Swing at the Fuze Box: the story
From Wikisquare
... this is the story of the Fuze Who's Whos... for a listing of regular events, lessons, and mailing lists, check Albany swing dance
The Fuze Box was the social center of one of several swing/latin dance scenes found in the Capital District. The Fuze Box came upon the scene a few years into the mid-1990's swing dance resurgence. While there was an active ballroom & swing dance community before the Fuze Box, with the new swing dance craze, a couple of the area colleges and the Fuze Box brought this form of social dancing into the lives of a younger audience and reintroducing social dancing into the lives of former jitter bugs, Lindy hoppers, and Charleston dancers.
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In the beginning...
Around the time of the original Fuze Box opening (ca. 1999), Albany's swing scene consisted mainly of social clubs and organizations (YMCA, Elks) and a few bars (City Limits, Big House, Malt River) hosting lessons and DJ'ed dance practices. A few local dance studios (Lorraine Micheals, Arthur Murray, EBA) expanded on their offerings to attract the new swing dancers.
The first Friday "Church Dance" was one of the early monthly swing dance events with live music, held at the First Lutheran Church in Albany. This dance was sponsored by the Hudson Mohawk Traditional Dance group, which is now the DanceFlurry Organization. One-hour lessons were taught by a variety of instructors, including Darren and Mary and Kathryn Wedderburn. Teresa Broadwell & Pat Melita were primarily in charge of making the dance happen every month. Music leaned towards the lighter side featuring bands like Thrivin' on a Riff, Doc Scanlon's Rhythm Boys, Peter Davis and Friends, and The Lustre Kings. The scene at this time consisted mostly of people in the 30+ age group, but individuals had little association with each other outside of the monthly dance. Church Dances are now "1st Friday Dances", organized by Heather and Mike, with help from Jason, Jenn, Janice <???> and Jim...still under the banner of the Dance Flurry Organization. Dances moved to the Hibernian Hall in Albany ca. 2005 and in 2008 moved to the Elks Lodge in Albany.
Enter: SUNY Swingers
ToDo: A significant portion of the Fuze Box crowd started going to this dance after taking classes at SUNY. Can someone flesh that out a little?
The New Fuze
The Fuze Box was originally located in a small space behind the Power Company, across the street from the QE2, which occupied the current Fuze site (for some notalgia on the QE2, check this hidden city site). After QE2 went out of business, the Fuze took its place in March, 2000.
The Metroland wrote about the newly-opened Fuze Box in 2000:
QE2 has been reborn as a suave swing lounge: cool blue walls, black-and-white checkered floors, sleek red booths, huge martini glasses spinning from the ceiling, shiny chrome, skinny ties and slicked-down hair, cut flowers in the ladies' room, couples swirling to a steady beat, and images of the Rat Pack strolling across a TV screen above the Art Deco bar.
The Fuze box management tried to have a 7 day a week swing club where they hired bands regularly and tried having a dress code. Common local bands were the Lustre Kings, Rocky Velvet, and Slick Fitty. Nationally-recognized bands played, too, like Lavay Smith (July 1999) and Squirrel Nut Zippers (June 2000) . Unfortunately, live bands were not highly supported, and the idea of having swing every night died within a year, just like most other "neo-swing" clubs in the country. Some time in 2001, the martini glasses disappeared, too.
It's gettin' hot in here!
The sultry dance floor expression culminated in the release of the 2003 Albany Swing Dance Calendar, featuring girls of the Fuze. Now a collector's item, the calendar's order page can still be found on Barry's Capital District Swing/Latin Dance Calendar website.
The heat of the scene crept beyond the walls of the Fuze. In 2001, the Fuze crowd could be seen ripping up the dance floor at Savannah's in downtown Albany and Daisy Baker's in downtown Troy. The smoke-filled rooms gave way to a packed dance floor. Savannah's became a recruiting post for the Fuze, powered by top-rate rockabilly from the Lustre Kings and Rocky Velvet.
