The Fashion Tribes of Melbourne
Theses article appeared in The Age entertainment section. I recognise a couple of names from the old days... Warning: very long post
It's not just a look-at-me syndrome - behind the dog-collars, frocks and phat pants, Melbourne's fashion clans are founded on precise ideas, writes Janice Breen Burns.
IN MELBOURNE MORE THAN any other Australian city, fashion subcultures blossom and spread easily. Nobody knows why exactly. The goths, rockabillies and ravers photographed here took a stab at rationalising why they first chose to dress the way they do, live the way they do, love the music and art and fashion that they do: "It was the scene." "It was the clothes." "It was the music." "It was my mum/dad/brother/sister/mate." But it was always more than that. Most explanations petered out on some rendering of the words: "I just am."
I just am a rockabilly, a goth, a raver or, for that matter, an emo, a rasta, a death rocker, skater, surfer, hip-hop brother or sista. Whatever. What living an off-beat life, dressing in an off-beat way - whether just for the weekends or in an everyday in-the-blood way that must marginalise and force you out to society's fringes - really boils down to is: "I am an individual." Which may seem ironic, or downright confusing to those in the socio-cultural chain store and logo-designer mainstream because, don't all goths look alike? Can't you pick a rockabilly by his quiff, or her penchant for big hair and diner frocks? A raver by his/her phat pants? And the answer is usually, yes.
But they are alike as all flowers are alike.
Melbourne's fashion subcultures are recognisable for some cliched details, but they are also seething scenes of expressive individualism. Within each tribe's definitive aesthetic, its members are, more often than not, wildly creative. Their first calling is to be different, but with meaning and reason. "It's fashion, but with all these hidden meanings and mechanisms underlying it," explains Bernard Lyons, a legal librarian by day, and goth by night, with an active academic interest in fashion tribes. "It's the opposite of walking into Just Jeans to buy another T-shirt."
Goths
There is a little goth in us all; a little darkness and melancholia, a tendency to baulk at the cheery "chin up" world of social etiquette and conventions. "Maybe we just question things a bit more," romantic goth Aowynne Davies-White says, struggling to define the indefinable. "We're maybe a bit more cynical." In fact, cynicism is inherent in the "goth look". It snubs perky colours and anything cute. Pretty things are useful for ridicule and parody; a daisy will be impaled on a spike, a cupie doll burned at the stake. It's a statement.
Recurring elements in the "goth look" include raven-black hair and eyeliner, shadow, lips and nails, androgynous black and silver accents in corsets, buckles, spikes and body piercings. Tattoos tend to whimsy and funereal. The medieval melodrama of flowing gowns and heavy cloaks is always in vogue. It's the stuff of dark, pre-electric worlds, of candlelight and poetry, romantic notions of love, and a belief that the human soul is not all lily-white; on its flip side, there is hate and evil.
Any confident definition of what goth is, however, will vaporise when applied to individuals. "Maybe we're slightly more jaded than other people," says Davies-White. "But not all of us." There is infinite variety in any subculture because, as a rule, its members escape the mainstream to express their individuality. Goth is no exception.
Bernard Lyons, a classic goth outside his pin-striped suited weekdays as librarian for a city law firm, says there are too many types of goth to tie down. "Goths are individuals first, goths second. We're artists, jewellery designers, photographers ... whatever. We don't like mainstream fashion, so we slip out of it into a parallel society. Goths aren't goths because they need to be in a subculture, they just are."
SUBGENRES
Although goths tend to be passionate individualists, some aspects of their life and appearance also clump enough to warrant the term "subgenre". It is a loose term, however, and far from absolute. There are dozens of goth subgenres recognisable by their clothing and taste in music, including "deathrock" goths (often high spiked punk hair, biker boots, black jeans and chains) and fetish goths (glossy PVC clothes and corsets, fishnets, spiked chokers). Here are a few of them:
Classic: darkly dramatic and drawn loosely from an historic, archetypal gothic aesthetic. On Bernard Lyons, the look is theatrical, elegant and androgynous: a sweeping, ankle length priest coat by Sydney's Serpentine Gallery, black lace cuffs that spill half a metre from his wrists, a brooding expression and sharp, clean features accentuated by a goatee, heavily drawn eyes and brows and silver piercings.
Common goth rock classics: Cocteau Twins, the Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Schadenfreude, Dead Can Dance, Rasputina.
Cyber: Melinda Hanley doesn't define herself as a "cyber", or any particular goth genre for that matter, but agreed to dress as one for our photo. Cyber is a hybrid of Japanese Anime (cartoon) characters and industrial symbolism, with infinite individual twists. Hanley's "cyberlocks" are a combination of waist-length green tendrils by Miss Razor De Rockefeller of the US, and tubular blue spring locks designed and made by Lolita goth Kimothy Camilleri. The corset is Hanley's design, made under her Defence Mechanism label, and the 15-centimetre slab-sole boots, custom made to order in Japan. Industrial goggles are sought after as accessories in several goth subgenres and Hanley's silver wrist and neck cuffs, designed by Bernard Lyons for his Assassin label, are connected by thin plastic "arteries" to draw on the classic horror concept of part-human androids.
Common cyber goth music: Covenant, Nine Inch Nails, Laibach.
Lolita: the name is a throwback to Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of romanticised pedophilia but in this gothic subgenre it also draws from the cartoonishly cute "hyper-dolly" trend among many Japanese girls who dress up on weekends and join thousands of others in Tokyo's Harajuku district. Kimothy Camilleri grew up in a country town - "I was a popular, 50-kilogram blonde in school" - but found her soul in goth culture. At 18 she is remarkably accomplished and works at a variety of artistic jobs to pay for custom-made dolly frocks, Japanese handmade slab-sole boots, and screw-curl hairpieces, which she also makes to order for other Lolita, cyber and graver goths.
A Lolita goth rock idol is Japanese singer Mana of Malice Mizer.
Romantic: In her tightly corsetted damsel dress and buttoned boots, crystal lace choker and gloves, Aowynne Davies-White is probably the goth least likely to draw attention on the street. Like many others, she works in places that don't demand she swap her goth frocks for streetwear or a corporate suit. Romantic goth is a subgenre with allegiances to classic goth and its tendency to dark melodrama and androgyny. Men in lace, corsetry, heavy eye make-up and dyed-jet hair are common among the romantics, whose music tastes are also similar to that of classic goths.
Graver: A relatively new subgenre of goth culture, gravers are a hybrid of "goth" and "raver", so appear like raven-haired, hyper-industrial, body-pierced, heavily buckled and chained angels next to the less encumbered ravers in their neon-striped phat pants, gators and hoodies (see ravers). Like Melinda Hanley, Rachael Travica-Dunstan does not define her look as one goth subgenre or another, but agreed to dress in her "graver" look for our photo. She is fiercely individual and reserves her most striking goth looks for weekends when she draws a perverse sort of delight from the occasional taunts of far less sophisticated teens who, she has noticed, draw their sense of identity from T-shirts and denim jeans. "This is who I am."
THEY SHOP
- Victorian Gothic (clothes, jewellery, accessories, corsets), 141 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 1777
- Lockworks (for hair), Level 1, 382 Little Collins Street, city, 9642 3384
- Peril Underground (clothes, jewels, vintage, tattoos) Basement, 17-19 Elizabeth Street, city, 9614 0155
- Circa Vintage Clothing, 1/102 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 8899
- Vicious Venus, 346 Smith Street, Collingwood, 9417 7449
- Madam Gothic Glamour, 734 High Street, Thornbury, 9484 6569
AND MEET
Melbourne Goth Forum, www.gothic.org.au
International Goth Forum, www.goth.net.au
Spraci, www.spraci.com
- Cabaret Nocturne, Highlander Lane, city, www.cabaretnocturne.net
- Circa Nocturna, part of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program, is an annual show of goth and other alternative/subcultural fashions, on Saturday, March 1, 8pm. Fitzroy Town Hall, Napier Street, Fitzroy: circanocturna.com, and www.myspace.com/circanocturna.
RAVERS
Edwina Hilton-Thorpe can dance like a girl possessed; a medley of elegant little kicks, jumps, skipping steps and spins she varies over and over, for hours and hours, until dawn breaks, or the club shuts, or she falters from sheer weariness; whichever comes first.
Today is different though; she is dancing for our photograph and it's hard, and hot; not her usual environment. In 20 minutes, she's puffed, and pink. "When you're out (at a club or rave), it's different; everybody's dancing and you get carried, you get into a kind of zone and you can go on and on."
Hilton-Thorpe is what you might call a weekend raver: she gets everything she wants out of the techno, electro, trance music scene a couple of times a month, then returns to her normal life. For her, the customised "phat pants", headbands and hoodies, the tight little mini skirts and fat, furry gators worn from sneakers to knees, are a temporary ticket into the music more than marks of a sub-cultural lifestyle. She is not alone. Most ravers swap their highly personalised gear - "phat pants" that fit close at the hip but are wide as wind socks at the bottom and often covered with glow-in-the-dark reflector stripes and cut-outs - for "civvies" after each club night out.
