This Saturday see another almighty two room hootenany in The Halt as Phonic and Stay plastic join forces in halt two with Dave Shades and Brian D'Souza, while in the main bar The Solid Gold Safari residents team are this week aided and abetted by one of Glasgow's true underground house music veterans and a personal hero of mine...
The legendary DJ Q aka Paul Flynn
"When I first met Paul he was 15, maybe 16, living in Cranhill in the east end of Glasgow and aspiring to be a dj. He often played alongside the Pussy Power brothers , Terry and Jason and came to most folk’s attention when he played their BLAST OFF parties at the ARCHES. His dj name was PAUL (HIS BEDROOM). Being of an age whereby he wasn’t drinking that much and going out to clubs, Paul quickly honed his musical talents and his work rate was prolific. He became good mates very early on with Carl Craig, who was himself , somewhat , the young team from Detroit at the time. His tracks and production started getting heavy play in Detroit and his notoriety as an underground house geezer spread across the states and Europe. He quickly became an in demand dj at the clubs and started travelling the world. I myself was living in Brooklyn during the summer of 2001 and was delighted to see he was booked to play New York at the club CENTROFLY, across from the old SOUND FACTORY. Paul had been djing around the world for a good few years at this point, a young guy loving the “dj lifestyle”… he had taken to the whole thing like a duck to water. I got a phone call at my Williamsburg apartment around 3pm……
“That u Russ?”
“Eh…..aye”
“Aaahaha, howzitgaun ya big poof? ……it’s me, Funboy Flynn. Ah’ll no keep ye long…. sitting here by the pool in San Diego mate, gonnae be o’er ur way this Saturday so come doon, just waiting on the boy bringing me ma drink here and chatting wi 3 burdz that ah probly shouldnae be, kno?... Anyroad ahm stiyin at the Paramount, thought we could go tae Body and Soul?”
“Aye mate, then u can dj at my party, SOLID GOLD”
The original SOLID GOLD party was in STINGY LULU’S, an amazingly fun, transsexual bar on St Marks Place in the East Village. It ran every Sunday from 10pm. One of the many incredible things that happened there was that one of my best friends at the time was working for Elite model agency and she had to chaperone about 10 models all around the city. The girls were highly paid and had stalkers and shit. They had to stay in this one apartment on 8th and Avenue C all day, every day. Twas exciting for that lot to get a pizza delivered, I’m sure they just did it for the thrill of the delivery guy coming to the door and them seeing the outside world, none of them looked like they ate pizza. Anyway Spoon, my friend, arranged with Elite that they could go out on a Sunday til 2 am as long as they were with her and she took them all to SOLID GOLD. We had the tiny dancefloor packed with supermodels who were in Evian adverts and all the magazines, Vogue cover girls, just so happy to be out and about that they’re all dancing and having a ball. It was a coup and a half, we were usually doing fine by midnight numbers wise, anyone who came in had to double-take it and at least have a drink. One guy used to come in and he never had a shirt on. He was dirty too, like he’s been in the bushes in Tompkin’s Park all night. He wore filthy white sailing shorts and flip flops. When he came in and saw the girls he was agog, and immediately put a bottle of champagne on each of the 6 tables in the room. He was a multi millionaire of some sort, he owned the entire brownstone next door. That was the kind of clientele Stingy’s had. The transsexual staff were by no means the ones that stood out.
When I got to Centrofly it was late. I’d been djing on 33rd and it was just down the road at 21st on the west side. I was with a friend, we hung out in cheetah for a bit, the old sound factory bar then headed in once the guest list line died down. The club was packed. It was my first time in there and I remember clearly walking into the room downstairs. There were about 500 white people in there having it like only white people can, one guy slugging from a bottle of champagne while grinding badly with 4 girls, everyone holding beers up, the floor a sodden mess. It was a disturbing, half-assed sight, (although champagne guy was definitely having a ball) when compared to what u would see at The Shelter or Body and Soul, Sapphire Bar or Coney Island on the boardwalk. My initial reaction was to flee. I had been in the best clubs I had ever been to since arriving in NY, this was going to burst the bubble. I had deliberately avoided any club in the 20s/30s west side for these reasons but I realized my expectations fell hugely short of the true debauchery I was witnessing. Just getting to the dj booth meant shoving thru this heathen rabble, but I had to hook up with the Funboy. Luckily I caught him just as he was about to go on, there was time for a quick beer from the rider. It’s not like u can chat when ur djing in new york and the place is mobbed, I was gonna have to stick around for 3 hours before I could speak to Paul again. The music was about to improve at least, but I knew Centrofly was an irretrievably lost cause and arranged to meet him the next day to go to some good clubs. I told him I’d pick him up at 230pm. He looked a little confused so I said again, 230pm….. at the hotel.
