Before you start running down the street to catch your rolling eyes at the title of this piece, relax: this article is not another needless encore to the Plumpoids. It is, in fact, a true story of an adventure that opened the boomgates of perception to what really makes music so special. Everyone will be able to relate to the equation of music times friendship to the power, love. ITM’s sentimental sixthdegree, waffles…
Just after 23:00 – Bristol station. Meet up place – The Marriott; room 747. I took a deep breath …and knocked. A voice neared closer before I was greeted with a surprised expression from a guy with his fly undone – exposing his boxers in a way that looked like I had just interrupted him from a good something. “Hi…I’m Ashli,” I held out my hand to introduce myself. God, that was way too chirpy, and a whey ghey. Could I try that again? No second takes. Lights. Camera. Action…
I followed the semi bald man into the room where everyone was sitting. “Hello, Ashli. How are you?” asked Andy Gardner of the Plump DJs.
“Good, thanks,” was my short reply. Good, thanks? Apart from being grammatically incorrect, what kind of a reply was that? I scorned myself with for my lack of ingenuity in replies to such a superstar. There were six other guys and three girls in the room. Everyone was enthralled with watching top 100 best tunes on television, having a chuckle at whether Wyclef Jean’s name should be pronounced in that froggy, French fashion.
Lee Rous was sitting royally in an armchair. For the third time in 24 hours he apologised for having to cut our interview short from the previous night. Gardner jumped in to ask whether I had been acquainted with Matt yet. “Matt?” I inquired. I must have left my brains somewhere on the cruising altitude of 33 thousand feet. Enter: sweaty palms. Not only was I in a room with Lee Rous and Andy Gardner of Plumps fame, but the freeballer was Matt Cantor of the Freestylers. “Oh yeah, Matt. Hi!” I tried not to look like I was ready to jump through the window and scream with excitement as I plunged to the Bristolian cobblestoned roads.
“I’ve played in Melbourne,” piped up a tall guy with glasses, “I played at…er…Revolver.” Who would have thought that I’d be sitting in Bristol, hearing about Revolver back home. Who would have thought that the guy telling me he played at Revolver would be John Stapleton from Dope on Plastic. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the venue now stunk like fish.
Matt Cantor was playing at a club called La Cota that night, separate from the Plumps gig at Blowpop. We mingled in the hotel bar before heading off. And there I sat, listening to the red haired girl’s breakup story; a girl from Denmark was talking about her tuition fees; and Entertainer Cantor was having a drink whilst lobbying his trademark off the wall jokes to passers by. My tall glass of beer, compliments of the ever-charming Rous-meister, was consumed within minutes. A much needed guzzle.
One of the other guys, Carl, wasn’t overtly curious of who I was, but the most hospitable. In our cab drive to the club, Kosheen’s ‘Suicide’ was appropriately playing on the radio. “Is this Kosheen?” I asked to confirm.
“Sure is,” Carl replied. “Home grown”, he mused. I smiled, knowingly. Before the track finished, we were already at Blowpop. Bristol isn’t exactly the biggest town, but the queue waiting outside Blowpop would have made you think otherwise. With red carpet privileges, we swept past the line of ogling eyes, and into the club. Carl made sure I didn’t get lost or barricaded within the sweaty, jammed bodies.
Surviving the trek to the DJ booth we saw the Plump DJ had already started to play, and a club promoter- whose name I forget- came rushing up to me. “Are you the journalist from Australia?” she screamed in my ear over the music. Journalist? Twelve months ago I was struggling where I would be going with my life, before I started putting down to paper how music made me feel. Nearly a decade of being influenced by dance music mixed with a love for writing had finally reached the cultivation stage. Journalist sounded like a label, like I had some sort of association with the Murdoch enterprise. All I knew was that I was in Bristol, hanging out with arguably the world’s finest breakbeat artists, and more nervous than DJ Nervous. (Nevertheless, I felt like screaming… “Up yer bum, RMIT!”)
I stared at her for while as I assimilated her words. “Yes,” I finally replied with a buzz. But, throughout the night, all I could think about was sharing this experience with the people I loved, the friends who were at the club in March 2000 when we heard the birth of ‘Remember My Name’. They should have been with me in Bristol, too. At the Finger Lickin’ Finale party in London the night before, I had called my best bud from Uni and made her listen to the Plump DJs set via mobile phone, via BT Cellnet, via Telstra, via a phone bill I’m still paying off. A lot of the phone conversation had been filled with screams of echoing happiness. The dreams had come true.
What my dreams failed to deliver was the message that there’d hardly be any room to dance in English clubs, with a lot of pit-sniffing going on and old British men pulling bad pick-up lines. Unprepared, I still managed to shuffle my way through the rhythmically-challenged Poms, keep my hair relatively frizz free and combat the guck and precipitation of sweat/smoke/and dirt off my skin! And earlier, at London Waterloo station, I had run into The Body Shop to buy lip-gloss. For the first time in my cosmetic life, I had left home without any sort of lip gear. Sad, yes. But I wasn’t going to be gracing the Plumps with dry, pasty lips.