"I've been in love with this music for as long as I can remember," Hilton-Thorpe says of the high-tech beat that drives hard into a raver's corpuscles.
"I think of this as the physical expression of this form of music," she adds about the mesmerising dance.
It's an astute observation. Above the doof-doof base line of house, techno, electro, trance and hard dance music on which the rave scene pivots, the complex higher registers do seem to plug like volts into the dancers' limbs.
Teenager Craig Verdon picks up the beat where Hilton-Thorpe left off, flicking right foot forward as he kicks his left back, accelerating this until his Dunlop sneakers appear to hover-glide a hair's breadth above the floor. He jumps to make way for fellow members of his rave "crew", Andy Truong and Cain Porter, who also expertly kick, twist and spin. "I just listen to the music and feel like doing it," says Truong, without stopping.
The three young men never seem to stop; dancing as they talk, or as they don't talk, constantly moving, filling every pause. This is the way they move around the city as the HBR (Hard Base Rockers) crew. Unlike Hilton-Thorpe, they live lives infused with trance, electro, techno and hard dance music. It connects them, absorbs them, even makes them thin. "It's meant meeting good friends - more friends, for me," Verdon says. "It keeps me away from the computer," Truong says. For Porter, it is a creative outlet like no other.
Five to 10 years ago, a rave was something you heard about on an internet and mobile phone grapevine. A DJ and megawatt speaker set, a few opportunists selling water, glowsticks and whatever else you could possibly need to dance madly all night and - voila - you had yourself a rave. The size of them, on bush properties, in forest clearings, football fields and beaches, depended on the efficiency of the technology that got the word out.
These days, raves are highly organised, are more often in clubs or approved public spaces (such as Federation Square) and usually ticketed. Despite the frenetic and solitary, trance-like dance peculiar to the scene, it is also dominated by "crews", or clusters of friends who often develop their own style of dance. Some super crews criss-cross the world, following the scene and carrying the seeds of new music, styles and fashions with them. Ravers are consequently the fashion tribe that evolves the fastest, metamorphoses most often and apart from the looser cult or fashion tribe known as emos, involves the highest proportion of young members.
SUB-GENRES:
Every raver is a "sub-genre" unto themselves, says Edwina Hilton-Thorpe. "No one dances in the same way," she says. "No one dresses in the same way." There are, however, clusters of significant similarity, including the evolution over the past two years of a dance style recognisable as "the Melbourne shuffle".
"I can't tell you exactly what it is," Hilton-Thorpe says. "Just a style of the running man (dance step), skips, jumps, kicks and spins that looks different." Last year, at a rave club in Beijing, a stranger yelled into Hilton-Thorpe's ear above the hammering electronic music as she danced: "You must be from Melbourne."
THEY SHOP:
Undisputed headquarters of rave wear is the shop affectionately known as "Mos" and run by its frenetic and passionate creator David Meill. Ministry of Style is at 348/350 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9419 4952.
AND MEET:
- Pony, 68 Little Collins Street, city 9662 1026
- Colonial Hotel, 240 King Street, city, 9670 859
- 28 Francis Street, city
- The Cage, Level 3, 2 Coverlid Place, city, 9663 1018
There are regular shuffle competitions and "shuffle-offs" including at Federation Square in Melbourne's CBD posted, with information about other regular club and other ticketed events on www.spraci.com.
ROCKABILLIES
In the 1950s, American culture split like an embryonic cell: hyper-hormonal teens on one side, conservative grown-ups on the other.
As the adult side hardened with the demands of materialism and McCarthyism, and all that they embodied, the at-once frivolous and angst-ridden teen side split, and split, and split again, ad infinitum into mixed fan clubs for Elvis Presley, schlock horror movies, Bill Haley, rock 'n' roll, bowling alleys, country music, The Wild One, customised jalopies, Tiki and Hawaiian fantasies, high-volt Marilyn Monroe glamour, Patsy Kline, Buddy Holly, Technicolor, 3D, TV and high school diner dates.
Today every recognisable iconic stream of 1950s culture - its music, fashion, art, decor, cars - still criss-cross the modern rockabilly movement. On its fringes, it is in constant flux, picking up signals as it rolls through every decade since the 1950s, from London punks and "teddy boys", to modernist art, 1990s horror and high school movie genres, thrash metal music and even fragments of goth sub-culture. But at its core, rockabilly is relatively stable despite the myriad spins its individual practitioners put on it. "It feeds on everything," says Guy Daley, a smouldering Marlon Brando type in tan leather fly jacket, white T-shirt and cuffed denim jeans. "It's not all about side burns and big hair and customised cars."
But it is that too. Common, but by no means compulsory among rockabilly boys, are slicked quiffs, western style and bowling team shirts, tattoos (a classic anti-conservative gesture in the '50s) and unbleached cuffed denim jeans. Among its girls, peachy air-brush-perfect rose-lipped make-up and big hair, full-swinging rock-around-the-clock frocks and tight, diner waitress shirtdresses are also common.
Like any socio-fashion-sub-cult, it is contradictory to its core.
SUB-GENRES:
The names loosely describe the sources of rockabilly culture but are almost invariably mixed by its individuals -
Classic: the nearest to purist practitioners. Classics are often middle-aged and, with the knowledge gleaned from living through the original era as rockabilly genres were being forged, often have a "zero tolerance" response to variations, says Guy Daley. "You get a lot of Elvis impersonators and big skirts."
Music preferences: original 1950s recordings.
Neo-classic: the modern individualists who pick and pluck the stuff that plugs directly into their psyche from rockabilly's 60-odd year evolution of constant expansion and metamorphosis. They come as punkishly pretty as Holly Jung in her micro-mini, tank top, biker boots and bicep tattoos, as cartoonishly glamourous as burlesque bombshell Beth Chapman (of Man's Ruin Burlesque) with her hyper-blonde curls and swish, polka-dot rock-frock, and as movie-star-suave as Donnie Cornelis in his crisp tailored, piped and embroidered western suit, Cuban-heeled cowboy boots, silver piercings and vampire red streak through his neat, slicked quiff.
The Neo-classics' music list is also as long and varied as rockabilly history, from root-stock rock'n'roll, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane to The Blasters, Los Lobos and current local acts, Hank's Jalopy Demons, the Satellites, Benny and the Fly By Nighters, Nici Blue Eyes (in our photo), Man's Ruin Burlesque (Beth Chapman, also pictured), Intoxica, Nervous Wreckers, Firebird and many more.
Psychobillies: a hybrid of rockabilly, punk and body-count horror movie sub-cults, said to have originated with the music styles of New York punk rock group The Cramps, then the Stray Cats and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, before blossoming into a notable sub-cult driven by bands such as Britain's The Meteors in the 1980s. Psychobillies dress - for want of a better word - more darkly than classic and neo-classic rockabillies, emphasising their punkish and horror genre origins with funereal palette choices and gothic twists.
On psychobillies' list of music favourites are names such as the Necromantics, Tiger Army and Social Distortion.
THEY SHOP:
Undisputed daddy-of-all-rockabillies, Ross Waddington, opened the Route 66 fashion shops 25 years ago, which spurred the explosion of rockabillies in Melbourne and Sydney. The business still pumps adrenalin through the rockabilly community with regular music and mixed events based around custom art, cars, burlesque and bands. Guy Daley is designer and manager for the business which also sells imported clothes, accessories and the odd Tiki mug, based on all streams of the rockabilly aesthetic, from Cathedral Arcade, 37 Swanston Street, city, 9639 5669 and 2 Grattan Street, Prahran, 9529 4659; www.route66.com.au
Chapel Street Bazaar, 217 Chapel Street, Prahran, 9529 1727 or 9510 9841, continuously renews its retro furniture, clothing and accessories stock and is particularly popular among full-time (as opposed to weekend) rockabillies who infuse home, car, wardrobe and life generally with iconic items of 1950s style.
AND MEET:
Wolfcall is one of the many regular rockabilly gigs sponsored by Route 66. The most recent was held on New Year's Eve and starred Lauren Marie and the Horton Brothers, both acts from Texas, as well as a dozen local acts. Upcoming events will be posted on route66.com.au
- Central Club Hotel, 293 Swan Street, Richmond (corner Coppin Street) hosts regular rockabilly nights.
- Colonial Hotel, corner Lonsdale and King streets, city
Keeping up appearances can be a bold and time-consuming process for the oft-heckled members of Melbourne's fashion tribes. Janice Breen Burns takes a second look beyond the mainstream.
