I’d moved to Melbourne at the end of 2003 and started hooking up with assorted locals, many of whom were multi-lingual music researchers I’d enlisted as part of my previous SBS radio work. I started Uber Lingua at the start of 2004 to continue this musical direction and was looking for an events project.
Adam ‘raceless’ Gauci from Curse ov Dialect is someone I have much in common with… We’re both lovers of cultural diversity and enemies of racism. I crashed into ‘raceless’ near Bourke Street and he told me about a mad new bar he’d discovered around the corner and how he thought we should try and do a night there.
St Jerome’s had opened only a few weeks before. We entered the front bar/café, stepped thru the newly banged hole in the back wall out back and sat down with some coffees. I was pretty amazed, and instantly saw the potential of the space. Jerome told us that up until that point there had been a couple of acoustic nights but they had no PA.
As we were leaving Adam spontaneously (and courageously) declared to Jerome that we wanted to start a weekly night at his venue. Almost without thinking Jerome was up for it and told us we could start the following week. We’d scored Thursdays!
I had to hire a PA from Pink Noise for the first event and bring my own CD decks. There wasn’t much furniture and the decking hadn’t been built yet so it was just a concrete goods ramp and a random Kombi van parked in the venue for people to sit inside and drink beer. For about the first year, Adam’s cultural co-conspirator Antuong ‘Saigon Sausage’ Nyugen rounded out our trio of resident DJs (he also came with turntables). They’d promoted similar extremely diverse ‘Ockerchino’ events together between 2001 and 2003.
St Jerome’s first weekly night had begun and I convinced the others to call it ‘Uber Lingua’. We played for drinks for the first month or so before negotiating an ever-increasing deal, but it wasn’t about the money. By the second week a semi permanent PA was installed, the Kombi van had been removed and very soon the wooden deck was built and we were DJing on a pieced together rig setup on a disused air conditioning unit.
Initially marketed as ‘musical journeys and block party’, pushing the limits of the DJ scenario were the early motivations of the club. Even though the wages were measly we decided to spend what we had on a policy of featuring incredibly diverse selectors. All but one of the DJs we approached to play were totally cool to do it ‘for the love’ and the musical ‘salad bowl’-like concept, as Adam liked to refer to it.
Adam and Antuong pushed the musical diversity angle of Ockerchino… moody goth programmed next to reggae, experimental free jazz next to ‘80s turntablism, Japanese 8-bit computer game music next to ‘70s Turk psyche. In the meantime I pushed all my Melbourne based former radio contributors to pull out their trans-lingual collections and become DJs. It seemed like each week we’d try and draw together an even more mind-boggling guest line up of music genres and lingoes.
We lasted four years at St Jerome’s and had about 400 guest DJs in that time. Many of them were big names and career DJ/producers eagerly dropping radical sets they hadn’t had the chance to play elsewhere, but I’d say at least a third of them weren’t DJs in the first place. Some of these rookies have gone on to become very influential people in the Melbourne music scene, and many successful DJs. I love when this happens (it should happen more often), and this particular example was due to Jerome’s complete openness to a quite out there idea.
In its first years, St Jerome’s was a very bohemian, free thinking zone… not only for Uni students, back packers, more exploratory travellers and artists but for ‘in the know’ inner city workers and business people looking for a cool spot to have a meeting. The venue had a 1am license and often those meetings became lubricated blurs.
I’ve always suspected the cultural cues Uber Lingua initially offered up helped set the tone for much of the programming across the week. Within a short time of us starting, other weekly residencies started, one promoted by bad boy Ortiz with a strong Brasilian flavour, one by a Costa Rican named Hot Property who has since defected to Mexico, another by graph artist Monkey who was seemingly a protégé of Jerome.
Over time, the reputation of the venue grew both locally and internationally through word of mouth. Italians, Germans, Indians, Dutch, Japanese, Spanish, Pan-Asians, South Americans, Africans and Scandinavians would all come to the venue, and often Uber Lingua because they’d heard about ‘a night of crazy dancing to mad international beats’. This audience base was our fuel. The amount of international types who approached me when I was DJing and asked me how I’d obtained an obscure track from their country or language group was mind blowing. Many new friendships were struck up there, and on my travels overseas I’ve slept on people’s couches I met at St Jerome’s.
