DISCO DONNIE AND THE DAYS OF RAVE

All Disco Donnie Wanted To Do Was Throw Some Wild Parties.

Then he threw New Orleans into the center of a national debate over music,
drugs, the First Amendment and pacifiers.

The most striking thing in Betty Estopinal's Metairie CPA office is a
massive portrait of her son Disco Donnie, constructed entirely of Mardi
Gras beads.

The stench of smoke and must rises to the State Palace Theatre's massive
balcony. It's a few minutes until the start of the first local screening of
Rise: The Story of Rave Outlaw Disco Donnie, a new documentary about the
heyday of the local rave scene and its legendary promoter.

The line to get into this all-night party stretches up Canal Street and
halfway around the block on Elk's Place, where paint chips from the
theater's unkempt exterior drop to a sidewalk flooded almost exclusively
with white high school- and college-aged kids. Girls in halter tops sparkle
with body glitter, chatting up boys in baggy pants.

Eager to get inside, each patron meets with a security bottleneck at the
door. Bags, pockets and shoes are searched; IDs are checked.

An enormous sign above the doors prohibits glow materials, Vicks inhalers,
Vicks Vapo Rub, dust masks and infant pacifiers.

Inside, the curtain opens to whoops and howls.

The opening credits feature QBert -- a seminal hip-hop DJ, hailed for his
elevation of turntablism as an art form -- collecting his luggage from the
local airport carousel.

Like most of the passengers on his flight, he's on his way to a Mardi Gras
party, namely Zoolu, a rave at the State Palace Theatre. As the film plays
on, a host of international DJs appear, including marquee names such as
Josh Wink, Nigel Richards and Derrick Carter.

But none of these performers is the star of the film.

That honor is reserved for event promoter James D. Estopinal Jr., aka Disco
Donnie, who first appears dressed in an orange vinyl tracksuit and a
Wagner's Meat T-shirt, gold sunglasses and a bottle opener on a gold rope
around his neck. "We're going to a party," he says to start the film,
flashing both rows of stark-white teeth in a wide grin. "Twenty-five
hundred or 3,000 of my closest friends."

Estopinal's wildly popular parties at the State Palace Theatre became the
stuff of rave legend by early 2000. Yet it wasn't just innovative
productions and financial success that landed him in Time, Rolling Stone
and The New York Times. The parties -- along with their venue and promoter
- -- won their fame thanks to a national controversy that would eventually
grow to include the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), both houses of
Congress and the entire entertainment industry.

GROWING UP ON THE WEST BANK, James D. Estopinal Jr. got his first taste of
nightlife via his father.

A hardworking attorney, James Estopinal Sr. gave up his practice in 1979
after he separated from 8-year-old Donnie's mother. Known as "Disco Jim,"
the elder Estopinal took a job as a DJ at a bar called Scratches on Behrman
Highway. Sometimes on weekends, Donnie's mother would let him go there with
his father. "I would sleep on the floor, go through records, play video
games, help stock beers, stuff like that," the younger Estopinal recalls.

Once, Disco Jim staged an "urban cowboy" show at the bar. Dressed in chaps,
he played the theme song from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and had
patrons sign a liability release form before mounting the quarter-a-ride
hobbyhorse he'd rented for the occasion.

Another time, he encouraged everyone to get naked to a Rolling Stones record.

When he wasn't spinning records, Disco Jim lived in a motor home parked in
a field near the bar. "I thought it was awesome that he lived in a motor
home," says Disco Donnie. "I saw all kinds of stuff kids aren't supposed to
see."

Most of the time, though, Estopinal lived with his mother, Betty Estopinal,
a CPA who now runs her own accounting firm in Metairie. The most striking
thing in her office is a massive portrait of "Disco Donnie" dancing in a
leisure suit, constructed entirely of Mardi Gras beads. "That's my son!"
she says proudly.

As a student at Arden Cahill Academy in Gretna, Disco Donnie loved sports
and social success. "Everyone would call him to see what he was doing. He
was always the one that planned things, that made things happen," Betty
Estopinal says. When he wasn't in school, he traveled with his mother,
often in an old Datsun with no air conditioning, on trips to places such as
the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and Winter Park Resort.

