Megatripolis
Encyclopedia
Megatripolis was an innovative, underground London nightclub created by Encyclopaedia Psychedelica
editor and founder of the Zippie
movement Fraser Clark
, partner Sionaidh Craigen and partners JJ and Bugsy as well as later Tribal Energy and a great many others. The club combined New Age
ideology with Rave
culture to create a vibrant, festival-like atmosphere presenting a wide variety of cross-cultural ideas and experiences. Club nights ran regularly on Thursdays from 1993 until 1996, being the focus of much of the Zippie movement. The club and its related activities also helped to popularise ideas such as cyberculture
and the Internet between those years.
, at first as a collaboration with Tribal Energy on Thursday nights in June 1993. With a lecture by Terence McKenna
on its opening night, and with DJs Nik Sequenci, Tribal Energy, Solar Quest and Mixmaster Morris. The club ran with an ambient space in the foyer and a smart bar on the terrace. With techno playing, an assortment of about 250 people used to attend. The club ran weekly. A disagreement between the Tribal Energy and Megatripolis crews led to the latter being thrown out of the venue eight weeks later. (Tribal Energy continued with a club on the same night, called 'metropolis', which ran for 7 weeks before closing). The evolution/dream crew consolidated and grew after the Zippy picnic, of June 1993, on Hampstead Heath, an event which Fraser Clark and Marcus Pennell instigated. On October 21, 1993, the Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross Station
became home to the club with evolution/dream promoting. 4000 people turned up for the opening night, when Megatripolis entered clubbing history. Heaven was London's original gay-only nightclub, but had run non-gay (known as Pyramid) nights for many years, including very famous clubs such as Rage, Earth, Spectrum and Land of Oz.
The Megatripolis 'Festival in a box' on Thursday nights attracted a diverse patronage from a wide age range, many of whom would not otherwise have considered going clubbing. By early 1994 it had also taken over the adjoining Sound Shaft nightclub and turned it into an ambient space with frequent all-night sets by Mixmaster Morris
on the club's fourth separate sound stage. Megatripolis also promoted several large parties with Frank Schofield at Bagley's in Kings Cross
and escalated its political agenda by renting an armoured car for the Criminal Justice Bill protest rally in July 1994.
The club ran until New Year's 1995 when internal pressures split it apart. It continued with a diminished agenda on an underground basis until it was closed on Thursday October 24, 1996, the club's third birthday. A UK tour and two shows at the Mad club in Athens took place in the spring / summer of 1996. A 3-CD album representing the club was released in July 1996 on Funky Peace Productions 2000 featuring mixes by DJ regulars and completely packaged on hemp
(tree-free) paper. Production equipment owned by the club was all distributed to all the crew. At a court case in London in June 1998 brought by Fraser Clark remaining rights to the name Megatripolis were given to Fraser Clark based on an agreement made in early 1993. A single Megatripolis event organised by Fraser Clark took place at Heaven in May 2000.
Typical evenings combined lectures and workshops with live musical performances and DJing playing mostly progressive house accompanied by video imagery and live theatre. Visits from speakers such as Allen Ginsberg
, Terence McKenna
, George Monbiot
, Howard Marks
and Ram Dass
were common, as well as from guest DJs including Colin Faver, Colin Dale, Alex Paterson
, Andrew Weatherall
, Mr C, Tsuyoshi Suzuki, Mark Sinclair, Eddie Love Chocolate, James Monro, Mark Allen and Talvin Singh. The club's resident DJ's were Darius Akashic, Nik Sequenci, Richard Grey and Marco Arnaldi. Atmospheric music combined with sound effects was played along to films in the "chill-out rooms" set apart from the dance floors.
New-age style stalls occupied the central hallway selling non-alcoholic energy (or "smart") drinks, body jewellery, alternative "small press" comics and magazines (such as the short-lived, but influential Head Magazine), as well as T-shirts and other clothing. The club also encouraged face and body painters, massage therapists, healers and magicians.
Also notable were early demonstrations of the World Wide Web
at a time when most patrons were just beginning to be aware of what was then termed cyberculture
, something seen as an important, if not defining, part of the Zippie future. Underground bulletin boards such as London's pHreak hosted live "cyber events" from the club. In what was seen as very progressive at the time, a live video interview with Arthur C Clarke was conducted from his home in Sri Lanka on a portable satellite phone system. Similarly, Timothy Leary was transmitted into the club via ISDN giving a video interview from his home in the Los Angeles hills. (Isdn cables were installed at his house for the link). (In the '60s Timothy Leary had been banned from entering the UK in person by the British government a ban which was still in force at the time). His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave a lecture via ISDN at the club on Thursday 18 July 1996.
Environmental issues were an important part of the club's remit, another part of the Zippie agenda. Anti-road protests were advertised on its internal noticeboards, hemp fashion shows were staged, environmental lectures and debates took place in the talk room The Well and pedal-bike sound-systems played live on several occasions in various rooms. The club has been noted as an important promoter of climate change awareness.