Early event concepts included the ‘Bigwest bogan’ theme night (Saigon Sausage’s idea), and a 12-hour party on the hottest Australia Day in history where we raised and toasted an aboriginal flag. We hosted Japanese noisemakers Dododdo and Ove Naxx in collaboration with Sydney expero-label Dual Plover. UK sound artist Marcus Leadley, bass merchant Saddhu Zero from France, and Coco Varma — an early member of the UK Asian Massive — were three other standout internationals featured in the early history.
Jools from Cape town ZA, FSB from Bulgaria, Kaigen from Japan, Stroms from Germany, and Idar Avestad from Norway were living in Melbourne at the time and virtually became honorary residents. Neil Sweeney, Lord Lingham, Kenyan DJ Bongo, Russian Disko, Johnny Topper, Vulgar Boatman, Marguerite, Vulk Makedonski, Greek hip hop man ADP, Isnod, Dubwise, Zaibatsu, Arnold Eye Irons & Emile Zile were amongst the local guest DJ roster.
Local luminaries who dropped left field trans-cultural sets included Jesse I (a dark Jamaican set), Tony Biggs, John Lee from Mountains in the Sky, Barrage, Ollie Olsen, Steve Law, David Thrussell, Qua and DJ Wasabi to name a few.
Early highlights for Antuong were Dylan Martorell of Snawklor playing Rio Baille, Annalee Koernig ‘DJ Janette Howard’ mixing black metal, hip hop & ethnic folk tracks, Rob Diggity aka ‘Sunshine Sanga’ & ‘Steezy’ playing his debut DJ set (at the Bogan festival)… He’s now an Opulent regular. Raceless’ highlights included Brenda (gothic set), Denesh (classical), Jim Knox (soundtrack), Guido (Brasilian) and Kaigen.
We did many ‘listening party’ CD launch nights including ‘Nfa’, ‘Kings of Techno’ and the ‘3615’ album by French act TTC. During a launch for a Coldcut disc, a streaker struck! Mashy P, one of our Sydney crew recollected:
“This dreadlocked guy came up to me in the DJ booth, armed with a quick succession of ‘up yours’ fingered salutes, and ranting about a guy with a Led Zeppelin T-Shirt… I suggested the T-shirt wearer perhaps was donning the top as a trendy retro thing, maybe he wasn’t actually into the band... With a few more ‘up yours’ gestures he disappeared into the crowd. I’d almost forgot about the incident, when he returned about 10 minutes later stark naked. He came up to the booth and said, ‘this is because of the Led Zeppelin T Shirt’ — before being escorted out by security, confused smiles and raised eyebrows all round.”
Due to our common obsession with the human voice in its many forms, Hip Hop and its connected sounds were at the centre of what we did. The first year the event was more about sitting around drinking beers and listening to down tempo beats with mad LOTE vocals. Much of the music I’d gathered through my radio work was more up tempo though, and my background was late ’80s/early ’90s electronic music, so it wasn’t long before I started to wind the tempo up closer to midnight.
The breakthrough moment for me — when I really noticed the flavour of our night changing — was when a group of drunk tattooed lesbians threw a birthday party and enslaved me to play a ‘Happy Birthday’ 12 inch by Stevie Wonder continually. I kept beat mixing international stuff and mashing it with electronic bass rhythms and planetary tribalism. The place went nuts and I distinctly remember a group of drunk businessmen getting swept up into the craziness and one of them dancing on a flimsy table in front of the DJ booth. What was this?
My perception changed that night, and by the next week I’d organised an arsenal of kicking global street sounds from all over the planet. I wasn’t interested in so-called world music. I wanted us to push the new century global electronic sounds. The whole internet fuelled global bass movement emerged a couple of years later, but we had a jump start via the multi-cultural kids of Australia, noice! This worked hand in hand with what Raceless was on about. The outdoor ‘under the stars’ atmosphere of the venue contributed a vital ingredient to the out of control dancefloor energy exploding week after week. Pure luck meant we only weathered a few wet nights in the first year.
