Just looking at the color scheme of this forum, now I've got a chance to sit down for a cup of tea. It's 'lime' green, but to me it's oldskool fluro color. We called it Kryptonite ))
But they've got the green sitting pretty nice, like reflector lines on Phats
Might as well just roll here for a bit in this thread as I fine tune the forum, which in fact is a very oldskool thing to do. We were always seriously distracted with the buzz bursting out all over the place. It was hard to keep up.
It feels like that NOW.
For example, just check out what Alicia and the Tribezone crew have been up to the past few days.
This is the first Shuffling in a movie !!
My god, Shuffle's all growed up
Well done Alica and Tribezone, stunner...tell the director it'll sell better if they let you do more shuffling. Check out more pics on Alicia's blog. It's out Nov 08. Nice Phats! The directors got a horror movie in the cinema's at the moment, full on spatter. Shuffle is the next obvious step lol
now if I can just enable the html, we can see the youtube clip, it was working ok in the music section. I saw the check box somewhere this afternoon...hmm
The clip works on alica's blog ok tho,
Last edited by Garry on Mon 28 Sep 2009, 21:30; edited 1 time in total
There comes a time when you realise you're standing in the middle of something. I've been around for ages as I mention in Shuffle the Beginnings, and have seen a good share of 'somethings'. You get to recognise the signs when something's starting to happen after a while.
It doesn't mean you know what it is. But you can't deny it's staring you in the face. 'Obvious but Undefined' is the term I use to describe it.
The moment it dawned on me that there was a an 'Oldskool' movement happening in Melbourne, as opposed to just a bunch of stuff that happens, was January 12 1992.
The date is significant because it is the day HAL the computer in 2001 a Space Oddessy, was 'born'.
I had just moved into the Melbourne CBD living in my studio. I'd been there for a year or so and discovered lots of other artists doing the same thing.
We took over old office buildings that were vacant because of the recession. I was in Commerce House, it had Australia's first rave clubs in it's basement for 5 years, and saw 460 club patrons strip searched in a Police raid.
Lots of artists lived there, it was a real community of misfits and non descripts, horror magazine publishers, fashion photographers, a fashion designer who slept in a coffin, and the Cinema Industry Benevolent Fund to name a few.
It was illegal to live in your studio. So we'd sneak around at night and go quiet when the security guards came thru. regular as clockwork 3 times a night. If you were having a party, eveyone would disappear from the corridors for 10 minutes then come out again. Here's a video walk thru I did in 1996. It was built in 1913. The front is Flinders Street on the banks of Melbourne's old gold rush port.
Those who lived there would brag, in a nice sense, about our ingenuity using found business cast offs to make our homes in old offices. It was like some post apocalyptic movie script. Mad Max meets the Omega Man sort of thing. The ferals had taken over the deserted city. At night they owned it !
So we were bored over the summer christmas break, and a few regulars at Filter, decided to make something, just for the fun of it. We'd meet up for a 'build'. That's what sculptors and artists do for fun in Melbourne. We make things.
We'd make a day of it. Celebrate HAL's birthday and have a party. Bring interesting bits and pieces and stuff we'd find in waste skips, and plan to make something.
'IT' became the beast on the front page of the local newspaper in the pic above. This was the flyer for the build (Below) The quote is from Shelly's original Frakenstein. - It was also the plan for the creature. Except we were wasted pretty early in the day and had the flyer upside down. What are the Modonna bra swirls, we thought were eyes. The horns we thought were legs, we just added 4 more And it wasn't even noon
I wasn't sure what was going on, but there was a buzz. People in the house baking fresh bread and 'special' chocolate mud cake, welders going everywhere. All these strangers buzzing around, most of us had never met before. We'd seen each other around, but that was it. We went all day, this is a still from a Super8 film time lapse I did of this fabulous beasts first sunset.
