Kooky blows the crowd away

Club Kooky upgraded to the Sydney Opera House’s Studio on Sunday night, as part of Vivid, Sydney’s new festival of lights and ideas.

It was an exponential growth for Sydney’s longest-running alternative queer night, which began at Club 77 in 1995 and has since had stints at the Imperial, Hermann’s Bar and now parties on at the Manning Bar at Sydney University every three months.

It was awesome to be at a Kooky party and amongst Kooky people inside Sydney’s most prized international location. The Vivid festival has become one of Sydney’s most exciting festivals, and curator Steve Pavlovic’s choice to include this particular offering in his line-up of club nights in the Studio space showed why he’s so respected as a tastemaker.

DJs-promoters Seymour and Gemma, who have pioneered the alternative queer scene in Australia for decades, deserve the highest of praise for continuing to sniff out the most cutting-edge music and performance. I suspect Sunday night offered truly career-defining moments for them both.

I have never revelled in appreciation for ‘Australiana’ as much as at the hands of these two, as they dare to celebrate the uniquely Sydney and uniquely Australian, standing apart in a culture that continues to obsessively look overseas for ideas, attitudes, sounds and movements. The imagery is the familiar, and it enriches everyone.

In this case, footage of retro Mardi Gras parades was beamed onto the backdrop screen. Glitta Supernova, who performed to That’s Amore while Kath and Kim-style soundbites were laid overtop as if you were hearing her bogan thoughts, was pure genius.

Some of the house music spun by guest DJs were not the sort of sounds we’ve come to expect from the deeply funky and electronic Club Kooky. Most of the guests were on the money, however, and the programming of Canada’s ’80s four-to-the-floor style Azari & III was spot on. The highlight of their set was the random dance-off on the dancefloor by the singer and a member of the band.

The party was a triumph of originality over conformity and has generated a whole lot of interest from a new generation of party-goers who didn’t even know Kooky existed.

Don’t knock Sydney till ya try it, I say.

By DANNY CORVINI