Over time the venue got more and more of a reputation. Initially Jerome was reluctant for it to be reviewed or promoted in any way, he was more interested in organic growth than monetary gains… It was inevitable though that word got out and more and more people were coming down. St Jerome’s made it onto a guide for Melbourne Bar hopping and things were never the same again. The 2004/05 Summer Series pushed more of a live music angle and this sowed the seed for the Laneway Festival. And we dropped beats out back that first year alongside the Friday crew. And Uber Lingua also provided DJ support for Lily Allen’s industry night at Jerome’s.
After a couple of summer series, Jerome was keen to have more live music nights and in 2006 asked me to expand on the DJ concept… Jerome’s friend Alfredo, who maintained (on a daily basis it seemed) the bits ‘n’ pieces sound system for the venue — would turn up with a whole second live PA, mixing desk, mics and large stage. We’d also lob in a couple of wide throw video projectors powered by VJ Siadatz who developed specific material, plus my DJ setup and go nuts with a massive block party.
We started with our 2nd Birthday Bash in 2006 featuring Curse ov Dialect alongside the Kenyan Hip Hop crew I was touring ‘Sinpare’. A series of monthly events followed in the second half of 2006 with Miso & Nubian Nights, Filastine from Barcelona (complete with shopping trolley percussion), Berlin based Canadian Deadbeat & Mexico’s Alejandro Davila (both out for the Red Bull Music Academy), our first ‘Uber System’ AV event, a gypsy night featuring Croque Monsieur & finally New Yorker DJ Olive presented on Thursdays over a six month period using the expanded technical configuration.
We also promoted two Saturday night parties… the Melbourne Funk Ball 2, a fundraiser for Brasilian street kids (the first was at Horse Bazaar), and the first Melbourne Gypsy & Balkan Bash. All of these nights were incredibly intense packed out events. Global street sounds and tailored video erupting in a moonlit back alley of Melbourne. Almost without fail all of the internationals we featured during these events would claim it to be the highlight of their tour. For me these were the definitive moments of the residency.
In 2007 we were in our forth year, and played another Laneway festival season (Sydney and Melbourne spaces this time). Due to the reputation forged at St Jerome’s, Uber Lingua was also presenting stages at Sydney Festival, performing at the opening nights of Darwin Festival and Adelaide Fringe, and promoting parties in Hobart and Brisbane, alongside launching a tour of Mexico.
Multiple generations of Jerome’s punters had come and gone, Raceless had turned his attention to ‘studies’, and I took the programming of the night more toward a dancefloor focus. Gonzo the mad Peruvian, Mr Fish, Panika, the Palacio Brothers, Mondo Loco, Aysu C, Irishman Aindrias de Staic, Hezekiah, and the Dub lovin’ Italians Davide & Luca were amongst the regulars playing alongside my global beats rituals.
Other internationals DJs during this time included Bostich and Panoptica from the Mexican Nortec Collective (a secret show when they were out for the Melbourne Fest), Chief Boima from San Francisco, MC Makkenz from Tokyo, Russ Jones from Future World Funk UK, and Dunklebunt from Vienna. All of this crew were doing similar stuff in their countries and in time would give us gigs in return.
We were now active in other cities, particularly Sydney with a growing crew up there playing another weekly residency. They started to come down and play at St Jerome’s as part of an inter-city exchange.
Uber Lingua went on to do many other projects, and the ‘birth project’ Jerome provided us was key to the particular tangents we ventured… I can’t be more grateful. Much respect also to Raceless the brave visionary.
I do lots of stuff across diverse media, and through my DJ work I take all my ideas and processes and have fun with them. The happiest times I’ve ever had DJing were at St Jerome’s. I used to refer to it as my ‘weekly work out’ as I’d go in totally unplanned and simply fang it. Playing to the very open minded St Jerome’s crowd was often an out of body experience. When the place was packed with international types and they were going nuts dancing, the energy feeding back into the DJ booth was mind blowing.
Melbourne’s cultural diversity got a shot in the arm I reckon