As a proud 90s child rising up in Queensland, I’ll let you know that a very powerful a part of any highway journey as a child was placing collectively the right blended tape.
Sitting at the back of my mum’s second hand Toyota Camry station wagon for these three hour drives to the Gold Coast on college holidays actually had its professionals and cons.
Aircon in automobiles again then was remarkable for many public college youngsters, so my arms would get a killer exercise cranking the home windows open and closed with these nostalgic automotive window levers.
There was additionally that sickening sense of panic that permeated all through the automotive when mum misplaced the gold coin she had out to pay the employee on the Gateway Bridge toll sales space.
But the most effective half – other than the thrill of probably getting a Happy Meal after we stopped for a wee break – was rocking alongside to a superbly curated blended tape or CD.
The sound of the millennium
The late 90s and early 2000s was a magical time for music.
People had been nonetheless having fun with the grungy sounds from bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, The Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden that outlined the early 90s.
But there was a brand new and thrilling vitality brewing as we slowly glided into the millennium: the rise of digital and home type dance music.
These had been beats impressed from distinctive types of sound beforehand reserved for darkish underground golf equipment in Berlin or hedonistic warehouse raves in Manchester.
Suddenly each music channel’s high ten included some type of hypnotising digital dance hits that triggered one thing particular within the mind.
I’ve vivid reminiscences of many Christmas Days, the place all my cousins can be banished to my grandma’s downstairs rumpus room to get out of the adults’ hair.
Gathered round an outdated Panasonic dice tv, we had been transfixed by music movies that somebody had recorded on VHS tapes.
We can be having the time of our lives at our personal little digital dance occasion, bopping alongside to hits like Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You (1998), the Chemical Brothers’ Hey Boy Hey Girl (1999) and Daft Punk’s One More Time (2000).
But there was one musician that had a maintain on us youngsters, and made us lose our minds with essentially the most explosive of dance strikes: English DJ Fatboy Slim.
Other Aussie youngsters who grew up in late 90s and early 2000s most likely first heard the music Praise You (1998) on varied TV commercials for Levi denims or Mitsubishi automobiles.
At the identical time, it was nearly not possible to go to a celebration and play musical chairs or move the parcel with out Fatboy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now (1998) or The Rockafeller Skank (1998) blasting from a boombox stereo someplace.
But for me, it was these highway journeys the place I actually received to expertise his music, with my mum blasting his You’ve Come A Long Way Baby (1998) album as I vibed within the again seat, counting the automobiles and bushes whizzing by.
There is one thing to be mentioned for blended tape youngsters, who needed to work laborious listening to hours of radio and press play on the precise second a music began.
It was a sort of strain that the spoiled youngsters of immediately’s Spotify age will merely by no means perceive.
We’ve come a protracted, good distance collectively
Fatboy Slim – whose actual title is Norman Cook – outlined that period and even now, over 25 years after his preliminary surge in recognition, nonetheless is aware of how to attract a crowd.
The 59-year-old star not too long ago rocked out Aussies at stellar exhibits in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, in addition to being a headliner for Triple J’s Groovin the Moo competition.
The latter noticed him journey to lesser recognized elements of Australia, with the occasion happening in Maitland (VIC), Bendigo (VIC), Wayville (SA), Canberra (ACT), Sunshine Coast (QLD) and Bunbury (WA).
I used to be fortunate sufficient to catch him at his solo Entertainment Quarter present in Sydney, and had my thoughts blown by his good musical expertise and addictive cosmic vitality that reverberated into the gang.
This may shock you, however the expertise actually topped these early 2000s summer time dance events my cousins and I rocked out to at my grandma’s home after I was eight.
The morning after the Sydney live performance on May 6, Fatboy Slim’s new documentary dropped and I mustered up all my post-rave vitality to look at it.
Cradling a relaxing gatorade and eagerly eyeing the place my Uber Eats driver was with my hangover feed, I tuned in to look at Right Here, Right Now (2023) on Binge*.
The 90-minute movie takes us again in time to a UK summer time’s day in July 2002, when 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 folks dramatically descended onto the well-known Brighton Beach for an evening of chaos.
The Big Beach Boutique II was free live performance placed on by Fatboy Slim, with organisers anticipating a crowd of round 60,000, however had deliberate for a most of 80,000 folks.
Instead, 250,000 keen followers confirmed as much as the seashore for certainly one of music historical past’s most unforgettable raves.
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‘I’m fairly scared’
The documentary begins by following Norman Cook’s regular transformation into Fatboy Slim and the success that adopted from the discharge of his first two studio albums.
By 2002, the musician discovered himself as probably the most widespread DJ’s, not solely within the UK however throughout the globe.
When England’s Channel 4 held an open air screening of a British cricket match on the Brighton seaside in 2001, it requested Fatboy Slim to carry out afterwards.
When hundreds of individuals confirmed up, the musician determined to stage a sequel the following 12 months, planning a free live performance for as many individuals because the seashore may take.
Despite happening earlier than the rise of social media, news of the occasion unfold like wildfire, and 30,000 folks able to occasion had already descended onto Brighton Beach earlier than the clock struck 9am.
