One of Sydney's best loved and longest running parties, Mad Racket, is taking a little rest from its spiritual home at the Marrickville Bowling Club and heading down to Melbourne for a series of parties hosted by long-standing jock Phil K's SloMotion Social Club.
The first party is set to kick off this Saturday 17th August at My Aeon, with Mad Racket co-founder and resident DJ Simon Caldwell taking on the Master Of Ceremonies role and support coming from SloMotion Social Club DJs Ozzie LA, Phil K and Nikko.
Despite rumours to the contrary, the Mad Racket party, which has been in effect since 1998, is not finishing for good in Sydney. We caught up with Simon Caldwell so he could set the record straight...
Can you fill us in a little on the problems you've been having that led to your decision to wrap up the party in Sydney? Actually, we haven't wrapped anything up. Rumours of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. We're on a hiatus, looking for some alternative venues. The local boys and girls in blue were getting a little overzealous, visiting regularly with expensive, offensive, ineffective raids. No violence at a party for our almost 15 year history clearly counts for nothing. So we thought we'd stretch our legs a little somewhere else...we'll let you know soon enough.
Do you foresee Mad Racket returning to Sydney again sometime in the future? If so, would it be back to the Bowling Club, or a different venue? See above, we'll be doing something before the year is out. We haven't counted out returning to the Bowlo at some stage in the future.
How did Mad Racket visiting Melbourne via Phil K come about? Well there are actually four founding DJs that make up Mad Racket, so just little old me on my own isn't really 'Mad Racket'. Hopefully we can all get down together for a real Racket. I had mentioned the situation to Phil, and had heard great things about SlowMotion.
What can punters expect from Mad Racket in Melboune? Well this time it's an extended set from me. I'll be trying to cover a few bases musically and really look forward to playing on the mad sound system.