Bob and Tom returned to the States and, sadly, faded into obscurity. I decided to sell Baia on summer end 1977 and I went to live in Africa for some years.” Triotti sold the club to a consortium of five Italian businessmen. No more every kind of people, but only night dancers who lived their lives too intensively. Disco was very changed since people arrived from everywhere. As he told journalist, Max De Giovanni, in an interview: “Baia’s greatness was its ending. By the summer of ’76 the club was on a high – both in the sense that it was packed and because an increasingly druggy element was creeping in.įor Triotti, this era was the ultimate peak. As tapes of their sets were passed around, word of Baia began to spread around Northern Italy with partygoers travelling from as far as Rome to experience the amazing venue and music. The Americans became hugely popular, not to mention a great selling point for Baia. In most cases, their status was below that of the bartenders.īob and Tom changed all that. If DJs were celebrated at all, it was due to their banter. Very few Italian DJs had even contemplated blending records. What’s more, most DJs didn’t actually play their own records but would instead play the collection of records owned by the club. The norm in Italy, as a DJ, was to announce each record over the microphone and play music in a strict order: five slow songs followed by five fast ones. What then began was one of the most influential partnerships in Italian dance music. Sterling didn’t stay long in Italy, and needing someone to help man the decks at Baia, Tom sent for his friend, Bob Day. When Tom eventually arrived in Italy, he brought his then partner, Sterling St Jacques: a stunningly handsome socialite who was known as the first black male supermodel and would later have an acting and music career of his own. This was a venue which, as well as having some of the city’s best looking boys, also had some of its best DJs, most notably Richie Rivera who later mixed a handful of classic disco hits such as Gaz’s “Sing Sing.” Whatever the case, it’s probably fair to guess Tom was exposed to some of the best DJs of the era. He may well have worked the bar at The Flamingo, an exclusive gay New York hangout that opened in 1974. Many accounts say he was originally from Puerto Rico but settled in Greenwich Village. With plans to bring back a slice of The Big Apple, he convinced an unknown local DJ, Tom Sison, to return with him.įacts about Tom are hazy. On one of his frequent trips he was introduced to New York’s disco scene and immediately fell in love. Tirotti was a local tycoon and a man with connections in the Italian film industry. However, in 1975 the trajectory changed when a new owner, Giancarlo Tirotti, took over. But as great as Baia looked, it was the music that made it legendary: first by introducing New York disco and later as the sounds mutated into new, tripped out directions via its most well-known DJ, Daniele Baldelli.īaia was originally a sports club and had been a hangout for Italy’s rich long before it was a famous nightclub. The most over-the-top touch was the DJ booth, which was located in a glass elevator and could play to multiple dance floors at once. Spread across four floors and capable of holding 2,000 people, the interior was snow white, contained two swimming pools and was purportedly designed by Valentino.
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