Tim Stoekle is a charming young bloke; tall, good-looking, meticulously well-groomed, and heckled everywhere he goes. "People are always yelling at me," the 21-year-old fur finisher says cheerfully. "On trams, public transport, in pubs, clubs." Melbourne is unofficially renowned as the city most tolerant of eccentricity, but Stoekle's retro '70s "magnificent dandy" look - posh velvet suits, silk waistcoats and cravats, bobbed hair and granny specs - is just too hard for some T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing locals to take. He's not Robinson Crusoe either. Death-rocker Lyle Blakemore, a quiet club promoter and call-centre operator fond of bleach-spattered, black winklepicker boots and a shaved mohawk he can stiffen to stand a handspan straight up from his head, knows a bit about street heckling, too. "Society likes to grab onto the easiest explanation for what they don't understand." For Blakemore and his deathrock tribe, the assumptions usually start with, "Satanist!". "It's so funny. People say, 'I know what you are, I know who you are', but they don't."
Most members of the tribes featured here, the deathrockers, mods and less so the reggae crew, have had to come to terms with the impact of their appearance on the conformists around them. The more markedly different they are to society's Average Jack and Jess, the more unnerved the hecklers and negative the heckling. But most learn to live with it and cluster in their tribes, particularly when dressed in their most spectacular, identifying outfits. In numbers, there is solidarity and, more importantly, their reason for being: the music, clothes, politics and subculture that defines them.
They can be smug. Understandably. Even a heckler - particularly an inarticulate one - can boost their self-confidence because isn't that proof of their raison d'etre? To stand apart. For example, Clint Finnigan, 28, a soft-spoken computer programmer and deathrocker, hazards a guess that his flamboyant appearance is a counter-expression for his natural reserve: "Maybe it's bringing out what I don't find easy to bring out."
Most tribe members say they never had a choice. Something about 1960's music and fashion, for instance, compelled nurse Marie Roath so completely that 20 years later, she still dresses, clubs, even go-go dances to a mod beat. "At the start, I loved it all because of the attention I got, but now it's a lifestyle. It's the way I dress, it's the music, it's my friends. We're all in this. We're a community."
For some, the compulsion was more personal: "I was trying and trying to fit it, then something just snapped," Stoekle recalls of his primary-school years. "I thought, 'It's just not going to work, I'm not like these people, I'm not going to conform'." So his search for a counter-culture, another means of expression, began. Others remember simply an overwhelming need to distinguish themselves from the high-school pack. "I find it's about purposely segregating yourself from everyone else," says Finnigan of the deathrock look and culture. By "everyone else", he means the mainstream conformists he found so alien in his teen years. Finnigan has come a long way since the days when their occasional heckling irritated or upset him.
"Now I know I'm expressing something they could never express," and so he strolls, smugly, on.
Deathrockers
Lyle and Rachael Blakemore make a spectacularly exotic couple, the sort of husband and wife an American sit-com writer might dream up to trip a few gags about nightmare neighbours, or to grind out a few cliches about how darn-tootin' normal the rest of us are, goddamnit. Lyle's shoulder-length black hair is shaved front to back on the sides and stiffened into a towering, spinifex-like mohawk. His sinewy arms and legs are poured into ripped black jeans, band shirt and winklepicker boots all spattered and pocked with bleach and belted and buckled and glinting with steel. Rachael is the perfect wife in shattered black stockings, PVC rara skirt and a buckled corset that schloops in her waist to a cartoonish hourglass. She's got two fat red silk flowers fastened, Frieda Kahlo-style, into her ink-black hair, ropes and ropes of jet-black beads looped over her bust, a dozen silver wrist cuffs, blood-red lips and a radiant smile that kinks an otherwise arresting picture of anti-establishmentarianism.
It's the Blakemores' marvellously muddled fashion recipe of punk, grunge, goth, gang-biker and, generally, anti-establishment iconography that leaves average beholders gobsmacked and unnerved. Like most of Melbourne's counter-cultural "tribes", deathrockers are vastly different and infinitely more varied than the tight handful of assumptions made about them. "We're really more about dressing up, going out and having fun than anything," Lyle says without irony. "Society likes to grab onto these ideas, you know: you dress weird, so you must be a Satanist." On some level, however, this softly spoken call-centre operator appears to relish some of the misperceptions his counter-cultural life and looks attract, and in that he is not unusual. Twenty-eight-year-old computer programmer and deathrocker Clint Finnigan says heckling by people on the street used to bother him as a teenager but now the power play has reversed. "I know they're doing it because I'm expressing something they never could." It's a rightly smug conclusion that's held by most subcultural tribes who see themselves proudly standing apart from the mediocre masses. "It's purposely segregating yourself from everyone else," says Clint.
Deathrockers have mostly superficial things in common, according to Lyle: the music style, the punkish, anti-establishment look, and for many, the kind of blood-and-guts horror movies that can scare the pants off you, or make you laugh. "I laugh," says Lyle. "It's that whole cheesey factor. And deathrock is definitely a light-hearted thing. There's nothing serious about it."
This is despite how it seems to conservatives and the satanic undertone of some patron bands such as Anti World, Tragic Black, All Gone Dead, and the original deathrockers, Christian Death. Although some bad-seed culverts have mushroomed out of the deathrock scene overseas, Lyle says the local scene is only superficially cloaked in darkness. The suicide of original deathrock band Christian Death's lead singer, for instance, has hung over the movement for years and probably worried legions of parents whose kids latch on to the scene as a vent of anti-mainstream rebellion and expression. Young Jesse Tanzen for example, plunged into Melbourne's deathrock scene the instant he turned 18 last year. "Before that, I couldn't get into the clubs." Since year 9 at high school, the quiet graphic-arts hopeful moved to old school goth bands such as Specimen, 45 Grave and Christian Death, and an overwhelming compulsion to appear different from the pack. When he hit 18, Lyle and Rachael Blakemore's deathrock Club1334 (named for the year of the black plague), was a natural progression. Jesse's next goal, apart from qualifying for a graphic art course, is to form Melbourne's first contemporary deathrock band using his own skills on guitar and keyboard.
They meet:
The Blakemores, formerly of deathrock club Kisskiss Bangbang, could be described as matriarch and patriarch of Melbourne's deathrock scene. They now run its pinnacle, Club1334, monthly at DV8 (formerly Subculture), Level 3, 12 McKillop Street, city, myspace.com/DV8 and http://www.myspace.com/club1334
.
"Darkness Visible" is the next 1334 club night, on April 19.
Black Widow's Nightclub, last Saturday of each month, Bass Lounge, 100 Little Bourke Street, city, myspace.com/blackwidowsclub.
They listen to:
Hundreds of deathrock bands have joined the original line-up, which included names such as Christian Death, 45 Grave (with lead singer, Dinah Cancer), Gun Club, Burning Image, the Flesh Eaters and Kommunity FK, which evolved with horror undertones out of a punk-rock scene in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Deathrock's second wave surged out of a British club known as the Batcave and picked up bands such as Specimen and Alien Sex Fiend. A complicated evolution of revivals and fresh bands has produced wave after wave of goth rock and deathrock bands, over which devotees endlessly argue about their relevance to one genre or another. Like most subcultural music scenes, the internet is heavily used to identify and circulate news of emerging bands in Europe, the US and locally, such as the Cemetery Girls.
They shop:
The deathrock look is essentially a mixture of goth and punk elements - black jeans and band shirts, vintage mesh and punched fabrics, silver steel jewellery and industrial details such as buckling and zips, heavy tattooing, body piercing, geisha-pale make-up with dyed black hair that the women decorate and the men coax into spectacular mohawks. Most looks are cobbled from op-shop and vintage shop finds. The techniques of ripping and splattering black garments with bleach is common. Women take an even more eclectic approach to fashion, mixing cyber-gothic corsetry and minx looks found at places such as Victorian Gothic, 141 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 1777, Peril Underground, Basement, 17-19 Elizabeth Street, city, 9614 0155, Vicious Venus, 346 Smith Street, Collingwood, 9417 7449 and Circa Vintage Clothing, 1/102 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 8899.
And also:
www.starvox.net/crypt/dr/dr.htm
http://www.spaci.com.au
Mods
In the 1980s, a small skinhead subculture flourished in Melbourne, and Marie Roath remembers it most for the lines of 1960s motor scooters - Vespas and Lambrettas - kicked over outside her favourite band haunts. "There was a lot of fighting going on then," recalls Roath, still a nurse and professional go-go dancer after all these years. "But, we were a community, we'd look out for each other." Twenty-odd years later, the skinheads have either gone, or aren't as irritated by the chic, little putt-putts, the mini shimmy frocks and teased bobs any more, and the mods who favoured those scooters are thriving again. "Young people have come in," says Roath. "New life, new blood." For Roath, mod is a love affair with music and fashion: "I love the look; neat and tidy, not a hair out of place, groomed to the hilt and I can't tell you how much hairspray."
"Mod", however, is perhaps a contradictory description for this subcultural tribe today. It now includes people living, dressing and dancing as if time froze in the 1960s and '70s.
