Naturally, a queen loves good lighting. Club lighting took an especially significant role in the disco nightclubs of San Francisco in the 80′s. The tradition of Arc Lighting centered around hand held spotlights with built in gels/filters giving technicians the ability change the vibe live and play around with brightness, intensity and color. Patrick Cowley worked at “The City” (a nightclub on on Montgomery and Broadway) as the main light guy. As dance music gained more and more of a cult following, traditions were formed. The way a club was lit started to become more stylized. Lighting guys, like Patrick, started to come up with a new language and way of synchronizing the clubs lighting to the music. Everyone knew the lyrics, they loved the songs, they knew where the intense build ups were and when a song was going to break, lighting guys started to take the crowd further into the experience by taking cues from the music. When a song mentioned love in the lyrics or was a love song, ArcLighters would switch the room to a deep red. ArcLighters started to wear headsets so they could send out cues to create a dramatic effect. Black outs, when all the lights would suddenly be cut, would send a dance-floor into a frenzy and often be the most anticipated moment of the night. One can’t help but infer that Patrick was weaving his relationship to the lighting into the compositions he made for the dance-floor.