I had one hand on the exit door when the space went black and a thundering industrial beat rattled my ears and pounded in my chest as the door vibrated against my hand.

Up to the moment I placed my hand on the exit door, it was just a dance club. Any dance club. Nothing you’d have reason to remember decades later. 

When I decided I wanted to write about what was ultimately an unforgettable clubbing experience after more than 30 years, I started wondering about dance clubs today. I’m many decades removed from the club scene, so I’m not following that world closely, but it seems like they’ve just become relics of a musical revolution that ran its course, going the way of parachute pants and Tab Cola.

Not so, says the New York Times, though. With advances in mixing and music creation, the world of dance music has been opened to anyone with a thumping beat in the back of their head that needs to escape. As the Times observes, live bands need loads of equipment and time. A DJ needs a flash drive and a sense of rhythm. 

Surely a good rave will still get the blood pumping with some popular EDM, and sometimes I get a sense there’s a lot more funk and soul mixed in, and that, my friends, is the evolution in music that tells us it is alive and well. And let’s be honest, whether we like to dance or prefer to nod to some semblance of the beat as a wallflower, there are few places in the world that make you feel like a dance club does.

Back to the early 90s, though. This particular club in Saarbrucken, Germany was an old converted theater wrapping around a raised platform for a stage with many of the seats pulled out to create open dance spaces, sprinkled with platforms and small tables. Outside the cavernous main space were a number of smaller rooms with bars and a variety of seating.

My friend and I sat at a table with a beer as we watched the clock to make sure we didn’t miss the last train back to Kaiserslautern. It was nearly 11 p.m., and as we got up and headed for the door, we lamented that the scene wasn’t as captivating as we imagined when we first began exploring The Gloria.

Good beer, good music, nice place, but quiet and just lacking the dance club feel we anticipated. As we made our way to the front, for the first time all night people were pouring in and past us into the theater space, and then it happened. The club erupted, transformed by a flash of strobes cutting the darkness, into a surreal, deafening soundscape.

I looked at my friend, he looked at me, and without a word we turned and fought our way back in, the sea of darkness cut by strobe and searchlights frantically crisscrossing every inch of the main room. Looking down into the black from the doorway, we saw dancers on every surface, many in reflective vests, waving glow sticks, blasting whistles and flailing frantically to the music that made everything from floor to ceiling vibrate.

The last train home that night departed without us. We really never even considered leaving after that. Around dawn we wandered into the quiet, cold street, waiting for our ears to work like normal and our eyes to adjust to the light. It was an experience I could never forget, and one I almost missed.

Dance clubs connect us to a part of us that maybe we aren’t regularly in touch with. But when it reaches inside us and flips the switch, we might come as close as we can to an out of body experience without death or drug use. The club clearly had an impact on many who experienced it as even today they host Gloria Revival parties to get lost in the vibe one more time. 

I was an 80s teen, and that meant new wave, techno and industrial music were in my DNA. We’re the generation that listened to it evolve. Depeche Mode, New Order, The Church, The Cure, and Dead or Alive were everyday favorites, while the Sisters of Mercy, Nitzer Ebb, Lords of Acid, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, and Front 242 satiated my need for a hard, angry beat.

That meant dance clubs were always on the menu, even if dancing wasn’t. I was always happy to sit back in the corner and just feel the music, occasionally buzzed enough to “dance”.

Anyone in Houston in the late 80s remembers Club NRG, a rare music gathering place for teens, where you could get your fix of loud thumping rhythms. The more upscale choice was Numbers, a nightclub that is still alive and kicking today, that served as the heartbeat of the Westheimer and Montrose cruising scene teens would jam up on weekend nights. It’s a very different area today.

My true appreciation for the dance club blossomed when I lived in Germany and traveled some in Europe in the early 90s. There was The Gloria in Saarbrucken, but we had a local Kaiserslautern haunt downtown called The Flash. What I found most unique about The Flash was the mix of music woven together by the DJs.

It was around the time Prince released “Diamonds and Pearls” so the title track, as well as “Cream” and “Get Off” weighed heavily in the rotation. But mixed into the current dance favorites, like LA Style’s “James Brown is Dead” and PM Dawn’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” you were sure to hear a variety of Bob Marley classics like “Buffalo Soldier” and “Get Up Stand Up”.

By 1993 maybe I was growing out of it as I’d moved to Frankfurt and would occasionally drop into a club, but was drawn more to local pubs and the rousing bar scene. Maybe I burned that candle too hard on one fateful trip to Spain and cured my craving forever.

In Lloret de Mar, a coastal town not far from Barcelona, we took advantage of a four-day trip to see just how many hours without sleep, multiplied by twice as many drinks, would spoil the fascination. It was a lot, multiplied by a lot more, but I have no more solid math than that. Giant venues like Moef GaGa, The Revolution, and Club Hollywood went all night and seemed to come with a never ending supply of high volume music and low-end gin and tonics.

I can’t tell you much about the clubs, except they’re still there today – international icons to the dance scene – and they made an impression, even if it was a fuzzy one complete with a three-day headache. I have a nice metal sign from the bathroom of The Revolution, bent and jagged at its corners, that I worked a long time to free from the wall. Good times.

Our own musical journeys take us to places we don’t expect. It takes us places that one day might embarrass us a bit, but always make us very nostalgic. Every bit of it fits neatly into that library of song that shaped the music lover each of us has become.

So forgive me if you catch me “Oscilating Wildly” now and again, reminiscing of a “Blue Monday” as I “Pump Up the Volume” at “10:15 Saturday Night.” I couldn’t deny the draw of the music.

Have some dance club favorites? Let us hear about them. Here are a few of mine.