The Choice Niteclub

[saadir7]

I hear / read a few things about this spot, but not much. What was it like? Who was the DJ?
How long did it exist? Any theme songs/anthems?
Any memorable moments? What was the deal?

[JMNYC]

memorable moment: the balcony collapsing mid-party.

Other insights:

Previous thread on The Choice (http://deephousepage.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=028332)

[drilla]

jon!

come here please www.statusho.com (http://www.statusho.com)

join. you will be happy you did.

[Leslie]

JMNYC - did you see todays NY Times - my how your boy James St. James has come a long way....

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/arts/16JAME.html


September 16, 2003
A Disco Legend Returns, Without His Feathers
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE


hey were fabulous figures from a bygone era, prancing about Plaid night club last week as if it were 1995.

Flanked by a tubby Asian man in a spandex miniskirt, Richie Rich stood on the dance floor, his curly blonde tresses gelled into submission, his pouty mouth slathered in lip gloss.

Kenny Kenny had wrapped himself in layers of strategically tattered clothing. "It's Santería meets shaman," he explained. Another partygoer sniffed, "More like hack-n-saw couture."

Black lingerie and a string of pearls constituted Sophia Lamar's outfit of choice. Having disposed of her shift made of Hello Kitty stuffed animals, Ms. Amanda Lepore (like Ms. Lamar, once a mister) sauntered about in six-inch stilettos and a fur bikini bottom, her ample, surgically altered breasts on display for much of the evening.

Had this been the New York of yesteryear, James St. James, too, would have been among those decked out for the occasion, the premiere party last week for "Party Monster," a feature film based on his 1999 memoir, "Disco Bloodbath." But this was post-Giuliani New York night life, after the crackdown on clubs, and Mr. St. James, in a black, tailored suit and sensible shoes, was looking aggressively understated, his mascara and chipped nail polish the only hint of a storied past.

"I'm going for elegance this evening," Mr. St. James said, demurely stroking his smooth, Moby-like pate. "If I came in feathers and a clown's nose, people would say, `Look at her trying so hard.' "

There was a time in the not so distant past when Mr. St. James, 37, would have made the effort. A fixture on the New York club scene for much of the 80's and early 90's, his ensembles were legendary. He has dressed up as a pizza slice, a stewardess and a purple grizzly bear. But after Michael Alig, a friend and club promoter, killed a drug dealer in 1996, effectively ending the city's thriving party scene, Mr. St. James retreated to the West Coast.

The story of his life in the limelight, his relationship with Mr. Alig and the death of Andre Melendez are chronicled in the film "Party Monster," a nostalgic ode to the world of super clubs, potent opiates and perilously high platform shoes. The film, which had a limited opening this month and opens nationwide in October, stars Macaulay Culkin as Mr. Alig and Seth Green as the flamboyant Mr. St. James.

"It was an immense responsibility," Mr. Green said. "James is such a complex and fascinating person, and I really wanted to do him justice." Mr. St. James did little to ease the pressure. He recalls temporarily losing his cool at a prefilming research dinner.

"It was all very low key at first, and then I grabbed Seth and said: `Look! This is my Erin Brockovich moment. You can't mess it up.' "

To help Mr. Green better understand his precarious friendship with Mr. Alig, Mr. St. James referred to a Burberry advertisement featuring an elderly woman wrapped in feathers and fur and a young leather-clad stud.

"The old woman is clearly the more fabulous one of the two, but everyone is looking at the boy," Mr. St. James recalled, explaining it to Mr. Green. "That was my relationship with Michael," he said. "Everybody was always looking at him, and I was going: "Wait, wait. I'm the more interesting one.' "

Born Jimmy Clark in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and raised in Saginaw, Mich., Mr. St. James described his childhood as "both perfectly pleasant" and "dull."

Reading "Edie: American Girl," the 1982 oral history of the Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, forever changed the teenager's life. "It just blew me away," Mr. St. James said in a recent interview. "I remember lying in bed and thinking, `Here I am, and Liza is at Studio 54 with Bianca.' I would go to the all-night grocery store and pretend that I was at Studio 54 because it was the only place open all night. Truman Capote in the frozen foods. Andy Warhol over in vegetables."

