Nightlife as Jean-Pierre Mels Sees It

“Metteur en fête”, party-maker: the phrase is his own, and he explained it to Le Matin in September 2000: “I think it sums up the job I do rather well, both the madness of the party and the seriousness of the staging.” A definition Carl De Moncharline could use word for word for his own.

In the same interview, asked what the job requires, he rejected the idea that being hip was enough: “My office is my mobile, my laptop and the contacts I make at night.” A contact book is not a list of names, it is a reputation kept up evening after evening.

He also said what he saw changing: “Kids are still just as fascinated by the world of the night, but the forty-year-olds have grown jaded.” Thirty years on, that sentence remains one of the most clear-sighted things written about Brussels nightlife.