Thursday October 19, 2023 | 5:30 - 8:00pm

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

$12 General Admission | Register via Eventbrite

In honor of electronic music and disco pioneer Patrick Cowley on his birthday, Josh Cheon, founder of Tenderloin-based Dark Entries Records, interviews singer-songwriter and frequent Cowley collaborator Maurice Tani, plus music by DJ Steve Fabus.

A revolutionary musician and producer who catalyzed his own style of “Hi-NRG” dance music, Patrick Cowley tapped into the Bay Area’s deep lineage of new, technologically innovative sounds to create music that vividly captures the confluence of a talented man, his place, and his moment. Cowley’s chart-topping collaborations with Sylvester such as “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” immortalized the “San Francisco Sound” and illustrate the indelible influence of queer artists and club culture on the evolution of electronic dance music. 

Cowley’s musical output, however, was wide and varied, from porno soundtracks to ad-spots and singer-songwriter productions. He was not only well versed in the new sounds of synthesis and electronic instruments, but also pioneered how to apply those sounds to popular music and make a career out of his maverick production work. Drawn to San Francisco for its acceptance of progressive lifestyles, Cowley had an innate musicality that he used to translate futuristic and abstract electronic sounds into the soundtrack of the city’s newly ascendant gay culture. Although he died tragically young at age 32, an early victim of AIDS, Cowley was a prolific artist who left behind a vast body of work. Over the past 15 years, the full richness and complexity of his artistic legacy has come into vivid focus thanks to a series of reissue and archival releases by Tenderloin-based independent label Dark Entries Records, replete with diligently assembled liner notes and interviews.

To celebrate Cowley’s music and legacy on what would have been his 73rd birthday (October 19), the Tenderloin Museum’s “Sounds of the Tenderloin” series hosts an interview between Josh Cheon, founder of Dark Entries Records, and Maurice Tani, a prolific singer songwriter and frequent Cowley collaborator going back to their student days in Gerald Mueller’s Electronic Music Lab at San Francisco City College. Their conversation will be bookended with music by Steve Fabus, who DJ’ed at SF disco hotspots the Trocadero Transfer and Endup in the ‘70s & ‘80s during Cowley’s heyday. 

This program is made possible by support from the Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.