Morganics

Now most people know that the South Bronx, the Boogie Down Bronx, in the early 70’s was the birthplace of Hip Hop, but for me, I first came into contact with Hip Hop in my neighbourhood, so for me, Hip Hop started in North Sydney.

Up the back of the school bus, the 672, just before Cremorne Junction at about a quarter to four back in ’84, my good mate, an American exchange student with the unfortunate name of Randy, tells me of a song he heard back in the states just two weeks ago. “There’s robots dancing in the air in the video clip, the track is by a jazz pianist and there’s a guy scratching on the records. It’s some futuristic funk thing like you’ve never heard before. It’s huge over there, man when you hear it, it’s gonna flip you out!” he tells me as he steps off the bus. I sit there, on my own, up the back of the bus and think,

“When I hear this song, my whole life is going to change.”

DJ cue in the soundtrack of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”. I hop off the ferry and walk into Circular Quay where there’s a huge circle of curious tourists watching a group of kids breaking, or as Molly Meldrum, the host of TV’s Countdown, misnamed it, “rap dancing”. One of them is balancing on his head and I can hear someone in the crowd say,

“He’s going to do that really dangerous move, that one that Gary Coleman from Different Strokes broke his neck doing? I think they call it a head spin.”

I eye the crew suspiciously and after a long pause balancing, the kid starts to try and  head spin, but just manages about 20 degrees before he falls to the ground in a heap. The crowd groans, I snigger, they look up and see me. I’ve got my lino on my left shoulder and my boom box on the other – not just any ghetto blaster, I made it myself.

After hours of studying the stereo on the front cover of Malcolm Mclaren’s “Duck Rock” I caught the bus up to Hobbyco at Crows Nest, with my Mum’s old cassette radio that she let me have. I explain to them that I need a silver marker pen, some glue and some paint. I choose the colours, bright orange, red and yellow. I go home, raid my old lego collection, stick a lego flower to the antenna, a coffee jar lid on the speaker, some plastic checker pieces next to the radio dial, get the silver marker pen and do my tag of “Enzyme” that I got from science class. At the bottom left corner, I write

“Morgan Lewis Productions 1984. Ph: 929 8016” yes, that’s my phone number. I buy six double DD batteries from Franklins and it’s done.

Back at Circular Quay, the crew of Bboy wannabees look up at me, spot the my boombox, look at each other, grab their shit and run off. I walk down to my normal patch, it’s normally just me and this one African American kid who is really good, we don’t get in each others way. He’s tight, he does a good show, I have a show too. I bought my white gloves – to highlight my mime routines – from the local chemist, I bought my Odyssey black and white pants from Paddy’s markets down in Chinatown and the piece de resistance, my red Nike swoosh canvas hi tops – that I keep clean with my Mum’s shoe whitener – take pride of place. I put down my lino, press play on the tape I have made at home and start my routine. I have a cool routine to White Lines with top rocks, six step and swipes into my signature hand spin, another to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and of course my popping, mime basketball routine works perfectly to “Rockit!”

At school, me and my mates Dave and Dominic are little stars, everyone knows we’re the breakers. We know it’s out of bounds, but we sneak into the hall at lunch time to practice on the slippery wooden floor. Mr Miller hears the music and chases us all out but catches Dominic and proceeds to punish him with the wooden paddle. Dom refuses to cry and we can tell that even as he doles out the punishment, Mr Miller can’t help but admire him – we all think Dom’s the coolest.

Dave does the meanest knee spin, Dom does backspins and my specialty is handglides and turtles. I am so small that I have hardly any weight and these moves work well for me. I rock the mad style at the blue light disco at North Sydney Police Citizens Youth Club; a hot pink T-shirt, a peroxide fringe that I did myself, layers on the side – done by my Dad’s Fijian Indian friend, Danny – and of course a rat’s tail. As the lights flash and the tunes play, we bust out our best moves, smiling at the girls in the crowd. Then the MC comes onstage and announces that the professional crew of breakdancers, the legendary DDT, the Digit Dance Team were about to hit the stage. They were three or four years older than us, they had matching tracksuits, they had mad routines, and they blew the crowd away. I still remember one of the guys was called Vlad, a big Russian dude and he could do the best nutcrackers – windmills whilst holding your nuts.

We used to practice down in an underground carpark right next to North Sydney Train Station. It was perfect because the concrete was polished, great for spins and it had the bonus that when the trains were coming, me and my mates would stop, quickly get ready and do a routine for the passing spectators. Blaze was a local graffiti artist and I loved his huge pieces on the wall at my local basketball court. I used to play tennis against that wall with my Dad. Coming up as a Bboy in North Sydney had its downsides; everyone knew that the place to be was Burwood Park on a Thursday night. It was mythical to me, but I was too young, too small, and too scared to travel all the way over to there at night. Every week, when we were at a circle in the city we would get reports,

“Did you hear Rosano did 15 handglides on a squashed coke can last Thursday!!?”

In front of Hoyts cinema on George St was a hot spot, everyone would pass through. That guy that was a mad popper who had some medical thing that meant he looked 40 when he was 16, the Lebanese guys that ran the “Breakdancing School” just a few hundred metres down the road; I remember watching one of them windmill one way, pause, then windmill back the other way – unbelievable!

One day we got chased away by security, ended up in Pitt St and where we had a huge battle between three crews. Islander boys twice my size are throwing down, but one of them does a handglide and I am sent in, a tiny little white dude from the North Shore, to represent. So I do my thing, bust out my super-fast, signature hand spin, I take him out and before you know it there are three Bboys in the circle all fired up, popping with their white chemist’s gloves on, getting closer and closer to each other, close contact popping! The energy is tense, aggression is building, contact seems inevitable and then who knows what’s gonna happen, when all of a sudden another security guards busts through the circle waving his baton, there’s yelling and screaming, we grab our lino and boom boxes and all run down the street whooping and yelling, all three crews friends forever.