Frantic is 8! A history of the world’s most successful hard house promotion
Reported by benz
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Submitted 01-08-05 12:30
Most of us have been to a Frantic event at one point or another. Or a few. Or lots. But do you know how it all started out? Do you know why? And how it got to where it is today? If you don’t and would like to know, here’s the place...
Way back in 1997, before most of us were born, a ‘young’ hard house fanatic/school teacher by the name of William Paterson was hankering for somewhere to hear the purer strains of hard house that he was only hearing a few hours of at a time in the clubs around at the time. Only the hard, fast stuff would do, and he was fed up of waiting through a whole night of funky music to wait for the two hours of harder music he loved so dearly. Having already spent two years clubbing at night such as Sunnyside Up and Sunflowers, and events where Tony de Vit would play tougher material later on in the night, he had made many clubbing friends and realised that many of them felt similarly. He spotted a niche in the market and decided to take the plunge and start his own night.
And so on August 15 1997, Frantic was born. The venue was called The Clinic in the massively appropriate Chinatown and the event sold out within an hour. A young Phil Reynolds was one of the main DJs on the night, and would go on to become an integral part of Frantic’s plans up to the present day. He was virtually unknown at the time.
Will, Owen B and Phil
“I met him and Ian Betts at The Gallery at Turnmills. We used to go there all the time in 96 and stay right to the end as that’s when Steve Lee played harder stuff such as Miss Shiva’s ‘Dreams’. Then we’d all go off to the cafe opposite the station and then on to Gray’s for the afterparty!” — Will
In an unprecedentedly camp move, Paterson gave out white roses to every clubber in the venue at the end of the night! However this attention to detail and desire to make the event a little more special would be something that remained an important part of Frantic’s ethos in years to come.
“The first Frantic event was done as a birthday party for Will and our mate Steve… it wasn’t something we thought about making into a proper club night until we saw how successful this one-off was. It was so popular that we thought we’d see if we could carry on doing it once a month. We didn’t realise it was going to be so successful. It wasn’t until about two years ago that I started DJing full time though as it’s not an easy scene to live off as a DJ.” — Phil Reynolds
The success of this first event gave Will the encouragement to continue with his parties, and he started looking for a bigger venue. He came across Happy Jax in London Bridge (now simply known as Jack’s), a barren 600 capacity venue that became the first regular Frantic venue from October 1997 to March 1998. Unfortunately for first three months the venue could only stay open until 3am which seriously affected attendance. This culminated in a poorly attended Boxing Day 1997 bash where only 160 punters came through the doors.
Undeterred, Will kept on plugging away, and in January and February the club was allowed to stay open until 6am. Both events sold out and hundreds of people were turned away. March came round and a new ownership took over Jax, telling Will on the Thursday before their event that they could only stay open until 3am. In a rather bizarre episode, Will searched for another venue to cater for the spillover clientele, and after searching high and low came across The Bunker Bar (now The Key). Will ran the event that weekend at The Bunker Bar, while Spencer Freeland handled things over at Jax to keep the management sweet. Both events sold out. See a pattern emerging here? Frantic was quickly becoming an established name on the club scene, and as hard house continued to refine itself and evolve and grow in popularity, so did Frantic.
It was evident that Frantic was beginning to need a bigger venue to accommodate all the hard-house-hungry clubbers that were being turned away. The next regular venue was Bagley’s (now Canvas), a warehouse of converted film studios that held other legendary nights such as Freedom and United Dance. Frantic ran here between March and October 1998. This is where the party really started to grow, and from June to August the Frantic events went from 2 rooms with 1200 people to 4 rooms with 3000 people.
Awareness for these parties was raised solely on the strength of 10,000 flyers — this was before SMS and the internet really took off as a viable means of promotion, and so flyer distribution and word-of-mouth were the only ways to get things done. Compare that to nowadays where Frantic distributes up to 100,000 flyers per event and uses over 20 websites for promotion!