The raid on the 2000 "Phuture Phat Hong Kong Phooey" show thrust New
Orleans into the national debate over raves. In 1980, Betty Estopinal came
down with a potentially deadly form of meningitis that required a
four-month hospital stay. "It was a scary time, but the thing that upset
him the most," she recalls, "was that nobody told him I could die until
after I was OK."

Disco Donnie entered Louisiana State University in 1990, planning to follow
in his mother's footsteps and become an accountant. In college, he threw
small parties in bars, mostly for his fraternity, which he led as president.

When he returned to New Orleans after graduating in 1994, he briefly worked
for his mother and took a job waiting tables at night. One night, a few gay
men he worked with invited him to a dance party at Cafe Istanbul, a
now-defunct club on Frenchmen Street. "I felt misplaced when I first came
back here," he recalls as he twists the sideburns of his 1970s haircut into
little curls. "Until I found this. I was totally floored."

From then on, he set himself on a mission -- to spread the word about the
culture he had found. "My personal crusade was not to let this scene pass
by anybody else," he says. He passed out flyers and invited his fraternity
brothers to attend dance parties around town and quickly became known as
"Disco Donnie," a nickname that he considers an early rite of passage into
the family of ravers he was helping to build.

Estopinal's first dance events were intimate affairs for a close-knit group
of college-aged clubbers.

He booked local DJs at Cafe Istanbul, the Audubon Hotel on St. Charles
Avenue and the previous incarnation of the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary
Arts Center on Magazine Street in the Lower Garden District. Working with
partners including Dan Millstein, aka DJ Stryfe, Estinopal organized the
parties under a series of "company" monikers such as Moon Patrol, a
precursor to his current entities, Disco Productions and the Freebass Society.

When the parties outgrew small clubs, Estopinal and his cohorts found
larger, less legitimate venues.

They posed as a sound equipment company to gain access to a stinky fish
warehouse on Erato Street for a regular Friday night event. "No liquor
license, no insurance, no security," he recalls. "Totally, like, stupid.

Five hundred people started showing up to these things, and it got really
risky.

It's a six-story place, someone throws a two-by-four out the window, and it
hits someone in the head. Stuff like that started happening.

We knew that if we wanted to get bigger, we had to go legal."

THROUGHOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF GRUNGE, the State Palace Theatre had featured
acts such as Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam and had hosted the New Orleans
premiere of the Dave Matthews Band in 1995. A family business owned and
operated by brothers Robert and Brian Brunet and their father Rene Brunet,
it had a security staff, proper insurance policies and ticket sales through
Ticketmaster. It was also tailor-made for raves.

With its ornate opera-house architecture and multiple performance rooms,
the State Palace could accommodate dozens of DJs and live acts and throngs
of electronic music fans.

The first few State Palace raves, held in 1995, drew crowds in the
hundreds, and the first Freebass Society Mardi Gras party at the State
Palace, Zoolu 2, held in February 1996, netted about $12,000. State Palace
co-owner Robert Brunet learned quickly that there was money to be made from
raves: "I said to Donnie and Dan, 'Hey, I don't know shit about the music
you promote, and y'all don't know shit about putting on a show.' So, I
proposed that we partner up. Donnie and Dan were peeing in their pants they
were so excited.

Donnie's not a dumb guy." Estopinal insists that he was the one to put a
deal on the table with Brunet and that he wasn't altogether clueless about
putting on shows.

But he also admits that the bottom line was never his primary concern.

"Donnie was always about the music," says Brunet. "He was always all, 'I'm
concerned about how other promoters are going to feel about this,' or, 'I'm
concerned about this not being the right thing for the kids.' I was like,
f--k the other promoters."

Eventually, Estopinal's success meant he began receiving investment
opportunities: a clothing line, a record label, a bagel shop. "I was so
busy goofing off, I was like, whatever," he says. "I was spontaneously
successful and I knew that it would be hard to duplicate that. I had seen
enough VH1 Behind the Music to know that. I was resigned to the fact that
one day, it would end, or slow down, or change."

