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The energizer Why is MC Mario Tremblay the most popular DJ in Canada? by MIREILLE SILCOTT Friday, September 19, 10 p.m. Phone Friend: Hey, what are you doing tonight? Mirror: I'm going to the Dôme. PF: Ha ha. No, really... M: I swear. I'm going to the Dôme. PF: Why? M: Because I'm interviewing MC Mario. PF: Come on! Why? M: Because he's the biggest fucking DJ in Canada and a million peoplehear him every week. Isn't that a good enough reason? PF: Sure, if you like hi-NRG cheese and derivative schlock... M: Hi-NRG cheese is a story, isn't it? Look how upset it made you... PF: Well, don't trip over any girly handbags on the Dôme dance floor, eh? 11 p.m.: Montreal Dôme
"So the Mirror, eh?" starts Aniello boisterously, pockets full of drink tickets and VIP passes. "That's very underground, very underground... er, why are you writing about Mario?" Because nobody in the alternative press ever has. "Very true. I like that, that's good." Backslap, free beer. I sip, looking at the framed photos clustered on the walls: Gillette ("To Aniello: Are you a short-d**k man? Ha, ha. Love, Gillette"), La Bouche ("Mario, thanks for all the support!"), Reel 2 Reel ("Thanks for the support!"), Real McCoy ("Thanks for the support!"), Fun Factory ("Thanks for the support!"). "You know," continues Aniello, one eye still on the security screens, "this is great, really great. Very surprising." If Aniello only knew. I felt as if I were sitting in the den of the enemy. I've been in the club scene for close to a decade now, and for that entire span I've ranted, bitched--often stupidly and unknowingly--about all that is MC Mario. 11:30 p.m.: MC Mario enters the office with the placidity of a millionaire entering his lair. He's a comfortable-looking, smiling 30-something in a roomy Old River denim shirt. He sits next to me and in front of Aniello. "She wants to explain what you do to the underground," Aniello tells Mario. Mario smiles. "Mario, what do you call the kind of music you play?" I ask. "The best of the best," he says. "Some people say 'Mario is commercial.' I would say I'm commerciable. There's a big difference. Anything that I think will have a mass appeal, I go for. But it could really be anything." Midnight: "Dance music, whatever you want to call it--house, disco, NRG, techno--has always been huge in Quebec," Mario says, rushing up to his posh windowed booth where he will spin for 2,000 Dômers and a province of radios. "There's a huge difference between here and, like, Vancouver or Toronto. In Calgary, if someone drives with the windows down in the summer, what you'll hear is something like Oasis. In Quebec, same Jeep, different people, you'll hear dance music playing--very loud. You don't get that in Calgary." Mario should know. He began DJing at clubs like Limelight and La Folie in 1979. He did the large suburban discos like Laval's Le Lazer, then moved to Metropolis in the late '80s and the Dôme afterward. By then, his daily CKMF Mastermix had sealed his reputation as the purveyor of commercial dance music in Quebec. His shift to the weekend 6 p.m.-3 a.m. Party Mix slot on Mix 96 (the most listened-to show in Quebec) made his kingliness indisputable. Mario now has a nationally syndicated program called The Mixdown. He is the Molson Centre's music programmer, has sold millions of compilations for Quality and Polygram, has just signed an eight-album deal with Sony Music and is the consultant for Montreal indie labels Tycoon and KLM. 1:15 a.m.: The Dôme is going particularly bonkers to an oompah medley of 2 Unlimited, Technotronic and "YMCA." "It's so cheeeeesy," laughs Mario. "But you bring them up to this level and then you can play ANYTHING." He then puts on a house track by Armand Van Helden. "If you close your eyes," says Mario, rifling through records, dancing around and sharing shots, "you'd think you're at Sona, no? You wouldn't believe how many people walk to Sona after Dôme." And as Aniello whisks me off to look down from the balcony, I wonder where the shift in attitude occurs between the two clubs. 2 a.m.: Girls are swinging on oversized swings atop the crowd as Mario plays Aqua's sickly NRG monster "Barbie Girl." "People wait in line to go on those," says Aniello. And what about those go-go cages with the platforms that rise up and down: are those hired dancers in there? "Oh no, those are customers too!" says Aniello. "They turn into instant porno stars the minute they step in!" And with that, I leave for Sona. There, I hear music I like better. But I feel utterly spooked when the DJ plays the same Van Helden track I heard at Dôme. Why is it "underground" here and "mainstream" there? There are some underground tracks that break the mainstream, I remind myself. If Sona's DJ played "Barbie Girl," he'd be fried. When I speak to Mario on the phone the next day, we're both pretty hoarse. Mirror: Mario, you said your crowd can get into all styles. Why don't you try something like jungle and see where it goes? MC Mario: It's funny. I tried a while ago with this one track; the beat was amazing, I didn't know it was called jungle music, even. I can't remember the name; it was... umm... M: "Original Nuttah" by UK Apache? MM: "Nuttah"? Yes! That's it! How did you know? M: Er, wild guess. It was a big one. MM: Well, I tried to make that the breaking track; it always takes one hit for the rest to follow, you know? And it just didn't work at all. M: So would you say that you play the music you want to play? MM: I play what I want to play because I like to see the club packed. I can get a Daft Punk or something like that in for a while, but the crowd's waiting for their big, disposable hits to come on. Fact is, the people who make a minority music purposefully don't make it for the majority. And the majority is my pleasure. There is a reason there's no radio show called "Live from Sona." MC Mario DJs the Dôme's fourth anniversary megaparty this Saturday, Sept. 27, 10pm. 32 Ste-Catherine W., 875-5757. MC Mario Mastermind's Dance 2000 compilation is now out on Sony Music |
There's already a lineup on Ste-Catherine leading up to "Montreal's #1 club." A wall-sized security man in a black Dôme T-shirt checks his walkie-talkie to confirm I'm not someone trying to cop a free Friday night pass. As his 'talkie crackles back ("Eh? A who? Sealcott?"), I check the handbag count but spot more backpacks on girls shivering in halter tops. The security man takes me up through the coat check, several offices and storerooms into the office of Aniello de Lucia, one of the owners of the Dôme, where I wait for MC Mario Tremblay.