“In the early days it was all word of mouth. Now the internet has meant that we don’t just promote at weekends in clubs but can get to people throughout the week. The market is so different know, it’s a lot more competitive. It’s always hard to get people to spend their valuable free time and hard-earned cash at a nightclub. The advent of late-night bar culture has also been a challenge.” — Will
As Frantic started incorporating the ever-growing sounds of UK hard trance championed by DJs such as Spencer and Phil, Will felt the need for a sister promotion solely dedicated to hard house, with a more intimate underground feel to it than the main Frantic parties. Thus in September 1998, Convergence was born at The Bunker Bar, featuring Jon The Dentist and some Frantic regulars playing the tougher side of their sounds.
Due to licensing issues, Frantic had to move on from Bagley’s. Like the true clubbing nomad that it is, it moved onto a successful period at The Rocket Complex (a University Student Union by day) in North London between January and April 1999. The first event saw queues round the block as Frantic’s popularity continued to grow to unprecedented levels. At this point Will was still a full-time teacher at a secondary school in Acton, West London, trying to balance promoting whilst holding down a day job.
“It was very difficult. I had to be very driven to fit it all in. I worked very long hours, but this set me up for doing it full time as I still work 7 days a week!” — Will
After a few months it was evident that Frantic was too big for The Rocket, and so Will continued his search for a bigger venue. It was in April 1999 that the first ever Frantic at Camden Palace took place. This would go on to become known as Frantic’s spiritual home, and kicked off a long series of memorable and successful events.
“Peach had been running there for a while, and a had long-standing name. The only other promoters at Camden Palace doing our kind of music were Mind Over Matter. We really wanted to try and get into it, as it was London’s number one venue at the time. Our reputation was growing so we succeeded. The event exceeded all our expectations... by 11.30pm there were queues around the corner, and the atmosphere outside was almost as good as it was inside!” — Spencer Freeland
“It was very, very busy, stressful, and something you wouldn’t forget in a hurry! It got better in time as we got used to the venue and made better use of it.” — Will
The first party saw 1000 people turned away at the door, and marked the start of Frantic’s reign as one of the most popular and revered clubs in the country. In July, Will decided to give the teaching a rest and give Frantic his all. He was now a full-time club promoter! The regular events in Camden started in August 1999 and 90% of them sold out. Later on in 2002 and 2003, Camden Palace was used by Frantic extensively, with a whopping 25 events hosted there in 2003 alone! Back at last in 2005, Frantic are chuffed to be back where they belong. Anyway, I digress...
Convergence was being regularly held at Crash in Vauxhall in 1999, with stars such as BK and Paul Glazby premiering their exclusive new tunes to the die hard hard house fanbase. It soon got too big for the venue however and was forced to move on. Later that year it moved to The Fridge in Brixton, where it continually sold out its events and saw queues round the block and a permanently open ‘upper deck’ at the venue. Towardthe end of the year, Will decided to set up Provocation — a cheeky little Sunday morning afterparty at The Office, an intimate little club just off Oxford Street. Mad isn’t the word! These crack-ons were truly the stuff of legends and still reduce grown men and women to tears of nostalgia when recalling those golden days. These carried on through in to 2000.
“We always had people asking us to do a carry on party. I went to at least 20 venues and no one would do it as you need a longer dance license which most don’t have. It was rather like a straighter version of Trade — i.e. loads of people coming straight there having been out all weekend and loads getting up early especially there for the hard house and there for the vibe.” — Will
Later that year Will felt that Frantic needed to move up another gear. He wanted to do something bigger and better and different to anything that was around at the time. His idea? Host a 4500 capacity rave at Brixton Academy, one of the country’s leading rock venues, and simply call it Hard House Academy... There had never been a hard house party on this scale in the UK, so it was naturally a rather stressful experience, and many believed it couldn’t be done. The buzz about the event was enormous as many had never been to The Academy before, and there were people queuing up from 3pm to buy tickets on the door to see people like BK, Lisa Pin Up and Phil Reynolds perform in this massive auditorium. 1000 tickets were sold on the door and the event sold out by 11pm.