However, there was no room for superficiality that night. I spied Lee’s composure as he played ‘Funny Break’ and saw him in a world of his own. Last night they had been promenading butt-wiggling behind the turntables. Tonight, they were demure, serious, and intense. As the swell of sound stopped, the ‘Love Tunnel’ (as Orbital called the break) rolled to cue. I stared with fascination – trying to peek into Lee’s eyes to catch whether he too was elating in the excellence of the profound beauty of rarely chartered, seldom touched emotions that this tune ignited within.
Time became the loop and another Plump party was over. The crowd was herded out by security and only a few of us remained as the guys packed up their gear. I managed to catch Gardner as he meandered in the club like he was at an art gallery. “Andy,” I called. He looked over and I held out a congratulatory hand. Gardner smiled. I shot out the words that I’d been burning to tell these guys for the past year. “That was fantastic,” I began. He took a seat beside me and I recalled the rest of my year-long rehearsed speech: “What you guys do with music is beyond this reality. I’ve never, ever experienced the kind of energy you guys resonate when you’re playing. Your music is totally on a different vibe.” Then the ‘Lost for Words’ syndrome kicked in. Mr Gardner looked at me like I just confessed my undying love for him.
“Really? Do you really think so, Ashli?” he asked in sincere wonderment. I was more taken back at how unassuming he was and how he had just remembered my name (pardon the pun!). In a scene where fickle and used-car-salesman personalities are commonplace, Andy Gardner was refreshingly real and my respect and love for his and Lee’s work grew even more. He was so bashful about the praise that our conversation manifested into the insanity of having radiators at an already boiling club.
Lost, but this time outside Blowpop, Matt Cantor saved the day and pulled me into his cab. In true DJ style, we detoured to the hotel to drop off his records. He wasn’t going to leave them anywhere! Next stop was Simon’s place – a promoter and DJ of Blowpop and the guy that would be ‘looking after’ me during my time in Bristol. When we walked into Simon’s apartment “the crew”, earlier from the Marriott, had reassembled at this new locale. Rous had assumed the position next to the turntables and the template of ‘back at somebody’s place after a night out’ was ever apparent with these guys too:
One person was always changing the records (and moaning about it), someone was the designated spliff-roller, one person was passed out, and then there were those who just didn’t say anything. And it wouldn’t be a gathering with a lot of shit talking and laughter. It was like I was in a parallel word, but only, I couldn’t yap endlessly in Lee Rous’s ear about how much I loved Lee Rous! Or be sympathetically laughed at for doing a supersonic boff. I was a “journalist”, not McMash.
Simon’s house was over an hour’s walk from Bristol station. I didn’t know which way I was going when I headed out, back to the big chuff. No sleep, mega fatigue, a splash of effervescent jetlag, fuelled by a feeling of satisfaction, I ambled through the old town port and made it to the train. Slapping on my hoodie, and my controversial sunglasses, I had dozed off only to find myself in Piccadilly, London, again.
I thought about the Plumps, and the rest of the breakbeat artists who had honoured me with their presence. And I realised that the music that they created enriched an already privileged existence. Their music brought my friends and I closer together, it somehow amplified the energetic frequencies of our friendships. For that, I am forever grateful. These now-not-so-virtual virtuosos were gods. But only in the way that they could create something we all loved sharing. Otherwise, they were just normal guys with super wits, sidesplitting humour and a lot of talent. For me, what was most compelling and idealistic were not these qualities (combined with dashing good looks), but Lee’s and Andy’s genuine love and passion for music.
Perhaps this is why, in our dance music culture, we are such devout genre nazis. Music is one of the only things that we truly believe in without reservation. We protect it with pride and prejudice. We surrender to its power. When all else fails, our beloved music transforms into a personal (or shared) cocoon of solace, excitement and joy. We know we can hear our favourite tune and re-create an eternal memory. We pay homage to our producer/DJ gods, because they are the divine catalysts for connecting us with sacred senses we tend to forget in the soul-suffocating, power-tripping, daily persecutions of work and the general adversity of life. Spoon me with the organics of music any day.
Shades of spoon, shades of twilight, shady shades of SMS’s were already apparent by 3pm that next day. The beep on my phone broke my cradle of thought. It was a message from my friends at GCSSS in Melbourne: “The plastic on the grass makes this place stink like shit :) We saw James Lavelle, but you’re hanging out with the PLUMP DJs!!!!” I was filled with fuzzy feelings and laughed with my newly acquired Ho-Ho-Ho-ness of English humour. Even if it was about shit, it was shit from home. It was special shit. It was the kind of shit that made you think… “Shit, I wish I were there.” I was so homesick.
Inevitably, the moral of the story doesn’t wrap up to be ‘I got to hang out with my idols’ or, or ‘my fifteen minutes of fame’, or an inspirational ‘you are the creator of your own life’ narrative. This euphonic path was paved by those who believed in me, supported me, danced with me, laughed and cried with me throughout the years. Destination: Plump , was an amazing experience, but the core philosphy behind the whole journey was that it was an awakening to what was most true to me – the people I loved. Not even Plump DJs could change that devotion. But they sure could challenge it – forever.
sixthdegree says...
I'm reading this again after 6 years and thinking ..."jeez...i really was a groupie!"...HOW life grows you up and moves you on. Those were the days.