Super-Club Superiority - 8/03/2006

With its detailed attention to music and vibe, Avaland rules Hollywood

By Dennis Romero

The notion of a super-club in Los Angeles was still an abstract concept when Avalon Hollywood came around in the fall of 2003. Before that, the city's idea of a big-room experience included a handful of aging venues with fly-by-night promotions: Circus Disco, a '70s-era warehouse of a place; the 1927 Mayan Theater, a classic but well-worn venue in need of a decent sound system; and the '80s-era Los Angeles Entertainment Center downtown, an edgy white box available to nearly any party promoter off the street. The proper super-club evolved mostly in England, the Midwest, and the East Coast in the 1990s. Venues such as London's Ministry of Sound, Avalon Boston, Chicago's Crobar, New York's Twilo, and the Club at Firestone in Orlando, Florida, helped set the pace. Club-conscious architecture, proper bottom-heavy sound, and in-house nights often distinguished these places.

When Avalon launched officially in October 2003, its owners unleashed a new experience for L.A., one in which a venue and its promoters were in sync about the music and vibe. Although Avalon was a remodel of the Mayan-era Palace Theater in Hollywood, its proprietors had a build-it-and-they-will-come strategy that worked. Million-dollar sound, acoustic alchemy, and VIP nooks and crannies helped the club surpass the competition. While superstar-DJ culture was clearly a hard sell with other area club owners, there was no doubt that Avalon's John Lyons and Steve Adelman, who fostered DJ nights throughout much of the 1990s at their Boston venue, got it. In 2004, the duo adjusted their flagship Saturday-night events in L.A. by bringing on promoter Wired L.A. and putting it and promoter Giant under an in-house umbrella, calling the party Avaland, after the Boston night of the same name.

Last week, Avaland in Hollywood celebrated its second anniversary. In a town filled with hip-hop nights, trendy mash-up parties, and "celebrity DJs" who can't even mix, Avaland is clearly the real best club night in L.A.

"It's too easy to book a DJ and that's it," explains Adelman. "It's a lazy man's way of doing something."

And so he began to give Saturdays more oversight in 2004, bringing the booking and production in-house while using promoters to get the word out. The idea was to make every Saturday an event, regardless of the person behind the decks. Even though big clubs have become very dependent on who's playing records inside, the better venues are consistent destinations no matter who's manning the tunes.

"That's how you build a night, with different things for different people," Adelman says. "If you're going to build a nightclub out of one DJ booking, what do you do the other 51 weeks in the year?"

Of course, Avaland isn't shy about bringing in the kind of DJs that will sell a place out with little promotion. Major residencies at the weekly party have been held down by Sasha, Ferry Corsten, and Danny Howells. And when Avaland hosts a big-name DJ, it does so properly. Trance king Tiesto was outfitted with a one-of-a-kind bass pedal that allowed him to test the limits of the venue's EAW sound system at will. New York house legend Danny Tenaglia got an artful stage set, complete with a subway-car façade and a boom-box-shaped podium on which to spin. On top of that, "there are always dancers, visuals, the whole nine yards," Adelman says.

He got his start as the director of the Roxy in New York in the early 1990s, helping to orchestrate over-the-top gay theme nights that set the template for the modern super-club experience. While other venues were worried about DJs' contract riders, the Roxy was obsessing about décor, the guest list, and the crowd mix. In 1996, that sense of celebration was brought to the fledgling DJ scene at Avalon Boston, where resident John Debo was bringing some of the U.K.'s best spinners to play progressive house. That year, Avaland was born, and a few years later Adelman joined the company. With L.A. and New York venues being added to the Avalon family in recent years, Avaland "has been going in three cities with over a million people coming through over the last 10 years," Adelman says.

And so, in a Hollywood nightlife scene obsessed with $250 bottles of scotch, starlet standoffs du jour, and music that makes you want to cut your ears off, Avaland brings a refreshing sense of super-clubbing to the West Coast, one where diverse crowds, top DJs, and a showtime aesthetic greet Saturday night. As Adelman puts it: "You gotta keep evolving."