Documentary traces success of Adelaide virtual festival Space Jams

Space Jams is one of Adelaide’s post-COVID success stories.

It started out as a one-off Instagram livestreaming festival and became so popular that it continues as a real-life event with the next show this weekend.

A new mini-documentary by Mark Tipple tells its story.

“I was out of work with no gigs, and just rolled with the punches by trying to seek the positive in the negative,” festival founder Josh Morphett said, and engineering student drop-out-turned-full time musician, talking to Tipple in the back of his 4×4 in the car park of Jive nightclub in Hindley Street an hour before the first Space Jams show.

Overnight when the Australian live scene closed off, Morphett went from a profitable seven gigs a week to nothing, with two young children and a stay-at-home partner to earn for.

Tipple started filming Morphett immediately after Adelaide’s lockdown began.

“Usually our shoot consisted of Josh at his house jamming live on Facebook and me at my house screen recording his gig on my phone,” Tipple said.

“To say this hasn’t been a straight forward shoot would be an understatement.”

As restrictions were lifted enough to allow 10 people in a room, Morphett thought up Space Jams and rang up musician friends to become involved.

The one-off continued as its popularity grew, eventually finding a regular home at Jive.

Over 100 acts were allotted 20-minute sets. Among them were West Thebarton, Teenage Joans, Wanderers, DyspOra, Horror My Friend, Ollie English, TOWNS, Laura Hill and Pinkish Blu.

“If anyone was going to do this, it was going to be Josh.” friend Logan Watt (aka Kuji Koo) said, who performed his 10pm ‘keytar dj set’ in a mate’s shed, as friends danced slightly out of frame.

“Even at school, Josh was the first to try something new or get everyone involved in whatever he was into, he’s just got a drive to do more.”

Space Jams was nominated for Best Innovation at the South Australian Music Awards.

With sponsors offering to come in, Morphett plans to make Space Jams on-going.

The next one, on November 7 features indie-pop singer Stellie, electronic soul musician Zac Eichner, all-girl indie rockers Oscar The Wild, folk-pop band Diamond Skies and multi-instrumentalist Rob Edwards, with DJ sets from Goliath and OKO, and comedian Clay McMath.