"I've refined my style to an absolutely dandified look," Tim Stoekle, 21, one of the movement's most striking mods.
He was inspired by actor Jon Pertwee's version of Doctor Who, the DVD borrowed from school friends when he was just 12. Stoekle was mesmerised by Pertwee's elaborate green velvet suit, "Gorgeously tailored, perfectly fitted." He began composing his own look - waistcoats, cravats, silk shirts and tailored suits and separates - from op shops and vintage stores.
He cuts a spectacular dash in a plum velvet suit, chartreuse silk waistcoat, purple cravat, sleek bobbed haircut ("I cut it myself") and round tinted spectacles. "People are always yelling out at me on public transport or at pubs," he says, blithely. "I don't care. I did try to fit in for a long time, then something just snapped. I thought, 'This isn't going to work. I'm just not like these people'."
Now he's a very happy dandy.
The opportunely named Emma Peel, 26, also found a her way into the 1960s revival by way of one magic moment - the discovery of an attic full of her mother's youth: cool radios and records and a portable record player, in her grandparents' house. Something clicked. "I never wanted to blend into the crowd." She was instantly hooked. "I started listening to Dusty Springfield and reading obsessively about the culture and fashion; Old Vogues from France and Italy. I started op-shopping obsessively to emulate the fashion looks."
Now Peel, DJ, dancer, club promoter, event manager and model, is recognised as one of Melbourne's most active mods, and one of its most striking dressers. Like most of her peers, she uses the fashions of the 1960s and '70s as inspiration for her look, but mingles contemporary and expressive details to make her look unique. "I'm not afraid to stand out, and I think this way of dressing actually suits me."
They meet:
At club nights with go-go girls dancing on podiums or in cages, at pub nights where the music belted out is as cute as the Ronettes or as raw as a '60s German garage band.
Tote Hotel, 71 Johnston Street, Collingwood, 9419 5320, thetotehotel.com
Town Hall Hotel, 33 Errol Street, North Melbourne, 9328 1983
Greyhound Hotel, 1 Brighton Road, St Kilda, 9534 4189
Gimme Shelter club nights every second Saturday of the month at the Exford Hotel, 199 Russell Street, city, 9663 2697, www.myspace.com/gimme_shelter_melbourne
Soul-a GoGo, radio station PBSFM's monthly club night at The Laundry Bar, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, 9419 7111.
They shop:
Almost invariably for original 1960s fashion and vinyl records in op shops, on eBay and in vintage stores, though the pickings are increasingly slim, says Marie Roath. "It's pot luck, really," agrees Tim Stoekle of his cherry-picked wardrobe.
Some of the best vintage gear can be had from (among many others) the Shag stores at 130 Chapel Street, Windsor, 9510 8817; Centreway Arcade, 20 Collins Street, city, 9663 8166; and 377 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9417 3348.
They listen to:
Local DJs: Emma Peel, Vince Peach, Mohair Slim, Pierre.
PBS106.7FM, pbsfm.org.au
The mix of music at a 1960s club night will surprise anyone who assumes the decade's pop signature sounds will be on a continuous, monotonous loop. On the contrary, DJs such as Emma Peel are aficionados of underground rock and tangent bands from the period. Music styles typical at a 1960s club night include R&B, jazz, freakbeat, US and European garage, Motown, soul, Latin soul, surf and even exotics such as the tiki or Hawaiian sound. Bands featured include the Electric Prunes, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Mongo Santa Maria, the Rolling Stones (Emma Peel has a drop-dead version of Paint it Black by a French 1960s garage band), the Beachboys, the Kinks, the Sonics, the Creations, and thousands of other originals. Local bands also play live, including all-girl group, the Shimmies.
And also:
www.myspace.com/thegirlbomb (Site of DJ, Emma Peel).
www.myspace.com/groovymarie (for tips on '60s fashion and make-up).
Reggae
(all girl) crew
Five young women from Greek, Sri Lankan and Ghanaian backgrounds found their way into Melbourne's reggae scene a few years ago and immediately, diligently, began spinning out their own mini revolution. It's a funky kind of feminism they hope will eventually creep out and kink the global reggae movement. At reggae events from Stradbroke Island to Perth, they encourage other young women to buck what they see as a patriarchal reggae culture and spin the music they love.
"It's been really rare to see a girl DJ," says Elena Petropolous, a self proclaimed "Greek girl from the suburbs" with dreadlocks down to her waist. "But there are two now in Perth." And there are others in the bud.
And there is Melbourne. "It's unusual here, because there are so many girl DJs," says Yasmin Rupesinghe, a university administrative assistant and long-time DJ (or, selector), dressed today in her reggae tribe gear: militaristic camouflage and khaki hot-pants inspired by a Jamaican dancehall queen. "Reggae's been a male-dominated, chauvinistic scene but that's changing."
In fact, the music originated in Jamaica in the 1960s and has a complicated provenance, bound up in the principles of Rastafari, a religious movement based on the philosophies of 20th-century Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. The music and religion are habitually confused, which is technically wrong, but they do have a loose and warm, cross-pollinating relationship. Exactly how warm, depends on the reggae performer or devotee. Petropolous for instance, is Catholic and shuns some aspects of Rastafari but embraces others. She dresses modestly, as a Rastafarian woman would (except that her astonishing dreadlocks remain uncovered), but also with militaristic references that symbolise a continuing struggle for freedom and justice.
One linking theme: among all of the young women and their highly individual interpretations of the subculture, the colours of the Ethiopian and Jamaican flags recur in bangles, belts, hair bands and clothing.
"We call the Rastafari philosophy 'livity'; it's about freedom, repatriation, justice," explains Rupesinghe. "You take from Rastafari what means something to you." And so, for the all-girl reggae DJ crews, the pickings are mixed, unique, reflected in each one's clothes, the records she spins, the way she lives her life. "For me, it was all about the music at first - that's what spoke to me," says Petropolous. "But then, I started to understand reggae's anti-Babylon (anti-establishment) message and its calls for individuality, spirituality, fighting the oppressor."
When she "got it", Petropolous felt a power she intends never to surrender. "Anyone from an ethnic background, any woman, understands."
They are:
Elena "Sista Itations" Petropolous, 31, graphic designer and Vida-Sunshyne Borquaye, 23, singer of reggae, soul and hip-hop, are partners in the Natty Sistren Sound DJ/selector crew. Andi "Night Nurse" Ingram, 30, lawyer, works solo as a DJ/selector, and Fiona "Fee" Bourne, 27, hospitality worker and Yasmin "Bellyas" Rupesinghe, 28, university administrative worker, are partners in the crew Housewife's Choice.
They meet:
The longest-running reggae night in Australia is More Fire by Chant Down Sound, second Saturday of the month, Brown Alley, corner Lonsdale and King streets, city. The seventh anniversary celebration night is on April 19, www.chantdown.com
Pressure Drop, by Natty Sistren Sound, fourth Saturday of the month, Laundry, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, www.myspace.com/pressuredrop
Heartical, Hi-Fi Basement Session, first Saturday of the month, Night Owl, 33 Elizabeth Street, city, www.myspace.com/hearticalhifi
Riddem Method, by the Housewife's Choice crew, third Friday of the month, Croft Institute, 21 Croft Alley, city, 9671 4399, www.myspace.com/housewifeschoice
Ring the Alarm, with Ras Crucial, Jesse I, Sister Itations, Vida-Sunshyne, Dizzy Dee and weekly guests, every Wednesday, Laundry, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy.
Zimbabwean MC Dizzy Dee, with Mista Savona and the Rootbound system, every Tuesday, Evelyn Hotel, 351 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9419 5500,
Reggae at the Horn, with Binghi Fire, first and third Saturdays of the month, Horn, 20 Johnston Street, Collingwood.
They listen to:
Pure rasta reggae as pioneered by Bob Marley has spun out many evolutionary tangents since the forms made famous by performers such as Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Jacob Miller, Jimmy Cliff, Shabba Ranks, Supercat, Chaka Demus, Pliers and Anthony B. To name a few. According to Jesse I, presenter and DJ on radio PBS FM, reggae is a broad term taking in most Jamaican music from the late 1960s ska era to the present. He simplifies the main categories as Modern Roots - "contemporary roots reggae, often combining real instruments with digital production"; Dancehall - "digital production and patois vocals, which your average Bob Marley fan probably wouldn't even connect to reggae"; '80s/'90s Dancehall- "less aggressive (with) more of a 'bouncy sound'"; Dub - "a form of stripped-back instrumental reggae, which eschews vocals in favour of ancillary effects such as echo, delay and reverb'; and Vintage - "classic 1960s/'70s".
Chant Down Babylon with Jesse I, 5-7pm Saturdays, 106.7 PBS FM, www.pbsfm.org.au
And also:
www.ozReggae.com
www.rastainoz.com
http://www.myspace.com/nattysistrensound
http://www.myspace.com/vidasunshyne
It's not just a look-at-me syndrome - behind the dog-collars, frocks and phat pants, Melbourne's fashion clans are founded on precise ideas, writes Janice Breen Burns.