"I felt misplaced when I first came back here," says Disco Donnie
(pictured), who graduated LSU in 1994. "Until I found this." "YOU EVER SEEN
A BUILDING'S WALLS SWEAT?" asks local raver and Web archivist Bruce Burge,
referring to the height of the State Palace rave scene, from 1996 to 2000.

Estopinal's parties became nationally known for bizarre themes and
attractions. There was a dance contest MC-ed by Fred Berry (the
now-deceased actor who played Rerun on the television sitcom What's
Happening!!), a surprise set by 2 Live Crew, a puppet show by local novelty
act Quintron and a traditional Mardi Gras second line by ReBirth Brass
Band. At one party, the San Diego group Crash Worship led a drum-pounding
processional that included a naked woman drenched in wine. Another time,
Estopinal turned on all the house lights at 3 a.m. and had a choir sing
"Amazing Grace" into the cavernous theater.

Some parties had cryptic titles like "Onslaught," and "Fire," and others
took on more twisted themes like "Psychedelic Pimp-Daddyland," "Caffeine
Sex Fiend," and "Supaphat Hong Kong Phooey." Later, Estopinal reincarnated
successful parties with "brand" names such as, "Supaphat Hong Kong Phooey
Twooey," "Phuture Phat Hong Kong Phooey," "Caffeine Mean Joe Greens," and
"Caffeine Mr. Green Jeans."

Freebass Society parties also featured top-tier electronic music talent
such as the Crystal Method, Paul Oakenfold and Thievery Corporation. In
2001, Scott Kirkland of the Crystal Method told the online magazine New
Orleans Electronica Digest, "[Donnie] is always willing to do something for
New Orleans that no other person in the country is willing to do, to make a
connection to the people that go out and pay $20 and $30 a night to get
into an event."

Talking to Freebass Society devotees, it's clear that they hold a
near-eerie allegiance to Estopinal and the scene he created.

Mostly in their early 20s, these ravers are visibly cautious when asked
about their leader's antics, offering responses like, "Donnie would kill
me," or, "I have a story, but it's X-rated." To some attendees, Estopinal
held celebrity status. "People wanted to meet him, hang out with him or
just touch him," says local DJ and upstart promoter Swede White. "They
wanted to shake his hand and say thanks for the great time."

DISCO DONNIE WAS AT HOME, trying on outfits and styling his hair when
agents from the DEA's New Orleans field office entered the State Palace
Theatre on Aug. 26, 2000, just before "Phuture Phat Hong Kong Phooey" was
set to begin.

When Estopinal finally arrived, he found police cars, lights flashing,
scattered around the venue's one-block perimeter.

The police had sealed off the theater's entrance before its doors opened to
patrons, leaving thousands of ravers spilling onto Canal Street.

From 9 p.m. until 1 a.m., DEA agents scoured the premises, seizing files,
computers, party favors and as much bottled water as they could haul away.
The agents found virtually no illegal drugs inside the theater -- and no
proof that Estopinal and the Brunets were involved in any type of drug dealing.

The following Monday morning, the promoters discovered that that wasn't the
issue at hand.

At a meeting with their attorneys, Estopinal and the Brunets learned that
they were being indicted under grand jury charges of violation of the
so-called "crack house statute" and ongoing criminal enterprise, a charge
that carried a possible sentence of 20 years to life. It was the first time
that the federal government used the 1986 law to indict venue managers and
event promoters for drug dealing and consumption at their events, rather
than charging the pushers and consumers themselves. "I was in shock,"
Estopinal recalls.

For the next several months, life was bizarre for Disco Donnie. "It was
crazy," he says. "Every conversation had to be outside.

I had to hide everything." His daily duties went from waking up past noon
and planning parties with hip DJs, to waking up for early morning meetings
with his attorney and then driving to his mother's house to have an outdoor
conversation for fear the phones were tapped.

"You feel funny when somebody's watching you for months and you don't know
it," he says. "You start getting paranoid.

