Time Out New York [clubs]

Issue No. 40 June 26-July 3, 1996
 

Interview MR. DJ
   

Fave lesbian club DJ Nelson Diaz is 100 percent straight—now that's gay liberation! Nelson "That Boy" Diaz seems in some ways a walking contradiction. Well-known around town for his healthy servings of salsa and merengue at various Latin-oriented clubs, his main musical influence is urban soul disco.

Although he also name checks Latin legends like Eddie Palmieri, El Gran Combo and Juan Luis Guerra, as well as younger talent like Marc Anthony and La India, he cut his teeth on labels like Prelude and West End. His favorite fellow DJs are also from the classic New York city disco school—mixers like Ken Carpenter, Shep Pettibone and David Morales.

Another oddity about "That Boy": Although he's straight, he's been in demand at some of the city's hottest lesbian and gay clubs for years.  Starting out as a mobile DJ, Diaz spun at weddings and dance-studio hustle classes. He soon graduated to club work, playing a progressive mix of disco styles at Chaps, a mostly white Upper East Side gay club. "I took them from the really fast HiNRG stuff way down to, like, 105 beats per minute," Diaz says, "until I had this white gay crowd dancing to Tom Tom Club's 'Genius of Love,' which for that kind of crowd was unheard of at the time."?

It was at Stingray, an underground gay and lesbian Latin club in Hell's Kitchen, that Diaz really made his name. As the club's main DJ, he worked the crowd into a frenzy with his buoyant mix of urban styles—freestyle, house, reggae, hip-hop, disco, salsa, merengue and more. Diaz himself remains modest when asked about his progressive programming. "A true lover of music can play for any crowd," he says with a shrug. "I've done country & western sets, even waltzes." So, despite his popularity at Latin gay club Factoria 21, where he spins every Thursday, he's perfectly happy to stay in the basement while DJ Merritt pounds the main floor with hard tribal house. "I don't want to play upstairs because I don't want to play just one type of music," Diaz says. "You have to keep it really hard on the main floor." The few times he has taken over the main floor, though, the result has been lots of sweaty dancers screaming for more. Switching effortlessly from a pounding boriqua house track to a crowd-pleasing R&B biggie, then on to a merengue tune that's all the rage in Puerto Rico and a good many parts of New York, Diaz achieves the best of both worlds: variety and intensity. Perhaps it's this versatility that makes Diaz a favorite on the lesbian scene. He's worked both main floors and lounges on the dyke circuit since the early days of Shescape more than ten years ago. He programs differently for women, as opposed to, say, the mostly male Factoria crowd, mixing in more familiar material. "Men get into rhythms more than women," he says, "whereas the girls need to hear it a few more times. Gay men's clubs play newer music, while the girls' clubs play more radio-oriented.
 

Not surprisingly, Thatboy is quite busy this Gay Pride week. In addition to Factoria, he's spinning at queer cable TV show HomoVision's Latin Fever 2 party, the official Latino Pride event. There's also his Wednesday-night party, Sazón, with La Mega WSKQ DJs Norty Cotto and Johnny Famolari. And on July 5 1996, Thatboy starts a weekly Latin lounge stint at another lesbian club, Her/She Bar. To all that, add his Saturday night gig at the Backdoor, a hot straight  after-hours club in the Bronx, where he spins tribal house, reggae, salsa, classics, hip-hop—you name it—all night long. (The Backdoor is actually quite well-known outside Manhattan for its friendly mixed crowd, great atmosphere and all-night open bar, but its Castle Hill location is a bit of a turn-off to all but the most intrepid 212-area clubbers. In fact, Thatboy says proudly, it's only the club's outer-borough location that keeps it out of the limelight, and out of the nightlife major leagues.

Despite his hectic DJing schedule, Thatboy still finds time for the occasional remix. He also runs a Latin record pool and promotions company, La Clave Promotions, named after the distinctly Latin percussion instrument. The pool distributes advance copies of Latin releases to its DJ members and collects feedback sheets from them, thushelping the labels gauge a record's potential.

After this article Thatboy  will be taking the resident DJ postion at Club Cheetah according to owner Robert Shalom, there's no doubt that Thatboy has his heart very much in spinning, something that his following—Latinos, queers, blacks, straights, whites, banjees, boroughs kids and downtown hipsters—already knows.
Nelson ‘Thatboy” Diaz spins Wednesdays at Sazón, Thursdays at Factoria 21, Fridays at Her/She Bar (starting July 5; see Gay & Lesbian listings) and Saturdays at The Backdoor, Resident DJ at Club Cheetah and more to come.