| #700 |
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2004 |
700 issues of change I remember when 3D World first began. I was in the final years of high school and my friends and I would head down to the city record shops to pick up a copy to find out about all the clubs that we weren’t legally allowed to get into. It was the end of the 80s and things were changing in Sydney club land. The boom period was fading and music was changing. Hip hop and house were in the charts, Triple J was still a Sydney-only radio station and was open minded enough to be playing this music on its specialist shows. Whilst the Hordern parties of the late 80s were seminal events – huge bacchanalian events, theatrical, daring - they were closely tied to the bohemian and gay & lesbian cultures of Darlinghurst. By the time the 90s ticked over the pace of change had accelerated and 3D started to establish its identity more broadly with the emergence of rave. Each week 3D World became and important source of information on what parties were on, and the never ending source of 0055 phone numbers to find out venue information. For a paper that had started by feeding a club scene, the scene it really nourished was rave – something that was an anathema to most clubs. These core years, 1991-1994 were a playground of futuristic music, hedonistic and psychedelic drug taking, and crazy, dangerous venues scattered across Alexandria and Mascot. There were dodgy promoters, venue scams, parties that didn’t happen, parties that fought the law and the law won, and parties that were truly miraculous. With the world in turmoil, the 1992 Gulf War, the end of Thatcherism in the UK, and the celebratory energies of post-Wall Berlin, the music of 1991-1994 was in turns anthemic, apocalyptic, and wild. Although Detroit techno and acid house had unleashed similar sounds to clubs a few years earlier, it was the booming acoustics of the warehouses that brought this new, faster, darker, crazier music to life. Swallowed up in a huge crowd, and disoriented by sound, the effect was compulsive and each week we’d all meet up and head out to parties in the middle of nowhere. Rival parties inevitably caused friction between promoters. As rave grew bigger and bigger and the money generated by and changing hands each event grew this was inevitable. This friction opened a space for smaller, younger, new promoters to try their hands. There were high quality musical alternatives to the larger raves from Biz E, Tony Colour, and Freebass (the Underground Resistance and Orgasm parties of 1992), alternatives that placed an emphasis on design and decorative difference (Punos), more still were in outlandish venues (Ov Thee Earth Tribe in the Glebe Island grain silos) and those that were just out to annoy rivals (Quang’s free events that were always planned to compete with Tribal parties). Another alternative came from community radio. As rave bloomed, community radio changed. Marrickville’s Radio Skid Row almost became a rave station after dark with weekly shows from a stack of underground Djs; whilst 2SER hosted Nik Fish and other smaller stations 2RES, 2RDJ all had their specialist rave shows. Interestingly it was Radio Skid Row that helped to create the other important rave offshoot – the punk/rave crossover of the Vibe Tribe. The first Vibe Tribe free party was held in Sydney Park in May 1992 and was the start of a movement that brought techno into alignment with left anarchist politics and eventually helped form Reclaim the Streets. Today the Vibe Tribe’s ethos continues most untouched with System Corrupt whilst it also has informed the techno parties of Swarm, the freaky club nights of Club Kooky/UberRandom and the live experiments of Frigid. During these early years local electronic music production was kept to a minimum with the party scene strong. Although Clan Analogue and labels like Thunk were laying down their roots in these early years, the most successful acts (and the few actually releasing records) were on Volition, a label that had been around on Festival since the 80s. It wasn’t until 1995 with the death of Anna Wood and the violent closure of the last Vibe Tribe free party in Sydney Park, that local production took off. With these important events, the mainstream rave scene retreated back into the clubs splintering in to smaller genres, and the underground scene had a lean year despite new musical changes emerging overseas. In 1996 Sydney’s Olympic property boom was beginning, Alexandria was becoming Green Square, and the newly revived club culture began to grow with drum & bass, acid breakbeat and other sounds coming to the fore. And it is from this point, 1996, that the underground scene has remained splintered. Techno parties, trance parties, drum & bass parties, breakbeat and experimental events have continued to move further apart. From one undeground, many smaller underground scenes. Every now an again there are attempts to unite the tribes – Freaky Loops, and later, the return of Happy Valley – but now in 2004 each scene is almost to distant from each other to come together. Party promotion is now big business. It is even a possible career choice. But with this ‘institutionalisation’ of dance parties much of the risk, the edge is gone. In its place has come safe, pre-packaged clubbing experiences fully compliant with occupational health and safety legislation and zoning laws. There is too much money at stake to do otherwise. It’s about time a new underground scene shook this up a bit. Seb Chan has been writing for 3D World since 1992 – beginning sometime around issue 190. He still writes the fortnightly Perilous column.  Goto
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