IN MELBOURNE MORE THAN any other Australian city, fashion subcultures blossom and spread easily. Nobody knows why exactly. The goths, rockabillies and ravers photographed here took a stab at rationalising why they first chose to dress the way they do, live the way they do, love the music and art and fashion that they do: "It was the scene." "It was the clothes." "It was the music." "It was my mum/dad/brother/sister/mate." But it was always more than that. Most explanations petered out on some rendering of the words: "I just am."
I just am a rockabilly, a goth, a raver or, for that matter, an emo, a rasta, a death rocker, skater, surfer, hip-hop brother or sista. Whatever. What living an off-beat life, dressing in an off-beat way - whether just for the weekends or in an everyday in-the-blood way that must marginalise and force you out to society's fringes - really boils down to is: "I am an individual." Which may seem ironic, or downright confusing to those in the socio-cultural chain store and logo-designer mainstream because, don't all goths look alike? Can't you pick a rockabilly by his quiff, or her penchant for big hair and diner frocks? A raver by his/her phat pants? And the answer is usually, yes.
But they are alike as all flowers are alike.
Melbourne's fashion subcultures are recognisable for some cliched details, but they are also seething scenes of expressive individualism. Within each tribe's definitive aesthetic, its members are, more often than not, wildly creative. Their first calling is to be different, but with meaning and reason. "It's fashion, but with all these hidden meanings and mechanisms underlying it," explains Bernard Lyons, a legal librarian by day, and goth by night, with an active academic interest in fashion tribes. "It's the opposite of walking into Just Jeans to buy another T-shirt."
Goths
There is a little goth in us all; a little darkness and melancholia, a tendency to baulk at the cheery "chin up" world of social etiquette and conventions. "Maybe we just question things a bit more," romantic goth Aowynne Davies-White says, struggling to define the indefinable. "We're maybe a bit more cynical." In fact, cynicism is inherent in the "goth look". It snubs perky colours and anything cute. Pretty things are useful for ridicule and parody; a daisy will be impaled on a spike, a cupie doll burned at the stake. It's a statement.
Recurring elements in the "goth look" include raven-black hair and eyeliner, shadow, lips and nails, androgynous black and silver accents in corsets, buckles, spikes and body piercings. Tattoos tend to whimsy and funereal. The medieval melodrama of flowing gowns and heavy cloaks is always in vogue. It's the stuff of dark, pre-electric worlds, of candlelight and poetry, romantic notions of love, and a belief that the human soul is not all lily-white; on its flip side, there is hate and evil.
Any confident definition of what goth is, however, will vaporise when applied to individuals. "Maybe we're slightly more jaded than other people," says Davies-White. "But not all of us." There is infinite variety in any subculture because, as a rule, its members escape the mainstream to express their individuality. Goth is no exception.
Bernard Lyons, a classic goth outside his pin-striped suited weekdays as librarian for a city law firm, says there are too many types of goth to tie down. "Goths are individuals first, goths second. We're artists, jewellery designers, photographers ... whatever. We don't like mainstream fashion, so we slip out of it into a parallel society. Goths aren't goths because they need to be in a subculture, they just are."
SUBGENRES
Although goths tend to be passionate individualists, some aspects of their life and appearance also clump enough to warrant the term "subgenre". It is a loose term, however, and far from absolute. There are dozens of goth subgenres recognisable by their clothing and taste in music, including "deathrock" goths (often high spiked punk hair, biker boots, black jeans and chains) and fetish goths (glossy PVC clothes and corsets, fishnets, spiked chokers). Here are a few of them:
Classic: darkly dramatic and drawn loosely from an historic, archetypal gothic aesthetic. On Bernard Lyons, the look is theatrical, elegant and androgynous: a sweeping, ankle length priest coat by Sydney's Serpentine Gallery, black lace cuffs that spill half a metre from his wrists, a brooding expression and sharp, clean features accentuated by a goatee, heavily drawn eyes and brows and silver piercings.
Common goth rock classics: Cocteau Twins, the Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Schadenfreude, Dead Can Dance, Rasputina.
Cyber: Melinda Hanley doesn't define herself as a "cyber", or any particular goth genre for that matter, but agreed to dress as one for our photo. Cyber is a hybrid of Japanese Anime (cartoon) characters and industrial symbolism, with infinite individual twists. Hanley's "cyberlocks" are a combination of waist-length green tendrils by Miss Razor De Rockefeller of the US, and tubular blue spring locks designed and made by Lolita goth Kimothy Camilleri. The corset is Hanley's design, made under her Defence Mechanism label, and the 15-centimetre slab-sole boots, custom made to order in Japan. Industrial goggles are sought after as accessories in several goth subgenres and Hanley's silver wrist and neck cuffs, designed by Bernard Lyons for his Assassin label, are connected by thin plastic "arteries" to draw on the classic horror concept of part-human androids.
Common cyber goth music: Covenant, Nine Inch Nails, Laibach.
Lolita: the name is a throwback to Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of romanticised pedophilia but in this gothic subgenre it also draws from the cartoonishly cute "hyper-dolly" trend among many Japanese girls who dress up on weekends and join thousands of others in Tokyo's Harajuku district. Kimothy Camilleri grew up in a country town - "I was a popular, 50-kilogram blonde in school" - but found her soul in goth culture. At 18 she is remarkably accomplished and works at a variety of artistic jobs to pay for custom-made dolly frocks, Japanese handmade slab-sole boots, and screw-curl hairpieces, which she also makes to order for other Lolita, cyber and graver goths.
A Lolita goth rock idol is Japanese singer Mana of Malice Mizer.
Romantic: In her tightly corsetted damsel dress and buttoned boots, crystal lace choker and gloves, Aowynne Davies-White is probably the goth least likely to draw attention on the street. Like many others, she works in places that don't demand she swap her goth frocks for streetwear or a corporate suit. Romantic goth is a subgenre with allegiances to classic goth and its tendency to dark melodrama and androgyny. Men in lace, corsetry, heavy eye make-up and dyed-jet hair are common among the romantics, whose music tastes are also similar to that of classic goths.
Graver: A relatively new subgenre of goth culture, gravers are a hybrid of "goth" and "raver", so appear like raven-haired, hyper-industrial, body-pierced, heavily buckled and chained angels next to the less encumbered ravers in their neon-striped phat pants, gators and hoodies (see ravers). Like Melinda Hanley, Rachael Travica-Dunstan does not define her look as one goth subgenre or another, but agreed to dress in her "graver" look for our photo. She is fiercely individual and reserves her most striking goth looks for weekends when she draws a perverse sort of delight from the occasional taunts of far less sophisticated teens who, she has noticed, draw their sense of identity from T-shirts and denim jeans. "This is who I am."
THEY SHOP
- Victorian Gothic (clothes, jewellery, accessories, corsets), 141 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 1777
- Lockworks (for hair), Level 1, 382 Little Collins Street, city, 9642 3384
- Peril Underground (clothes, jewels, vintage, tattoos) Basement, 17-19 Elizabeth Street, city, 9614 0155
- Circa Vintage Clothing, 1/102 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 8899
- Vicious Venus, 346 Smith Street, Collingwood, 9417 7449
- Madam Gothic Glamour, 734 High Street, Thornbury, 9484 6569
AND MEET
Melbourne Goth Forum, www.gothic.org.au
International Goth Forum, www.goth.net.au
Spraci, www.spraci.com
- Cabaret Nocturne, Highlander Lane, city, www.cabaretnocturne.net
- Circa Nocturna, part of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program, is an annual show of goth and other alternative/subcultural fashions, on Saturday, March 1, 8pm. Fitzroy Town Hall, Napier Street, Fitzroy: circanocturna.com, and www.myspace.com/circanocturna.
RAVERS
Edwina Hilton-Thorpe can dance like a girl possessed; a medley of elegant little kicks, jumps, skipping steps and spins she varies over and over, for hours and hours, until dawn breaks, or the club shuts, or she falters from sheer weariness; whichever comes first.
Today is different though; she is dancing for our photograph and it's hard, and hot; not her usual environment. In 20 minutes, she's puffed, and pink. "When you're out (at a club or rave), it's different; everybody's dancing and you get carried, you get into a kind of zone and you can go on and on."
Hilton-Thorpe is what you might call a weekend raver: she gets everything she wants out of the techno, electro, trance music scene a couple of times a month, then returns to her normal life. For her, the customised "phat pants", headbands and hoodies, the tight little mini skirts and fat, furry gators worn from sneakers to knees, are a temporary ticket into the music more than marks of a sub-cultural lifestyle. She is not alone. Most ravers swap their highly personalised gear - "phat pants" that fit close at the hip but are wide as wind socks at the bottom and often covered with glow-in-the-dark reflector stripes and cut-outs - for "civvies" after each club night out.