The sixth and final night of the club was a "launch rave" hosted by Ronin Press for Timothy Leary's
book Chaos And Cyber Culture. In true "illegal UK rave" tradition, patrons were given the event's location at a nearby burger joint. Leary jammed and performed jazz skat with famous Bay Area musician Maruga. He was later kidnapped by the Zippie Soundsystem and forced to release a statement condemning the UK Prime Minister John Major
and the Criminal Justice Bill, which famously banned outdoor parties with music that included an "emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Leary exerted a powerful influence over the philosophy of the club and the Zippie
movement overall. An indication of this can be found in the introduction to his posthumous book The Fugitive Philosopher (Ronin Press, September 2007) written by Fraser Clark. The original title of the piece, published in Clark's online magazine the UP!http://www.parallel-youniversity.com, was Timothy Leary Was A Saint Who Will Be Remembered & Celebrated Long After Jesus, Mohamed and Elvis Are Forgotten
Well-known people who attended the club include Malcolm Mclaren, Lynne Franks, The Pet Shop Boys and Sir Richard Branson.
Encyclopaedia Psychedelica
Encyclopedia Psychedelica was an independent London-based magazine in the late 1980s espousing a return to hippy values at a time when to call someone a 'Hippy' was considered an insult...
editor and founder of the Zippie
Zippie
Zippie is a term used to describe a person who does something for nothing, i.e. zip. Any supporter of free culture, free food, free books, free software is a zippie....
movement Fraser Clark
Fraser Clark
The late Fraser Clark was the founder and editor of Encyclopedia Psychedelica and a key advocate of the rave movement, hosting regular small underground parties which laid the way for the launch of the first large legal festi-rave club in central London, Megatripolis in 1993.He advocated a new form...
, partner Sionaidh Craigen and partners JJ and Bugsy as well as later Tribal Energy and a great many others. The club combined New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
ideology with Rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
culture to create a vibrant, festival-like atmosphere presenting a wide variety of cross-cultural ideas and experiences. Club nights ran regularly on Thursdays from 1993 until 1996, being the focus of much of the Zippie movement. The club and its related activities also helped to popularise ideas such as cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
and the Internet between those years.
History & Venues
The club first started at The Marquee in London when it was at 105 Charing Cross RoadCharing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
, at first as a collaboration with Tribal Energy on Thursday nights in June 1993. With a lecture by Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...
on its opening night, and with DJs Nik Sequenci, Tribal Energy, Solar Quest and Mixmaster Morris. The club ran with an ambient space in the foyer and a smart bar on the terrace. With techno playing, an assortment of about 250 people used to attend. The club ran weekly. A disagreement between the Tribal Energy and Megatripolis crews led to the latter being thrown out of the venue eight weeks later. (Tribal Energy continued with a club on the same night, called 'metropolis', which ran for 7 weeks before closing). The evolution/dream crew consolidated and grew after the Zippy picnic, of June 1993, on Hampstead Heath, an event which Fraser Clark and Marcus Pennell instigated. On October 21, 1993, the Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross Station
Charing Cross station
Charing Cross station may refer to:In London, England:*Charing Cross railway station*Charing Cross tube station **Embankment tube station was previously named Charing CrossIn Glasgow, Scotland:...
became home to the club with evolution/dream promoting. 4000 people turned up for the opening night, when Megatripolis entered clubbing history. Heaven was London's original gay-only nightclub, but had run non-gay (known as Pyramid) nights for many years, including very famous clubs such as Rage, Earth, Spectrum and Land of Oz.
The Megatripolis 'Festival in a box' on Thursday nights attracted a diverse patronage from a wide age range, many of whom would not otherwise have considered going clubbing. By early 1994 it had also taken over the adjoining Sound Shaft nightclub and turned it into an ambient space with frequent all-night sets by Mixmaster Morris
Mixmaster Morris
Mixmaster Morris is an English ambient DJ and underground musician. Relating specifically to ambient music, Morris stated "It's exactly what you need if you have a busy and stressful life".-Life and career:...
on the club's fourth separate sound stage. Megatripolis also promoted several large parties with Frank Schofield at Bagley's in Kings Cross
Kings Cross, London
King's Cross is an area of London partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the London Borough of Islington. It is an inner-city district located 2.5 miles north of Charing Cross. The area formerly had a reputation for being a red light district and run-down. However, rapid regeneration...
and escalated its political agenda by renting an armoured car for the Criminal Justice Bill protest rally in July 1994.
The club ran until New Year's 1995 when internal pressures split it apart. It continued with a diminished agenda on an underground basis until it was closed on Thursday October 24, 1996, the club's third birthday. A UK tour and two shows at the Mad club in Athens took place in the spring / summer of 1996. A 3-CD album representing the club was released in July 1996 on Funky Peace Productions 2000 featuring mixes by DJ regulars and completely packaged on hemp
Hemp
Hemp is mostly used as a name for low tetrahydrocannabinol strains of the plant Cannabis sativa, of fiber and/or oilseed varieties. In modern times, hemp has been used for industrial purposes including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food and fuel with modest...
