In Search of Balearic
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In Search of Balearic
A group of islands, the cult of Alfredo, or just an excuse for playing daft poprecords? Balearious!
Twenty years ago, the word Balearic meant nothing more than a collection of islandshuddled near the Mediterranean coast of northern Spain. It was the sort of place you
might go to if you favoured package holidays or booked your breaks from the pages of
a Thomsons brochure. But then something strange happened. British DJs, holidaying
on the island of Ibiza, discovered a DJ called Alfredo Fiorito and before we knew it, the
Balearics the location also became a musical genre: the Balearic beat.
So what is Balearic? Is it an actual place or is it an idea? We know about the island of
Ibiza, but what is the other Balearic, the Balearic that is a fuzzy and scattered set of
records that may or may not include Wang Chung, Phil Collins and Simply Red. Did it
ever exist outside of the confines of DJ Alfredos record box circa 1989? And is it, asdance writer Frank Tope once jokingly referred to as, pop records that sound good on
pills or a jumble sale of crap masquerading as gold?
This is the story of what happened in Ibiza and, perhaps more importantly now,
whether it ever really was a genre or simply a bunch of records played by an
Argentinian ex-pat.
A SHORT HISTORY OF IBIZA
Ibiza has always retained some sort of mythical hold in peoples imagination. Its
location in the Mediterranean meant it was perfectly positioned to offer sanctuary fortransients travelling to or escaping from somewhere else. It was a favourite haunt of the
Carthaginians whose goddess of sexuality, Tanit, populates trinket stalls on the island
to this day. Its first settlers were the Phoenicians, who gave it its name (it derives from
their god of safety, dance and protection, Bes); and thereafter by the Romans and the
Vandals, the Arabs and the Catalans, the Jews (fleeing persecution) and Americans
(draft dodgers, most of them), fugitives from justice and injustice, pirates looking for
place to hide or trade; finally, it was the hippies and the jet set who came
Ibiza is a tolerant place. Youd have to be to welcome/endure so many visitors over
two thousand years. Despite the despotic Francos brutal reign on mainland Spain, it
became known as an island that was particularly sympathetic to gay men and women,
well before most of mainland Europe; Santa Eulalia was a popular gay tourist
destination from the 1950s onwards and Ibiza has remained one of the top three gay
holiday spots worldwide ever since. The islands first gay disco, Anfora (snuck away in a
cave in Dalt Vila) opened as long ago as the early 1960s. Pachas Piti Urgell recalls the
contrast in attitudes between Ibiza and the mainland. Once the police came to our clubin Sitges and they said that that it wasnt up to standard because it was too dark to
read. My brother told them, Well, thats not a problem because nobody comes here to
read!.
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A man with the gloriously unlikely moniker of Bad Hand Jack helped launch Ibizas
musical scene when he began booking jazz musicians to come and perform on theisland, including Billy Eckstine and Jon Hendricks (sadly, Bad Jack Hand lived up to his
name and was later convicted of murder in Barcelona). Thanks to its reputation among
the gay community and among a strata of super-wealthy individuals, movie stars, actors
and playboys found its secluded bays perfect for either relaxing or getting up to no
good, away from the prying eyes of a hungry celebrity press. Errol Flynn spent time
there, along with Ursula Andress, Denholm Elliott (who made it his home), Nikki Lauda,Goldie Hawn and Roman Polanski. Ibiza was pretty much left on its own, claims Bar
Ms Willie Crichton. This is why, in a way, we were able to have what we had. It was a
well-kept secret. This was a bastion of liberty in the country. It was like an independent
republic.