In the fall of 1984 Mr. St. James enrolled in New York University, where he studied experimental theater for two years before dropping out and fully dedicating himself to his after-hours activities.

His penchant for memorable garb quickly earned him notoriety. In a 1985 profile Newsweek called him a celebutante. Soon he was getting "Paris Hilton-type press," he said, "a bold-face regular in the gossip columns."

Mr. Alig, a transplant from Indiana in search of his own fabulousness, befriended Mr. St. James. With his stamp of approval and the financial backing of Peter Gatien, owner of the popular clubs Limelight, Tunnel and Palladium, Mr. Alig eventually became New York's biggest party promoter, creating a glitter-filled world where drugs abounded and costumes were the norm.

"Getting dressed was always the best part of every night," Mr. St. James said, diving into a plate of California rolls. "You would have a bunch of drag queens and club kids in a room, and everyone would be pulling out tiaras and tutus and diapers and clown noses. We'd sit and drink, do a tab of acid, a line of coke, and we would just get hysterical at the combinations people would come up with: I'm a hooker from Mars. I'm a geisha gangster."

While Mr. St. James admits that he and his merry band of misfits were "nightmares and brats," he argues that there was an ideology, a club-kid agenda, behind the false eyelashes. "We were going to do away with sexual roles," he explained. "Drag was going to be the norm. Drugs were going to be this gateway into this utopian society."

While entrenched in this "utopian society," however, Mr. St. James's drug use began to rise. After snorting cocaine "five nights a week for 10 years," he said, in 1994 he switched to the party drug ketamine hydrochloride or "Special K," a powerful animal anesthetic that can cause hallucinations in people.

"That was like home," Mr. St. James said. "It felt like an old sweater.`

Those present in this period recall a man who was barely lucid. "He was a little messy and always in a K-hole," Brooke Humphries, a friend, said affectionately. (Natasha Lyonne plays her in "Party Monster.") "I was always having to dump him in cabs and send him home."

Ms. Lamar said: "I don't know how he was able to write a memoir and remember everything. I always remember him passed out on a couch.`

Mr. Alig's drug use was also out of control, and during a disagreement in their apartment, Mr. Alig and his roommate Robert Riggs bludgeoned Mr. Melendez, who went by the name Angel and often dressed in white wings. Mr. Alig and Mr. Riggs received 20-year sentences in 1997. That year Mr. St. James left New York for Los Angeles, where he lives.

"I was a drug addict, there was nothing for me in the club scene anymore," Mr. St. James explained. "My trust fund was gone. I was a 30-year-old drag queen with a lopsided wig, lying in a pile of vomit at the Limelight.`

Three years after the Melendez killing, a sober Mr. St. James began to commit his memories to the page. His novel (now rereleased in paperback as "Party Monster"), a trippy, self-deprecating romp through the Day-Glo world of New York night life, is surprisingly rich in detail. Despite years of drug use he appears to have forgotten little.

"Play Trivial Pursuit with me, and you'll be astonished," Mr. St. James boasted. "I can remember every outfit I wore to every party going back to 1983."

Though he regularly corresponds with Mr. Alig, Mr. St. James said he was still disappointed in the man he has often described as his best friend and worst enemy.

"He had the charisma and intelligence to have really gone anywhere," Mr. St. James said.

Now it is Mr. St. James who is intent on creating a second act as an author.

He is working on a novel based on the Tennessee Williams short story "Two on a Party." After years of playing dress-up evening after evening, buried beneath layers of artifice, Mr. St. James said he was ready to stand on a different platform.

"I can be an incredibly fabulous person, and I don't have to be in the highest heels, the tallest wig, the skimpiest outfit," he said. "I can let other things speak for me now."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

[saadir7]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
memorable moment: the balcony collapsing mid-party.

Other insights:

Previous thread on The Choice (http://deephousepage.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=028332) Thanks yo.

