www.loopzorbital.com

I have a feeling this is going to be like Brixton and Glastonbury all over again

My favourite Toronto rave promotion company, Hullabaloo!, is throwing their last ever party on Saturday night.

I'm simultaneously excited and bummed out (and feeling totally sentimental about the whole thing). However, $20,000 sound and lighting budget for this one, need I say more?

Of all the pictures I've taken at Hulla parties (for a while I (and my boyfriend at the time) would attend as photographers), this has always stood out for me and I think it sums the whole thing up nicely...


Charlie B, Hullabaloo 18

Hardcore crew, this one is for you!

The Toronto Star, July 7

Say goodbye to the Hullabaloo! era
Chris Samojlenko calls it quits at No. 44

One, last blow-out party this weekend

BEN RAYNER
POP MUSIC CRITIC

Even if fun-fur finery, glo-sticks and happy hardcore were never your thing, you can't be a raver past or present in Toronto and not feel a twinge of sadness at the looming retirement of the Hullabaloo! brand.

Although neither the largest nor the longest-lived of the party-promotion outfits once so numerous in this city by the close of the 1990s, Hullabaloo! — the brainchild of cherubic happy-hardcore DJ Chris "Anabolic Frolic" Samojlenko — has always staged the "raviest" of raves, colourful nighttime playgrounds where the childlike whimsy, elaborate costumes and unabashedly upbeat sounds that characterized the scene's U.K. origins have never gone out of fashion.

Hullabaloo!'s singular brand of cultural idealism, not to mention its championing of rip-roaring, 150 bpm hardcore sounds, has earned it a faithful following that has endured over the years while most of the other promoters who came up alongside it have vanished. Yet late last year, Samojlenko stunned the Hulla hordes by announcing that he would soon be getting out of the party business and putting the Hullabaloo! name to rest for good.

The moment of truth is upon us this weekend. Sometime during the wee hours of Sunday morning, the lights will come up on the 44th Hullabaloo! event and that will be it.

"It's gonna be rough," concedes Samojlenko, 30. "But it's run its course. I sort of came to the hard conclusion that brighter days weren't ahead, and Hulla is such a brand that I sort of owed it to go out while it still meant something rather than to beat it into the ground. Ever since I made the decision, I've felt really good about it because it sent shockwaves around the world. Literally everywhere."

Indeed, while hardcore parties have been a mainstay of the European party scene since rave's inception (and are even slightly resurgent these days), Hullabaloo! and Anabolic Frolic have pretty much owned North America since the franchise began in 1997.

Samojlenko, an Ottawa native first introduced to electronic dance music via the University of Ottawa radio station, started throwing parties for much the same reason he stumbed into DJ-ing: "Out of necessity." He simply wasn't hearing the music he liked — specifically, the pathologically giddy, oft-maligned genre known as "happy hardcore." So he took matters into his own hands, first as an importer of hardcore vinyl, then as a DJ and finally as a promoter.

"I literally starved while I was doing this in the beginning," Samojlenko says. "I knew if I had a job, I would not be able to focus while working. So basically I couldn't afford a place to live. I had an office that was 10 by 12 feet, no windows. I slept on the floor of this thing for two years. When my wife, Robin, moved up here from L.A., we lived in there together for three months until we got our own place. It was trial by fire. If you can make it through that ..."

It has, of course, paid off. Anabolic Frolic and Hullabaloo! have occupied a fairly unique niche in the North American market ever since. And, thanks in part to Samojlenko's hugely successful Happy 2 B Hardcore series for the long-lost Moonshine Records (at 400,000 units moved, it's the bestselling electronic-music series ever), the Hulla name has gained notoriety amongst ravers around the world, regularly drawing curious partiers from points as far afield as the States, the U.K., Germany and Australian to Toronto.

But Hulla and Samojlenko wound up being in the wrong place at the wrong time when one of three much-reported Ecstasy deaths to occur in the city in 1999 happened at his "A View to a Thrill" party that October.

Called before a public inquest into the unfortunate death of 20-year-old Ryerson student Allan Ho, Samojlenko wound up bearing the brunt of the media's anti-rave pillorying when the city's rave hysteria hit full force in 2000. It's still hard for him to talk about the time.

