Was there a resident DJ at Studio 54?

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For some reason this is missing from my historical knowledge.
Surely it was more than Rubell playing his favorite records, right?

For some reason I was thinking Nicky Siano was, but The Gallery was going on about the same time, so that doesn't make much sense... I know the Mancuso-Siano-Levan holy trinity of NY DJs, and it just seems weird that no "big name" grew out of all the hype surrounding 54.

Anyone up on this sort of stuff that can help?

― rentboy (rentboy), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 19:28 (twenty years ago)

it was Nicky Siano and Richie Kaczor when it opened

http://www.disco-disco.com/clubs/studio54.html

"Richie Kaczor was the DJ playing this opening night and the first song he played was "Devil's gun" by C.J. & Co.. Richie was also the DJ playing in the weekends and Nicky Siano played the second night and in the weeknights. Nicky couldn't play weekends at "the Studio" since he owned his own popular New York club - the Gallery and was playing there in the weekends. It was also Nicky who played the night of the famous Bianca Jagger birthday bash in May 1977, in which she rode into the club on a white horse led by a naked body-painted guy."

― Renard (Renard), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 19:45 (twenty years ago)

man i wish i was better at using Google.
thanks Renard. :)

― rentboy (rentboy), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 19:46 (twenty years ago)

no biggie

I also gotta book recommendation if you're into this stuff -- Love Saves the Day by Tim Lawrence .... totally great.

― Renard (Renard), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 19:49 (twenty years ago)

Actually, that just arrived in the mail from Amazon yesterday, will spend a good portion of my Saturday planted on the beach reading it (if the good weather holds out)

Thanks!!

― rentboy (rentboy), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 19:53 (twenty years ago)

Someone should do a tour of former disco clubs around New York City.

Like New York mag had this piece with a map of old downtown spots... [here]

― Confounded (Confounded), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:17 (twenty years ago)

i walked past Studio 54 yesterday in a pinstriped suit; doors painted black and scaffolding obscuring the front. cyndi lauper and alan cumming are doing a gurn-camp revival of "threepenny opera" there now i heard

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:21 (twenty years ago)

the back of Roseland, directly across the street, still has a grubby Dickens-meets-Weimar kind of shambling allure to it

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:26 (twenty years ago)

I keep meaning to go by the old Paradise Garage location... at 84 King Street.

― Confounded (Confounded), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:30 (twenty years ago)

I was actually thinking of seeing Threepenny Opera until it got ripped apart in NYT. The only thing he liked about it was Nellie McKay!

― Renard (Renard), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:33 (twenty years ago)

i met one of the bouncers from the Paradise Garage. he's married with three kids and lives on Long Island now. he told me Talking Heads was Larry Levan's favorite thing to play.

xpost

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:34 (twenty years ago)

if what that article said about Macheath is true, and it seems like it, it's a pretty, er courageous choice to make - Macheath was always a sinister, brooding yet outwardly "respectable" villain

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:38 (twenty years ago)

'The Threepenny Opera' is indeed kind of a mess. Wierdly drab and joyless in a first half that just draaaaags, then amped up but pointed nowhere in particular during a second half that makes the vibe of the first even more headscratching. Nellie's great, though.

― Andy Battaglia, Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:44 (twenty years ago)

i have another book recommendation to add to renard's -- Turn the Beat Around by Peter Shapiro!

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:48 (twenty years ago)

hey andy! i'm reading "Homicide" now ... it got lent to me in Baltimore when i went down that way for T&A's wedding ... it's a great placebo for the TV show ... or was the TV show always just a placebo for the book, and i just didn't know it?

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:50 (twenty years ago)

I used to work right by the Paradise Garage location...not very exciting. But close to Vinyl Mania, so you can buy some of Larry Levan's old records and really relive the legend.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:37 (twenty years ago)

didn't Siano get fired from his Studio 54 residency for once daring to play two sides of a Kraftwerk record back to back?

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 11:47 (twenty years ago)

eight years pass...

Watched the movie for the first time since it came out. Conceding that it could have been a million times better, it's actually not bad. (The thing that led me to it again was Peter Biskind's Miramax/Sundance book.) What it's (very) short on is atmosphere. I'm not sure if you could do that part of the story justice in a film, but 54 doesn't even come close. (Curious as to whether there's anyone on ILX who was actually in the club before Rubell went to jail. You'd have to be even older than I am, and that narrows the field down considerably.) Parallel to that, the music barely registers--although I don't mind the weird Gordon Lightfoot cover.

Which leaves the story and the performances. Making Rubell a secondary character and dropping in the Ryan Phillipe story--which is sort of the Tony Manero story reconfigured--works okay. I actually find his half-romance with Neve Campbell somewhat affecting. (Biskind's book says she was forced on the director against his wishes; I don't know, I think she's fine.) The best thing I can single out about the film is Mike Myers. I think he comes up with something very good, although I have no idea if he's anything like the real person.

I wouldn't have had a clue who Mark Ruffalo was when this came out, so that was a surprise.

― clemenza, Monday, 4 August 2014 01:42 (eleven years ago)

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