1980S TO 1990S DECADES

Scants opened on the 19th August 1983 at 180 Fox Street. The owners, Stan Herson and Bruce Kennedy would later go on to open Heaven, but this was the pair’s first foray into the nightclub business.The resident Scants DJ was Andrew Wood assisted by Jannie Vermaak. Both used to DJ at Mandys, but Jannie preferred operating the lights (and later the lasers) leaving the music to Andrew. Scants was also the first club in South Africa to have lasers. They came a few months after the club opened resulting in the club also being known as SCANTS Laserdrome.   The timing was perfect in catching the wave of new club music that was burning up underground and mostly gay dancefloors in Europe, USA and Canada. This was High Energy (or HI-NRG). Coming out of the ashes of disco in the late 1970s, this music was largely synth and drum machine driven influenced by more experimental disco producers like Georgio Moroder and electronic bands like Kraftwerk and Cerrone. Leaders in this new sound were produce

Heaven was a nightclub that ran from 14 June 1985 to late 1987 in Johannesburg at 165 Marshall Street. Many will know this address as the original Doors nightclub that opened in 1990 and operated there for many years before moving to Edenvale. Stan Herson and Bruce Kennedy started Heaven. Six months before, they had owned SCANTS which was at 180 Fox street. It closed as the block had been sold for redevelopment.The music at Heaven was a mixture of High Energy, Eurobeat and Italo Disco with current radio hits and classic club & disco thrown in. The DJ, Andrew Wood (ex SCANTS), was also responsible for compiling and mixing the popular High Energy series of 2LPs from Vol. 5 onwards. At the time of my first visit, Vol. 7 or 8 was out and many of the tracks from those compilations were played on any given night.In addition to dance music, Andrew also mixed in Depeche Mode, Marc Almond/Soft Cell, Yazoo, DAF and New Order and lighter alternative stuff like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The