Lee Rous (Plump DJs) @ POW 3/10/2003
A mild autumn night in Melbourne 2001 would mark the beginning of the Plump Djs escalating stardom in this city and around Australia to this present day. Back then, as a 21-year-old breaks junkie and uni student, I had been anticipating a Plumps gig since the eminent ‘Remember My Name’ shot through my senses a year before. And this was night would be the moment that one half of Plump DJs, the then sleeping giant of breakbeat, would show Melbourne the ballsiest, bassiest, burgeoning breakbeat yet witnessed. Over two years later, we see it again. Same venue. Same Plump. Same absolute love for the music.
Lee Rous turned 30 last year, and with his 2nd ever set in Melbourne on Friday Oct 3, 2003 at 33&1/3, showed no signs of getting senile. There was no balding. More energetic and confident than last, his arms were a life-sized metronome, and his hands the knife that stabbed the air of thick, larjjjjj, obese, heavy, weighed down, dense (got any more?) breakbeat. And one of the best things about it was…you may not be the only one that does the Blue Steel whilst in deep concentration, momentarily snapping back out of it with spasms of excitement and fanfare. But then again, I usually have a computer and not thousands of people staring like they want to have my musical love-children. Pretty interesting analogy about where artists stand, isn’t it?
‘Creepshow’ kicked it off with the saxophones looping in everyone’s love for the tune. And every other Eargasm piece was thrown on the 2 hour solo Plump show. Since getting the Eargasm album, I’d always thought about how great the tracks would sound – LOUD. Especially at an intimate venue, by the peeps who wrote the tune, just to be able to really feel those tunes blast through your being. The size of the crowd didn’t stop you from feeling it. Though one bloke said otherwise. The funniest thing I encountered on the night (apart from the Blue Steel), was a mashed up guy sitting on the infamous POW balcony complaining about how he was disappointed because he had heard four Plump Djs tracks already. Apparently this guy was looking for “cutting edge breakbeats from the UK.” It was truly as gay as a Mentos ad, as was the dearly departed.
Back inside, standing at the bar, every now and then I would look up to see the blanket of heads (hey, no visors sighted this time!) and Lee with his big cheeky smile – absolutely loving it. In contrast to 2001, even though everything was the same, everything had changed. The Plump Djs were no longer a couple of medium-fry breaks producers straight outta London, so to speak. They were big time international DJs. And you could see it written all over Rous’s face – from the smile, through the stars coming out of his eyes. And there I was, standing at the bar, no longer a diligent trainspotter up the front wearing sneakers and the remains of what I had thrown up over the balcony, thrown out at one stage by security, but comfortably standing next to a few good men who had played a role (whether they knew it or not) in this crazed Plump fan’s journey from 2001 to 2003: the Beat editor, AJ (Bless – he’s about to give birth to a moustache), Ben Shepherd (responsible for tearing the roof off with Nick Thayer prior to Lee hopping on the decks), and Andrew Drever (the guy who wrote the first Plump article in The Age). Respect.
And then me (yes, I was standing next to my self)- the person who’s possibly written the most Plump DJs related stories in the world to the point of being asked to write their bios (because Fingerlickin’ Records had to find a way to shut me up, somehow). Nothing like a bit of shameless self-promotion and mockery!
But standing at the bar had not changed my love for the music. Nor did it fundamentally differ my participation in feeling it. It was merely a different perspective that I had grown into. I was surrounded by what I had created through my love of something just like anyone else. And just like the course Rous and Gardner have taken from A Plump Night through to Eargasm, from playing small gigs to phenomenal parties with 17 000 people, from bashful appearances on stage to a hoard of people asking for autographs, they were changed…but still the same. They were people who had created their amazing reality through the love of what they do but still people who could …remember someone’s name.