Sitting in the identical room, on the identical lodge he had stayed in nearly 21 years in the past, Fatboy Slim mirrored on his feelings main as much as the gig afterward within the day.
“When I first arrived in this room, I was looking outside thinking this is brilliant, there is so many people,” he mentioned.
“But then it turned into, there are SO many people.”
Jumping again into an interview from that very same room’s balcony in 2002, a journalist requested him how he was feeling as they each appeared out into the ocean of our bodies under.
“I’m quite scared actually,” Norman chuckled nervously.
“It’s a monster that has gone out of control.”
An emergency assembly was held with native police, who advised that they cancel the occasion.
However, there was a concern that this might trigger extra points.
“I could see from the police faces like ‘we are overwhelmed here’,” he mentioned.
“I had prepared myself that the whole thing would be snatched away. They sat me down and said, ‘right, we’re going to go ahead with it, but only because …’
“And I asked, ‘only because it’s more dangerous not to do it?’ Because we’ve got all those people down there, they’ve been drinking all day, but they’re happy.
“But if you shut the place down, they’ll be unhappy, and it could be ugly.”
Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat
Despite the likelihood that it may all go flawed, they got the inexperienced gentle to go forward.
Things had already spiralled into chaos earlier than the gig started.
Security workers – tasked with telling folks to not stand on the water’s edge – give up en masse as a result of the job was not possible.
Riot police manning the seashore’s groynes – stone limitations counteracting longshore drift, with slippery seaweed on high and a sheer drop on one aspect – had been withdrawn for their very own security.
One man was filmed climbing and swinging from a lamp put up, an act which prompted a stern public security announcement from the loudspeakers.
“I was read various riot acts about what I could and couldn’t do, and if they told me to switch off the music I couldn’t argue,” Norman recalled.
“Which is not the best frame of mind to be in.
“Looking back, I don’t remember much about the actual gig. I must have been completely on autopilot.
“But I wasn’t the most relaxed I’ve ever been, as I was aware that if anything went wrong, we would be in a lot of trouble safety wise.
“But what I do remember, is feeding off the energy of the crowd.”
As cameras panned into the ocean of ravers, I may nearly really feel the pure pleasure and euphoric vitality radiating off my TV display screen.
The pulsating music was good, and the approaching large-scale disasters that authorities had anticipated by no means transpired.
There was not one of the crowd crushes, mass violence or drunken drownings that many had feared, and solely six arrests had been made.
As one safety guard member mentioned within the movie, this was attributable to one easy motive: this was a loved-up dance crowd, not a fired-up rock crowd.
“If that had been an Oasis gig, we would have been f*cked” he mentioned.
Death of an Australian nurse
Despite it going higher than many had anticipated, it was not with out some darkish moments.
There had been 171 non-fatal accidents and two tragic deaths that occurred after the live performance.
It was revealed {that a} man in his 40s had died on the seashore following the occasion after struggling a coronary heart assault.
Additionally, a 26-year-old Australian nurse named Karen Manders tragically handed away from head accidents attributable to a ten metre fall from the seafront esplanade.
The accident occurred at a celebration after the occasion, and the younger girl died in hospital two days later.
Fatboy Slim mentioned within the documentary that the loss of life of Karen has haunted him over time.
“It was a horrible thing that someone had to die that night,” he mentioned solemnly.
“I managed to get in touch with her parents, and I said to her mum ‘look, I’m so sorry’ and she said ‘don’t worry, it was going to happen’.
“She told me that her daughter phoned her earlier in the night, and said she was having the best night of her life.
“And she said, thanks for making the last of her life, the best night of her life. That really kind of got me.
“I still feel because I was the reason she was in Brighton that night, I feel somewhat responsible for her death.
“That will always haunt me.”
Lessons learnt
The damaging toll of the occasion grew to become crystal clear as soon as the crowds had lastly dispersed and the solar rose onto Brighton Beach the next morning.
Countless bits of sharp damaged glass lined the pebbled shoreline, and the repulsive stench of urine crammed the air.
Fatboy Slim was apologetic about this, and lined the prices of the huge clean-up operation.
The historic music occasion without end modified the way in which live shows had been run within the UK.
No free, spontaneous gigs have ever been allowed to occur since then, and it has turn out to be a textbook instance of “what not to do” on the subject of music occasions.
Thankfully, it didn’t find yourself just like the notorious Woodstock 1999 or Fyre Festival disasters – but it surely did come eerily shut.
Last 12 months, 20 years after the unique occasion, he was as soon as once more allowed again onto Brighton seashore for an unimaginable anniversary gig – this time ticketed and closely regulated.
“I’m still doing this because I genuinely love it,” he mentioned on the finish of the documentary.
“I love hearing tunes, and instantly wanting to share them with other people.
“Something very powerful happens at raves and parties, where it becomes stronger than the music, it becomes stronger than the people there.
“The room becomes this massive energy, and I feed off that.
“It is something that drives me along and I’m very grateful that I’ve been allowed to do it for so long.”
*News Corp, writer of this web site, is majority proprietor of Binge.
Originally revealed as ‘Scared’: Fatboy Slim displays on chaotic Big Beach Boutique gig
Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au