So let me break it down. In New York there are varying degrees of clubs. These degrees are based upon a number of factors, a few being:
The availability of alcohol,
Opening hours,
Presence of doorstaff/security,
The location,
Number of white people,
Number of bridge and tunnel suburbanites,
Availability of drugs
Some of the most telling factors as to whether something will be good or not are right there in front of you if u check off the things on that list. Let’s take, for instance, Body and Soul as a club. It has no alcohol, it started at 3pm finishes midnight , it’s on a Sunday afternoon. This may not work in many places but it is because there is no bar and it is at a time where ur Saturday night pisshead would be too hungover to come to a club - or even think about going to a club with no bar anyway - that Body and Soul was such a beautiful place. Around the scene in New York, drinking is very much a peripheral participation, at the best clubs anyway, you can hit the bar after the club, if u go to Body and Soul you go to dance.
The Paramount on 46th street is owned by the surviving owner of Studio 54. DJ Q was certainly getting looked after. We arranged to meet in the lobby, one of the most amazing in the city, pop nuevo furnishings with a giant chandelier and staircase as u enter the lobby. I was happy chilling there for 5 mins waiting, but I called up to his room after 10. When I got to the room there was Paul, all 6 foot of him, on the bed with his legs and arms in a perfect X shape, fully clothed with the breakfast-in-bed tray across his waist.
“Bit early for limbo mate”
“Jist warmin up big man”
“Fuck sake mate, your nose is huge, and it’s throbbin red, fuk'n hell, somebody hit you? wh'appened?”
“Ah that?..... Don’t ask , accident at Centrofly. So we goin to body and soul?”
He had a bunch of beers lying around,
“Well…. Aye we could”
I’m always wary of taking first timers to places like Body and Soul and The Shelter. No matter how clued up they are it’s really hard for people to get their heads round the no alcohol thing. I found this especially true of Body and Soul and given the present state of inebriation that Q was in I thought better of taking him there. I thought he would crash unless he kept consuming beer and B+S was no place to crash. To be honest by the summer of 2001, although still one of the world’s best clubs, the crowd had changed at body and soul, it had been discovered by the tourists who were flying into the city just to go there and then do a bit of shopping. With that came wide eyed expectations and people standing on the wall for the first hour a little instead of the creating the perfect weekly celebration of life it had been in the past. They were looking for pills and shit like that, things that just didn’t go on there. It was a different level, it’s not that it wasn’t about getting fucked up (tell that to the muscle men at the second pole, left side), it just wasn’t a market for drugs like Tunnel/Limelight, it had real style and the love in the room was real and unified. It was a New York thing, old and young, all nations, a real rainbow family . Body and Soul’s crowd was incredibly beautiful as I remember it. Beautiful girls, old school Paradise Garage regulars, Houses of Xtravaganza, Aviance, Debarge and more represented, star wars light sabre dudes, ninja dancers, grey haired dreadlock gentlemen with staffs, 70 years old if a day, with nappy headed Brooklyn girls limboing thru their legs. No time to stand around at Body and Soul. It was a place u did nothing but dance ur ass off at. Looking at the Funboy I couldnae see him limboing much more that day, not without some alcohol, and man…… his fucking nose looked like the front of a plane.
A new spot had opened up and it was mad ghetto. It was on 28th street, (the 28th Street Crew,) in a place called DEMERARA. The club , as the name suggests, was dark. I had found out about it by word of mouth. The info I had been given was that it was called “God is Great… or some shit” and it was running at the same time as Body and Soul with free entry. Going up against Body and Soul? U mean going to a Sunday club and missing Body and Soul? This was nearly unthinkable for me at the time but I knew my source was good, a real househead and I had went along a few weeks previously to check it out. It was dope.