[JMNYC]

Thanks Leslie -- hadn't seen the article. I didn't particularly like "Party Monster" myself, but perhaps that's because it really wasn't even a good representation of the book, let alone the scene. I mean, only the Limelight was the only club ever mentioned in the movie! :(

[Dj Alex]

Hello all ,

[Dj Alex]

Hello all ,

I did not want to bring it up on a long one again , but I had two other questions . What years did the Choice run from and what were the opening - closing times , was it one dj per night etc ? .

Peace and someine dig out some mixes from this place ! .

Alex . ;)

[JMNYC]

Alex - search the mix archives - there are Choice mixes there.

[Dj Alex]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
Alex - search the mix archives - there are Choice mixes there. Hello Jon,

Yeah i went through those I was eager to hear more , not so many from this club I presume ? .

Peace Alex .

P.S Good luck with your afterhours party - that's the way to go ! . ;)

[JMNYC]

Alex, most of the tapes from the Choice were made on Reel-to-Reels so many of them have yet to make it into the digital age...

[saadir7]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
Alex, most of the tapes from the Choice were made on Reel-to-Reels so many of them have yet to make it into the digital age... Who has the tapes?

[Dj Alex]

Originally posted by saadir7:
[]Who has the tapes? [/QB]Hello Saadir ,

Did you check my thread reg the Choice ? . There are Choice mixes up on the site Larry Levan - Closing night , Robert Owens - are there two parts to this mix . I'm sure there are more out there . This club as I said before is one place I would of like to be at and also it seemed that some deep music was dropped there . The mixes even on this board demonstrate that .

I had some questions as to what time it ran to and how long it was going 2-3 years ? .

Peace Alex . ;)

[saadir7]

short memory bro. i read it and just re read.
thanks.

[JMNYC]

Originally posted by saadir7:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JMNYC:
Alex, most of the tapes from the Choice were made on Reel-to-Reels so many of them have yet to make it into the digital age... Who has the tapes? </font>[/QUOTE]I gave 3 to Victor Rosado - he's "baking" them and hopefully burning them to CD for all of us to enjoy... stay tuned...

[ September 20, 2003, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: JMNYC ]

[John Hall]

