new club night goes up against avalon in l.a.

Avalon's lock on Saturday nights in Los Angeles didn't last long: Pasquale Rotella, who used to work with Avalon's Dave Dean when they were at nearby Vanguard, has announce he's starting a Saturday night superstar DJ party at a renovated Music Box Hollywood around the corner from Avalon.

The first night, March 20, will feature Sander Kleinenberg. The night will be called Decor and will be organized in conjunction with Rotella's Insomniac Events. The next night the venue will also host Groove Armada. A statement from the venue states that it is being restored to reflect its original, 1920s glamor.

The move will once again mean competition for DJ talent on Saturdays in L.A. Dave Dean moved his booking power to Avalon at the beginning of the year after Avalon's Garrett Chau peaced out to take a job with Lollapalooza. Dean, along with Liquified's Damian Murphy, is helping the club book DJs both Fridays and Saturdays. He also has events in San Diego, Orange County and Phoenix. Rotella is one of the kings of rave in L.A. and arguably holds the record for the largest such event, Electric Daisy Carnival, last summer.


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giant and dave dean are back at avalon hollywood

Dave Dean and his Giant club brand are back as Saturday-night co-promoters at Avalon Hollywood (pictured above). Dean was booted from the club in 2006, with rumors claiming that he took too much of the door for the owners' taste. He went on to establish Giant at nearby rival club Vanguard, and the two battled for talent and ticket-buyers. Avalon's lead promoter, Garrett Chau, left late last year to take a job "to oversee the global expansion of Lollapalooza," he told us, leaving an opening at the venue. Vanguard, meanwhile, appears to be void of promoters and upcoming events (its website's calendar is virtually empty).

Way more background on this than you probably want in a post by yours truly at LA Weekly.


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Big fun:

-So here are some of the details about the new hip-hop portion of the evening at Vanguard in Hollywood on Saturdays, which starts Sept. 22. Giant chief Dave Dean says it was his idea to add hip-hop to the upstairs VIP room at Vanguard to expose a different crowd to his e-music big-room nights there and to clear other areas of the venue, specifically the patio, for more electronic dance music DJing. (He says he also suggested this kind of set-up for Avalon's Spider Club when he was running the main room at that rival venue). He says the patio's sound system is being upgraded for more quality sounds outside, and it will round out four "distinct" sound systems at the venue.

The hip-hop room's promoter is Hollywood-scene veteran named Omer S, by the way. Both he and Dean say Mr. S will work under the Giant fold, although the 200-capacity VIP room will have a separate entrance on Hollywood Boulevard, a la (you guesed it) Spider Club.

"I have been promoting hip-hop clubs for seven years," Mr. S says in an email forwarded to us. "However, my true love is electronic. I am from Israel and have grown up on the music way before it was popular in the U.S. [Eh, you mean before Americans like Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson invented it? -Ed.]. My partners and I are all very excited to be part of Giant. As for the new promotion, our intent is to compliment and supplement the existing Giant promotion, not to change the scene or diminish the night in any way. My partners and I predominantly cater to a hip-hop crowd, however."

The night will be called The Mansion and is apparently a version of nights he was doing at the cheese emporium known as the Day After club. For its part, Giant states it has room for 1,600 even without the VIP lounge's 200 cap. Upcoming DJs for fall-winter include: Sasha, David Guetta, Dirty South, Above & Beyond, Roger Sanchez, Dimitri from Paris, Benny Benassi, Blank & Jones and Armand van Helden. "I’ve never had a better relationship with a club in LA than the one I currently have at Vanguard," Giant's Dean says.