Liz Muzik

Listening: KCRW

Mood: Content

Trippin' Among The Stars

Music and Metaphysics are my two great loves, and this year I celebrate my twentieth year as a Dj, and nineteenth year as a yogi.

I've spoken a lot about my ideas regarding metaphysics but virtually nothing about my deep love of music, so I thought I might share some now.

Many of my first memories revolve around music. It was a big part of our lives when I was growing up, and my mother had a great 60's and 70's record collection which I loved to play on our fabulous wooden cabinet-style record player with the lift-up lid. Music was played in our house a lot.

On the weekends, my Filipino mother hosted numerous Filipino Association parties at our house and at one point, they seemed to be happening every week. It was a whirlwind of people, food, Filipino-Australian couples, other kids, and inevitably someone would have brought a guitar which was always followed by lots of singing, or they'd play records and there was always lots of dancing. We even had a 7-inch single imported from Manila for dancing Tinikling, the national Filipino dance. It involves a fair amount of dexterity and grace, as two very long sticks of bamboo are involved, held at either end. As the dancers weave between them the two people at either end bang them together at regular intervals so if you're not quick enough your ankles get clipped. I used to love it.

So by 5 or 6 I was learning the piano and putting on shows for any adults that would come and watch; I'd started learning all the words to songs like Big Spender and The Green Green Grass of Home, and after learning how the record player worked I developed quite a skill at programming records for my own enjoyment. I'd spend whole afternoons locked away in our lounge room singing and dancing around having the time of my life, mainly cos I was pretending that I was actually a sexy black woman with lungs of steel like Shirley Bassey.....

We had an automatic record player so I'd stack the platters on the spindle, in the reverse order I wanted to hear them, and gleefully watch them drop down onto the turntable one by one. I'd marvel at each time the record would drop into place and how the needle would automatically lift up, then down, sliding into a groove on the the vinyl at the perfect spot, whether it was a 7-inch single or a "long player".

Besides piano, I learned the flute, guitar and got some formal vocal training(I even sought out a "popstar" singing teacher for awhile when I moved to London - her most infamous pupil was John Lydon aka the Sex Pistol's Johnny Rotten - and she makes a cameo appearance in the Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle movie), and I also joined various choirs including a brief stint with the Melbourne Chorale. I loved singing.

In 1982, in my early teens, I began making my own version of "mix tapes", which were compilations I'd put together by taping American Top 40 or songs from the local radio stations like Eon-Fm, and I'd try to make the edits as clean as possible by using the pause and record buttons with lightning accuracy.
I also got heavily into making audio "letters" on cassette tape to friends of mine in the Philippines, friends I'd made at school there when we moved over briefly between '79-'81.

My equipment consisted of the record player, a $29.99 Tandy radio/cassette player with an in-built mike, my records, some samples off the radio, and my voice. I'd narrate these funny stories and add music and stupid voice samples for comedic effect. I know that on one of them I sampled Richard Simmons off his famous 80's workout albums, and on another I added some crazy Dj in Singapore I recorded off the local radio when I was there on holidays. Fuck I wish I had one of them now, I'd probably die laughing, but back then you couldn't make copies of cassettes.

At 16, I got myself a part-time job working at the local record shop and once that happened, my obsession with music just grew and grew. I was a vinyl junkie, and now it was at my fingertips.

As I was just finishing high school, my parents took quite a bit of convincing, but after pleading and pleading with them, they let me start doing a regular radio show on 3rrr-Fm, and finally I had my own show. It was pretty amazing of them really, as it involved me doing a graveyard shift for the first 6 months, and either my Mum or Dad would have to wake up in the middle of the night to drive me to the studio by 2am, but it led to a 9-year stint at that station, a brief spot on Red-Hot Fm in London, then back here with Kiss Fm for the six or seven years they were on air up til 2001.

So at 17 I was doing the show (which was called "Morning Dawning", after a Siouxsie and the Banshees song), playing 80's New Wave, early electronic dance, ambient and indie stuff, and I was sneaking into the clubs where they played it. By 18 I was promoting and Dj-ing at underground club nights, and by the time I was 21 I was managing my own alternative record store in Smith St, Collingwood, called "Leedin' Records" (so 80's).

It was shortly after that that I HAD to move to London. It was where all the best music was coming out of at the time, and I had become such an Anglo-phile I even started speaking with an English accent that only grew stronger after I moved there (how embarrasing). I played some old radio shows of mine to Toby a while back, and he was like, "Is that you?!! My god, you sound so sweet and innocent!!!!".

Once I work out how to upload some sounds to this page I'm gonna put some vintage Liz up there for y'all to hear. You might just get a chuckle out of it. I might also harvest a few quotes from my diaries at that age to go with the samples - it's a pantload of fun, believe me.

When I got to London I went completely mad for the scene there. Life was crazy and exciting and I got to meet virtually all my heroes. I worked in music distribution, interviewed recording artists for the radio back here, went out to see bands, and to the clubs, and I learned a hell of a lot about how the scene worked, from the inside out. Then the most unexpected thing happened. I started seeing through all the bullshit around it. That's when Acid House came along, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's been a really amazing ride, and although I couldn't possibly write all my stories down here, I will make sure to record at least a few.

Music is still very much in my blood. It always will be, so the story isn't finished yet either, but my blood is starting to remember the other parts of myself, and as it travels around my body these days, it's carrying a new massage into my cells. It is saying, "Expand the song you're singing to include a few more octaves."

And that is precisely what I'm doing.

category: Music, My Life