As the city has evolved over the last 17 years, the club has changed with it. But inside, the driveway entrance ramp leads down into a dark rabbit hole of pulsating sounds that have spawned a legacy of DJ-driven club nights with such debaucherous names as Sloppy Seconds and Fuck Yesss. From the street, the current club looks like nothing more than a storage shed. In September 1997, the club moved a few blocks east down Ponce de Leon Avenue, into a cavernous underground former blues club called Lou's Blues Revue, where it was renamed MJQ Concourse. Chang literally gave these sounds a common ground, and MJQ quickly became a place where cross-dressers, artists, thugs, club kids and urban intellectuals converged to the beat of many drummers. It was the early '90s and lounge music, dub, jungle, acid jazz, retro-soul and trip-hop defined the times. From the beginning, MJQ embodied the mondo fun, sophistication and swingin' repertoire of its namesake, while holding sway over Atlanta's indie-minded nightlife scene. The shabby nightclub with the mod design was the singular vision of a 6-foot-4-inch Swedish-Chinese tastemaker named George Chang, and the club's name was a nod to his favorite band, the Modern Jazz Quartet.
When MJQ opened for business in the basement of the Ponce de Leon Hotel in March 1994…Ītlanta had never seen anything like it.