We had such a good time that we decided to come back the next day, Sunday. In the Sunday Age a major melbourne daily newspaper was an article called 'Operation Flashback' which the Police had dubbed investigations into the sudden resurgence of LSD at psychedelic underground parties. Like the 60's/early 70's in Melbourne. They were right. That's what it felt like to me.
That Sunday Night we had a party. There were fire in those old 44 gal drums in the paper pic, we had lights shining on the beast and a grunty ghetto blaster sound system. we played techno and shuffled around our creation under the balmy summer night sky.
About 3am a Police car stopped. It had been circling for hours. The site was the intersection of StKilda and Alma roads. About 100,000 cars go down Stkilda road a day, it's a 3 lane highway both directions. The beast looked down on the traffic lights.
Friday when people drove home from work there was a vacant block of land, owned by the church across the road. We didn't ask permission Monday morning all these motorists would suddenly see this great urban beast baring down on them. )) Yes we planned it like that So the Police helicopter had been circling for 2 days as well. They couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.
So the patrol car finally stopped. We're going to jail, we started saying, quick where's the camera, we wanna get this. - Artists
But the Police loved it. Better for the junk to end up as an art work than landfill they said. Now that surprised us! Have the journo's been around yet? The Police asked. We explained we weren't after publicity, we want this to be a surprise.
Oh IT'll be a surprise the Police laughed. The stations been buzzing about it all weekend.
The Police then said, Would you like US to drop a call to the journo's, it's been a slow news day, they'd love it. The Police said they wouldn't give away that they'd spoken to us, and play along with the urban myth story.
This is the Melbourne Police mind you !!!
Yeah sure, anything to make the Police happy at 3am while we're having an illegal rave around a steel beast
So the next day TV crews turned up and interviewed the friends who lived in the house. Nah we didn't see anything, they told the reporters. We were away for the weekend and it just appeared. ) Be VERY careful what you believe on the evening news folks
It was a great weekend and I took down a record of the main crew with names they'd like to be known as, here's the list in no particular order and a portrait I did of one of the guys Stu, on the first day. I'd just met him a few hours before.
Tiger Lady Swedish Chef Rosco P Coltrain Pizza Beer Potato Stoned with yellow cap Operation Flashback Investigator Sera Pax Milky Rusta Boy Tao Anonymous Bosch The Marlboro Man CNN Sunday OXX I’ll be in touch I’ll get back to you on that Lap Max Seth Nathan Alli Black The Man and His Dog (Stu) Dorothy Slippers Toto Ol’ Blue eyes Jimmy The Tube Sheriden Pumpa Mat George Just call me Al
We discovered most of us were living in the CBD in our art spaces, and got each other details to visit. Others had come down from Canberra, and were stopping over on their way to Adelaide to do an industiral theatre work in the Old Adelaide jail. They invited me to join them. I did.
We had a 'fire war' every night in the exercise yard with flame throwers, burning effigy's a live noize industrial band, and I slept in a different cell each night. Slept on death row my final night there. The only one in the wing. None of the other 30 or so cast and crew staying there too, were game enough for death row - wimps !
Also worked on the Imagineer Parties, with Pip (Earthcore) in a warehouse that was cleared out at dawn by the Australian Federal Police and Inteligence agency ASIO, to make way for the Queen of England - yes literally. She was visiting Adelaide and opening a new theatre complex next to our warehouse. I got it on film. I'll post it once I've transfered it from Super8 Film. Someone stole my projecter - Hectore Hazard was his name. HECTOR !!! You said you'd return it!
We scammed a vintage WW2 6 wheeled armoured personelle carrier for a parade to publicise the Imagineer parties we did 4. We painted fluro on it. It had twin Rolls Royce engines and ran out of gas in the Mall, so we just left it there. The council gave us parking tickets! We said move it yourselves. It was there for a week.
Then I came straight back to Melbourne to do the first Every Picture Tells a Story parties and TV broadcasts of our parties.
This was all in the space of 8 weeks at the beginning of 1992. We expected the beast to be bulldozed within days, instead it stood like a holy shrine for 9 months. Tourists would come each day and leave trinkets and take photos in front of it.