Seminal hippie movie More, which employed a Pink Floyd score, was shot on Ibiza
and nearby Formentera and provided further temptation for the long-hairs of Europe to
head for the Mediterranean. The Ibiza of 35 years ago was somewhat different to
todays commercialised island. Hippies would hang out in the open, often literally since
many of them never bothered to wear clothes. The show was not in the clubs it was in
the streets, recalls Argentinian Nino, aka Captain Birdseye. I mean the street was a
club. You walked to the harbour and there was a crazy world there with the hippies and
the hippie market, people naked on the street, drag queens, Germans on theirmotorcycles. But in San Antonio there were package tours and one of the attractions for
the tours was to come and see the crazy people so they brought the tourists down to
look. The people did not feel comfortable being looked at, so they took refuge in the
clubs.
The first modern-style club to be opened on Ibiza was Pacha. Even then Pacha wasalready a burgeoning empire, with clubs on the mainland (their first place opened in
Sitges in 1967). Pacha was opened by the Urgell brothers, Ricardo and Piti, the latter
also being the founding DJ. Piti played a mixture of British rock (Island Records was afavourite label with bands like Spooky Tooth and Traffic particular favourites) and pop
and soul. The early 70s was somewhat different to now. There were two floors and two
worlds, explains Piti. The touristy side was on one floor and the hippie world was on
the other floor. The same music but totally different scenes on the different sides. Lots
of hippies would come, but the tourists would come and they would also pay. The
hippies would just bring their dogs.
Pacha parties grew to legendary status. One such night involved a flamenco performer
dancing with a horse on the main dancefloor. Another involved transporting the wholeclub on a boat to Formentera. And then there were the White Parties. Ill always
remember the first White Party we threw in 76, three years after it opened, chuckles
Piti. Everybody had to wear white. They were saying, What shall we do to make this
party special? So we put two UV lights so you could really see the white. Everybody
made a really big effort. So when they put the lights on so the clothes glowed, everyone
took them off and danced in the nude. The atmosphere was incredible. The challenge
was to make a better party than that one because that one was just so amazing. But we
never managed it.
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JEAN-CLAUDE MAURY
History is never linear and however much you might want the facts and figures to line-up like soldiers, they never do. History is a city of facts backed by an empire of
suppositions. While this story is largely concerned with Ibiza and the effects of DJ
Alfredo, there are always interesting diversions and this is one of them.
Jean-Claude Maury is a mysterious character that steps into the frame just as the
camera lens blinks. His story collides accidentally with that of Ibiza and Balearic musicdespite the fact he is rarely, if ever, mentioned. He is the Zelig of the Balearic scene.
What we do know about him is this. Jean-Claude Maury was a Frenchman, originally
from Marseilles, who lived in Brussels. His background was originally in the punk rockexplosion, but he first came to prominence as a DJ at the Mirano, a swanky Belgian
club that is often described as the Studio 54 of the Lowlands (an accolade that probably
ranks alongside the best breakdancer in Afghanistan). He is said to be a primary
influence on the Belgian new beat scene and championed the dark leftfield pop that
became such a fixture in sets in Antwerp and beyond. It was Jean-Claude who broke
Max Berlins Elle Et Moi and also did a very passable cover version for the Carrere label
under the name Joy. He was originally the DJ at Glorys (which had French ownership)
before moving on to Ku, where he was resident during Alfredos Amnesia glory years.
When I asked Alfredo about the DJ who influenced him, he cited Jean-Claude Maury.
He was a very simple guy, without a massive ego. And, although he wasnt young, he
had a love for the music, particularly, and he had great taste.
Other details are sketchy. Was the Jean-Claude who played at the opening night of
Pacha Sitges in the late Sixties, the same person? Did he bring his new beat influencesto bear on Ibiza (Mag & The Suspects Erection, for example, was both a big Balearic
tune and massive with Belgian DJs like Fat Ronny)? Was Jean-Claude the link?
Jean-Claude Maury, however accidentally, almost certainly had an influence on the
sound that eventually became defined as Balearic. In fact, its not hard to see the links
between the music played in Belgium during the years leading up the new beat
explosion with that of Ibiza and Alfredo. The difference between the two is probably just
a healthy dose of sun to wash away the doom and acid rain.
