MJQ Concourse

Atlanta had never seen anything like it. 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. 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. It was the early ’90s and lounge music, dub, jungle, acid jazz, retro-soul and trip-hop defined the times. 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.

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. From the street, the current club looks like nothing more than a storage shed. 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. As the city has evolved over the last 17 years, the club has changed with it. From its humble beginnings as the hippest hole-in-the-wall on Ponce to becoming the city’s edgiest dance club, MJQ is still the epicenter for Atlanta’s underground nightlife scene.