THERE WAS A POINT when you couldn't go to a club in this town without running into Johnny Fiasco. His long-running residencies at Red Dog, Shelter and Smart Bar contributed in large part to the resurrection of the House sound of Chicago in the early 1990s, brought back to life by a new generation of DJs including Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Cajmere, Mark Grant and Spencer Kinsey.

Though he no longer has a regular residency in Chicago, I find that I still can't get away from Johnny Fiasco. The man lives inside my head: as one of the most prolific producers and remixers over the last few years, there's a slim chance that a House night can come off without someone spinning a record that Johnny had a hand in making. He exploded on the scene as a producer in 1991 with "Zig Zag" - a simple tune with a a contagious groove that became a House staple. In the years since then, Johnny hasn't let up. It's a daunting task to come up with a comprehensive discography of his remixes and original productions, but suffice to say that listing the labels he's worked for alone might take up more words than are in this article. Through it all, however, he's remained true to the source of his inspiration: the jackin' Chicago sound that first turned him on as a kid and made the aspiring guitarist put down his axe and take up a set of 1200s.

I wanted to ask you first about the track "Zig Zag" from back in 1991.

That's pretty much what got the ball rolling for me.

That was your very first recording?

That was the first one. That was actually a record that was produced by a DJ by the name of Chunkabud. I did a remix and said "We've gotta put this out, we gotta put this out." We put it out and it obtained a kind of cult status. Things started rolling from there.

Was it hard having your very first record blow up like that? "Zig Zag" was a huge hit.

No, not at all. It might go to some people's heads - I won't mention any names [laughs] - but it was all about getting things moving in what I wanted to do for a long, long time. It's all about keeping your priorities straight. It's funny, though. For the first time in your life you see people come out of the woodwork that want to be your friend, or do a record with you, when all you really are is a hot 'ho and they want a piece.

You started out as a guitarist back in the 1980s. How did you make the transition from being a live musician into being a DJ?

At House parties in high school, back in the mid-'80s.

What was the high school?

I went to Benito Juarez first, then I transferred to Curie Metro on Pulaski and Archer, right across the street from Hot Jams. We did live shows at House parties, which evolved into straight House parties. We always threw the hottest parties, but we didn't hire any DJs. In that period the parties were called "Club Naked".

Club Naked?

Yep, Club Naked. When we played, we played maybe an hour of House, then some New Order, Nitzer Ebb, and it was all mixed in with House Music. Everywhere else it was just straight House parties. Then we'd do a twenty minute punk set, and people would start headbangin' for twenty minutes. Nobody ever got hurt, but it was crazy. And we'd go back full circle, and start playing House again. I think towards the end, we were pulling about 800 people on Saturday nights. We had people like John Cusack coming to our parties - all these local celebrities that would just pop in.

Believe it or not, Jesse de la Pena was kind of a rival of mine back in the day. We did kind of the same stuff. And his posse would be outside in the line with my posse. But we never hired outside DJs. It was like, "You're going to listen to the music, you're going to learn how to DJ. I don't want these outsiders. We've already got so many people coming, we don't need superstar DJs."