At Disco Donnie Presents, we’ve been decking the [dance] halls with boughs of disco for 20 years now. Whether you’re a new Disco dancer or a veteran, we want to say thank you for raving out with us and spreading the disco cheer.

For our greeting card this holiday season, we asked everyone what they were doing many years ago when Donnie was throwing his legendary parties in New Orleans. And in the photo and messages below, you’ll see many stages of raving from the Disco team.

From our family to yours, we hope you have a very Disco holiday and may the good spirits of the season meet you with happiness, fill your hearts with peace, and pump your speakers with bass!

20 Years of Raving, A Disco Miracle!

Evan, head of the marketing, was going through an awkward phase in life. “22 and a real mess. John Lennon glasses and plenty of disco house. I still don’t have grey hair, so I think about a year or two away from meeting Donnie.”

Stu may be finding talent for our lineups now, but in his picture, he wasn’t even old enough to attend. “Hello, yes, is this Disco Donnie? Is your rave really 18+? ….what if I have a note from my mom saying it’s OK!?”

Our head of hospitality, Andrea has been raving with Disco almost since the beginning. “My picture is from a party at the State Palace Theater in New Orleans in 1998 – I’ve been trying to work for Donnie ever since!”

His current job sees him bringing talent to a city near you, but in Amin’s picture he’s clearly on some type of thug holiday. “I didn’t choose the Disco thug life – the Disco thug life chose me.”

Holding it down as president of the company, Michele is an original Disco gangster. “In 20 years, I may look a little different, but my love for the scene hasn’t changed a bit!”

Before he was leading the web team, Eric was part of the generation who wasn’t afraid to make a glowing statement. “Back in my day we didn’t have websites or the twitters. We had greasy fliers with sketchy info lines.”

As vice president of the company, Kevin sports a bald is beautiful look now. But in his picture, he’s on the blonde ambition tour, “Blondes do it better! I’m only 100,000 points away from Platinum status.”

Rob oversees our social media – which is perfect considering his picture is from an era where forums reigned supreme. “What do you mean I can’t meet Tiësto? I’m going to tell everyone on my message board about this!”

Next time you’re wowed by the production at one of our events, thank Allen – who, coincidentally, had a similar reaction when he went to his first show, “Oh my god… This is what a rave is? I’m gonna rave till I die! Perfecto and Global Underground foreverrrr!”

Currently lord of the box office, Leon has always had an affinity for travel, “It’s 2001 and I’m flying both cars and ravers at 4:00 AM in the dead of winter. Those were the best days of my Disco life – when PLUR was in our DNA!”

Our ticketing guru Kelly has been a diva for a long time, “Making raves fashionable since 1999!”

Chief of the medical and security department, Edwin knows how to keep calm under pressure, “I’ve got so much PLUR, I’ve gotta give you some!”

Making sure we don’t run around like chickens without heads, our executive assistant Natalie hasn’t noticed much change in her day-to-day tasks. “I used to hang out with people who wore diapers, now I change them.”

KellCobb can nail down anything on the production side of things these days, but he still gets nostalgic. “Those were the good old days, beepers, vinyl, dance floors and when Limelight wasn’t a David Barton Gym.”

Whether you’ve been throwing parties for 20 years or for one year, you will have “hecklers;” the people who seem to always have something to say about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And is was no different for the early days of Disco Donnie Presents. But Donnie always knew how to turn something negative into something fun.

One of the ways Donnie kept in touch with attendees was through email lists, “So basically, [after] I’d come home from a show, I would check to see what people thought about it and how I had done,” laments Donnie on his former post-show routine, “They were very critical people, it was like the worst-of-the-worst. They were never happy with anything.”

Creating [Another] Random Title

Most of the earlier parties had a very relaxed look on stage access – in fact, it was almost encouraged. But not everybody liked the view from down below, “[At the party] you had people dancing up there and whatnot, and I got an email of someone complaining that there were ‘stripper sluts’ on stage up there.” Never one to dwell, Donnie took the critique and got creative, “So when I started thinking about Halloween, I just printed that email and started messing around with different concepts.” Much like the random hodgepodge genius that was Psychedelic Pimp Daddy Land, so was the plight of Vampire Stripper Sluts from Outer Space, “It wasn’t necessarily gonna be a Halloween concept, I just thought it would be cool to tag those names together. I strung together vampire stripper sluts and the outer space thing kinda tagged along with the old movie theme concepts I’d done.”

The First Vampire Stripper Slut

The events leading up to first Vampire Stripper Sluts from Outer Space in 1998 were less than desirable. Always known for having innovative and creative fliers, Donnie wanted the Halloween event to be the first rave to have a 3D flier – an novel concept that as it turned out, was easier said than done, “I didn’t get a chance to see the design on the flier until I went to go pick them up at the airport,” Donnie remembers, “the internet wasn’t as accessible as it is today, so it was just really problematic to have to scan an incredibly large image and send it to somebody.”

Even though he was unsure of how the flier turned out, Donnie was still prepared to see the design through, “I bought a whole bunch of 3D glasses that I was gonna staple to the flier so everyone knew it was 3D.” As Donnie opened the box, excitement turned into anxiety rather quickly, “The flier was super blurry and was not even remotely in 3D.” But that wasn’t the only problem with the flier, “I booked DJ Shadow to headline the jungle room, which was a really big deal at the time, but the designer forgot to add his name to the flier and didn’t realize it until after all the fliers had printed. So they had to manually add his name in the smallest font to fit in the little bit of space left on the back.” Admittedly, that quick fix, albeit the best that could’ve been done, was the catalyst another incident Donnie was about to face.