You start thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm just going to turn myself in.' I was
thinking of every bad thing I'd ever done, like that time in kindergarten
when I cheated on that test. If they followed Mother Teresa around for
eight months, they could put her in jail."

"At the time, we thought we were doing our best," Brunet says of security
measures at State Palace raves. "We thought, 'We don't want people doing
drugs in here, but it's not necessarily our job to be the police.' I
wouldn't say it was a foolish opinion, considering that's how every other
venue in town saw it." Reflecting on the roller-coaster ride that his
partnership with Estopinal became, he seems half-regretful, half-amused.
"Someday, I swear," he says, "I'm going to write a book about this. It has
all the makings: music, sex, drugs, cops, attorneys, courts."

It also has a tragic death.

In August of 1998, 17-year-old Jillian Kirkland of Mobile, Ala., was rushed
to Charity Hospital after suffering convulsions from drug complications at
a State Palace Theatre rave. She died after lying in a coma for several
days. The incident marked a low point for Estopinal, whose father had
passed away just a few weeks before the incident.

"I felt terrible that that had happened at one of my events," he says. "At
some point, I was like, well f--k it, I don't want to do this anymore. It
hurt. But I had a lot of friends around and they convinced me to keep going."

About one month after Kirkland's death, Estopinal says, three DEA agents
visited his apartment on Bourbon Street in the Faubourg Marigny,
unannounced, at seven o'clock on a random morning.

He says the agents questioned him about drug dealers at the State Palace
Theatre raves, telling him that they were certain he knew who they were.
After he insisted he did not know, the agents asked him what his yearly
income was. They told him they could "take care of him" if he agreed to
identify the drug dealers.

Again, Estopinal denied having the information. "They told me what a
horrible person I was," Estopinal recalls, "and that I was destroying
people's lives."

Richard Woodfork, public information officer for the New Orleans division
of the DEA, would not verify or deny Estopinal's story or provide any
specific information about the investigation.

On the Senate floor, Biden said that the legislation was necessary because
promoters "profit from exploiting and endangering young lives," citing the
New Orleans case as an example.

The ACLU, the International Association of Assembly Managers and EM:DEF all
attacked the bill as anti-First Amendment. Two of the bill's original
sponsors, including Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, withdrew their support.

A retooled RAVE Act resurfaced the following year. Now called the Illicit
Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, the bill applied to any type of concert or
entertainment event.

Its writers had also removed its controversial "findings" section, which
had attempted to codify an inextricable relationship between raves and club
drugs.

A conference committee tacked the new, broad-based act onto the Amber Alert
Bill -- a popular piece of legislation that deals with child abduction and
sexual exploitation of children -- which passed in April. Leahy issued a
press release recognizing objections to the bill and its inclusion in the
"hastily assembled" conference package.

It might be too early to tell what kind of impact this law and others like
it will have on the entertainment industry.

Some promoters, such as the entertainment conglomerate Clear Channel, are
not threatened by it. "Clear Channel Entertainment finds the Illicit Drug
Anti-Proliferation Act and the amendment to the Amber Alert to be positive
legislation for the facilities management industry," reads the company's
official statement on the matter.

More concerned is the New Orleans-based music promoter Superfly
Productions. Organizers of the annual Bonnaroo Music Festival in
Manchester, Tenn., the independent company regularly promotes concerts by
acts associated with the "jamband" scene spawned by the Grateful Dead -- a
band often associated with illegal drug use. Superfly principle Jonathan
Mayers is wary of the law's possible applications, but also confident that
concert promotion is a legitimate business and a cultural necessity.
"People are always going to want to gather and be entertained," he says.
"I'm not going to let a law that was meant to attack something else stop me
from doing what I do. If someone wants to interpret that law to an extreme
degree, then there are going to be problems about everything we do and how
we live."