The dj’s were Wil Milton and Herb Martin, the place was pitch black with a few spotlight on the dancefloor. Immediately I recognized the white person there as this guy from the Shelter. He used to dance with his girlfriend , eyes shut, his hair was down to his waist and straight, he wore specs and a smoking blazer. He danced in a peculiar manner that meant his feet were rooted to the spot and he dropped his shoulder when he was feeling it giving the impression he was picking up some luggage. I loved that guy, he was always in the middle of the floor with his girl, eyes shut and completely feeling the music. When I saw him I realised this was where the shelterheads had been leaving for since Body and Soul got too touristy.
The Shelter at the time was in the same club as Body and Soul and the two used to run into each other with Shelter closing at 3pm Sunday. The crowd had changed though like I said and it was here that some of the more hardcore had started to come. Like I said it was free entry. Walking thru the club for the first time was dodgy because people were cartwheeling and spinning, dancing like they do at the Shelter. The dancefloor was much smaller but the dancing was the same. The walls were lined with basketball benches, there was nowhere else to sit, apart from at the back next to the dj booth where they had a table. I doubt anyone in there knew that though. What was different about this place, “Together In Spirit” it was called, is that people in there were quite obviously fucked up. These cats had been up all night at the shelter, left there at the juncture with b+s, made it 40 blocks uptown, and it showed. Lined against the wall, on the benches, were some freaky looking motherfuckers. Huge, tall, skinny, vest wearing dudes with white towels on their heads, others with their heads in their hands. A catatonic looking girl who would lie there on the bench motionless for half an hour then spring up and pirouette, touching her toes singing the words to some brand new, probably unavailable house track. The geezer with the biggest head u ever saw, another one with superhero like qualities, another rooted to the spot. 6 foot 8 giant man with a bald head and ridges across the back of his skull giving the impression he was wearing a helmet, the crying guy, I thought it thru and decided this was where to take DJ Q and his nose! It was only 18 blocks down 7th avenue from Times Square and the Paramount, if we finished the beers here then headed down we’d be fucked up enough to fit in and then we had the piéce de résistance, ace in the hole, nose. It was now capable of stopping the traffic on 7th. If we were crossing the road I could spin Q round and stop the cars at any junction, “Temporary lights mang !”.
We hung around the plush surroundings and finished more beers, I went and got more, we rolled down 7th ave around 4 pm, got there around 5. I had told Q the script and what to expect, i.e weird/incredible, “Just remember it’s planet earth” was some good advice I got going to Together In Spirit once.
We walked in, greeted by Conrad and the other lady, she was brilliant, “hey honeys back again!” We were pretty wasted to be getting such a friendly greet and we looked , let’s say, different. We kinda made our way thru the darkness across the floor and found the table at the back. It was up 4 steps from the floor and shielded by a curtain. It was right next to the dj booth, I don’t think anyone ever sat there. I had explained how drinking wasn’t really that cool to Q, he asked where the bogs were. He got up from the hidden table and made his way back thru the dancefloor . He came back carrying 4 bottles of Heineken, for the 2 of us. Fly the flag mate, I thought and started on a blunt. Half way thru the blunt the dj drops a DJ Q track, we’re sitting there laughing and getting drunker by the minute. The rest of the club wondering what the fuck was going on, and I mean for this lot to wonder it had to be extreme. We got up and started speaking to Wil, the geezer running the place came over and was like “no blunts,” he looked a little nervous. We’re saying “Nah man it’s cool, this is him, this record is him” they’re looking at us like we’re totally nuts. The dj’s dropping the track, I can’t remember which one it was and the whole club is dancing to it , everyone except the two mad white dudes who are double fisting Heinekens up the back and telling the dj they made the records. Q is having difficulty breathing and his speech is severely impaired, he’s talking to Wil about the mix, “aye mate ah did it in Detroit” he says. The dj is speechless, we get up and dance a bit…… we were courteously given loads of room! It was nearly time to go to SOLID GOLD on St Mark’s place anyway..."
- Russ DJ DRIBBLER Forman.
As always entry to both rooms is free all day.
Solid Gold Safari... Wild and free and starts at 3!