The Choice was open for
slightly more than 2 years, from about 87 to 89.

~~~~

I just slaved away for an hour on a fncking mega post about
the place, but I used too many graemlins, and
when I used the back button, all was lost!!!

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/banghead.gif

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/computermad.gif

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/bangdesk.gif

Oh well, from now any serious writing gets done
seperately, then copied/pasted into DHP.

Time to

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/bongsmi.gif

and

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/stereo.gif

then sleep, get up early, and check out the
DALAI LAMA in Central Park sunday.

I WILL be sharing some CHOICE memories asap.

[JMNYC]

some insight from voiceoftheunderground.com:

[Richard Vasquez (owner of the Choice)] started his work as a deejay in '78 at a time when disco and rock were being freshened-up by punk and dance oriented rock. In the midst of a successful career as an advertising graphic designer he did his first nightclub gig at an after-hours club called Berlin. A Friday night reggae party of mostly Jamaicans, at 3am Richard would start playing and transform the gathering into a new-wave party of Brits, Germans and New Yorkers that lasted until nine am.

He continued to play at all the popular clubs of the early eighties... where dance music by white musicians was featured. This scene was gradually integrated with music by rap-artists and break-dancers who were black, and he would always look for an opportunity to throw something funkier into the parties he did at Save-The Robots, Danceteria, Cat Club, Area, Palladium,
The World.

But he would never do a party on Saturday night because that's when he went to The Paradise Garage to spend an evening with Larry and Joey LLanos. It was there he found the inspiration to create new music all the time by mixing records together. The music they were playing was mostly by black artists, and it was infinitely more danceable than the music from the white scene. It also put him in touch with his Pentecostal church roots. As a teenager in the fifties he played the piano and organ in the black churches where the
people would dance and sing and play their tambourines into the wee- hours of the morning. Here at The Paradise Garage the music featured the same incredible voices that he performed with as a youth in the churches of Brooklyn and Harlem. It felt just like church only it was much sexier and it was very African. At the time The Garage was closing he was creating parties in New Orleans at a loft in the French Quarter.

He would fly down a plane-load full of Garage personalities to create a party there at Club NoNo patterned after The Garage. Graffiti artists, drag queens recording artists and dancers
showed New Orleans how to put a little underground culture into their parties.
After the Garage closed in 1987 a core-community of thousands of people had no place to go on Saturday nights. Richard along with Garage lighting-man Gregory Meyers began doing parties in his East Village townhouse.

Michael Alig described these parties in Anthony Haden-Guest's book about party culture "The Last Party". "Another host, Richard Vasquez, would give parties in his East Village house. They would start on Fridays and would last until Monday...he had a five-story loft...- And on Monday after you had danced for a day, and you had sex for a day, and you had talked for a day---- You would leave and come back--- and it would still be going on...the parties were getting more and more fabulous... and the fourth floor fell onto the third floor as everyone was dancing...it was hi, girls! And the drag queens fell down in a big pile of rubble..."

David Mancuso - owner of the legendary Loft - had heard about the floor collapsing and invited Richard and Gregory to create a totally new club...The Choice. Richard kept hearing from his friends that...we're goin' to Bassline this Saturday because we got no Choice. Spending ten years of his life's savings for just such an occasion... He gave them The Choice. Most of the money went into an incredible sound system.

So The Choice took up right where The Garage left off. Larry Levan soon joined Richard and Joey Llanos. Living in Richard's townhouse with famous
door-man Barry Perry, Levan fine-tuned The Choice's sound system every Thursday. All Mark Levinson amplifiers with all Klipsch speakers, made for a very delicate sound system which had to be tweaked every weekend.

Soon every legendary deejay would play there including Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, Basil, Victor Rosado, Little Louis Vega, Bobby Konders.
Robert Owen and Disciple would get their first opportunity to spin there.

The Choice was permanently closed by the City of New York for bogus political reasons. Richard having seen a fulfilled dream was ready to move on to a more lucrative career in the booming real-estate market of Miami Beach, where he currently resides on Ocean Drive. With real-estate career well established here the opportunity once again arose for Richard to play the style of music he specializes in at the Friday night dance party in the Red Room at Level. For several years music had dropped out of dance music...it became high speed noise. But now, once again, lyrics and melodies are moving the dance floor. The old school sound is being freshened up for a new movement of progressive producers creating music featuring great virtuosity in vocals and instrumentals. A very good time for Richard to come back to the thing he loves to do. Miami Beach has welcomed this legendary NY deejay with a weekend residency at Kiss and many guest performances at Nikki Beach Club Opium Garden, Crowbar, and LivingRoom, An amazing feat to have this kind of recognition today without ever having the hype of a released remix or compilation.

