Dance-Music Makers Seek R-E-S-P-E-C-T : Pop: Deejays, radio personnel and fans are gathering this week to bolster an image tarnished by disco backlash and the Milli Vanilli scandal.

A concert tonight at the Hollywood Palladium featuring Brenda K. Starr, Movement Ex and other dance and rap acts will cap the first International DJ Expo West, a three-day event at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City that organizers expected to attract more than 2,000 dance-club deejays, radio personnel, record company officials and dance-music fans.

The event--sponsored by New York-based magazine DJ Times and open to the public--is the West Coast spinoff of a similar session in October in Atlantic City, N.J., that drew more than 1,400 people, said Chuck Arnold, the magazine’s editor.

Other Expo activities include equipment exhibits and more than two dozen panel discussions on topics ranging from the latest developments in house and rap music to dance-club design trends. Tonight’s Palladium concert will also feature Thelma Houston and deejay-turned-performer Jellybean, whom Arnold called “the first superstar deejay.”

Arnold is hoping the convention will help build respect in the industry for dance music, whose image remains tarnished by the backlash to ‘70s disco and last year’s Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal.

“Dance music has not gotten respect that other kinds of music have,” Arnold said. “Dance-club deejays are progenitors of what will happen next in music. A lot of them are bringing (into the pop world) lots of new sound combinations, like a heavy-metal guitar riff with a house groove and a hip-hop rapper.

“Deejays have always been celebrities in Europe, and we think it should be like that here too.”