"Anybody who knows me knows I was very passionate about what I did and I never messed around in anything bad. It was just bad luck, I guess," he says.

Samojlenko — who suffered through another crisis a year later when a Hullabaloo! partygoer was stabbed through the heart — says the whole thing was an "eye-opening experience about the media."

"I remember the morning after our party when the police were giving their spin on the whole thing," he says. "They were painting this terrible picture of, like, kids sleeping in trash and stuff. And it turns out my mother was in Toronto that weekend — it was Thanksgiving weekend — and I'd invited her to our party because she'd never seen what I do. So she came at 5 in the morning, she got up onstage and I introduced her to the crowd and everybody went crazy. My wife, Robin, gave her some glo-sticks and she danced onstage with glo-sticks for my entire set, and afterwards some kids took it upon themselves to escort her through the building and get her a taxi.

"She was so impressed by the whole experience, it reminded her a lot of things she did in her youth. She was there, she saw it with her own eyes and all of a sudden we saw what they were reporting."

In the midst of this dark period, Samojlenko nevertheless resolved only to end Hullabaloo! on "my own terms." And while the parties have grown smaller since the heyday, but a stable core of fans has remained.

So why end it now? The way Samojlenko sees it, the scene, now well into its 15th year in North America, is only going to keep fragmenting and contracting, as the infrastructure that allowed it to get so big in Toronto no longer exists.

"For years and years and years, there wasn't a single weekend in Toronto where there wasn't a big event going on. I'd say with any given Hulla, there were 500 new kids experiencing their very first rave. And if you think about that going on every single weekend and just gaining momentum, that doesn't exist anymore ... For the past two or three years, I've sort of felt like I've been carrying the whole scene on my shoulders."

Samojlenko, who recently became the proud father of a baby boy, will continue to DJ "as long as Anabolic Frolic's bookings do," while pursuing his curious second calling as a trained stage hypnotist on the side. He's also working on a book about his experiences.

But Hullabaloo!, he vows, is done. Following a pre-party at the Marquee Event Theatre tomorrow night, then, the final Hullabaloo! — fittingly called "All Good Things ..." — goes down at the Opera House on Saturday, featuring a DJ roster of Hulla residents and concluding with a two-hour "history of Hulla" set from Anabolic Frolic.

"The sound and lighting budget exceeds anything we've ever done, even in our biggest days," he laughs. And for a place like the Opera House, it's totally overkill. On paper, if you saw what we had planned, it's totally crazy. But I think for a lot of people there, it's gonna be the last rave they're ever going to be at. So I'd like Hulla to personify what the rave scene is and was ...

"What people don't understand about raving is there was such a community. They're the ones who made it what it was ... Every Hulla was sort of this really creative celebration of fashion and culture and music, and that came from within. That came from the people who came to it."

stargurl wrote:

beautiful photo, really captures the feeling

have an awesome one tonight mate!

I just got home, it's 6:45 in the morning.

What a party!

I didn't know it was possible to cry so much while listening to happy hardcore!

Sleep then review

Oh goodness, where do I begin? At the beginning, I suppose.

As far as I can remember, I learned about Hullabaloo on IRC, back around Love & Magic or Into the Blue. Something always came up, or I wasn't allowed to go, but I managed to pull everything together for Funtopia 1, at Ministry back in June 1998. Even then, there were netmeets: my friend Brian (from #Orbital on Undernet IRC) and his friends Emily and Carl drove up from Washington, DC. Somehow I had managed to convince them that Hullabaloo was worth the trip, even though I'd never attended a Hulla party before.

It was awesome.

After that, I made it to most Hulla parties, and looked forward to them like nothing else. One of my all-time favourites would have to be Big Top: the first big net meet (that I remember), the bouncy castle, playing Twister in the corner of the venue... an excellent night.

And then in 1999, something happened that I feel was a total act of fate, and I feel as though I need to mention it here. I was living in London for school, and I wanted to get back to Toronto to attend For Those Who Know in December. I was too cheap to take the train or the bus, so I posted a message on the Hulla board looking for a ride. A guy named Mikie saw my post, and even though we'd never spoken before, he then convinced his friend Alan to drive me to the party. Alan and I met up in London a few days before the party just to make sure that it would work out, and I found out that Mikie had also offered to let me stay at his apartment after the party.