DJ ALFREDOIn the very same year that Pacha threw their infamous White Party, a young Argentinianjournalist arrived on the island by way of Madrid and Paris. Alfredo Fiorito was visiting a
friend. He never left. His first job on Ibiza was selling candles on a market stall. A fewyears later he was running a friends bar. The bar also had some decks, a mixer and a
small collection of records, so Alfredo doubled up as barman and DJ. He had but one
ambition and that was to become resident at Amnesia, then an ailing open-air club that
no one seemed able to make into a success. As to why he wanted this job, he says
simply: It was the most alternative place in Ibiza.
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Amnesia had originally been a finca that had belonged to the Planells family for several
generations. They sold it to the aristocratic Maria Fuencisla Martinez de Campos yMunoz in 1970, who turned it into a hippie enclave replete with art exhibitions, live
performances by stoner bands with a side order of mung beans. It became a
discotheque in May 1976 when a Madrileo called Antonio Escohotado began leasing
the finca from its owner. He chose the name Amnesia (having discarded the markedly
less snappy the Workshop of Forgetfulness).
Amnesia was not a success for several years. Trevor Fung recalls going over to play
there in 1984 after two Belgians bought the club. There was no one in there. No one.
Dead. I played there for about two weeks. It had just been bought and theyd just got itgoing. Didnt happen. Lost my job. During that same summer, Alfredo finally got his
chance. By the end of August, we had not had one person in the club, he laughs,
knowingly.
By the end of that season, it was the hottest club on the island. What changed their
fortune was switching from regular club hours to after-hours and a little Alfredo magic.
It all happened by accident. One night wed been waiting to get paid and some of the
people in the club, my work colleagues, asked me to play for them while we waited for
the money, explains Alfredo. Some people came down from Ku, heard the music andstayed there. Fifty to sixty people. The next day there was 300; the day after 500 and
four days later there was a thousand in the club. Just like that. From then on, Amnesiaopened at three and closed at midday.
The music that Alfredo and a cadre of island DJs began to discover and promote over
the next few years formed the original Balearic playlist (many of which were later
codified on the FFRR compilation Balearic Beat Vol. 1). Although many of these recordswere mainly European and often English, theyd remained a mystery to many of the
travelling British contingent mainly because they were all soulboys for whom the ideaof listening to music made by white people, especially white English people, was
anathema.
Trevor Fung was an early devotee of Alfredos and soon got to know him. At the time
what I used to do was bring him stuff from the UK and he used to buy it from me, he
says, I used to look through his records going, Where did you get this from? I thought
where the fuck did he get all this stuff? And then I looked at the labels and it was all
English stuff. It was from Leeds and places like that. I thought what the fucks going onhere?
What was interesting about Alfredos selections was that even though they were,
indeed, from unlikely locations like Leeds, they still somehow had a Mediterranean feel
to them. The Cures Pictures Of You was a perfect example sounding like a strange
hybrid of dour Estuary vocals and Latin heat; perfect for Amnesia, in fact.
What turned Alfredos music from a popular local curiosity to worldwide infamy was the
intervention of four young enthusiastic British DJs out on a holiday at the behest of
Fung, who was running the Project Bar during the summer of 1987: Johnny Walker,Paul Oakenfold, Nicky Holloway and Danny Rampling. It was Fung who had toldOakenfold about the burgeoning scene there (hed actually been once earlier in the
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season, not liked it, and returned home). It was also Fung who introduced them to
ecstasy.
Id give them all one at the bar. I didnt want to say too much, I just said, Try this, it
dont do too much to you! Then we went to Amnesia. Fucking hell! We was all off on
one here. Danny Rampling skipping round the room and jumping speakers. Johnny was
sitting in a speaker. Paul was like I cant fucking believe this, its changed since I last
been here! Chaos.