[John Hall]

Hi JMNYC:

I've seen this article, it's more of a publicity
write-up than objective journalism.

I have mostly good things to say about
THE CHOICE, but these parts burn me up:


Originally posted by JMNYC:
some insight from voiceoftheunderground.com:
....
After the Garage closed in 1987 a core-community of thousands of people had no place to go on Saturday nights.
HUH? When the Garage closed, people started
going to LOTS of previously unknown or underattended
parties, including

OZONE LAYER
BETTER DAYS
BASSLINE
HOUSE NATION parties,
PARADISE BALLROOM,
LOTS of smaller parties,
and eventually
THE CHOICE and
SOUND FACTORY.
(and of course THE LOFT
when David re-opened it around 1990.)




David Mancuso - owner of the legendary Loft - had heard about the floor collapsing and invited Richard and Gregory to create a totally new club...The Choice. Richard kept hearing from his friends that...we're goin' to Bassline this Saturday because we got no Choice. Spending ten years of his life's savings for just such an occasion... He gave them The Choice. Most of the money went into an incredible sound system.
The above is quite removed from reality, IMO.
I'll let David Mancuso share his thoughts if he
feels like it when he returns from Japan.

I will say in response to this paragraph:



Levan soon joined Richard and Joey Llanos. Living in Richard's townhouse with famous
door-man Barry Perry, Levan fine-tuned The Choice's sound system every Thursday. All Mark Levinson amplifiers with all Klipsch speakers, made for a very delicate sound system which had to be tweaked every weekend.
.... The truth is, David's very delicate sound system
had to be REPAIRED CONSTANTLY due
to the
ABUSE it was not designed to take.

LOTS of great DJs played there, but truth be
told,
LARRY LEVAN was the only one who had enough
experience and good enough hearing to operate
that system without destroying it the way
others did!

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/faga1.gif

Any hoo, not to seem like a hater, I have mostly
VERY FOND memories of the place http://deephousepage.com/smilies/party_06.gif and will elaborate down the line.

[John Hall]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by saadir7:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JMNYC:
Alex, most of the tapes from the Choice were made on Reel-to-Reels so many of them have yet to make it into the digital age... Who has the tapes? </font>[/QUOTE]I gave 3 to Victor Rosado - he's "baking" them and hopefully burning them to CD for all of us to enjoy... stay tuned... </font>[/QUOTE]Victor's a great DJ...but I didn't know he was
adept at archiving and restoring magnetic tape.

Why do the Choice tapes need baking?
The bad formulations with the shedding oxide
were abandoned by the early 80's AFAIK.

When they get baked, that's in on ever playing
them again after that one pass.

Please elaborate if possible.

[ncho]

Originally posted by John Hall:
Why do the Choice tapes need baking?
The bad formulations with the shedding oxide
were abandoned by the early 80's AFAIK.

When they get baked, that's in on ever playing
them again after that one pass.

Please elaborate if possible. i had a question about "baking" as well -- what is that?

peace,
-g-

[JMNYC]

Actually John, I agree as re: the Loft - David clarified this in the thread that Gman accidentally deleted. David allowed them to use the Loft space for the Choice parties, but it was certainly not a "brand new club".

That was a quote from another board and I DO NOT endorse it as factual - just some background for the thread.

As for the baking, I think Francois was helping Victor - I'm not sure exactly what it entails but apparently Victor was going to string them up and see if they are in decent shape... no one I know in the NYC area had a compatible player so since they were of him, Basil & Richard, I figured he'd be the one to go to, and either burn them to CD or bake them and then burn them (I was going to send them to Gman but they're not mine and the person to whom they belong didn't want them leaving the state for fear of never seeing them again).

If they're in good shape, we'll all be enjoying them soon:)

[ September 20, 2003, 08:54 PM: Message edited by: JMNYC ]

[Dj Alex]

Originally posted by John Hall:
Hi JMNYC:

I've seen this article, it's more of a publicity
write-up than objective journalism.

I have mostly good things to say about
THE CHOICE, but these parts burn me up:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JMNYC:
some insight from voiceoftheunderground.com:
....
After the Garage closed in 1987 a core-community of thousands of people had no place to go on Saturday nights.
HUH? When the Garage closed, people started
going to LOTS of previously unknown or underattended
parties, including

OZONE LAYER
BETTER DAYS
BASSLINE
HOUSE NATION parties,
PARADISE BALLROOM,
