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Nightclubbing: The Pac Jam, Home of Miami Bass
October 23, 2015
By Jesse Serwer
Booty-shake baron Luther Campbell introduced hip hop to the strip club and fought in court for rap’s right to be X-rated. But the ribald Bass music Campbell championed with 2 Live Crew originated in a more PG-13 environment: the Pac Jam Teen Disco, an alcohol-free Miami club Uncle Luke opened with his Ghetto Style DJs crew in 1986.
Established in one of Miami’s most neglected areas in the city’s most lawless era, the Pac Jam fostered an environment unimaginable today: A place where kids barely out of middle school hopped up on soda, potato chips and hormones coined dances with names like “Throw the Dick” and the “Toilet Bowl” and where, several times nightly, the Ghetto Style DJs detonated a deafening pipe bomb so explosive it blew open the doors to the venue’s front entrance. Sonically, the club fed Miami’s appetite for low end, bringing the walls of Cerwin-Vega speakers and bass bins from the city’s open air sound system blowouts into a space so tight the walls would sweat. The Pac Jam didn‘t just break Miami Bass records, it literally wrote them: some of the genre‘s most essential tracks come from chants originated here by Ghetto Style, and the kids themselves.
Before it was its own venue, the “Pac Jam” was a party thrown by the Ghetto Style DJs on Sundays at Sunshine Skateway North, a roller rink near Miami Norland High School (where Luke now works as a football coach). In 1986, the same year he formed Luke Skyywalker Records to release 2 Live Crew’s landmark single “Throw The D,” Campbell took over a bare-bones space on 54th Street and 12th Avenue in his Liberty City neighborhood, bathed it in Ghetto Style’s signature green, and christened it the Pac Jam Teen Disco. When it wasn’t hosting events like MC Hammer’s Miami debut, this incarnation of the Pac Jam tripled up as the headquarters of Luke Skyywalker Records, and the home of Bass 91.7, an underground station that effectively birthed South Florida’s vibrant pirate radio culture.
The Pac Jam was the Apollo of Miami.
Walshy Fire
By 1990, with 2 Live Crew’s famously explicit As Nasty As They Wanna Be making them a subject of national fascination and scrutiny (from cops, Bible thumpers, Roy Orbison and George Lucas), Campbell was making the most of his notoriety, building a hip hop empire that would soon include ventures such as Luke Mortgage, Luke Parking and three more 21-and-over nightclubs. Purchasing a two story building on Northeast 2nd Ave near Miami’s Little Haiti, he set up an assembly line-like complex with a recording studio, offices, warehouse, retail store, and a new Pac Jam that could accommodate 1,500 people – a bigger room for a bigger boom. With Campbell, once the club’s star DJ, focused on other ventures, the Amazing Chico AKA Chico the Leo became the Pac Jam’s featured attraction on Friday and Saturday nights. Trina, Trick Daddy and large chunks of the Miami Hurricanes football team were regulars – “Pac Jam Junkies,” as the club’s devotees called themselves. The good times lasted until 1995, when mounting debts led Campbell to declare bankruptcy, closing the chapter on an era in Miami music.
“The Pac Jam was the Apollo of Miami,” says Major Lazer’s Walshy Fire, a regular attendee during the club’s ‘90s-era incarnation. “It was the place you could hear Miami music the way it was supposed to be heard. The Ghetto Style DJs had an amazing sound system that would just hit you in your chest. You couldn’t
By Jesse Serwer
Booty-shake baron Luther Campbell introduced hip hop to the strip club and fought in court for rap’s right to be X-rated. But the ribald Bass music Campbell championed with 2 Live Crew originated in a more PG-13 environment: the Pac Jam Teen Disco, an alcohol-free Miami club Uncle Luke opened with his Ghetto Style DJs crew in 1986.
Established in one of Miami’s most neglected areas in the city’s most lawless era, the Pac Jam fostered an environment unimaginable today: A place where kids barely out of middle school hopped up on soda, potato chips and hormones coined dances with names like “Throw the Dick” and the “Toilet Bowl” and where, several times nightly, the Ghetto Style DJs detonated a deafening pipe bomb so explosive it blew open the doors to the venue’s front entrance. Sonically, the club fed Miami’s appetite for low end, bringing the walls of Cerwin-Vega speakers and bass bins from the city’s open air sound system blowouts into a space so tight the walls would sweat. The Pac Jam didn‘t just break Miami Bass records, it literally wrote them: some of the genre‘s most essential tracks come from chants originated here by Ghetto Style, and the kids themselves.
Before it was its own venue, the “Pac Jam” was a party thrown by the Ghetto Style DJs on Sundays at Sunshine Skateway North, a roller rink near Miami Norland High School (where Luke now works as a football coach). In 1986, the same year he formed Luke Skyywalker Records to release 2 Live Crew’s landmark single “Throw The D,” Campbell took over a bare-bones space on 54th Street and 12th Avenue in his Liberty City neighborhood, bathed it in Ghetto Style’s signature green, and christened it the Pac Jam Teen Disco. When it wasn’t hosting events like MC Hammer’s Miami debut, this incarnation of the Pac Jam tripled up as the headquarters of Luke Skyywalker Records, and the home of Bass 91.7, an underground station that effectively birthed South Florida’s vibrant pirate radio culture.
The Pac Jam was the Apollo of Miami.
Walshy Fire
By 1990, with 2 Live Crew’s famously explicit As Nasty As They Wanna Be making them a subject of national fascination and scrutiny (from cops, Bible thumpers, Roy Orbison and George Lucas), Campbell was making the most of his notoriety, building a hip hop empire that would soon include ventures such as Luke Mortgage, Luke Parking and three more 21-and-over nightclubs. Purchasing a two story building on Northeast 2nd Ave near Miami’s Little Haiti, he set up an assembly line-like complex with a recording studio, offices, warehouse, retail store, and a new Pac Jam that could accommodate 1,500 people – a bigger room for a bigger boom. With Campbell, once the club’s star DJ, focused on other ventures, the Amazing Chico AKA Chico the Leo became the Pac Jam’s featured attraction on Friday and Saturday nights. Trina, Trick Daddy and large chunks of the Miami Hurricanes football team were regulars – “Pac Jam Junkies,” as the club’s devotees called themselves. The good times lasted until 1995, when mounting debts led Campbell to declare bankruptcy, closing the chapter on an era in Miami music.
“The Pac Jam was the Apollo of Miami,” says Major Lazer’s Walshy Fire, a regular attendee during the club’s ‘90s-era incarnation. “It was the place you could hear Miami music the way it was supposed to be heard. The Ghetto Style DJs had an amazing sound system that would just hit you in your chest. You couldn’t