Every Hard House Academy thereafter sold out and became a national hard house institution; one of the most talked about events in the land. Clearly, Frantic was now a force to be reckoned with, and after this initial Academy party, Will showed that if he put his mind and effort to it, he could achieve some spectacular results. Such a success was important in helping Will to strive to try bigger and bolder things in the futures and to not be afraid to take risks.
During the first 3 to 4 years of Frantic, the vast vast majority of the crowd were from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. So there were thousands of clubbers going back to these countries telling their mates back home about Frantic, and people telling Will, “I wish we had Frantic back home!” March 2000 saw the first ever Frantic International event, with Will making the trip to Sydney in Australia to oversee things. A sell-out as usual, this 400 capacity event at The Ice Box took place the day after Mardi Gras and marked the start of a series of Frantic events all over the world. Frantic in Sydney and Melbourne have just celebrated their 5th Birthday. Frantic Australia Tours have covered Auckland, Brisbane and Adelaide, while Japan and South Africa also saw regular events (through Sam Findlay, K90’s manager in Japan and through Martin McHale from 330 Club in South Africa). Furthermore San Diego in the USA was treated to the Frantic experience as was Finland. Meanwhile in the UK Frantic toured clubs all over the country, from Aberdeen in Scotland to Norwich in East Anglia.
“What did I learn from all this? That dance music travels, that great music is an international language and that anything you do needs careful organisation.” — Will
In May 2000 Lisa Porter, who Will met through selling her tickets to an event, came on board to help Will run the Nukleuz DJ Agency, which he was co-running with Pete Pritchard, head of Nukleuz. The Nukleuz Records imprint was on its way to becoming the biggest selling vinyl label in the UK, and they would work closely together with Frantic for years to come.
“When I first started clubbing I went to trance clubs like Escape From Samsara and Pendragon. My first Frantic was at Bagley’s in October ‘98. It was the first time I had heard proper hard house and thought, ‘I’m home’.” — Lisa
2001 saw the launch of the short lived Frantic label which was co-run by Nukleuz, which saw artists such as Defective Audio, Andy Farley, Organ Donors and Paul Glazby contribute over the course of 8 releases. This marked the extension of Frantic to something more than just a London club night, and two very successful Frantic-branded mix CDs with Warners followed (mixed by Ed Real, Phil Reynolds and Andy Farley — still hailed as two of the best hard house compilations ever released). 2001 saw Frantic champion Nick Sentience’s groundbreaking, tech-infused sounds, while in the next couple of years BK’s epic productions continued to show the way. These years showed Frantic very much focusing on the exciting sounds that UK producers were coming out with. This was also the year that Amanda joined Will’s team, working alongside Robyn (who later went on to work for Tidy), helping to run and promote the events.
“Looking back to when I started there was a lot of competition within London (Fevah, Pendragon, Escape from Samsara etc) all of which were at the top of their game. But over the years as the scene changed — people came and went, new clubs started up and old ones called it a day — I think Frantic succeeded as it pushed on changing with the times but never compromised what it believed in.” — Amanda
May 2001 saw the launch of Timeless, Frantic’s classics night at Camden Palace.
2002 saw Frantic embark on a bold new challenge — The UK’s first ever hard house mini festival, called Mainframe, at Lotherton Hall in Leeds.
“We got 5000, not the 10k we hoped for, but that was still an achievement with an all hard house line up. We learned a hard lesson that you need to work carefully with your competitors. Tidy unfortunately did an event in London on the same day. We also learnt that festivals require a bigger remit than one style music. But it was a fun day.” — Will
The next few years saw Frantic embark on all sorts of collaborations with some of the world’s leading dance music brands. This included a New Year’s Eve 2003 event with Sundissential in Birmingham, an NEC event with Gatecrasher in November 2003, lots of parties with Sundissential North, and two appearances hosting the hard house arena at Creamfields in Liverpool. 2004 saw the resurrection of Frantic afterparties at The Office with the short-lived but very successful Hardware, once again adding another weapon to Frantic’s hard house arsenal. February 2004 also saw the inception of UP^^, an occasional funky house night, which still runs to this day with increasing success, having covered venues such as Club Aquarium, Turnmills and Ministry of Sound. March 2004 saw the start of a beautiful friendship with Wildchild, with Frantic’s first SEOne event. This colossal multi-arena experience ushered in the new era of Frantic’s 21st Century rave, with more focus on supplying the clubbers with as many rooms of music and as much variety as possible.
