HOW TO START A SCENE FROM SCRATCH, taken from holly and kati's GOOEY project presentation, ELECTROFRINGE 08

What do you do if you're a cool girl or shy boy and you wanna make music or art or whatever!??! MAKE MUSIC AND ART IN YR BEDROOM AND THEN TAKE IT TO THE WORLD!!!! It doesn't matter if you live in New York City, or the smallest, most boring town in the middle of nowhere, you can make music in your bedroom you can put your art online, and organize shows and meet people who make art and do other weird things!!! I've got some hottt tips, but first an intro:

When i moved to Melbourne, I was totally devo-ed when i realised that there wasn't a cool girl art noise scene here!!! :( cos I moved from Brisbane where Toxic Lipstick and Anal Cookie and other groups like that did heaps of work to make space for weirdo girls and weirdo boys who don't like guitar music! So my first couple of months in Melbourne were spent sooking about not having a space to call my own, but then my friends and I decided to BUILD A SCENE FROM SCRATCH, to create a space (in our bedrooms//minds and even ON STAGE) for girl noise artists and musicians to show each other (and the world) the amazing things that we can do! And so Gooey On The Inside was born!

Now, after organising parties for over a year, I've made friends with with teenagers who sample video games in their hot tracks, ex-drug addicts who rap about the shit in their life instead of taking pills, awesome performance-art drag-queens who do tarot readings and everyone's make-up, and lots of sparkle-whaaaa babes who have come out of their shells cos they know that there is space to make the art they want!

So… if you make music and you are a girl (or if you are a shy boy, or queer, or if yr not rich or WHATEVA) it can be harder to get your stuff out there than if you're a regular all-boy rock band!!! But if you push through the obstacles, you will find that there are people out there in similar positions to you, and who make cool stuff as well (or they will after they get inspired by what you're doing!). Their lives will be enriched by the knowledge that you and your art exist!! Right now it might not seem like there's space for what you're doing, but if you just to stick yr elbows out and wiggle a bit, you will make some!! This is DIY culture: DO IT YOURSELF, because no one else will!!

PUT ON SHOWS
This is probably the most important thing you can do to create a scene. A show is a physical space where people can perform all the (h)art that they have made! It a place to meet new people who have been lured in by your awesome flyer design skills and want to have a good time. Its a place to express yourself and show off!

have some idea of what you want to happen @ yr show…
You can have acts or DJs, or anything that you think will make cool people come to your show (like vegan hot dog stalls, weird installations by your art friends, bubble machines, WHATEVA YOU WANT!!!)

find a venue <3>
Anywhere could be a venue for your show!!! Gooey On The Inside have put on shows in warehouses, art galleries, squats, our friends' lounge-rooms, in carparks, in clubs, in an anarchist bookstore and recently even at big festivalz! Each venue will have its good and bad points. If your show is in an art gallery there may be sound restrictions but you'll probably have freedom to do some weird shit up there. If your show is in a squat, you'll need to be prepared for the fact that cops could turn up, and if you want to use a club or a pub you'll have to negotiate with the booker who might want a guarantee of how many people will come or else they'll want your money! But always be confident about what you want to do when you are talking to the people who run the venue you want to use. In general, if you're a girl, men will talk down to you and assume you know nothing. THIS IS FALSE!! You can do anything you want!! Easily!!!

organize a PA or sound equipment for the event
Some people get really intimidated when it comes to sound equipment (including me about 6 months ago), but its actually not that hard:
A PA is a Public Addess system, its the name for what normally includes a mixing desk, and at least two speakers, and normally it might come with some shit mics. Venues like pubs and clubs usually have a PA already, but you'll need to hire or borrow one if your party is at a gallery or a house or squat (or just use amps + shitty speakers).
Get to know mixing desks, leads, jacks, etc and you will won't have to deal with loser sound guys because you will hear the problem and be able to fix it yourself!! But here are some basic stuff to remember before you become a soundmaster:
Before you play, ALWAYS do a soundcheck. Good sound is half your show. Talk and sing into the mic the way you will when you perform. If there is a bit where you yell, do it so the sound person knows. If you don’t like your voice sounding really low or really high, tell them and they can take out the tones you don't like. But you need to say what you want, don’t trust that they just 'know what they’re doing'… they don’t… BE CONFIDENT for real!!!!!
If you make electronic music and it doesn’t sound right when its playing thru the PA, tell the sound tech straight away. They might argue with you and tell you that its your computer or your gear or your ears, but it isn`t. Normally they haven't plugged in both channels of your instrument/computer/mixer etc or have put them into the wrong hole! Oops!

promote ya gig
Decide on a cool theme!! Some Gooey themes have been: clown, infinity, mad max sparkle apocolypse, birthday party, Ibiza beach party, goosebumps horror house, troll dolls, rave culture, the possilities are endless!
Make the flyer to match the theme using cracked versions of photoshop and hand draw colourful shit on top of it and then encourage people to dress up for the party. Make sure your flyer has ALL of the info that people will need, including the time, place, day AND date of your show, and also the acts who are playing the show! Give flyers to your friends and tell them if they start a band they can play too!!! Leave flyers at all the places you look for flyers (record stores, cafes, school/uni, clothes shops, youth centres). Put the flyer all over the internet and talk shit about your show (this is so fast for telling your friends to come party and you don’t have to print out onto old growth rain-forest).

cultivate community!
this sounds real posi, i know, but we're talking about nu-egg talent here!!! Once you're playing stadium shows you'll have heaps of time to think about whether your music is 'really good' or not. But right now, if you really want to create a new world for you and your allies, you need to believe in yourself as a radical performer! And remember, your friends are just like celebrities, they just haven't been exploited yet!

support the art
if your friend starts making raps or music or art tell them its awesome (because it IS) and then put on a party to celebrate it. (someone once asked me, 'but what about if your friend's art ISN'T good', but i've never come across this problem! 'good' is a totally subjective concept, and if Billy Ray Cyrus and his achey breaky heart could be a number one hit sensation of the early ninties, then there is no reason why yr friends can't play whatever they want at yr show, even if they just wanna bash on the bottom of icecream buckets and howl to the sky backed by a choir of stray dogs!!! also, if you don't like what someone does at your show, you don't have to ask them to play again, its good to try to have different performers at different parties too!!!)

co-inspire with your friends
never give up, no matter how many people tell you your music isn't 'good', let's push each other to become bigger, better, cooler, hotter, funner, freaks!
Remember to make a myspace if you are a cool girl artist + record songs in yr bedroom please, cuz the world needs it!! And then we can talk to each other and get inspired!