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 If Barry Bissell’s Take 40 Australia shaped the music of my teens, it was the DJs in gay nightclubs that shaped the music of my young adulthood.
We do a funny thing when we hit 30. We start to become a little like our parents. We start to reminisce. We start to wonder what old flames are doing these days, and upon finding them on Facebook, we kinda wish we didn’t know. We begin to wonder whatever happened to the friends we use to dance all night with, the people we used to cry with after a bad break-up, and the first lot of gay people we came across who helped show us the way on to the Yellow Brick Road so that we could eventually stand in those damn ruby pumps on our own.
After a few reunions with friends of years gone by on the net, my thoughts recently turned to the music that provided the soundtrack to my less responsible years. Being in the early to mid-nineties, names such as Urban Cookie Collective, Newton, The Coming Out Crew and Ru Paul come to mind. As do Dana Dawson, 2 Unlimited, Technotronik and Rozalla.
As with anyone else from any other generation of the last 90 years, it is music that has provided a context for where we were and what we were doing. Like the smell of Grandma’s Sunday roast, it takes you back to another time and another place.
I’ve got the key, I’ve got the secret. I’ve got the key to another way.
The Urban Cookie Collective takes me back to sniffing stale amyl in a small dark pub in Sydney where I thought, seriously, that by being young and gay, that I had found the key to a new way of living, where responsibility was something other people had to contend with, and that I only had to work another 5 days until I could sniff more amyl nitrate and perve at more shirtless boys.
 One and one is two. Two is me and you. Two plus one is three. Three is family.
Why this was such a huge hit with gay men in the mid nineties is beyond me. It’s a song about a hetero couple feeling complete because they now had a baby. But that didn’t stop thousands of us lip-synching every word with our arms flailing about. For me, it was all about the family I would one day build with my new gay friends. A family of friendships and equality where my handsome, rich boyfriend would save me and we’d invite our friends around... and even if we only had one friend come around, it still would make us a family. Forgive me. I was 19 at the time, ok?
Burn baby, burn baby, all my energy. Burn baby, burn baby, all my fantasies...
 Clubhouse feat. Carl said it all in this song that often saw me clamouring my way on to a podium as a slimline 20 year old. For me it reminds me of a time when I just didn’t care any more. I just wanted to dance and lose my head until literally everything that was in my over-active mind would burn away. I just wanted to feel good and I went to great lengths to make sure I could feel as little as possible in those days.
I Gave You Love, I Thought That We Had Made It To The Top, I Gave You All I Had To Give, Why Did It Have To Stop? You’ve Blown it all Sky High...
This was a biggie from Newton when I broke up with Nick, my first serious boyfriend. After a violent and tumultuous relationship during which he seemed to make most of my friends think I had cheated constantly on him, it later came out that he had been cheating on me the whole time. My friend at the time, Matty, didn’t like him from the start. He always was a lot smarter than me! I needed a song to mark the occasion, some DJ gave it to me.
I have heard it said that God walks quietly amongst us, directing our ways gently with a still, small voice.
I think it’s far more likely that God is a DJ blasting out every bit of information we need to know about life at 95 decibels.
And for those of us who don’t like organised religion, I am sure we can pick up His best sets on iTunes, probably distributed by Ministry of Sound.
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