With a record collection filled with old school funk, classic soul grooves, vintage R&B and a generous helping of classic rock, it’s not surprising that DJ Quasi Mandisco has been getting Atlanta dance floors moving for 15 years. He earned the Mandisco moniker while DJing at the Star Community Bar several years ago when Jim Stacy (then a co-owner of the bar) said, “You hit on all the white girls sort of like ‘Mandingo’. You’re Quasi Mandisco.’
When Platinum Championship Wrestling returns to Tudor Square (where PCW’s former Academy Theatre home used to be, coincidentally just a block away from Stacy’s Pallookaville Fine Foods) for Sacred Ground: Chapter Six on Sept. 26, Mandisco, in his tight white pants and hoop earrings, won’t be the one hitting on a particular white girl known as Miss Rachael. Instead, he’s employing the menacing Lei’d Tapa to give Rachael a beating in one of this year’s most anticipated matches at Sacred Ground.
“Sacred Ground is all about Quasi Mandisco,” he says. “I started with this company four years ago and worked my way to the top. Now when you think of PCW you think of The Priority Male himself Quasi Mandisco. Somebody’s been trying to take that away from me, some little girl who’s playing a big man’s game. Rachael Freeman suddenly thinks she’s important now because she’s had a match or two. Soon she’s going to have face the fact that she’s not as good as she thinks she is, she’s not as pretty as she thinks she is. She’s about to feel a whole lot of pain like she’s never felt in her life because I’m bringing one of the strongest, most athletic and baddest women in professional wrestling to kick in that pretty little face of Rachael’s. My recommendation to Rachael is to just stay at home and save herself an ass whoopin’. If she shows up on Sept. 26, she’s going to get hurt and there’ll be nobody there to blame but herself.”
When he’s not talking trash at PCW, Mandisco still DJs every Saturday at the infamous Clermont Lounge, Atlanta’s oldest strip club best known for the beer-can-crushing antics of longtime dancer Blondie Strange. When the Atlanta Ballet began searching for a new resident DJ for its 2014-2015 season, Mandisco was happy to start performing for an entirely different cast of dancers. While they’re preparing to take the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre stage, Mandisco is spinning in the lobby for patrons purchasing drinks and finding their seats.
“They’re both fun in their own ways,” he says of the contrasting atmospheres of the Clermont and the Ballet. “I play a lot of the same stuff at both places. I’m not going to play Prince’s ‘Pussy Control’ at the Ballet, but I still play Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Michael Jackson, the Temptations – a lot of the same stuff. It’s fun because people are often surprised to be at the ballet and hearing Prince. To see people dancing through the lobby on the way to their seats, I think it adds another element to a fun night. I don’t talk all the trash there that I do at the Clermont and PCW, though.”
With his deep, smooth voice and sharp tongue, Mandisco’s Barry White-meets-Ric Flair persona has become part of the attraction when he performs at bars and clubs. As a lifelong wrestling fan, his transition into the antagonistic manager at PCW was a natural one.
“Once I started getting confident with DJing, when people would make bad requests and get on my nerves, I realized I could start cutting wrestling promos on people,” he says. “They thought it was funny and part of the show, so I kept doing it. Then I found out about the PCW school, trained for three months, and came in as a Bobby ‘The Brain’ Hennan-style manager.”
In addition to spinning at the Clermont every Saturday and inciting Porterdale audiences at PCW the first and third Saturday of each month, you can now catch Mandisco DJing on Friday nights at a new restaurant and music venue called Venkman’s. From more sophisticated ballet audiences to riled-up wrestling fans to some of the most unique strippers around, Mandisco’s polarizing persona and old school musical tastes never fail to get some sort of reaction from his audiences. Be it positive or negative, he really doesn’t care as long as they’re feeling it.