The return of Dance Mania Records

The label’s music is also great to drop into a mix—at least according to Steve Mizek, editor of dance-music website Little White Earbuds and founder of the labels Argot and Tasteful Nudes. “If you played a Dance Mania track, it would get people dancing,” Mizek says. “People love getting down to music that has just no intention of being nice but is all about having fun, partying, and being real with our desires and what people actually want to do—which is smoke, drink, and have sex.”

Barney says Dance Mania closed up shop because music retail was slumping and the audience for house was dwindling; at the same time he shuttered Barney’s Records, a retail and distribution business he’d taken over from his father. Matos points out that Chicago’s house scene began winding down in the early aughts, in part due to a spike in rave busts, and 9/11 dealt its own blow to nightlife in general. With the possible exception of the slump in record sales, though, none of those factors still holds—and dance music is more popular than it’s been in years. Barney and Mitchell hope to release the first two records from the revived Dance Mania in June. The first is a re­issue of Mitchell’s Project (the EP with “Ghetto Shout Out!!”), and the second is a new EP from Traxman called West Side Boogie Vol. II. There’s no Dance Mania website yet—right now dancemaniarecords​.com belongs to DJ Funk—and Barney and Mitchell have pressed only 1,000 copies of each record. Business seems to be going well, though. “The first release practically sold already,” Barney says. “We have more orders than we have records.”

Barney, now 55, grew up in the music industry. His father, Willie, founded his record store, originally called Barney’s Swing Shop, in 1953, and expanded into distribution in the 60s. When Barney returned to Chicago after graduating from Bradley University in Peoria in 1980, he went to work for his dad, taking over the distro side of the business as well as the store, where he got the chance to interact with ordinary customers. “I used to have DJs coming over buying music all the time, and they started buying this house music,” he says. “I was very interested. It’s not like I was part of the scene—I wasn’t a big partier or anything like that. It started off as strictly business with me, and I just said, ‘I may as well jump in.'”

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