I remember walking into this open-air, white-walled fabulous club with palm trees and
mirrored pyramid and dazzling light show going on and all these crazy, flamboyant
people dancing, recalls Johnny Walker. You had all the jet-set around the edgesdrinking their champagne and all the gay crowd going mad on the dancefloor. It was a
real carnival atmosphere, full of life and energy.
And then hearing Alfredo play was completely mindblowing to what we were used to
in London, he adds. We were like, Wow! What the fuck is this? Something completely
different. Alfredo was mixing up house records with indie guitar records, pop stuff like
Madonna and George Michael, and then some of the things that are now Balearic
classics, that I suppose he was finding in Ibizan record shops. I think we did go there
every night; we just couldn't get enough of it. We were like: Weve got take this back toLondon.
What happened next has passed into legend in the UK. Often cited as the start of the
dance scene in Britain (as though nobody had ever danced until Acid Tracks landed in
London). Paul Oakenfold started The Future (aided by pal Trevor Fung), Danny
Rampling ran Shoom in the Fitness Centre, while Nicky Holloway had the Trip at theAstoria. Within months they had help transform a holiday epiphany into a nationwide
phenomenon.
Shoom DJ Colin Faver has never seen anything like it, wrote John Godfrey in i-D
magazine. At the end half of them come up and shake my hand. It just doesnt happen
anywhere else. Its the most obvious display yet of a realignment in club attitudes, a
move away from the fashion victim voyeurism that has dominated London clubland in
the past and more than just a return to fun. We want to change peoples attitude
towards each other when they get out, get rid of that aggressive atmosphere that most
clubs have, says [Shooms] Jenny. As soon as you step inside The Shoom or TheFuture, you can literally feel and certainly see the difference. Nobody glares at you,
everybody smiles at you and someone might even give you a present.
Nights swiftly sprung up all over the country (although, in fact, many early house nights
in Nottingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield had long been thriving anyway).
The style magazines began gingerly stepping around the scene, while the tabloids
interest often denouncing and praising the scene, almost simultaneously ensured
that raving became a national pastime for any youth with a sense of fun and access to
some half-decent drugs.
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Now while its true that the Balearic beat was born in Ibizan clubs, such as Amnesia
and Pacha, its breeding took place in a small, sweaty, strobey, smoky south Londonclub called The Shoom, wrote Terry Farley, in the sleevenotes for Balearic Beats
Vol. 1, a compilation that was entirely based on the playlists of DJ Alfredo. The
hardcore original Shoomers, along with another London club The Future, had
discovered the joys of Balearic beats, during several previous summers of love (sic),
and had brought the music and the attitude back to London with them. The kinetic style
of dancing now associated with Balearics ugly brother, acid house, is pure Ibizan inorigin. The loudest screams at Spectrum are always reserved for Nitzer Ebb and the
Residents while hearing Enzo Avitabile booming through the smoke at Joy is an
ecstatic experience one step away (some say forward) from sex.
The arrival of the Balearic beat, reinforced by the unstoppable force of acid house,
altered the direction of British clubbing and, indeed, British youth culture, for the next 15
years. But, while it was Balearic that was the launching pad, the idea of playing eclectic
sets in the same manner as Alfredo soon waned as the new house regime began.
THE NEW BALEARIC
These days you cant move for clubs advertising themselves as Balearic. Its almost as
ubiquitous as minimal house. So what does it mean now? Is it a genre of music anddoes it have anything to do with Alfredo?
In the 1980s, before the arrival of house music, almost all club DJs played an eclectic
range of music that might incorporate disco, funk, soul, rare groove, go-go, electro, hip
hop and even the occasional comedy record (and some would argue that comedy
records are the epitome of Balearic). Nobody billed these DJs as Balearic; a) because
the term did not yet exist and; b) because everybody played in this style.
In New York, it was the same story, too. Larry Levan, with his wide ranging tastes that
encompassed the classic disco and soul of his youth to bands like the Clash or CatStevens or even Nu Shooz, it could be argued (and is, frequently, by some ninnies) that
Larry Levan was Balearic. The same could be said for Ron Hardy. And Frankie
Knuckles. Oh and Tony Humphries, Shep Pettibone, David Mancuso, Nicky Siano and
about a hundred others.
