Queen of the scene

>> As of May 2, Cabaret Mado brings drag back to clubland

by GERARD DEE

When Cabaret Mado opens its doors on Thursday, May 2, the club will offer a full palette of entertainment, headed by one of Montreal’s most famous drag queens, Mado Lamotte. It will also bring together a team of people who have been instrumental in defining the look, the sound, the soul of the Gay Village over the last two decades.
“Our community deserves a club like this,” says DJ Mark Laflamme. “It’s going to be comedy, improv, singers and, of course, there are going to be drag shows—it’s Mado! But I think it’s going to be much more than that.”

You bet it is. Expect anything from karaoke to stand-up comedy, and plenty of kick-ass music, which Laflamme will be providing twice weekly. His specialty? Everything. “It doesn’t matter if it’s disco, house, underground or R&B, it’s all about the feeling and the vibe of the night,” he says. “I can deliver the merchandise.”

Laflamme has been delivering the merchandise for the past 22 years. The list of clubs he’s played in reads like the history of Village nightlife: KOX, Pipeline, the Garage, Security Maximum, Jungle, Sky, Stud, Sisters and Parking. “Marc was one of the premier DJs way back when,” says friend and fan David Jones. “I would say he’s often under-appreciated because he’s been around for so long. He’s not just the flavour of the month.”

Mado on top

Laflamme admits it’s been a struggle, but the tide seems to be turning. The Stud had been his only regular gig for a while, so when he was recently invited to be a regular DJ at Sky on Saturday nights, he jumped at the chance. The offer was rescinded four hours before he was scheduled to begin, but it turned out to be the proverbial blessing in disguise. The following Saturday, he got a call from Parking, asking him to fill in that night. They then invited him to become their regular Saturday night DJ. He accepted. And then it got even better.
“The week after that, guess who shows up in the DJ booth at Parking? Mado! He asked me if I would like to come and work for him and I said, ‘Oh my God, things couldn’t go much better for me now!’”

For Mado, AKA Luc Provost, Laflamme has high praise. “I think Mado is going to be big. The way I look at him and his evolution from the time he started to now, it’s perfect!”
“Now the timing is perfect,” echoes Provost. “I’ve been doing Mado for 15 years, I’ve been doing the Tuesday night (at Sky) for three years. And the Tuesday night, I was promoter, producer, manager, drag queen, DJ, I did everything, so I know everything about the business now.” Disenchanted with a club hierarchy that often placed drag at the bottom, Provost wanted more.

“Doing this stuff for so long, seeing bar owners making so much money with our nights—and when I ask for a little raise, they say, ‘Oh, we can’t afford it.’ But now I’m part of the ownership. I don’t have to ask permission, I just have to consult with my associates.”

Ink stains

One of the associates Mado will be consulting with is Pierre Viens. Like Laflamme and Mado, Viens had been a part of the club landscape for a long time. The bars he’s had a hand in have been among the trendiest—Cargo, the Beat, Business, Metropolis, Security Maximum, Sky, Magnolia and Unity. Provost describes Viens as a “business friend.”
“We’ve worked together for ten years. Of course, sometimes we have arguments about things, but we’re always on the same wavelength. We have the same ideas about what nightlife should be. He’s so good at what he does, he’s a professional and I can trust him. Of course, we all make mistakes, I guess he did too. But I always said, even if I don’t agree with the decisions he makes about his bars, if I have to open my own bar, I want to do it with him.”

Viens’ decision about Unity last fall led to one of their biggest disagreements. “We had an argument about the closing of Unity,” says Provost, “and I wrote an article, and he said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ and I said, ‘Pierre, I did what I had to do. There was a community behind me that was expecting an article from Mado.’ I had to do it. They closed at the beginning of September, and Sky opened at the end of December. They lost four months of good parties, and, for them, good money and, for us, a good place to dance. But I think Pierre realizes that.”

New unity

“If I had to go back and change things, I would make other decisions,” says Viens. “First of all, instead of opening the Unity pub downstairs, I would have bought Sky. That was the first mistake. That was a big one. Second was closing Unity in August. When the Sky pub reopened, the Unity pub went down, and we were so sure that the same thing would happen to the Unity club. And we said, ‘Okay, we’re going for a straight market.’ But obviously, it was a bad decision.”

Viens says it was a business call, based on the Village’s well-known history of supporting the newest “in” bar to arrive. Still, it didn’t go down well. “A lot of people were really upset, because they didn’t understand. There was really like a backlash in September in the Village because of the decision we took. I was very shocked. I even had to take out an ad in Fugue to explain myself. It was kind of rough, September, October.”

In fact, Unity is supposedly reopening within the next couple of months, but Viens will not be part of it. He says he’ll focus on Cabaret Mado instead. And he seems genuinely happy with this decision. “We’ve had this project in mind for years, me and Mado,” he says. “And (Marc and I) have known each other for quite some time. The team that’s going to be in place is wonderful.”7