July 2013

Another 1996 Mixtape from the 	archives. 
Had a listen to this and all I could think was how diverse the music was then. 

Diva vocals, pounding beats, piano riffs, cover versions of commercial tracks, quality, cheese, and those rare  tunes that you had heard somewhere and brought back those oh so good feeling from a dark corner of a dance floor somewhere. 

From clubs that were hard to get into unless you were the “right look”, to clubs that wouldn’t let you in if you were the “right look”. From under dressed tiny hot pants and bras to overdressed, anything worked if you could carry it off. All the way hrough to secret parties in derelict houses - how did we survive? 

I remember being in a 2 storey terrace house in the backstreets of Darlinghurst for a party that you had to call a number to find out where it was, there was a massive gaping hole in the upstairs floor that was the dance floor, god only knows how we avoiding falling through it. 

Music production varied from well produced pieces of pure magic to slapped together bootlegs - back then we called those white labels. 

All us DJ’s did everything we could to get our hands on the “limited edition” white labels as we knew or were told by our friendly vinyl pusher that its the LAST copy and there was only 50 copies released. Sometimes that was true… sometimes nah…. But you wouldn’t take the risk would you? 

The race was always who would play the next big tune first, back then there was no “hey dj can you play *Insert current top 10 track”. There was no waiting for someone else to turn it into a hit. 

Believe or not, I don’t hear vocals - I hear whats under the vocals and that for me is the journey, vocals get in the way of a good story! There is said it! 

Try to tell me or sing the vocals to something and I’ll most likely give you a blank look. 

The dance floor was served a selection of brand new tunes, new styles, experiments, vocals, instrumentals - yes the era when the best tunes had NO VOCALS - I was in my music heaven then! 

Back then people would follow certain DJ’s because they loved the particular style the DJ had, and the access to that music was limited to the DJ’s or avid music collectors as vinyl was expensive! Imagine paying anywhere from $15 and upwards for ONE tune? It was a bonus if both sides of the vinyl had winner tunes. 

Considering my pay rate was $35 per hour back then at my main gig (and then taxed) it meant either lots of gigs or day jobs just to sustain a healthy vinyl collection, let alone feed and support a child and myself. 

There was always a compromise, if you wanted the good gigs you were paid less as they were high profile and then you made up  the money for it on other side gigs. 

I will be releasing the Archived Mixtapes through the years that I was recording them. I still have a couple I could salvage from the collection for 1996. 1997. 1998. 1999. 

Some of the tapes didn’t survive, the quality is so bad that it was painful to hear. But, I’m glad that some have survived.  

As I listen to the tunes, they all bring memories of either buying them, playing them, trying to mix them and the worst was scratching them, ohhhh the pain of scratching a favourite tune! 

There are quite a few tunes I don’t have anymore, there’s another story there. Some I sold to fund my move to Melbourne, some were stolen - the stolen ones broke my heart as they were the cream of what I was playing in 1998 and 1999 and a lot of unique vinyl that was my sound and I have not found them again as I didn’t catalogue what I had so the artists and titles have been lost to me. 

Between the vinyl, flight cases, headphones, and a case of cds, it broke me. That happened on my birthday, I didn’t think I would recover.

Jewelz December 1996 Mixtape Side A And B

THE KNIGHT TRAIN VOL  5 - THOMAS KNIGHT

Part 5.
Set recreation from the Dream Universe - Christmas in July live stream event. Unfortunately, Facebook muted many of the songs in the live recording so this is a recreation of the songs I played that night.

It ended up being a ~6.5-hour set, so the mixes will be split up into 1-hour mixes for easy listening.

Summer '24

Ohndre

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