LOTS of smaller parties,
and eventually
THE CHOICE and
SOUND FACTORY.
(and of course THE LOFT
when David re-opened it around 1990.)




David Mancuso - owner of the legendary Loft - had heard about the floor collapsing and invited Richard and Gregory to create a totally new club...The Choice. Richard kept hearing from his friends that...we're goin' to Bassline this Saturday because we got no Choice. Spending ten years of his life's savings for just such an occasion... He gave them The Choice. Most of the money went into an incredible sound system.
The above is quite removed from reality, IMO.
I'll let David Mancuso share his thoughts if he
feels like it when he returns from Japan.

I will say in response to this paragraph:



Levan soon joined Richard and Joey Llanos. Living in Richard's townhouse with famous
door-man Barry Perry, Levan fine-tuned The Choice's sound system every Thursday. All Mark Levinson amplifiers with all Klipsch speakers, made for a very delicate sound system which had to be tweaked every weekend.
.... The truth is, David's very delicate sound system
had to be REPAIRED CONSTANTLY due
to the
ABUSE it was not designed to take.

LOTS of great DJs played there, but truth be
told,
LARRY LEVAN was the only one who had enough
experience and good enough hearing to operate
that system without destroying it the way
others did!

http://deephousepage.com/smilies/faga1.gif

Any hoo, not to seem like a hater, I have mostly
VERY FOND memories of the place http://deephousepage.com/smilies/party_06.gif and will elaborate down the line. </font>[/QUOTE]Hello John ,

I understand how upset you must of been to losing the views you were tryinhg to write , that's happened a few times to myself as well .
Thanks for your contribution to this post , I for one would love to hear your memories and views of this place , dj's etc .
I have heard a mix or two from Victor from this place one not greatly recorded but awesome selection/slammind session - The Brothers , Salsoul Rainbow , Eurythmics , Marsha Hunt and many more .

Were you a regular visitor to this place ? .

From the earlier thread I started when I wanted to find out it came across that some really good deep music was played here - not just standard classics - I love those too , but also some mad other music .
Also was it an all night session ? .

Peace and thanks again

Alex .

[imported_Gman]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
Actually John, I agree as re: the Loft - David clarified this in the thread that Gman accidentally deleted... JM, you are not going to let me forget about deleting that thread are ya ? biggrinangel.gif

[mdpm99]

Originally posted by JMNYC:
some insight from voiceoftheunderground.com:

[Richard Vasquez (owner of the Choice)] started his work as a deejay in '78 at a time when disco and rock were being freshened-up by punk and dance oriented rock. In the midst of a successful career as an advertising graphic designer he did his first nightclub gig at an after-hours club called Berlin. A Friday night reggae party of mostly Jamaicans, at 3am Richard would start playing and transform the gathering into a new-wave party of Brits, Germans and New Yorkers that lasted until nine am.

He continued to play at all the popular clubs of the early eighties... where dance music by white musicians was featured. This scene was gradually integrated with music by rap-artists and break-dancers who were black, and he would always look for an opportunity to throw something funkier into the parties he did at Save-The Robots, Danceteria, Cat Club, Area, Palladium,
The World.

But he would never do a party on Saturday night because that's when he went to The Paradise Garage to spend an evening with Larry and Joey LLanos. It was there he found the inspiration to create new music all the time by mixing records together. The music they were playing was mostly by black artists, and it was infinitely more danceable than the music from the white scene. It also put him in touch with his Pentecostal church roots. As a teenager in the fifties he played the piano and organ in the black churches where the
people would dance and sing and play their tambourines into the wee- hours of the morning. Here at The Paradise Garage the music featured the same incredible voices that he performed with as a youth in the churches of Brooklyn and Harlem. It felt just like church only it was much sexier and it was very African. At the time The Garage was closing he was creating parties in New Orleans at a loft in the French Quarter.

He would fly down a plane-load full of Garage personalities to create a party there at Club NoNo patterned after The Garage. Graffiti artists, drag queens recording artists and dancers
showed New Orleans how to put a little underground culture into their parties.
After the Garage closed in 1987 a core-community of thousands of people had no place to go on Saturday nights. Richard along with Garage lighting-man Gregory Meyers began doing parties in his East Village townhouse.

Michael Alig described these parties in Anthony Haden-Guest's book about party culture "The Last Party". "Another host, Richard Vasquez, would give parties in his East Village house. They would start on Fridays and would last until Monday...he had a five-story loft...- And on Monday after you had danced for a day, and you had sex for a day, and you had talked for a day---- You would leave and come back--- and it would still be going on...the parties were getting more and more fabulous... and the fourth floor fell onto the third floor as everyone was dancing...it was hi, girls! And the drag queens fell down in a big pile of rubble..."

