IT MAY BE THE center of the entertainment industry, but Los Angeles seems like the edge of the world when it comes to House music. Or so it would seem to those of us from the Midwest and the East that haven't had the chance to visit Deep, LA's most prominent House residency, lovingly nurtured by its visionary creator, Marques Wyatt.

"It just becomes trendy to assume there's no scene in LA," Marques once told a writer for a local paper, but "LA is getting a lot more respect through the artists who want to come here and play." Marques Wyatt is one of the main reasons why.

Religious imagery abounds in music journalism - particularly when it comes to House music. But there's something in Marques Wyatt's relaxed and confident demeanor that seems to merit it. He talks slowly and softly but with a big laugh. "I grew up on the beach in Santa Monica," he says. "This is just who I am."

Marques has a vision for Deep, for the Los Angeles scene, for a genre of music often relegated to something that's played at the club and stays at the club. It all started for him in the early 1980s, when he made two trips to New York City that changed his life. He saw and heard - or rather felt - Larry Levan's groundbreaking performance at the Paradise Garage and passed through Dancetaria and other early clubs. Brought up in a musical family, he had never heard this stuff before.

"Back then it didn't have a name - at the time, it was just referred to as 'dance music,'" he says. "But that really started my affection for this."

Just a few years earlier, Ron Hardy had been in LA temporarily, though he returned to Chicago shortly thereafter. Marques on the other hand stuck around, dedicated to bringing the essence of what he had glimpsed in New York to his hometown.

With his missionary zeal, Marques often had to take the first step and wear the most hats, though he was never alone. "Even when I was doing it all myself, it was very organized," he says. But having a hand in both aspects of the industry also gave him an added perspective.

"Promoting and running my own club, I was able to see both the promoter's side of things and the artist's side of things. Much of that expressed itself as respect for the artists who play here. I travel quite a lot, and I've been in poor situations myself as an artist. I was able to put them in a nice hotel rather than a cheap one, give them a nice flight rather than the least expensive one available. I could do that because I was also an artist and saw things from that point of view."

At one point in the early 1990s, Marques was running three separate residencies around the LA area. The experience culminated in "Does Your Mama Know?", an afterhours launched in 1992 and which ran for seven years.

Deep was christened in January of 1999 at the Viper Room, which it quickly outgrew before moving on to its current location at the Vanguard (6021 Hollywood Blvd). The night never struggled, and seven years later it's running stronger than ever. "Deep is a very special place for the people who go there," he says.

Among the luminaries who have made the trip out to the West Coast to play there are Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, Mark Grant, Louie Vega, Tony Humphries and Timmy Regisford. Marques now works with a partner, Sam, who focuses more on the promotional side of things while Marques concentrates on the creative.

"The club I did before this, I stopped doing it because I felt like the vibe was changing. I didn't like where it was going.

"It's sometimes very hard to find people who are into the music and not into themselves. It's become the nature of the beast because so much attention is being drawn to the DJ now. You see the guys get into it, and there's not so much attention on the music. Sometimes their actions are reflective of that. It's not everyone, and the people I like to put on aren't into that."