Paradise Garage’s Joey Llanos shares the Top 5 Classic Tracks From the legendary NYC Nightclub
In 1987, the underground house and disco community of New York took a hard blow to the burgeoning scene when the legendary Hudson Square club, Paradise Garage, closed it’s doors after 10 years of operations. Lead by resident DJ virtuoso Larry Levan, the club played a vital role in dance music’s foundation in the states and even can be attributed for spawning the fundamental sub-genre, garage.
Almost two decades have past since Paradise Garage closed its doors, and it seems 2015 is the lucky year that the venerated club will make its glorious comeback but in a new city. The fabled venue – together with Good For You Records – will host a one-night event at the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday, December 19th, where two of Paradise Garage’s most impactful DJs, Joey Llanos and David Depino, will take the decks again to take LA back to the golden era of disco.
To celebrate, Joey Llanos chose the top five classic tracks that helped shape Paradise Disco’s legacy and gave us a little insight into the impact each track had on the nightclub.
1. Phreek – Weekend
“I believe it was the number one song of the garage for the full time the garage was open.”
“Larry [Levan] loved the quality of this song so much that he would EQ the sound system to it each weekend and played it all the time.”
“Larry changed the way we looked at downtempo records with this song. He made this downtempo record a peak-time record.”
“When doing this record, Larry broke it down sound-wise, and that was never really done before – this started a trend for all records from that point on. Everyone was breaking their mixes down, and he was the first to add an acappella to the 12″. That started the trend and it was groundbreaking.”
“One of Larry’s first mixes did so well it saved the 12”. The 12” was in danger of going back to 45s – it was costing too much money to produce. The success of this 12″ allowed the 12″ to continue.”
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