Central Station Records celebrates 40th anniversary with book and 3CD set
The rise and rise of Australia’s longest running dance label Central Station Records – and its founders Jo Palumbo and Morgan Williams – is intertwined with the growth of Australia’s dance music scene, first as a music and community phenomenon, and then as a global brand.
As the store-turned-label celebrates its 40th anniversary with a book and a 3CD set, it shows starkly how different the Australian EDM scene would have been if Central Station Records, which started out as a number of stores, hadn’t sneakily imported 12” dance vinyl records not released here by the multinationals who had the rights.
Madonna and Prince emerged in Australia through this underground scene.
With input from 50 DJs, producers and creative types, Rel Hannah’s book Music Wars – The Sound of The Underground, The Untold Story of Central Station Records (published today) recreates the passion and excitement of how these imported dance records sparked a new generation of club DJs who’d rush to the stores to check out the latest shipments.
By playing these rarities in clubs, illegal warehouse parties and recovery rooms, they drew kids obsessed with glamorous, misunderstood and subversive doof records which served as antidotes to the dreariness of their lives.
As clubs bloomed, an entire scene erupted with its own promoters, designers, magazines, radio stations, agencies, new labels and its own association.
No one necessarily had a blueprint for success, least of all Central Station, but sheer enthusiasm and talent won out.
“The Australian dance music scene would have probably got as big, whether we were here or not,” Williams tells TMN. “Maybe it might have taken a bit longer to reach where it did.
“But it was a real movement, everyone on a mission.”
Music Wars delves, warts and all, into how the scene was almost destroyed when major record companies responded with anger to the importing of records.
Palumbo recounts to TMN, “I bought a record store in Melbourne and all these customers and DJs would come in asking for all these records which weren’t available because the big record companies who had the rights wouldn’t release them, because they thought they wouldn’t sell.
“So I started importing these 12” vinyl records from overseas. The Copyright Act in wouldn’t allow imported records, and soon the legal letters started from the major labels. At the time, it was a crime to do that, and I actually could have gone to jail for a long time.
“I was so angry that small business was being suppressed and the music everyone was loving was being suppressed. I thought, I’ll take you on.”
The book recounts the incessant legal letters, court battles, vandalism and dirty tricks directed at Central Station.
Refusing to roll over, they wrote thousands of letters to politicians to overturn the law. Or they’d contact the dance divisions of the majors overseas, complain about what their Australian subsidiaries were doing… and get heaps of promo vinyl from sympathetic overseas executives.
“Large Australian businesses are not known for kindness to small competitors,” says Palumbo. “We were happy to work with them, so we fought back on legal, economic and political levels.”
As Central Station Records looks back on its last four decades, it continues to have a presence on the global charts. Melbourne singer-songwriter Starley’s Call On Me, along with its Ryan Riback remix, has notched up 420 million streams and gone Top 10 in 14 countries.
Music Wars also comes with a 3CD soundtrack.
CD 1 focuses on the music that inspired the original store, like Chic’s Le Freak, Crystal Waters’ Gypsy Woman and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love.
The other two CDs cover the successes of the label, including homegrown signings Bombs Away, Odd Mob and Starley, and international acts as such as Vengaboys, Scooter, DJ Sammy, Hardwell, Chicane, Tina Cousins and ATB.