would be a place where gays could go and get away and have a little haven of acceptance and their own community.

How would you guys describe yourselves? Would ‘music archive’ be an accurate label?

I think ‘music archive’ is a really accurate, broad description. But more specifically, it’s a music archive of gay nightlife culture in Fire Island and the New York area in the 1980s and 1990s.

What kind of music can be heard on your Mixcloud profile?

Some of the earliest tapes are purely Disco because we go back as far as 1979. Unfortunately, the ones that go back that far have no credit as to who the DJ was. You start with pure Disco and you start going through the evolution of what happened in gay nightclubs during the ‘80s and ‘90s and you transition to more of a Euro sound, that ‘80s British sound that became very popular in gay nightlife. Then you transition to House, something none of the gay DJs at the time called it. But this of course is when House music started to happen. They certainly were starting to play some of that much more Disco sounding, vocalled House. When you start getting towards the ‘90s, you get out of that high energy Euro sound. Then you start migrating to Progressive House and even Deep House. 

One of the most interesting things about this collection all the way through is that we have some complete nights out that were much longer back then and almost always played by one DJ. You’ll have a set from a Saint At Large party that could be 14-20 hours long. They’re really structured, they have a beginning, middle and end that gets the party going. The end of the party and those down trips in gay nightclubs included music that was either called ‘morning music’ or ‘sleaze music’ which was the really slow sub-112 tempo stuff with more of a moody feel.

You can get snapshots of all of these musical shifts happening in front of you. Before you could Shazam things, if you did not physically have a record or a tape of a track, you couldn’t listen to it unless it were on the radio. The club was where you heard it, and that was it. 

Why do you think Mixcloud was the best platform to help you bring the messages of the tapes to life?

Mixcloud pays royalties to the artists whose music is included. That means a lot to me as an artist myself. The platform gives back; it’s not just taking this material and treating it as something that they own. We recognize that we are sharing music that other people have put their blood and sweat into. The ability to schedule our releases, on Mixcloud, the search capabilities being able to make playlists. We’ve broken these things out and grouped tapes together by the different DJs that have contributed, or by years. So if you want to go and listen to 1985, you can see all the tapes we have for 1985. We love the ability to monetize our profile so that we can cover our costs associated with keeping this going. Mixcloud has good options for that with tips and subscriptions and we appreciate that.

Tell us a bit about your community on Mixcloud; what role do they play?

The response to the collection from our community has been just amazing. It makes me think of the significance of what the tapes represent. The time period of ‘80s and ‘90s gay culture in New York, Fire Island and all over the world. It was a time period of the AIDS crisis. So many people didn’t survive that era but the people that have survived naturally have nostalgia and an interest in music that they grew up on or that they danced to. This particular era has a deep and touching connection for the people who have survived. They remember their friends and those experiences, both the good times and the angst. I’ve heard so many comments from people about how moving and special it is for them to be able to have this connection to this music and to be able to go back and listen to it. 

On the flip side another batch of comments that we get is from people of a younger generation. Those who appreciate being able to have this look back and hear the music. I’ve found their appreciation isn’t nostalgia, it’s discovery. It’s awesome that we have both people who reflect on this era and remember it and people who enjoy discovering it. There’s some great and rare treasures hidden among all of these sets. It’s all there for discovering and people are enjoying it from all of those different angles.

What lessons have you personally taken from listening to the tapes and sharing them?

When I was presented with this project and started digitizing the tapes, I hadn’t thought about the social aspects surrounding this music. So the way that the community has responded to them has really helped me get a deeper understanding of how this music preserves moments of culture, society and experience. It’s added another layer to the music itself, and that is just so exciting and touching to behold.

The tapes cover the course of the late 1970s to late 1990s. Which major musical changes do you think they capture the most?

One of the things that is unique about this collection is that you will hear, from the ‘80s and early ‘90s sets, a lot of High Energy and Euro Dance, something you’re not going to hear in a lot of other places. I think this really captures a huge number of these tapes and of course elements of Disco throughout.

“The tapes really helped me get a deeper understanding of how this music preserves moments of culture, society and experience.”

Joe D’Esponisa

What does the future look like for Pine Walk Collection?

At this point, all of the tapes from the original discovery in the bungalow are up on the site. But since then, others have come forward with tapes they have that certainly feed into this collection. They are recordings from Fire Island or from DJs of that time period and we’re digitizing these addendum tapes. So we’re keeping the site alive and the content fresh with this additional material. We’re going back to all of the stuff that was originally released and putting them out as a podcast. So that people can discover some of the tapes that maybe they’re not finding.

If you had three words to describe Pine Walk Collection, what would they be?

Gay music preserved.