Celebrating 20 Years of Disco Donnie Presents: Psychedelic Pimp Daddy Land

For the 20 years that Disco Donnie Presents has been in the business of making people dance, the themes for our parties have always been a buzzworthy topic.

When raves were in full-force towards the mid to late 90s, promoters were constantly attempting to outdo one another. And if you ever read a full list of titles given to each party, you’d see why, “It seemed like you always had to name your party something super silly,” Donnie remembers, “people had Candyland, ‘Supa’ this, and ‘Phat’ that – it was just the same thing over and over again.” We all know Donnie was never one to conform, so he started brainstorming, “I wanted to do something that was kinda like Candyland but funnier. So basically, the goal was to try to string together as many nonsense words together to make an awesome party name.”

Donnie eventually settled on the name Psychedelic Pimp Daddy Land for the Memorial Day weekend event. The first edition took place on May 24, 1997 at State Palace Theater in New Orleans. The psychedelic lineup featured techno live act Prototype 909, big beat live act Cirrus, and other favorites like Kimball Collins and Terry Mullan. The party was, of course, a hit and became an annual event. But because of Donnie’s (awesomely) severe case of creativity, the titles were always prone to change, “The reason I changed the title every year was so that the flier would look different. You had shows that just use the same name and the same art every year – which is smart, you know, people recognize the art and they’ll be like, ‘oh, I remember that party.’ But I didn’t wanna do the same things over and over. I wanted to keep changing it. And maybe that wasn’t the best business plan, but it made me sleep better at night.”

Over the years, themes included Pimp Daddy on Ice, Pimp Daddy’s European Vacation, Pimp Daddy’s Weekend Furlough, Pimp Daddy Needs to pay Child Support…the list goes on, “I chose whatever was topical, or whatever I thought was funny enough and I just themed it out to keep it a little more interesting.”

Though the titles were made in jest, other promoters thought of it as competition, “I was making fun of rave party names but I ended up creating a monster because other promoters started making even sillier titles.” But Donnie will always remember the show fondly, “Aside from Zoolu, that’s my favorite party.”