Glow with the flow

>> Neon celebrates eight years of people
getting shit-faced and waking up
with underwear on their heads

by JACK OATMON

An institution respected by its contemporaries, anticipated by its visiting performing artists and idolized by partygoers, with a distinctive design sensibility and an ambitious outlook on dance music that keeps its audience both loyal and growing, Neon, the Montreal production and promotion company founded by Justin Dallegret, Tiga Sontag and John Hatz (Turbo Recordings’ Mark Dillon got on board later on), celebrates its eighth anniversary this weekend.

A series of small-scale parties in the late ’90s, with the kitschy moniker Cobra, were the conceptual core from which Neon’s founders would refine the weekly Neon club night at Jai Bar, and the parties that would follow.

“Cobra’s where it all began,” says John Hatz. “It was the first practical environment that we tried out our formula. We had our silly, one-colour flyers that we did on photocopy paper with, like, Tom Selleck on them. The first one was called Cobra, the second one was called Revenge of the Cobra. I think the third one was The Cobra Strikes Again and the fourth and final one was The Cobra Strikes Again, Again.”

Tiga, the renowned DJ and co-founder of the late afterhours Sona, explains that those first parties were an alternative to the existing dance-music options, for him as well as his patrons. “The first really small parties were nice. They were liberating. They gave me a chance to play different kinds of music. It was very exciting to get away from the Sona formula. It was still electronic dance music, but it was much more vocal, much more melodic, a bit more anything-goes. For me, the main criteria were that you could come in and hear a bunch of different types of music and experience new stuff.”

John Hatz adds that the element of fun had, to a certain degree, seeped out of his club experience. “Someone had to do something to change stuff because things had become a little bit stale. We were like, ‘I want people to get shit-faced and have fun.’ That’s why people go out—to relax and get laid and have fun and forget the day. It had somehow gotten uncool to wake up with your underwear on your head, which for me is, like, the best part of life—waking up under someone’s coffee table and you’re stuck to the carpet, and you’re like, ‘What happened?’”

Don’t fuck with the magic

It was with a certain degree of serendipity that Neon made the transition from a small organization with a weekly club night and a few scattered parties to its current incarnation, housed at the Société des Arts Technologiques and handling major bookings and enormous events.

“We had been shut down for about a year when SAT called me in early 2001,” says Hatz. “They were doing an artistic exchange program with New York and they wanted me to do a party in Montreal with New York artists. So I called up Morgan Geist and we booked Metro Area to play in Montreal. That party was supposed to be in 2001. Then, obviously, Sept. 11 happened, so all the New York guys cancelled. I was left with this night I had booked, and SAT still wanted me to do something. I called up Tiga and Justin and said, ‘Do you guys think it’s time to do a bigger Neon?’ They were itching for it, so we booked Vitalic from France. We got 600 people. The next one was with Miss Kitten and the Hacker, and from that point on, it just went up.”

According to the founders, that kind of spontaneity has always been at the root of the Neon experience. Both Hatz and Tiga insist that Neon has never had an overarching directive. As long as the parties are fun and engaging, they say, Neon will continue to evolve naturally.

Hatz says he’s not sure what the future holds for Neon. “It may sound ridiculous because, as a businessperson, with everything I do, I have a pretty strategic, aggressive master plan, but with Neon, that’s something we don’t have, and that’s something we don’t wanna fuck with. Not having a plan has worked for us. The magic only exists when things are sincere and spontaneous, and you lose that when you start forecast planning about what your next move will be.”

Anniversary party with Tiga, Jordan Dare and Thomas Von Party at Darling Foundry on Saturday, Feb. 24, 9 p.m., $30