"I've been in love with this music for as long as I can remember," Hilton-Thorpe says of the high-tech beat that drives hard into a raver's corpuscles.
"I think of this as the physical expression of this form of music," she adds about the mesmerising dance.
It's an astute observation. Above the doof-doof base line of house, techno, electro, trance and hard dance music on which the rave scene pivots, the complex higher registers do seem to plug like volts into the dancers' limbs.
Teenager Craig Verdon picks up the beat where Hilton-Thorpe left off, flicking right foot forward as he kicks his left back, accelerating this until his Dunlop sneakers appear to hover-glide a hair's breadth above the floor. He jumps to make way for fellow members of his rave "crew", Andy Truong and Cain Porter, who also expertly kick, twist and spin. "I just listen to the music and feel like doing it," says Truong, without stopping.
The three young men never seem to stop; dancing as they talk, or as they don't talk, constantly moving, filling every pause. This is the way they move around the city as the HBR (Hard Base Rockers) crew. Unlike Hilton-Thorpe, they live lives infused with trance, electro, techno and hard dance music. It connects them, absorbs them, even makes them thin. "It's meant meeting good friends - more friends, for me," Verdon says. "It keeps me away from the computer," Truong says. For Porter, it is a creative outlet like no other.
Five to 10 years ago, a rave was something you heard about on an internet and mobile phone grapevine. A DJ and megawatt speaker set, a few opportunists selling water, glowsticks and whatever else you could possibly need to dance madly all night and - voila - you had yourself a rave. The size of them, on bush properties, in forest clearings, football fields and beaches, depended on the efficiency of the technology that got the word out.
These days, raves are highly organised, are more often in clubs or approved public spaces (such as Federation Square) and usually ticketed. Despite the frenetic and solitary, trance-like dance peculiar to the scene, it is also dominated by "crews", or clusters of friends who often develop their own style of dance. Some super crews criss-cross the world, following the scene and carrying the seeds of new music, styles and fashions with them. Ravers are consequently the fashion tribe that evolves the fastest, metamorphoses most often and apart from the looser cult or fashion tribe known as emos, involves the highest proportion of young members.
SUB-GENRES:
Every raver is a "sub-genre" unto themselves, says Edwina Hilton-Thorpe. "No one dances in the same way," she says. "No one dresses in the same way." There are, however, clusters of significant similarity, including the evolution over the past two years of a dance style recognisable as "the Melbourne shuffle".
"I can't tell you exactly what it is," Hilton-Thorpe says. "Just a style of the running man (dance step), skips, jumps, kicks and spins that looks different." Last year, at a rave club in Beijing, a stranger yelled into Hilton-Thorpe's ear above the hammering electronic music as she danced: "You must be from Melbourne."
THEY SHOP:
Undisputed headquarters of rave wear is the shop affectionately known as "Mos" and run by its frenetic and passionate creator David Meill. Ministry of Style is at 348/350 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9419 4952.
AND MEET:
- Pony, 68 Little Collins Street, city 9662 1026
- Colonial Hotel, 240 King Street, city, 9670 859
- 28 Francis Street, city
- The Cage, Level 3, 2 Coverlid Place, city, 9663 1018
There are regular shuffle competitions and "shuffle-offs" including at Federation Square in Melbourne's CBD posted, with information about other regular club and other ticketed events on www.spraci.com.
ROCKABILLIES
In the 1950s, American culture split like an embryonic cell: hyper-hormonal teens on one side, conservative grown-ups on the other.
As the adult side hardened with the demands of materialism and McCarthyism, and all that they embodied, the at-once frivolous and angst-ridden teen side split, and split, and split again, ad infinitum into mixed fan clubs for Elvis Presley, schlock horror movies, Bill Haley, rock 'n' roll, bowling alleys, country music, The Wild One, customised jalopies, Tiki and Hawaiian fantasies, high-volt Marilyn Monroe glamour, Patsy Kline, Buddy Holly, Technicolor, 3D, TV and high school diner dates.
Today every recognisable iconic stream of 1950s culture - its music, fashion, art, decor, cars - still criss-cross the modern rockabilly movement. On its fringes, it is in constant flux, picking up signals as it rolls through every decade since the 1950s, from London punks and "teddy boys", to modernist art, 1990s horror and high school movie genres, thrash metal music and even fragments of goth sub-culture. But at its core, rockabilly is relatively stable despite the myriad spins its individual practitioners put on it. "It feeds on everything," says Guy Daley, a smouldering Marlon Brando type in tan leather fly jacket, white T-shirt and cuffed denim jeans. "It's not all about side burns and big hair and customised cars."
But it is that too. Common, but by no means compulsory among rockabilly boys, are slicked quiffs, western style and bowling team shirts, tattoos (a classic anti-conservative gesture in the '50s) and unbleached cuffed denim jeans. Among its girls, peachy air-brush-perfect rose-lipped make-up and big hair, full-swinging rock-around-the-clock frocks and tight, diner waitress shirtdresses are also common.
Like any socio-fashion-sub-cult, it is contradictory to its core.
SUB-GENRES:
The names loosely describe the sources of rockabilly culture but are almost invariably mixed by its individuals -
Classic: the nearest to purist practitioners. Classics are often middle-aged and, with the knowledge gleaned from living through the original era as rockabilly genres were being forged, often have a "zero tolerance" response to variations, says Guy Daley. "You get a lot of Elvis impersonators and big skirts."
Music preferences: original 1950s recordings.
Neo-classic: the modern individualists who pick and pluck the stuff that plugs directly into their psyche from rockabilly's 60-odd year evolution of constant expansion and metamorphosis. They come as punkishly pretty as Holly Jung in her micro-mini, tank top, biker boots and bicep tattoos, as cartoonishly glamourous as burlesque bombshell Beth Chapman (of Man's Ruin Burlesque) with her hyper-blonde curls and swish, polka-dot rock-frock, and as movie-star-suave as Donnie Cornelis in his crisp tailored, piped and embroidered western suit, Cuban-heeled cowboy boots, silver piercings and vampire red streak through his neat, slicked quiff.
The Neo-classics' music list is also as long and varied as rockabilly history, from root-stock rock'n'roll, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane to The Blasters, Los Lobos and current local acts, Hank's Jalopy Demons, the Satellites, Benny and the Fly By Nighters, Nici Blue Eyes (in our photo), Man's Ruin Burlesque (Beth Chapman, also pictured), Intoxica, Nervous Wreckers, Firebird and many more.
Psychobillies: a hybrid of rockabilly, punk and body-count horror movie sub-cults, said to have originated with the music styles of New York punk rock group The Cramps, then the Stray Cats and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, before blossoming into a notable sub-cult driven by bands such as Britain's The Meteors in the 1980s. Psychobillies dress - for want of a better word - more darkly than classic and neo-classic rockabillies, emphasising their punkish and horror genre origins with funereal palette choices and gothic twists.
On psychobillies' list of music favourites are names such as the Necromantics, Tiger Army and Social Distortion.
THEY SHOP:
Undisputed daddy-of-all-rockabillies, Ross Waddington, opened the Route 66 fashion shops 25 years ago, which spurred the explosion of rockabillies in Melbourne and Sydney. The business still pumps adrenalin through the rockabilly community with regular music and mixed events based around custom art, cars, burlesque and bands. Guy Daley is designer and manager for the business which also sells imported clothes, accessories and the odd Tiki mug, based on all streams of the rockabilly aesthetic, from Cathedral Arcade, 37 Swanston Street, city, 9639 5669 and 2 Grattan Street, Prahran, 9529 4659; www.route66.com.au
Chapel Street Bazaar, 217 Chapel Street, Prahran, 9529 1727 or 9510 9841, continuously renews its retro furniture, clothing and accessories stock and is particularly popular among full-time (as opposed to weekend) rockabillies who infuse home, car, wardrobe and life generally with iconic items of 1950s style.
AND MEET:
Wolfcall is one of the many regular rockabilly gigs sponsored by Route 66. The most recent was held on New Year's Eve and starred Lauren Marie and the Horton Brothers, both acts from Texas, as well as a dozen local acts. Upcoming events will be posted on route66.com.au
- Central Club Hotel, 293 Swan Street, Richmond (corner Coppin Street) hosts regular rockabilly nights.
- Colonial Hotel, corner Lonsdale and King streets, city
Keeping up appearances can be a bold and time-consuming process for the oft-heckled members of Melbourne's fashion tribes. Janice Breen Burns takes a second look beyond the mainstream.
