Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Kingfish

The Kingfish entrance
 The year was 1987,  a friend of mine took me to Lafayette, Louisiana for the first time and introduced me to this amazing place that now lives in the pantheon among the best clubs in the south.   The place was actually located just outside Lafayette city limits in Breaux Bridge right close to the bayou. The place would open Saturdays from 2 A.M. to noon the next day as an after hours venue where the real party took place.  It had a huge parking lot in the front filled with underage teens hanging out in hopes to get inside this shrine of dance music madness fueled by a rainbow of drugs.
the famous parking lot
A warehouse in the middle of nowhere where all inhibitions were null and everybody was welcomed regardless of race, class and sexual orientation right in the big ole south. The Kingfish was pretty much my indoctrination to the idea of a rave before it was even called a rave or a club space where dancing was priority.  The music was very eclectic with a mixture of house, industrial, goth, free style, techno, synth pop, R&B and even rock. The place even had it's own dances such as "grabbing a rail" and "feeding the chickens".
Inside the Kingfish
There was so much X in that place alone that if word that the police was on its way,  people would drop so many drugs that the dance floor would be filled with the pills.  I was there for the dancing and the music for the most part and I must say that the sound system was quite amazing, Razormaid remixes ruled and the Dj's knew how to work the crowd.  As always, good things had to come to an end and the place was shut down towards the early '90s after so many raids due to it's bad reputation of excessive drug use and its sad after effects.  The place had several reincarnations later under different names but never captured the euphoric glory of the early years as the socio-economic landscape in the south shifted as well.   Choosing what songs to feature here has been quite a challenge and I tell you that I feel like I've experienced a musical rabbit hole while researching the extensive playlists found on several blogs.  Here are a few of the songs I feel captured some of the feeling of the club knowing the spectrum here will never do justice to the eclectic and extensive repertoire played by the Dj's.  For more info on the entire playlist go to The Fish - Robert's Blog  which was a great resource for this posting. Enjoy!

























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15 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post. I was there on and off for years. I started as one of the teens who could not get in. Great memories....and some bad ones too. haha

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    1. I'll never forget the night they let me run the lights for the dance floor!!! And, my bff, Sean, was back dancing for a famed local group who played live that night! Kudos to you for the fun memories! ๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ”

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  2. Best night in 94 of my life

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    1. I just realized that link does not work anymore. Perhaps his blog moved? It had an amazing playlist of such era!

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. One morning they raided it from the bayou on boats and simply blocked the parking lot
    Told a cop we were headed back to NOLA
    He grabbed and questioned me an hour and a half later leaving Denim and Diamonds across town
    He was actually nice about it but told me to get on the road THIS TIME
    Lol
    We loved the Kingfish

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  6. One morning they raided it from the bayou on boats and simply blocked the parking lot
    Told a cop we were headed back to NOLA
    He grabbed and questioned me an hour and a half later leaving Denim and Diamonds across town
    He was actually nice about it but told me to get on the road THIS TIME
    Lol
    We loved the Kingfish

    ReplyDelete
  7. Between 2010 and the Zoo in Baton Rouge. Escapades in Metairie and the King Fish in Lafayette there was never no better clubs in the and no better time great memories that will never be forgotten... The one and only ruthless toothless

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  8. The Kingfish was such a Saturday night, afterhours, ecstasy and electronic music haven. It was there for us at a time when little else like it existed in our region of the world. Nowadays, when I tell people about it and where it was, they are often quite surprised (I live in Houston, btw). I have no regrets about being one of the weekend warriors that frequented it often between 1988 - 1990. People would drive in from an hour or more away (Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, etc). I was living in Lake Charles attending college at the time, yet I was often there until 8am Sunday morning and had no problem with the hour long drive back. So many fond memories of my Kingfish days. I find it interesting I'm posting about it on a blogspot post that started in 2012, but I'm glad to see people still talking about it. While there were other good nightclubs on that I-10 stretch from Lake Charles to New Orleans, the Kingfish stands out in my opinion.

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