That night changed my life. Alan had a digital camera, and he let me use it for part of the night at For Those Who Know. I put my pictures online and one was used for the Ooh Crikey Wot a Scorcher flyer, and the "Photocrew" was born. If it wasn't for Hulla, I never would have developed an interest in photography, and it truly has become one of my passions. But back to the people I met that weekend. Alan and I went on to date for quite a while. Mikie has since become one of my closest friends, even though he's lived and worked overseas for a while now. Earlier this year, I flew to Australia to be "best man" in his wedding. I've met so many good people through Alan and through Mikie, and it's all thanks to one stupid post I made on the Hulla board.

Starting with Ooh Crikey, Alan and I (or sometimes just myself) would go to Hulla armed with, at first, his camera, then our own cameras, and take literally hundreds and hundreds of photos each night. I loved taking party pictures.

And then in 2001, for various reasons, it kind of all fell apart for me. Going to parties had started to feel like work to me (in terms of running around trying to get photos of everything instead of dancing), I didn't know many/any people to go with and always felt like a bit of an outsider rather than a part of the scene, and then there was Rhythm of Life (RIP Salim). I skipped a couple Hullas, attended Turn up the Music in November 2001 and then I did not attend another Hulla (or any other party, as far as I can remember) until April 2005, when I grabbed a couple friends who had never been to Hulla and dragged them to Lost in Space.

I never planned to quit like that, it just sort of happened. Hullas would roll around and I just couldn't motivate myself to go anymore. Looking back, I really regret this, as I'm sure I missed some great times.

To be honest, I hadn't even planned to attend Lost in Space or All Good Things. But then Chris approached me about the scrapbook project, and I started digging through old CDRs and pulling together all of my Hulla photos. And then I remembered what Hulla meant to me. Chris sent me a couple scrapbooks in the mail, and I just started to cry. Holding the scrapbook was like holding who I was from 1998-2001, and I missed those days. I missed taking pictures. I missed the people that I saw in the photos.

Then I went to Lost in Space, and I had a great time, even though I never made it onto the main floor, and didn't stay all that long or really see anybody that I once knew.

Last night I promised myself that I'd be front and centre, and there I was, from about 15 minutes into Tommy's set right until the end of the night. And what a night it was! I had my brother with me, and it was his first party ever. I'm glad that he got the chance to experience something that meant to much to me. I was so happy to see so many familiar faces, so many people that I hadn't seen in years and years. That's the Hulla spirit right there, spotting somebody that you haven't seen in four (or five or six) years, giving them a massive hug, and instantly it feels like you're back among true friends.

As the night went on last night, I kept feeling as though whoever was playing was playing the best set of the night. Each and every set was amazing, and I feel like I have to thank the DJs because they were so great.

I was doing fairly well last night emotionally, just a little bit of sadness around the various retirements. And then there was the video scrapbook. There was a slide with a photo of me, and then a couple slides later one of Mikie, and I just lost it. Instantly I grabbed my phone and sent Mikie a text to wish him a Happy Hulla and tell him how much I wished he was there. He came back with "Aww! Blow a whistle for me!" and that just about sums it up.

What else is there to say about last night? The Opera House looked fantastic. The music was amazing. And the crowd! What an awesome and friendly bunch. I've travelled a lot recently and attended some fairly large and famous events. I can say this with all sincerity: nothing can top that Hulla vibe. It was truly alive and well last night.

To the Hulla ravers, especially those who have routinely travelled from all over the place to attend Hulla parties: it's amazing how much dedication you've shown. It's great to see how much effort people still put into their outfits, into bringing things to give away, into ensuring those around them are having a good time. There is no crowd anywhere like a Hulla crowd.

I think that I had better cut myself off, otherwise I could go on forever.

Hullabaloo has meant so much to me over the years, and I am so happy to have been there for the very last one. I almost can't believe that this is indeed the end. But what an end! Last night was truly legendary.

Happy Hullabaloo!

Love always,
Aimée (stargurl)