Jean-Paul Mousseau, seen in the top photo, made a splash after being hired by owners Gilles Archambault and Claude de Carufel to redesign their Le Baroque nightclub at 1467-1469 Crescent.
Mousseau, best known for conceiving Montreal metro's colourful red tile motifs, created the elaborately-designed, Warhol-inspired Mousse Spacthèque discotheque (seen above), which opened its doors on 6 Sept. 1966.
Majority owner Archambault was the spawn of entrepreneurs who quit school at 14 to work at an insurance company. He took acting classes before bumming around Europe where he earned a little travel cash by hosting conferences about Quebec in countries like France, Spain and Germany.
While traveling France Archambault spotted early-day discotheques, known as Whisky-a-Gogos, which dispensed with musician and just played records.
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Turntable nightclubs started when the German wartime occupation forced young French to party by dancing to their spinning 78s on their phonographs.
Archambault then teamed up with de Carufel, a construction guy, to open a discotheque on Stanley street but their permit request was shot down.
Archambault gave up but de Carufel prodded him to revive the project and the duo went on to open La Licorne at 1430 Mackay, in a building that has long since been demolished in favour of a concrete residential skyscraper.
Only about 10 people showed up at its launch, as the Licorne was still a half-completed project but it soon became popular with a low overhead and high profits.
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| Archambault |
Archambault became a high-flying, Bentley-driving nightclub king who dressed in the best Italian suits and he and partner de Carufel then opened the Baroque, which became the Mousse.
They also launched L'Empereur at 1473 Dorchester W. which later became the car-themed Le Crash.
The Mousse Spacthèque aimed to turn nightclubbing into a sensual, surrealistic, artistic experience where clubgoers would bathe in light bouncing around wooden ceiling mobiles and over various scattered female mannequin parts.
Ties and dresses were mandatory at the club which housed the Cybèle, Pluton and Orphée rooms, seen later by an art critic as, "a manifestation of the 1960s cultural utopia with its pursuit of emotional liberation and self-fulfillment."
The team opened similar bars in Alma, Ottawa, Quebec City as well as the Metrothèque at Berri metro, the first Montreal nightclub to be connected by metro and where Liberace watched on with DJ Alfie Wade as police busted underagers.
Owners shut the Mousse Spacthèque and reopened it on June 30 1970 as the Eve Club, which aimed to attract a female clientele.
See also:
- Montreal's first star nightclub DJ Alfie Wade, on clubs, Leonard Cohen and Little Burgundy
- State of Montreal discos 1970
The next year the Mousse was rechristened the Sexe Machine where cartoonist Robert Lapalme, 60, created a part-Clockwork Orange, part-Fellini fantasy with topless waitresses and plastic breasts.
The switch from live music to records has continued unabated and disco became a key component to the Montreal identity as, patrons themselves became the show and their dancing the visual entertainment.
Nightclub musicians found work scarce thereafter.
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| La Licorne |
Gilded Cage discotheque as seen in 20 Feb 1969 La Presse. The place had paper hanging from the ceiling, as the stalagtites were seen as an essential element of the discotheque experience.