A DJ Saved My Life

Today on the Blog we're going to pay tribute to DJ Leony (USA) under the title of an old early 80's song called "A DJ Saved My Life." Why? Because when our namesake Pleasure Island and in particular Mannequins closed in September, 2008, many of us drifted over to Universal CityWalk and their main club The Groove and it was a depressing experience. Rarely did they play any electronic dance music in there (or techno as we used to call it back then) which is what we were all craving. But then a friend introduced me to a different CityWalk club called Latin Quarter. It is here that I discovered DJ Leony!

Of course Latin Quarter was mostly Latin genres of dance music. But during that first visit in 2009, Leony launched into a half-hour set of EDM too and he would do the same every couple hours during his Thursday and Saturday night gigs! His name was also so familiar to me but how? I then discovered DJ Leony had his own EDM mix show on XM Satellite Radio on a show called Air 81 where an imaginary flight across the country would touch down in various cities and a local DJ would play a one hour show. Leony played countrywide when the flight touched down in Orlando! And here he was right here at LQ!

It was only later that I discovered downtown Orlando and clubs like Sky60 and Bliss Ultra Lounge where more EDM could be heard. But prior to that, the year post-Pleasure Island was kind of depressing but hats off to DJ Leony, a DJ saved my life!