Biden and the DEA both say that the language of the Illicit Drug
Anti-Proliferation Act protects venues from being prosecuted for incidental
drug use by their patrons and that a venue that does not promote the use of
drugs has nothing to worry about. "Where there is a major concern about the
consumption of drugs, we have to get involved," says the DEA's Woodfork,
"but we would never shut down a legitimate place where there are concerts
and music." Harry William, an attorney with the ACLU, is not so sure. "The
real history of this is that Biden slipped this language in the Amber Alert
bill without any debate because they'd lost the debate before, when various
groups were adamantly opposed to it on First Amendment grounds," he says.

Gary Blitz, national coordinator of EM:DEF, says that for independent
producers, just the threat of a lawsuit can be chilling. "Let's say you set
up a tour or event that costs several million dollars to produce," he says.
"Then the venue manager gets wind of the RAVE Act and voluntarily pulls the
plug on your event.

Then you don't even get a day in court." Even if you did, argue some
detractors, an independent promoter might not have the resources and
finances to defend itself.

This scenario has already occurred.

Just one month after the legislation passed, a NORML rally to benefit the
campaign for medical marijuana was shut down in Billings, Mont., when a DEA
agent informed the venue owners that they could be prosecuted for drug use
by their patrons under the new federal law. Biden and the DEA both called
this instance a misinterpretation of the law, but not before the event was
canceled.

More recently, the owner of Element, a nightclub in Austin, Texas, was
allegedly advised by local police to cancel an Oct. 26 performance by
drum'n'bass DJ LTJ Bukem, a show promoted by Estopinal's company, Disco
Productions. Co-promoter Damon Williams says that the club's owner, who
could not be reached for comment, was convinced that the show would bring
too much attention from police because of Estopinal's association with raves.

The Austin Police Department denied the allegations, and the show was moved
to a club in Dallas.

"It's definitely making it harder to get venues," says Estopinal. Earlier
this year, he helped Swede White move a pair of events from Twiropa to the
State Palace and Ampersand when an investor pulled support. "My investor
and his attorney came across the RAVE Act and were aware of the State
Palace's troubles," says White. "When the new act passed and took effect
immediately, it was time for them to get out." White did not reveal the
name of his investor. "I would love to fight the law personally," he adds,
"but I do not have millions to spend on attorneys."

Cutting-edge DJs still spin in almost every city in the United States, but
there's a sense, at least in the local rave community, that things just
aren't what they used to be. Many people from the State Palace scene
complain that today's parties are less fun -- and attendance has dropped
drastically. New York-based journalist Bill Werde has written about raves
for The New York Times, The Village Voice and Urb, a California-based
electronic music and culture magazine.

He penned an article in the February 2003 issue of Urb titled "Rave Is
Dead" and thinks that the rave scene was bound to cycle down, or change,
regardless of legal trouble. "This was a scene that couldn't possibly
last," he says. "You just got the sense that it was a matter of time before
it ended.

It's a shame because there was this utopian vision that really worked when
things were good."

ESTOPINAL HOPSCOTCHES ACROSS THE PATIO behind the Tulane Avenue dance club
Ampersand, kicks a sandal off of one foot and offers a hand to shake. "My
hand is clean," he says, "but my socks didn't come back from the laundry."

It's 4 p.m. and the after-party to the previous night's rave at the State
Palace is as lively as it's going to get on this sultry July afternoon. A
DJ mixes from his table at the front of the patio, his deep pulsating beats
blaring into the open air.

Between sips of Budweiser, Estopinal says that the new law does not change
the way he does business. "I still don't deal with security," he says. "My
job is to book talent." Now living in Columbus, Ohio, with his girlfriend
and their 2-year-old child, he still promotes electronic music events at
cities around the country, including New Orleans. He books talent at
festivals such as the local Halloween weekend Voodoo Music Festival, which
features a rave tent. He also books DJs at local clubs, including the
weekly House of Blues S.I.N. (Service Industry Night) dance party.

And he still throws regular parties at the State Palace Theatre, with Zoolu
10 coming up Feb. 21.

Disco Donnie offers a sincere hug to everyone at the party, even strangers,
before he leaves to drive to Metairie. "I want to go see my mom," he says.
"She's worried about me. I didn't come home last night."