Long, Richard (1933-1986) Founder of RLA (Richard Long and Associates), dance club sound designers during the disco heydays of the ’70s and ’80s. Richard’s success grew out of his experience working as the sound engineer for the Paradise Garage in Greenwich Village during the mid-seventies. After developing his chops at the Paradise Garage, Richard designed many famous dance clubs including Studio 54, Annabel’s (London), Regine’s (a chain of 19 clubs scattered around the world from Paris and NY to Cairo) and many others that were the vanguard of the disco era. Indeed, continuing years beyond Richard’s unfortunate death in 1986, his designs flourish today in such icons as the Ministry of Sound (London). Further information available at GSA and see Richard and Alan Fierstein’s seminal paper “State-of-the-Art Discotheque Sound Systems — System Design and Acoustical Measurement,” presented at the 67th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, New York , 1980.

Richard Long DJ Console

Stacks from the old Club Townsend in San Francisco, later moved over to Mighty SF in the mid 00’s.