David Mancuso - owner of the legendary Loft - had heard about the floor collapsing and invited Richard and Gregory to create a totally new club...The Choice. Richard kept hearing from his friends that...we're goin' to Bassline this Saturday because we got no Choice. Spending ten years of his life's savings for just such an occasion... He gave them The Choice. Most of the money went into an incredible sound system.

So The Choice took up right where The Garage left off. Larry Levan soon joined Richard and Joey Llanos. Living in Richard's townhouse with famous
door-man Barry Perry, Levan fine-tuned The Choice's sound system every Thursday. All Mark Levinson amplifiers with all Klipsch speakers, made for a very delicate sound system which had to be tweaked every weekend.

Soon every legendary deejay would play there including Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, Basil, Victor Rosado, Little Louis Vega, Bobby Konders.
Robert Owen and Disciple would get their first opportunity to spin there.

The Choice was permanently closed by the City of New York for bogus political reasons. Richard having seen a fulfilled dream was ready to move on to a more lucrative career in the booming real-estate market of Miami Beach, where he currently resides on Ocean Drive. With real-estate career well established here the opportunity once again arose for Richard to play the style of music he specializes in at the Friday night dance party in the Red Room at Level. For several years music had dropped out of dance music...it became high speed noise. But now, once again, lyrics and melodies are moving the dance floor. The old school sound is being freshened up for a new movement of progressive producers creating music featuring great virtuosity in vocals and instrumentals. A very good time for Richard to come back to the thing he loves to do. Miami Beach has welcomed this legendary NY deejay with a weekend residency at Kiss and many guest performances at Nikki Beach Club Opium Garden, Crowbar, and LivingRoom, An amazing feat to have this kind of recognition today without ever having the hype of a released remix or compilation. I love it when people write articles and never check out the info they get to make sure of what is fact and what isn't.

d

[ncho]

Originally posted by John Hall:
I've seen this article, it's more of a publicity write-up than objective journalism.
Originally posted by david mancuso :
I love it when people write articles and never check out the info they get to make sure of what is fact and what isn't.the document in question doesn't appear to be an article, but rather a large chunk of richard vasquez's bio off of voiceoftheunderground.com (http://www.voiceoftheunderground.com/artists/richard_vasquez.html)....is his bio partly incorrect?...

peace,
-g-

[JemalC]

Greetings from the fotochick again because I just had to reply on this topic. Without getting too deep, if you want to hear what former CHOICE owner Richard Vasquez had to say about this special club, log on to
www.undagroundarchives.com (http://www.undagroundarchives.com) (People Section) for the poop in his own words. Since we hit a lot of the highlights that were featured in the quoted article, maybe that's where the story came from but you can read it and decide for yourself.

holla back direct with your comments at
info@undagroundarchives.com if you want.

smiles and smooches
donna

peace

to David M... if you haven't seen it, please check it out and if you would like to rebut holla back the same way!

[JMNYC]

the quote I posted was definitely more of a publicity write-up than a real "Bio"... if I'm not mistaken we went thru this in the previous thread (no Gman, I'm not gonna let it die ;) ). I should probably have refined my search and maybe fully read the article before posting (I didn't even read the whole thing through http://deephousepage.com/smilies/conf45.gif).

Once again goes to show that you can't believe everything you read. graemlins/nono.gif My bad.

[saadir7]

I'm working on the Richard / New Orleans connection. Trent Delaune, who i DJ'ed with at The Audubon Hotel, was part of this crew. He's told me a little about the No No parties, and it was he who told me tales of the Choice.
This just keeps getting better and better!

[Dj Alex]

I know I know , well you know how I feel ! .

Peace Alex . :rolleyes:

[saadir7]

Originally posted by Dj Alex:
I know I know , well you know how I feel ! .

Peace Alex . :rolleyes: exactly dog. i appreciate the input.

[saadir7]

Originally posted by saadir7:
I'm working on the Richard / New Orleans connection. Trent Delaune, who i DJ'ed with at The Audubon Hotel, was part of this crew. He's told me a little about the No No parties, and it was he who told me tales of the Choice.
This just keeps getting better and better! The No No parties existed in the
Wharehouse District of New Orleans
in 1987 - 1988.
No No stands for Night Ones
of New Orleans. It was housed in a building
on Constance St., near the Mermaid Lounge.
I'm told this building no longer exists.
I got a few names and details, but I
wanna research a little more before I
make more knowledge born..