The swing resurge also spawned a national rediscovery of Lindy Hop and Albany was not left out. Lindy is the 'older brother' of the east coast swing style, sharing common origins and moves from earlier Jazz & Blues dances like The Charleston. Computer-savvy nerds in the group (and there were many) might have called it Swing++.
The Center For Body Mind Awareness, a few doors down from the Fuze, hosted Lindy practices around 2000. By 2001-02, Albany was hosting Lindy exchanges, which drew Lindy Hoppers from far places to the Capital District -- now recognized as a northeast Lindy hotspot due to the excellent musicians and instructors booked for events. Exchanges have continued annually and are now organized by a relatively new organization, Albany Chill Organization, which also helps select bands for the 1st Friday dances.
With diverging musical interests coming together at the Fuze, some competition of DJ and music styles developed. The Fuze visionary DJ Rick Spins left his post as DJ in early 2002. The responsibility got passed around through a few people in the community (Moose, X, Ben...). By 2002 it had settled into a weekly alternation of DJ styles between old-school swing / blues and neo-swing / rockabilly. The former was taken up by Kelly, and the latter by JohnK. Kelly eventually added Tony and Meghan to her shifts, and Tom G replaced JohnK in 2004. And for a while, the weekly swing nite plugged along in this format, becoming one of the longest-lasting Swing hotspots to be found.Fuze Box myspace
A hot fad cools
The Swing resurge started in the late 90s faced its inevitable decline throughout the country. Neo-swing bands were no longer on the charts. But Albany swing seemed remarkably tenacious in the face of the decline, and the Fuze remained energized on Thursday nights. The combination of the 50s facade, comfortable bar and lounge atmosphere kept a core group coming while a steady stream of newbies continued -- some in passing and some to stay. By mid 2000's, though, many of the more passionate original members (and some of the best dancers) had either moved on or moved out of the area.
The passion that remained lay mostly in the community of Lindy Hoppers. This crowd tends to prefer tunes more grounded in the musicianship of traditional jazz and blues styles over the more engineered sound of neo-swing and the heavier beats common to rockabilly and jump blues. Many Albany Lindy dancers also prefer a slightly slower range of beats because the shuffle rhythms of traditional swung jazz styles fit the triple-step footwork better, and pulling off complex Lindy steps at fast tempos requires a good deal of proficiency.
There was some griping and backbiting that happened among a small group of people who had strong preferences for one kind of music to be played at the Fuze Box. This old quarrel seems to have increasingly less meaning to many or most dancers in the Albany area who enjoy a variety of dance and music styles. Some of this lack of mutual support between both swing crowds may have influenced the Fuze Box to move on and try something new. If that was the case then all Albany swing dancers would do well to focus on and emphasize shared interests and make those small but important efforts to build a broader community.
In the end, though, it was something else that grew increasingly out of favor with the Fuze owners. Our unswerving sobriety.
This story sums up what was a bit frustrating on the bar end: The Thursday night before Christmas, I ended the standard DJ announcements to a packed house with "Everyone head to the bar, the next round is on me!" At the end of the night, I asked at the bar what the damage was. As he fumbled for his slip, he started "You owe one..." at which I grimaced "One hundred what?" and he said "No, you owe one Stoli's Vanilla and Coke." Even I was disappointed.
The end of Swing at the Fuze
Nearly a decade after its initial opening, the Fuze Box ended Thursday Night Swing on January 31, 2008. Fuze's glory days may be gone, but there is still a strong devoted core in the swing scene, with new people joining regularly, and several other local scenes showing no signs of stopping. Albert started an area swing calendar around 1997 -- Barry picked it up in late 1999 and has archived the events since then [1]. Others have joined in more recently to keep the swing dance scene alive and well in Albany.
After a short hiatus, Fuzers returned to Thursday Night Swing at the Envy Lounge in downtown Albany. Intended to be larger, classier, and in Albany's nightlife district, the story was to pick up again here. However, the Envy Lounge also proved to be a difficult venue and the search is on once again for a permanent location...