Frantic’s commitment to giving the clubbers the freshest and most exciting experience has seen it host events in 19 of the capital’s top venues. This included co-hosting and promoting a party at London’s biggest venue, the gargantuan 10,000 capacity Alexandra Palace in Easter 2005. This still stands as the largest indoor club event held in 2005, and was a big deal to pull off.
650 events, 10 countries, 4 continents, 6 CDs, a record label and 600,000 happy clubbers later and here we are! Frantic is just starting on a National Anthems tour this Autumn with Storm, Slinky, Sundissential, Parlez Vouz and more, promoting its forthcoming CD by Andy Whitby and continuing to provide clubbers with big-scale, cutting-edge hard house events every month. The focus these days is on quality rather than quantity, and by focusing on a smaller amount of events compared to a few years back, Frantic are able to devote more time, energy and love to each one. The result? Unbeatable clubbing! How does Will view his baby in 2005?
“I’d like to mention that we are investing a lot of time and effort into finding new DJs that will take hard house music into the next decade and we are constantly working hard on new lighting and decor ideas. I’m proud of our stance on the importance of quality soundsystems at very event, hence our dedication to using Funktion One. Amanda and I would like to thank all staff past and present, the venue staff, the production crews, the DJs and Live Acts and most of all the clubbers!” — Will
So there you have it. Come and celebrate 8 glorious years of Frantic on August 13th and help to continue its legacy!
Thanks to Amanda for sorting out the flyers! And to Ray @ HDL for pics!
Frantic's 8th Birthday
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On:
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Saturday 13th August 2005
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At:
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KOKO [map]
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From:
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21:00 - 06:00
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Cost:
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Limited Early Bird Tickets go on sale Monday 16th May 2005
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Ticket Info:
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Limited Early Bird Tickets go on sale Monday 16th May 2005
Ticketweb: 08700 600 100 / www.ticketweb.co.uk
Club tickets: 0870 246 1840 / www.clubtickets.co.uk
Frantic HQ: 07949 618 065 / Amanda@franticuk.com
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Buy Online:
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Click here to buy tickets
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More:
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Frantic's 8th Birthday
Saturday 13th August
2100-0600
Koko (Camden Palace)
1A Camden High Street, Mornington Crescent Tube
www.koko.uk.com
This is the Dream Ticket! The UK's biggest and boldest Hard House Event at Europe's greatest Dance venue!
In 8 amazing years we have achieved over 650 successful events in 10 Countries and over 4 Continents. We have been host to over 600,000 Clubbers and have played out over 400 different DJs in 50 different venues with 5000 Hours of Hard House!
Frantic's celebrates 8 years as the UK's brightest champion of Hard House by converting the glorious Koko (Camden Palace) into the ultimate celebration of the music we love and the scene that we support.
All the DJs and Acts in the Main Room and Arena 2 have been chosen for their ability to rock the dance floor like there is no tomorrow! All will be playing nothing but the finest classics and anthems as we trip down memory lane and live again 8 years of unbeatable parties and unforgettable times!
We will be building a unique and innovative stage set and bringing in new Lasers, Frantic visuals, balloon drops and confetti canons!
There will be a free commemorative CD mixed by the delightful Cally Gage available to Early Arrivals! Goodgreef Legend and Northern Hero Alex Kidd challenges Frantic Resident Andy Whitby to a battle on the Wheels of Steel. This is going to be better than good!
YOU JUST HAVE TO BE THERE!!!
HARD HOUSE, OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD, BUT NEVER BETTERED!!
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Flyer:
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