What house created was both a template a hegemony but also because of its all-
consuming power, it created a small but vocal opposition. The reason many DJs used itas a shorthand term to describe their style was a simple way of differentiating them from
everyone else. It was a way of saying, We dont only play house.
The theory behind Balearic is that any record could be made to work on a dancefloor
provided it had the right feel (that fantastically nebulous word that means one mans
Funkadelic is another mans Dana International). But its also because the idea of a
bearded misery guts from Wigan who had never been further south than Macclesfield
calling himself a Balearic DJ was intrinsically funny (it still is).
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So the new Balearic or The New Balearic, should I say is both a myth and a reality.
Its a myth in as much as there is no specific genre of Balearic as there is for, say,house or happy hardcore or even hardbag. But its also a reality, an alternative reality,
admittedly, in which records from any genre can be Balearic if someone has the
chutzpah or the stupidity to claim so. Balearic is like the giant rabbit in the James
Stewart movie, Harvey, a preposterous notion to some, but to Elwood P. Dowd, a very
real six-foot fluffy animal. You either get it or you dont. Thus Wang Chung can be
Balearic (well, if youve got cloth ears, they can), as can Simply Red or Jamiroquai. Thelist is endless, as is the debate.
For some DJs like the Idjut Boys or DJ Harvey its simply about taking some foggynotion of what it is and interpreting it their own distinctive way. The most important thing
about becoming a Balearic DJ is to have a sense of the absurdity of your chosen role.
You should take great pleasure watching faces drop on a packed dancefloor as they
realise they have been dancing to Cliff Richard or Lieutenant Pigeon for the past three
minutes.
For the original Ibiza DJs, that time and place has long passed and for most of them
the style they championed was not necessarily an ethos or lifestyle, but simple
expediency. An Ibizan DJ would be playing almost every night for up to eight hours aday; they had to fill 40 hours or more programming a week. I think it was because we
were brought up like that, but also there was not much choice, thinks Jos Padilla.Now you can specialise in Detroit techno or deep house or whatever, then you had to
play with what you had. We had to play so many hours that we have to play different
tracks to make the session happen. Its not because in Ibiza we like to play like that. We
have to play Talk Talk, we have to play Belgian beat, we have to play rock, we have to
play reggae, because we have to fill the space of so many hours.
Terry Farley, not only wrote the sleevenotes for the 1988 Balearic Beats Vol. 1compilation, but also championed much of the music. He has been known in his distant
past to have played records by Phil Collins, though thanks to counselling and primalscream therapy has not re-offended for many years. My personal view on Balearic is
that it was a moment in time namely a few Ibizan clubs from 1986-88 and Alfredos
personal taste. In 1988 all the records spun at Future and Shoom were direct steals
from his sets. It was when the UK DJs tried playing their own pop records on drugs that
it went wrong (I stand at the front of the guilty queue myself) although it was fun at the
time.
I canvassed opinion on some message boards as to what Balearic really means:
Harvey playing Easy Lover in the a.m. at New Hard Left, said one; Hearing DonnaSummers State of Independence on a pill for the first time, countered another; Love
of music for its own sake, free of puritanical bias and entrenched prejudice, free of
marketing pigeonholes But this put it more succinctly and more ludicrously than
anyone else: Its a state of mind, wrote Barry Devan. Its a group of islands. Its sand
in your foreskin but not caring. Its Clarks comfy shoes. Its corduroy. Its a lazy place.
Its warm. Its Wellington boots. Its knowledge. Its Moonboots. Its carpet not laminate.
Its Van Halen not Europe. Its council not Hilton. Its Jason Boardman. Its the M10. Its
borrowing not buying. Its me, its you, its everybody. Its bollocks. Its great. Absurd,but true.
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