(tree-free) paper. Production equipment owned by the club was all distributed to all the crew. At a court case in London in June 1998 brought by Fraser Clark remaining rights to the name Megatripolis were given to Fraser Clark based on an agreement made in early 1993. A single Megatripolis event organised by Fraser Clark took place at Heaven in May 2000.
Culture & Events
Megatripolis proved popular, although some reporting of it suggested a dichotomy between an avowed downplay of psychedelic substances and perceptions of substance use by some club-goers. In any event, the club provided a meeting place of like-minded people and served as a platform for social awareness and activism as well as more traditional nightclub fare.Typical evenings combined lectures and workshops with live musical performances and DJing playing mostly progressive house accompanied by video imagery and live theatre. Visits from speakers such as Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...
, George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
, Howard Marks
Howard Marks
Dennis Howard Marks is a Welsh author and former drug smuggler who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases, supposed connections with groups such as the CIA, the IRA, MI6, and the Mafia, and his eventual conviction at the hands of the American Drug...
and Ram Dass
Ram Dass
Ram Dass is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem...
were common, as well as from guest DJs including Colin Faver, Colin Dale, Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson is an English musician and co-founder of the ambient group The Orb, in which he has worked since its inception....
, Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall is a DJ, producer, and remixer.Andrew, Terry Farley, Cymon Eckel and Steve Mayes started Boy's Own initially as a fanzine commenting on fashion, records, football, and other issues...
, Mr C, Tsuyoshi Suzuki, Mark Sinclair, Eddie Love Chocolate, James Monro, Mark Allen and Talvin Singh. The club's resident DJ's were Darius Akashic, Nik Sequenci, Richard Grey and Marco Arnaldi. Atmospheric music combined with sound effects was played along to films in the "chill-out rooms" set apart from the dance floors.
New-age style stalls occupied the central hallway selling non-alcoholic energy (or "smart") drinks, body jewellery, alternative "small press" comics and magazines (such as the short-lived, but influential Head Magazine), as well as T-shirts and other clothing. The club also encouraged face and body painters, massage therapists, healers and magicians.
Also notable were early demonstrations of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
at a time when most patrons were just beginning to be aware of what was then termed cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
, something seen as an important, if not defining, part of the Zippie future. Underground bulletin boards such as London's pHreak hosted live "cyber events" from the club. In what was seen as very progressive at the time, a live video interview with Arthur C Clarke was conducted from his home in Sri Lanka on a portable satellite phone system. Similarly, Timothy Leary was transmitted into the club via ISDN giving a video interview from his home in the Los Angeles hills. (Isdn cables were installed at his house for the link). (In the '60s Timothy Leary had been banned from entering the UK in person by the British government a ban which was still in force at the time). His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave a lecture via ISDN at the club on Thursday 18 July 1996.
Environmental issues were an important part of the club's remit, another part of the Zippie agenda. Anti-road protests were advertised on its internal noticeboards, hemp fashion shows were staged, environmental lectures and debates took place in the talk room The Well and pedal-bike sound-systems played live on several occasions in various rooms. The club has been noted as an important promoter of climate change awareness.
Megatripolis West
An offshoot of the club was started by Fraser Clark and others, in San Francisco in late 1994. It ran for five consecutive weeks before closing.The sixth and final night of the club was a "launch rave" hosted by Ronin Press for Timothy Leary's
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
book Chaos And Cyber Culture. In true "illegal UK rave" tradition, patrons were given the event's location at a nearby burger joint. Leary jammed and performed jazz skat with famous Bay Area musician Maruga. He was later kidnapped by the Zippie Soundsystem and forced to release a statement condemning the UK Prime Minister John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
and the Criminal Justice Bill, which famously banned outdoor parties with music that included an "emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Leary exerted a powerful influence over the philosophy of the club and the Zippie
Zippie
Zippie is a term used to describe a person who does something for nothing, i.e. zip. Any supporter of free culture, free food, free books, free software is a zippie....
movement overall. An indication of this can be found in the introduction to his posthumous book The Fugitive Philosopher (Ronin Press, September 2007) written by Fraser Clark. The original title of the piece, published in Clark's online magazine the UP!http://www.parallel-youniversity.com, was Timothy Leary Was A Saint Who Will Be Remembered & Celebrated Long After Jesus, Mohamed and Elvis Are Forgotten
Megatripolis in Popular Culture
Megatripolis was name-checked on the BBC's 'Absolutely Fabulous' and on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers album 'Stadium Arcadium'.Well-known people who attended the club include Malcolm Mclaren, Lynne Franks, The Pet Shop Boys and Sir Richard Branson.