Tim Stoekle is a charming young bloke; tall, good-looking, meticulously well-groomed, and heckled everywhere he goes. "People are always yelling at me," the 21-year-old fur finisher says cheerfully. "On trams, public transport, in pubs, clubs." Melbourne is unofficially renowned as the city most tolerant of eccentricity, but Stoekle's retro '70s "magnificent dandy" look - posh velvet suits, silk waistcoats and cravats, bobbed hair and granny specs - is just too hard for some T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing locals to take. He's not Robinson Crusoe either. Death-rocker Lyle Blakemore, a quiet club promoter and call-centre operator fond of bleach-spattered, black winklepicker boots and a shaved mohawk he can stiffen to stand a handspan straight up from his head, knows a bit about street heckling, too. "Society likes to grab onto the easiest explanation for what they don't understand." For Blakemore and his deathrock tribe, the assumptions usually start with, "Satanist!". "It's so funny. People say, 'I know what you are, I know who you are', but they don't."
Most members of the tribes featured here, the deathrockers, mods and less so the reggae crew, have had to come to terms with the impact of their appearance on the conformists around them. The more markedly different they are to society's Average Jack and Jess, the more unnerved the hecklers and negative the heckling. But most learn to live with it and cluster in their tribes, particularly when dressed in their most spectacular, identifying outfits. In numbers, there is solidarity and, more importantly, their reason for being: the music, clothes, politics and subculture that defines them.
They can be smug. Understandably. Even a heckler - particularly an inarticulate one - can boost their self-confidence because isn't that proof of their raison d'etre? To stand apart. For example, Clint Finnigan, 28, a soft-spoken computer programmer and deathrocker, hazards a guess that his flamboyant appearance is a counter-expression for his natural reserve: "Maybe it's bringing out what I don't find easy to bring out."
Most tribe members say they never had a choice. Something about 1960's music and fashion, for instance, compelled nurse Marie Roath so completely that 20 years later, she still dresses, clubs, even go-go dances to a mod beat. "At the start, I loved it all because of the attention I got, but now it's a lifestyle. It's the way I dress, it's the music, it's my friends. We're all in this. We're a community."
For some, the compulsion was more personal: "I was trying and trying to fit it, then something just snapped," Stoekle recalls of his primary-school years. "I thought, 'It's just not going to work, I'm not like these people, I'm not going to conform'." So his search for a counter-culture, another means of expression, began. Others remember simply an overwhelming need to distinguish themselves from the high-school pack. "I find it's about purposely segregating yourself from everyone else," says Finnigan of the deathrock look and culture. By "everyone else", he means the mainstream conformists he found so alien in his teen years. Finnigan has come a long way since the days when their occasional heckling irritated or upset him.
"Now I know I'm expressing something they could never express," and so he strolls, smugly, on.
Deathrockers
Lyle and Rachael Blakemore make a spectacularly exotic couple, the sort of husband and wife an American sit-com writer might dream up to trip a few gags about nightmare neighbours, or to grind out a few cliches about how darn-tootin' normal the rest of us are, goddamnit. Lyle's shoulder-length black hair is shaved front to back on the sides and stiffened into a towering, spinifex-like mohawk. His sinewy arms and legs are poured into ripped black jeans, band shirt and winklepicker boots all spattered and pocked with bleach and belted and buckled and glinting with steel. Rachael is the perfect wife in shattered black stockings, PVC rara skirt and a buckled corset that schloops in her waist to a cartoonish hourglass. She's got two fat red silk flowers fastened, Frieda Kahlo-style, into her ink-black hair, ropes and ropes of jet-black beads looped over her bust, a dozen silver wrist cuffs, blood-red lips and a radiant smile that kinks an otherwise arresting picture of anti-establishmentarianism.
It's the Blakemores' marvellously muddled fashion recipe of punk, grunge, goth, gang-biker and, generally, anti-establishment iconography that leaves average beholders gobsmacked and unnerved. Like most of Melbourne's counter-cultural "tribes", deathrockers are vastly different and infinitely more varied than the tight handful of assumptions made about them. "We're really more about dressing up, going out and having fun than anything," Lyle says without irony. "Society likes to grab onto these ideas, you know: you dress weird, so you must be a Satanist." On some level, however, this softly spoken call-centre operator appears to relish some of the misperceptions his counter-cultural life and looks attract, and in that he is not unusual. Twenty-eight-year-old computer programmer and deathrocker Clint Finnigan says heckling by people on the street used to bother him as a teenager but now the power play has reversed. "I know they're doing it because I'm expressing something they never could." It's a rightly smug conclusion that's held by most subcultural tribes who see themselves proudly standing apart from the mediocre masses. "It's purposely segregating yourself from everyone else," says Clint.
Deathrockers have mostly superficial things in common, according to Lyle: the music style, the punkish, anti-establishment look, and for many, the kind of blood-and-guts horror movies that can scare the pants off you, or make you laugh. "I laugh," says Lyle. "It's that whole cheesey factor. And deathrock is definitely a light-hearted thing. There's nothing serious about it."
This is despite how it seems to conservatives and the satanic undertone of some patron bands such as Anti World, Tragic Black, All Gone Dead, and the original deathrockers, Christian Death. Although some bad-seed culverts have mushroomed out of the deathrock scene overseas, Lyle says the local scene is only superficially cloaked in darkness. The suicide of original deathrock band Christian Death's lead singer, for instance, has hung over the movement for years and probably worried legions of parents whose kids latch on to the scene as a vent of anti-mainstream rebellion and expression. Young Jesse Tanzen for example, plunged into Melbourne's deathrock scene the instant he turned 18 last year. "Before that, I couldn't get into the clubs." Since year 9 at high school, the quiet graphic-arts hopeful moved to old school goth bands such as Specimen, 45 Grave and Christian Death, and an overwhelming compulsion to appear different from the pack. When he hit 18, Lyle and Rachael Blakemore's deathrock Club1334 (named for the year of the black plague), was a natural progression. Jesse's next goal, apart from qualifying for a graphic art course, is to form Melbourne's first contemporary deathrock band using his own skills on guitar and keyboard.
They meet:
The Blakemores, formerly of deathrock club Kisskiss Bangbang, could be described as matriarch and patriarch of Melbourne's deathrock scene. They now run its pinnacle, Club1334, monthly at DV8 (formerly Subculture), Level 3, 12 McKillop Street, city, myspace.com/DV8 and http://www.myspace.com/club1334
.
"Darkness Visible" is the next 1334 club night, on April 19.
Black Widow's Nightclub, last Saturday of each month, Bass Lounge, 100 Little Bourke Street, city, myspace.com/blackwidowsclub.
They listen to:
Hundreds of deathrock bands have joined the original line-up, which included names such as Christian Death, 45 Grave (with lead singer, Dinah Cancer), Gun Club, Burning Image, the Flesh Eaters and Kommunity FK, which evolved with horror undertones out of a punk-rock scene in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Deathrock's second wave surged out of a British club known as the Batcave and picked up bands such as Specimen and Alien Sex Fiend. A complicated evolution of revivals and fresh bands has produced wave after wave of goth rock and deathrock bands, over which devotees endlessly argue about their relevance to one genre or another. Like most subcultural music scenes, the internet is heavily used to identify and circulate news of emerging bands in Europe, the US and locally, such as the Cemetery Girls.
They shop:
The deathrock look is essentially a mixture of goth and punk elements - black jeans and band shirts, vintage mesh and punched fabrics, silver steel jewellery and industrial details such as buckling and zips, heavy tattooing, body piercing, geisha-pale make-up with dyed black hair that the women decorate and the men coax into spectacular mohawks. Most looks are cobbled from op-shop and vintage shop finds. The techniques of ripping and splattering black garments with bleach is common. Women take an even more eclectic approach to fashion, mixing cyber-gothic corsetry and minx looks found at places such as Victorian Gothic, 141 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 1777, Peril Underground, Basement, 17-19 Elizabeth Street, city, 9614 0155, Vicious Venus, 346 Smith Street, Collingwood, 9417 7449 and Circa Vintage Clothing, 1/102 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 8899.
And also:
www.starvox.net/crypt/dr/dr.htm
http://www.spaci.com.au
Mods
In the 1980s, a small skinhead subculture flourished in Melbourne, and Marie Roath remembers it most for the lines of 1960s motor scooters - Vespas and Lambrettas - kicked over outside her favourite band haunts. "There was a lot of fighting going on then," recalls Roath, still a nurse and professional go-go dancer after all these years. "But, we were a community, we'd look out for each other." Twenty-odd years later, the skinheads have either gone, or aren't as irritated by the chic, little putt-putts, the mini shimmy frocks and teased bobs any more, and the mods who favoured those scooters are thriving again. "Young people have come in," says Roath. "New life, new blood." For Roath, mod is a love affair with music and fashion: "I love the look; neat and tidy, not a hair out of place, groomed to the hilt and I can't tell you how much hairspray."
"Mod", however, is perhaps a contradictory description for this subcultural tribe today. It now includes people living, dressing and dancing as if time froze in the 1960s and '70s.
"I've refined my style to an absolutely dandified look," Tim Stoekle, 21, one of the movement's most striking mods.
