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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.

By Cristina Diettinger

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. Portrait courtesy John Lawson/Barrister's Gallery

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."

Photo by Luke Bullock

"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.

Estopinal had already suspected that DEA agents were at large at his parties. By the late '90s, the DEA had made its "Club Drug Campaign" public, and mainstream media was rife with coverage of raves as drug-fueled death traps. "Every time we did a party at the State Palace," he says, "somebody said it was going to be raided." He was well aware that the DEA had launched a national investigation of raves and the club drugs associated with them. He wasn't aware, however, that he and the owners of the State Palace Theatre were subjects.

For eight months, beginning in January of 2000, Estopinal and the State Palace Theatre were under investigation by the DEA. "I should have known," says Estopinal. "It was on the Internet. They were calling me on the phone, pretending they were promoters from out of town, asking me about throwing raves, trying to get me to say stuff about drugs. I'd tell them security keeps them out of there."

Agent Michael Templeton and his task force officers were collecting evidence for an application for the search warrant that they needed to raid the theater. Templeton's affidavit for a search warrant states that he and other agents, acting undercover, observed rampant consumption and sales of Ecstasy and LSD that "neither the security guards nor the management of the State Palace Theatre did anything to curtail." It said that the venue sold glow sticks, bottled water, pacifiers and other "drug paraphernalia" at their events. Templeton also stated that at "Zoolu 6," on March 4, 2000, one undercover agent made "a total of 25 purchases of controlled substances, particularly MDMA, averaging one every four minutes."

Previous congressional testimony by New Orleans Field Division Special Agent in Charge George Cazenavette (now retired) revealed the division's belief that DJs were involved in the distribution of drugs in the venue and that drugs were stored inside sound equipment and distributed to the crowd by "runners" with VIP badges.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC HAS SPAWNED DOZENS OF SUBGENRES-- house, trance, techno, drum'n'bass -- and its enthusiasts often travel hundreds of miles to go to a rave. "We'd sell tickets in 20 states," says Estopinal. "People were coming from everywhere because they had to see a certain DJ, so they could cross him off their list." Most ravers say the idea that people only come to raves to do drugs is ludicrous. It's for the music, they say. Yet few deny that there are other factors involved.

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