Top 40 rock band BOOM CRASH OPERA lived around the corner of it and did a commercial video clip in front of it, and named their next album after it - The Fabolous Beast. They commissioned me to do a touring stage set inspired by it.
This is it being completed for it's debut on Coke a Cola's Take 40 Australia at Channel 10 TV studio's in Nunawanding mid 1993. For a live TV special. Those are the Erinsborough High School lockers behind the works, from Melbourne TV soup Neighbours (Kylie, Jason Donovan, Natalie Embroglia etc).
The band even paid me more to go thru waste skips at night to make sure it was all made out of found material, and it was. Even parts of Commerce House were in it.
It was a buzz. It was a time when the Melbourne underground jelled from a bunch of people doing stuff, clubs, parties, theatre, fashion, art work whatever, all pretty much isolated from each other, into a group of likeminded souls. Like we could identify ourselves. Within an instant we were life long friends, and knew it, and we still are.
This was our time. To me it truely was a Fabulous Beast, that's what I call the Oldskool Underground of Melbourne.
That's the BUZZ I'm picking up from the new gen Shufflers right now, except it's global. It's the same buzz, and original oldskoolers are coming out of the woodwork because they can feel it too.
This is familiar territory folks. We can't wait to see what the new generation is gonna do with it. That's what it was like at the build. Young and old, noobs and oldtimers, all in it together for the shear buzz of it.
Yep the building was Commerce House, and in the basement there was the Commerce Club, which had been around for about 80 years. But it became a gay lunchtime sex bar late 1980's, for business men in town. Then started as a night time club around 1990, with Maze, which didn't last long as it was raided and shut down because of drugs. And around 1991 a few more gay nights opened up on fridays and then Tasty which was run by the Razor crew relocated from down StKilda road way.
Tasty was a mixed gay/straight night and it was Tasty that was raided. The whole venue was locked down a few months after the raid, and the venue was never reopened, I got the last video footage of it inside before the whole building was redeveloped into a 5 star hotel 1996. The basement were the club was, is now a car park.
There were lawyers strip searched on the night, some had come from Sydney for the weekend, Tasty was quite famous in the underground. So they sued the Police in Australia's first legal class action and won a $10,000,000 payout to all the clubbers for wrongful strip search. And the new state Premier said it was a disgusting thing for the Police to do, and made the Police force pay the $10,000,000 out of their own pockets as punishment.
So the Police had to buy their own uniforms, shoes and lunch room milk and coffee etc for years until it was paid.
Yeah i've actually seen a documentary called the Tasty Bust. It was interesting but quite scary at the same time, how easy the police missed the mark and stuffed up.
Hahaha! That is incedible. I have got to say Garry huge thanks for this forum. It really has opened many peoples eyes of the Melbourne Underground history ir precipitated the rumours and legendary stories of some.
yeh melbourne has this weird underground thing which confuses the hell out of visitors. Like mainstream Melbourne didn't know we existed in the oldskool days, but we had our own tv station and broadcast parties live to air.
Melbourne's had this paralel universe for over 100 years. It bridges legal society and the underworld of real life crims murders drugs etc
Because of that we were secretive for self preservation. The gangsta's didn't want anyone knowing who they were - obviously, and frowned on anyone talking about it, I was never here, you've never met me type of things.
Oldskoolers were beaten up if they blabbed to anyone. Party promoters were frequently seen with black eyes and broken jaws because they saw something or said something they shouldn't have.
So you were very cautious about inviting anybody from outside the underground into that inner circle. Because you would be held responible for your friends behaviour.
If you couldn't trust a friend to keep quiet about seeing a celebrity off their face at an underground party, you we're invited.
It was a closed shop. Promoters frequently gave ticket buyers the wrong address if they thought they looked dodgy, the venue details were kept as secret as possible.
