Two weeks in paradise
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DJ Smoking's long, strange trip
by CHRIS HATHERILL
It came across my desk buried in a pile of resumés from DJs, applications for a program I was administering. It was up to me to sort through them all and narrow it down to people who would benefit most from free government money. Most potential candidates had at least a few residencies listed, but Blue Dog and Laika were about as glamourous as it got.
Then I picked up 40-year-old DJ Smoking's C.V. The first half of his DJ career consisted of playing in a series of bars in and around Thetford Mines, Quebec. I was about to put it in the "maybe" pile when one particular gig caught my eye: 1979, Paradise Garage, New York City.
A few e-mails and 450 area-code calls later and I'm sitting across from Pierre Lafond in one of the thousands of little hot dog places that grace our belle province. He is dressed head to toe in denim, smokes Player's Full Flavour and has just driven over the bridge from his home in the South Shore. This guy once played at Paradise Garage?
Glamour days
The Garage is one of New York's, indeed the world's, most legendary clubs. Often mentioned in the same breath as Studio 54, it opened in 1976 and went on to become famous for its exclusive clientele, its atmosphere, its sound system and above all its DJ, now officially a god, Larry Levan. Levan's influential mixing style shaped the course of dance music and made the Paradise Garage the place to be in the late '70s and early '80s. Madonna made her first public appearance there, joining celebrities like Grace Jones who frequented the SoHo institution. Which makes it pretty hard to believe that some unknown kid from Montreal would be invited to replace Levan during a two-week sick leave.
"Listen, me, my style is like Tony Humphries," Lafond says in French with a heavy Québécois accent. "This guy is the best DJ in the world. My technique is different, but I see it like there's a second Tony Humphries, in Quebec. I've been DJing since I was 12 years old. At 16 I started working in actual clubs. Obviously there aren't many doors that open before you at that age, you've gotta move, you've gotta persevere. So we got together with some friends and started a mobile system."
It was during these years that Lafond perfected his technique and began collecting records. Roaming the province either with the mobile disco or as a club DJ, his repertoire soon grew to include popular tracks from New York and Chicago. He started dabbling in production and hooking up with club owners in the States before contacting legendary New York label Salsoul. It was this that led to his brief foray into the exclusive world of the Paradise Garage, or so he claims.
"New York is the best city for music," he enthusiastically explains. "There was an unbelievable mood at the time. When I went to New York for two weeks I had a contact at Salsoul, and it just worked out. I don't think that stuff happens anymore. You went into that building, and the sound was incredible, the best. Back then it was funk, it was soul, a bit of disco--it was glamour. Glamour music."
Keep on truckin'
It's easy to get caught up in the moment as he reminisces, but hard to decide if it's true or just a, "Yeah, I was at Woodstock" style story. On the one hand he definitely knows a lot about the New York scene at the time and certainly knows the music, but then has trouble remembering the names of people who could help verify his tale. He is naively innocent about just how legendary the club went on to become, insisting it was "just another contract," but also claims all his photos from that era were "stolen" when he moved. Just when I'm about to write him off completely, he drops the bomb. "Do you want to come see my records?"
Twenty minutes later we're swerving through traffic at high speed toward the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, blaring one of his old-school vocal house mix tapes. Lafond is simultaneously drumming on the wheel, singing and swearing violently at anyone who gets in our way. We pull into his driveway and come to a stop in front of a massive tractor trailer that's about as tall as the house. Now a truck driver by profession, Lafond spends weeks at a time on the road travelling all over North America. I suddenly get a mental image of him pulling out of a Arizona truck stop and burning away down the open highway blasting vintage gay house.
"DJs here are missing musical creativity," he says, firing up an old sound system that fills half the room and makes me worry about his young daughter's chances of hearing loss. "No harmonies, no long mixes. DJs here say they mix records. You don't mix records. You produce music, you make music. The mentality here is 'I work for my pay.' No fucking good. Down there in New York, music is a religion. It's sacred."
Is that your vinyl answer?
If music is sacred, then I'm in an unlikely church. We're standing in a basement in Brossard surrounded by children's toys and over 8,000 records. I begin browsing through the neatly organized shelves and feel a warm sensation in my pants as I discover an entire section of original Sugar Hill Records 12"s. There's also back catalogues from Strictly Rhythm and Trax measured in feet, not inches, and all kinds of other random rarities. As Lafond goes to work on a pair of ancient, pre-1200 Techniques, there's no denying he's got skills. Quick to match beats, he's also dead-on with the faders, bringing snippets of tracks in and out, all the while grinning from ear to ear and yelling random information about the records that are turning. Even if his memories are a little hazy, there's always something to be learned from the older and wiser.
"Pour moi, it was the best experience of my life." He pauses and looks out into space for a second. "I can't tell you the feeling I felt when I was there, the experience of living something like that. If anyone ever gets that chance, they have to go for it. They have to."
If you're into classic sounds, DJ Smoking is your man. For mix tapes and bookings, call (450) 462-1303
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