Still Diggin’

Something special has been growing in West End over the past couple of years.

On the last Sunday of every month a bunch of vinyl collectors get together at the Rumpus Room, exchange records and just generally try to out-do each other in terms of obscure sub-genres and wacky gatefolds. It's a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, particularly considering the aural gold that often gets dusted off and chucked on the turntables.

“We may have gotten a little too weird last month,” admits Geoff Boardman. “It was a cheesy listening special, so we had all of our cheesy cover records. I really went all out, trying to one-up everybody and pulling out the craziest records that make people go, 'Oh shit. You can't play that in public!' There was a Beatles track sung by a band of dog samples - that was a very early ‘80s sampling record.”

Boardman is more commonly known by the production name, Blunted Stylus, or maybe even his DJ name, Jigsaw, coined by Lazy Grey when Boardman was a member of the Resin Dogs. Record fairs are a natural habitat for the guy, who grew up on the back of the first wave of hip hop music in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

“It was 1981 and I remember buying a Kraftwerk album with pocket money. But at about the same time on the television MTV was playing ‘Buffalo Gals’ by Malcolm McLaren and ‘Rockit’, which is Herbie Hancock - they were very influential. ‘Rockit’ had the DJ scratching. That was really how it all started for me, and then at some point you just get more into the mixtapes and that becomes a creative outlet rather than just an appreciative one. You just keep creating things that are similar to what you hear, and you try and do stuff yourself. That's really how hip hop was born.”

Like any true student of hip hop, Boardman's purview takes in just about every kind of music. He grew up on old AC/DC and Black Sabbath records (the early Resin Dogs cut, 'Q Cumbers', actually sampled Sabbath), courtesy of his father, and so when he sees a pile of unknown wax, the musicologist in him tends to take over.

“You just never know what's going to come up when you're digging through records. I love synth pop music - all synth pop stuff - anything that you can find at Weird Gear that's to an extreme is kind of what I'm into,” he laughs.

But the taste for vinyl seems to be moving beyond the realms of old school aficionados such as Boardman. While compact disc sales in music have been in decline over the past ten years and cassettes are all but non-existent, vinyl has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of this physical media graveyard.

“I think it's got a lot to do with that human trait of collecting,” Boardman says. “A lot of the vinyls out there have sold in their millions and are great records, but they're not the ones that people have in their collections. They want something that's a bit more obscure. It's good to have the classics as well, but some people can just have that on the CD. When it comes to vinyl, it's a whole other world.”

Given the cornucopia of old vinyl available, an afternoon like Weird Gear could easily capsize if left untethered. With that in mind, the events have started operating on a theme-by-theme basis, and this month it's all about fusion.

“It's about mashing up different styles that are quite obvious on the record: jazz and rock, or rock and funk - it could be anything. It's usually the electric guitar synth-funk that is known as fusion. It's really from 1970 to ‘76, or whatever. Yeah, and all the heads that will be there - we've got heaps of the regular Weird Gear crew: myself, Lexicon, Edward Scrillahands. We've got [Prop] Greg, who always brings some great stuff, and they'll all have their little take on fusion and they'll be there to chat about their records and their wares so people can get a bit of an insight into a product before they buy it. It's just about sharing the knowledge and just being part of one family of diggers, beat miners, music appreciators, and production heads.”

WEIRD GEAR GOES DOWN AT THE RUMPUS ROOM IN WEST END, THIS SUNDAY, FROM 1PM, JUNE 26.