He was inspired by actor Jon Pertwee's version of Doctor Who, the DVD borrowed from school friends when he was just 12. Stoekle was mesmerised by Pertwee's elaborate green velvet suit, "Gorgeously tailored, perfectly fitted." He began composing his own look - waistcoats, cravats, silk shirts and tailored suits and separates - from op shops and vintage stores.
He cuts a spectacular dash in a plum velvet suit, chartreuse silk waistcoat, purple cravat, sleek bobbed haircut ("I cut it myself") and round tinted spectacles. "People are always yelling out at me on public transport or at pubs," he says, blithely. "I don't care. I did try to fit in for a long time, then something just snapped. I thought, 'This isn't going to work. I'm just not like these people'."
Now he's a very happy dandy.
The opportunely named Emma Peel, 26, also found a her way into the 1960s revival by way of one magic moment - the discovery of an attic full of her mother's youth: cool radios and records and a portable record player, in her grandparents' house. Something clicked. "I never wanted to blend into the crowd." She was instantly hooked. "I started listening to Dusty Springfield and reading obsessively about the culture and fashion; Old Vogues from France and Italy. I started op-shopping obsessively to emulate the fashion looks."
Now Peel, DJ, dancer, club promoter, event manager and model, is recognised as one of Melbourne's most active mods, and one of its most striking dressers. Like most of her peers, she uses the fashions of the 1960s and '70s as inspiration for her look, but mingles contemporary and expressive details to make her look unique. "I'm not afraid to stand out, and I think this way of dressing actually suits me."
They meet:
At club nights with go-go girls dancing on podiums or in cages, at pub nights where the music belted out is as cute as the Ronettes or as raw as a '60s German garage band.
Tote Hotel, 71 Johnston Street, Collingwood, 9419 5320, thetotehotel.com
Town Hall Hotel, 33 Errol Street, North Melbourne, 9328 1983
Greyhound Hotel, 1 Brighton Road, St Kilda, 9534 4189
Gimme Shelter club nights every second Saturday of the month at the Exford Hotel, 199 Russell Street, city, 9663 2697, www.myspace.com/gimme_shelter_melbourne
Soul-a GoGo, radio station PBSFM's monthly club night at The Laundry Bar, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, 9419 7111.
They shop:
Almost invariably for original 1960s fashion and vinyl records in op shops, on eBay and in vintage stores, though the pickings are increasingly slim, says Marie Roath. "It's pot luck, really," agrees Tim Stoekle of his cherry-picked wardrobe.
Some of the best vintage gear can be had from (among many others) the Shag stores at 130 Chapel Street, Windsor, 9510 8817; Centreway Arcade, 20 Collins Street, city, 9663 8166; and 377 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9417 3348.
They listen to:
Local DJs: Emma Peel, Vince Peach, Mohair Slim, Pierre.
PBS106.7FM, pbsfm.org.au
The mix of music at a 1960s club night will surprise anyone who assumes the decade's pop signature sounds will be on a continuous, monotonous loop. On the contrary, DJs such as Emma Peel are aficionados of underground rock and tangent bands from the period. Music styles typical at a 1960s club night include R&B, jazz, freakbeat, US and European garage, Motown, soul, Latin soul, surf and even exotics such as the tiki or Hawaiian sound. Bands featured include the Electric Prunes, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Mongo Santa Maria, the Rolling Stones (Emma Peel has a drop-dead version of Paint it Black by a French 1960s garage band), the Beachboys, the Kinks, the Sonics, the Creations, and thousands of other originals. Local bands also play live, including all-girl group, the Shimmies.
And also:
www.myspace.com/thegirlbomb (Site of DJ, Emma Peel).
www.myspace.com/groovymarie (for tips on '60s fashion and make-up).
Reggae
(all girl) crew
Five young women from Greek, Sri Lankan and Ghanaian backgrounds found their way into Melbourne's reggae scene a few years ago and immediately, diligently, began spinning out their own mini revolution. It's a funky kind of feminism they hope will eventually creep out and kink the global reggae movement. At reggae events from Stradbroke Island to Perth, they encourage other young women to buck what they see as a patriarchal reggae culture and spin the music they love.
"It's been really rare to see a girl DJ," says Elena Petropolous, a self proclaimed "Greek girl from the suburbs" with dreadlocks down to her waist. "But there are two now in Perth." And there are others in the bud.
And there is Melbourne. "It's unusual here, because there are so many girl DJs," says Yasmin Rupesinghe, a university administrative assistant and long-time DJ (or, selector), dressed today in her reggae tribe gear: militaristic camouflage and khaki hot-pants inspired by a Jamaican dancehall queen. "Reggae's been a male-dominated, chauvinistic scene but that's changing."
In fact, the music originated in Jamaica in the 1960s and has a complicated provenance, bound up in the principles of Rastafari, a religious movement based on the philosophies of 20th-century Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. The music and religion are habitually confused, which is technically wrong, but they do have a loose and warm, cross-pollinating relationship. Exactly how warm, depends on the reggae performer or devotee. Petropolous for instance, is Catholic and shuns some aspects of Rastafari but embraces others. She dresses modestly, as a Rastafarian woman would (except that her astonishing dreadlocks remain uncovered), but also with militaristic references that symbolise a continuing struggle for freedom and justice.
One linking theme: among all of the young women and their highly individual interpretations of the subculture, the colours of the Ethiopian and Jamaican flags recur in bangles, belts, hair bands and clothing.
"We call the Rastafari philosophy 'livity'; it's about freedom, repatriation, justice," explains Rupesinghe. "You take from Rastafari what means something to you." And so, for the all-girl reggae DJ crews, the pickings are mixed, unique, reflected in each one's clothes, the records she spins, the way she lives her life. "For me, it was all about the music at first - that's what spoke to me," says Petropolous. "But then, I started to understand reggae's anti-Babylon (anti-establishment) message and its calls for individuality, spirituality, fighting the oppressor."
When she "got it", Petropolous felt a power she intends never to surrender. "Anyone from an ethnic background, any woman, understands."
They are:
Elena "Sista Itations" Petropolous, 31, graphic designer and Vida-Sunshyne Borquaye, 23, singer of reggae, soul and hip-hop, are partners in the Natty Sistren Sound DJ/selector crew. Andi "Night Nurse" Ingram, 30, lawyer, works solo as a DJ/selector, and Fiona "Fee" Bourne, 27, hospitality worker and Yasmin "Bellyas" Rupesinghe, 28, university administrative worker, are partners in the crew Housewife's Choice.
They meet:
The longest-running reggae night in Australia is More Fire by Chant Down Sound, second Saturday of the month, Brown Alley, corner Lonsdale and King streets, city. The seventh anniversary celebration night is on April 19, www.chantdown.com
Pressure Drop, by Natty Sistren Sound, fourth Saturday of the month, Laundry, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, www.myspace.com/pressuredrop
Heartical, Hi-Fi Basement Session, first Saturday of the month, Night Owl, 33 Elizabeth Street, city, www.myspace.com/hearticalhifi
Riddem Method, by the Housewife's Choice crew, third Friday of the month, Croft Institute, 21 Croft Alley, city, 9671 4399, www.myspace.com/housewifeschoice
Ring the Alarm, with Ras Crucial, Jesse I, Sister Itations, Vida-Sunshyne, Dizzy Dee and weekly guests, every Wednesday, Laundry, 50 Johnston Street, Fitzroy.
Zimbabwean MC Dizzy Dee, with Mista Savona and the Rootbound system, every Tuesday, Evelyn Hotel, 351 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9419 5500,
Reggae at the Horn, with Binghi Fire, first and third Saturdays of the month, Horn, 20 Johnston Street, Collingwood.
They listen to:
Pure rasta reggae as pioneered by Bob Marley has spun out many evolutionary tangents since the forms made famous by performers such as Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Jacob Miller, Jimmy Cliff, Shabba Ranks, Supercat, Chaka Demus, Pliers and Anthony B. To name a few. According to Jesse I, presenter and DJ on radio PBS FM, reggae is a broad term taking in most Jamaican music from the late 1960s ska era to the present. He simplifies the main categories as Modern Roots - "contemporary roots reggae, often combining real instruments with digital production"; Dancehall - "digital production and patois vocals, which your average Bob Marley fan probably wouldn't even connect to reggae"; '80s/'90s Dancehall- "less aggressive (with) more of a 'bouncy sound'"; Dub - "a form of stripped-back instrumental reggae, which eschews vocals in favour of ancillary effects such as echo, delay and reverb'; and Vintage - "classic 1960s/'70s".
Chant Down Babylon with Jesse I, 5-7pm Saturdays, 106.7 PBS FM, www.pbsfm.org.au
And also:
www.ozReggae.com
www.rastainoz.com
http://www.myspace.com/nattysistrensound
http://www.myspace.com/vidasunshyne