Taking to the State Palace Theater on October 31st, Überzone, one the staples and all-time favorites of the rave scene, headlined the event. Joining him was pioneering UK techno artist Luke Slater, Perfecto Label favorite Sandra Collins, American progressive trance talent Christopher Lawrence, and lest we forget, DJ Shadow. The show went off without a hitch… almost. As the party was coming to a close, DJ Shadow had a little “fun” with the audio equipment. To quote one reveler from an archived rave forum, “Didn’t Blackalicious with DJ Shadow destroy the sound system in the Jungle Room? Literally?” Yes, is the answer to that question. But despite the damage, most of the security and audience were unfazed, “They probably thought it was part of the show,” jokes Donnie.

Spaced Out Vampire Stripper Sluts

Another memorable edition of Vampire Stripper Sluts took place on October 27, 2001 at State Palace. Headlined by Deep Dish, who has just reunited recently, performed a six hour set at the Halloween event. Sandra Collins returned, joining Sharam and Dubfire on stage, but the show also had veteran UK drum and bass acts Stakka & Skynet and Usual Suspects, influential German drum and bass talent Panacea (who performed a three turntable set), and the UK’s IDM and breakbeat fusion talent, Jega. If ever there was a lineup to send you to outer space, this was the one to do it.

The Vampire Stripper party has become a staple during the Halloween season as years passed. And if you thought Psychedelic Pimp Daddy Land and Vampire Stripper Sluts from Outer Space and something in common, you’d be right, “Those are kinda like brother and sister parties… Or at least cousin parties!” Donnie chuckles.

For the 20 years that Disco Donnie Presents has been in the business of making people dance, the themes for our parties have always been a buzzworthy topic.

When raves were in full-force towards the mid to late 90s, promoters were constantly attempting to outdo one another. And if you ever read a full list of titles given to each party, you’d see why, “It seemed like you always had to name your party something super silly,” Donnie remembers, “people had Candyland, ‘Supa’ this, and ‘Phat’ that – it was just the same thing over and over again.” We all know Donnie was never one to conform, so he started brainstorming, “I wanted to do something that was kinda like Candyland but funnier. So basically, the goal was to try to string together as many nonsense words together to make an awesome party name.”

Donnie eventually settled on the name Psychedelic Pimp Daddy Land for the Memorial Day weekend event. The first edition took place on May 24, 1997 at State Palace Theater in New Orleans. The psychedelic lineup featured techno live act Prototype 909, big beat live act Cirrus, and other favorites like Kimball Collins and Terry Mullan. The party was, of course, a hit and became an annual event. But because of Donnie’s (awesomely) severe case of creativity, the titles were always prone to change, “The reason I changed the title every year was so that the flier would look different. You had shows that just use the same name and the same art every year – which is smart, you know, people recognize the art and they’ll be like, ‘oh, I remember that party.’ But I didn’t wanna do the same things over and over. I wanted to keep changing it. And maybe that wasn’t the best business plan, but it made me sleep better at night.”

Over the years, themes included Pimp Daddy on Ice, Pimp Daddy’s European Vacation, Pimp Daddy’s Weekend Furlough, Pimp Daddy Needs to pay Child Support…the list goes on, “I chose whatever was topical, or whatever I thought was funny enough and I just themed it out to keep it a little more interesting.”

Though the titles were made in jest, other promoters thought of it as competition, “I was making fun of rave party names but I ended up creating a monster because other promoters started making even sillier titles.” But Donnie will always remember the show fondly, “Aside from Zoolu, that’s my favorite party.”

With 20 years of being in the business, we’ve certainly seen many evolutions of rave culture here at Disco Donnie Presents. From Jnco’s, to fuzzy leg warmers, teddy bear backpacks, and kandi, rave attire has always been known to raise a few eyebrows. With most society unaccustomed to the appearance of the party-goers, Donnie decided to poke a little fun at his rave family with Attack of the 50ft Raver Zombies.

Taking place on January 24, 1998 at State Palace Theater, the inspiration for Attack of the 50ft Raver Zombies was fairly innocent, “I took something from my childhood that I was interested in and basically tried to make it into a party,” Donnie says, “I used those early memories as the catalyst for what I was doing.”

As a kid, you probably could’ve found Donnie in front of a black and white TV watching horror films on the UHF channel, “It was interesting to me,” Donnie recalls, “you had like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Planet of the Apes, The Blob… when I was trying to come up with a different theme for a show, I just strung some of those movie concepts together.” For Donnie, using this format to think of new themes worked for quite some time too, but we digress.

Thick in the burgeoning rave movement, those on the outskirts of the culture weren’t really sure what to think of ravers, “It was kinda like this time where everyone was down because [people thought] ravers were terrible; nobody liked ravers, you know?” Trying to bring some comedy to opinions of outsiders, Donnie started brainstorming, “I took something from my childhood that I enjoyed and I tried to make a party theme of an old movies from the 40s and 50s – what would it be like if instead of Godzilla or giant 50ft woman, its like a 50ft raver. Back then, people were scared of aliens, in the 90s, people were scared of ravers.”

Attack of the 50ft Raver Zombies had a rather haunting lineup as well. Headliners included West coast rave favorite Astral Matrix, Chicago house legend DJ Sneak, and “Get Get Down” creator Paul Johnson.

Many parties derived from the Attack of the 50ft Raver Zombies theme – but we’ll save those for next week.