It also stopped the drunken yob gangs who wander melb streets looking for someone to bash. we were more worried about them than the police. Off duty police regularly came to our parties, they loved to dance as well. They stuck out like a sore thumb with their fashion sense, but were usually harmless enough.
As they would say if you approached them, as many did, Hey cops need a night off too, we have a stressful job with bad guys trying to shoot us, we're safer at an underground dance party than any suburban pub.
The oldskoolers are really protective of the times, we give each other hell online, usually facebook.
Some late comers, those who got into the scene from 1994 onwards, are trying to fudge the facts, claiming they were at various parties at the begining 1990-92.
You weren't even in the country in 92 would come an accusation, then it would be up to the person claiming it to prove it.
Being one of the originals has gathered a lot of street cred over the years, it's a valued status these days. Oldskooler are gonna lap it up while it lasts
This photo of the TVU crew has just surfaced. Taken in 1992 by a young noob called Richie Rich (Hardware) as the flyer pic for his next party. But was never used.
We can name pretty much everone in the pic, but can't agree on the date. It's anytime from march 92 to october 92. We were all at all those parties there, but they blur together. I reckon after august 92 because that's when I made that costume. I had a different one in July 92.
So when I claim something about the oldskool I hear all my old friends banging on about this detail and that detail, so to save a few arguments I back up stuff where ever I can, or just keep my mouth shut.
So you have to show the flyer, but the line up often changed, so you have to describe the decor of the night to prove you were there etc etc, even then some are dubious. 800 people streaming around the place all night in the dark, it's easy to say you were there, but weren't.
It's a full on 3rd degree interogation. And after all the talks been done, some people are still suspicious of something, if you didn't witness it 1st hand.
People are still expressing doubts about oldskool claims, today
Oldskoolers are a tough audience. I'm the easy going one compared to them.
I should mention, today with all the global recession and banks going broke etc, was exactly like it was in 1990-92 when we got up to all these things. Plus the cold war finishing was huge.
The world was out of control, so we figured while the govts are busy trying to find others to blame for the god awful mess they'd made, we'd just get on with our own stuff, underneath their radar.
The shuffle was created in really bad times, nobody knew how long it'd go for. Nobody knew what was gonna happen with all the nuclear missiles, nobody knew when they'd ever get a job again, it was a really scary unsettling time.
So we had parties to cheer us up. I mean just look at the faces in that TVU pic of 1992, everybodies happy, and it's the morning after. You'd hardly think times were tough. and there are a number of people in that pic, who's homelands were at war with each other.
The Shuffle was our escape from reality, it was a safe happy place. No surprise the symbol of the era was a smiley face. - years before the internet too btw.
When ever the oldskoolers get a bit cocky about things, like every week lol, there were a small handfull of us, about half a dozen or so, who could claim senior status having been in the Melbourne Underground since the 1970's and pioneering electronic music before disco. From the first 1960's psychedelic era.
Like Melbournes Jim Keays (lead singer) and the Masters Apprentices. Recording in the Beatles Abbey Road studio in 1970 with Pink Floyds engineer and John Lennon recording his first solo album next door. Then coming back to Melbourne to record on an underground electronic album Cybertron on the melbourne underground Clearlight Of Jupiter label. Inspiring the detroit techno gods to call their first band Cybertron and the track Clear.
The chorus of this track became the chant of a generation, that is still heard in the Shuffle today. "Do what you wanna do, be what you wanna be"
The Master's Apprentices - It's Because I Love You 1970
So it's a 'seen it all before' sort of thing for us. We were around when fluro paint was invented in the 60's. So phats for me is just a cyba hippie sort of thing, they're just recut flares. And that's OK.
We're often just surprised that anyone's still interested, and it's a buzz for us to see what you do with it. That way it's fresh to us all over again.
After all we have nothing to prove, we just do stuff for the passion these days.
Yea is a good track. But nah, they don't play tracks like this in clubs much anymore, but they should Melb mostly has old hard trance stuff, very boring.
So what is Oldskool?
))
Today at 00:30 by 
