In the fall of 1995, I spent many nights in a dank basement club called the Cooler, a former refrigerated warehouse in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. The neighborhood was raw -- the slaughterhouse smell of blood and death had coagulated in the cobblestones of Gansevoort Street and at night tall transvestite prostitutes from Brooklyn and the Bronx swarmed the area, taking their customers for rides in the back seats of taxi cabs.

Amid such loam, the Cooler, now defunct, was sometimes host to a moving musical party called Giant Step, now a record label. If the Meatpacking District seems an unusual place for a dance party, it may have been that the desperation and decay on the streets above seeped through the pavement to fuel the life of the party below. Ah, New York . . .

A party in itself, the Groove Collective first began exerting its earthy influence on New York's music scene through Giant Step, playing at the Cooler and other clubs around the city. Partygoers loved the band for its super-tight grooves, long jams and warm vibe; their seemingly effortless interplay was the envy of virtually any musician who checked out their gigs. For Chris Fatoye Thebarge, a founding member of the Collective who plays congas and bata drums, the goal of each show has always been the same: "To make people dance!"