It’s essential that we kick this off in London. When you stumbled out of the jungle clubs and warehouses in London back in the 90s, you were greeted by a massive human wall of friendly promoters handing out flyers for upcoming jungle parties, in all kinds of interesting colours to catch your blurry-eyed attention. In the background here, behind me and dear friend Dave, you see a classic Dreamscapey flyer (the Woodstock 2 edition). I am back on a visit for New Years’ Eve here, December 94. The next day we celebrate the jump into ’95 at The Harder They Come at Stonebridge Park Complex.

Obviously the flyers turned into collector’s items, and any self-respecting junglist decorated their walls with them. Wildly! Me too, of course. This beauty is for a jungle rave at Bagley’s, 1995.

…and sometimes, the nicest thing about the flyers were the colours. Hahaha. Look at this madness. (No offence, Tomlin). All the One Nation flyers looked like this. Super crazy. This is so insanely tacky, I can’t even. (And up on the wall it went). July 1994.

LOL. There was 1) always candles burning 2) always a woman a) jumping out of something b) with flowing hair. MEGA-TACKY. Was it on my wall, though? OF COURSE IT WAS!

And here we go, Copenhagen! This is November 1994, and I am on my way to the Prodigy concert in Den Grå Hal here! Who was there? 😀 As you can see, I’m slowly starting to build a new flyer wall behind me here incorporating some Danish finds (“Fuldmånefest”!) as well. RARE PIC!

Yup, brought all my beloved London jungle flyers and gave them new homes on new walls with every move. Geek-o-rama. Check out the Jungle Fever bat flyer. And the Jungle Sound Clash flyer behind my ear is a MASSIVE classic. Furthest to the right: Tomlin’s One Nation Valentine’s Ball flyer.

Lower view of same wall. Dreamscape XII. Future Myth! Tribal Dance!

And another move, even more space, new junglistic flatmates! And once again, I went all in with my flyer wall. We’re about to head off for a Jungle Fever party here, in appropriately sporty gear. It could be at Operaen, but I have a feeling that this could actually be one of the bigger ones, at Den Grå Hal, where I met Sofus The Amazing Shapeshifter (see yesterday’s post).

A closer look at the Jungle Fever bat flyer (that’s Jungle Fever, London, of course), which has survived, because it ended up as deco in my diary at some point (when I stopped making jungle flyer walls everywhere I went). The biggest part of my flyer collection, which was lovingly stowed away in a leather suitcase in the basement, died in the massive rain storm of 2011.

A zoom in on the Back to Basics flyer, London 1994. I still like this kind of thing.

At one point I stopped doing the wall thing with flyers and went for posters instead, mostly Rotundum ones. But I continued collecting flyers for quite a while. Check out the banana logo on the Jungle Fever flyer from Det Blå Pakhus here. We had a few discussions about it back then. It’s a double flyer, actually: To the right, the next day, Birth of a New Energy – host: Al Lindrum. That was a really good party, too. And Eardrum at Alexandra, haha. Busy week. Busy year. Busy years.

The junglistic lineup for Jungle Fever at Det Blå Pakhus. 🙂

A short mega-oldskool birthday bash revisit just to show how, after I upgraded to a flat with THREE rooms (sort of), started to control myself just a little bit with the flyer craziness in the living room. What a lineup in the couch. Dimensions poster in place.

But to balance things out, I went ALL IN in the kitchen!!! (which was literally falling apart anyway). Look at these young fellas, on the hunt for more birthday bash gløgg. It’s on the stove, people, but I could see how things would just disappear before your exhausted eyes in this Find Hidden Object version of a kitchen.

Okay, Danish people, this approach would never work if you’re actually competing with someone for attention! We need bright oranges on blue backgrounds! 😉 Early version of DJ 2000F as Frederick with an added C, here. Roni Size played an excellent set, my diary says. Afterwards, we went straight to Pakhus 11 for a Warp Records thing. This is Dec. 7th. 1996. Do you remember how busy THAT year was, people…

But it is VERY CLEAR from the pages of my diary that my taste in flyers gravitated towards the trance scene! <3

More flyer collecting, on a trance tip. This is from a letter to a dear junglist friend back in London. It says: “Here’s the flyer for the rave I’m going to tonight! YES… Denmark’s getting there! Remember how worried I was?!” Such amusing reads.

This, though! This is a junglistic masterpiece! Invasion of the Bass Snatchers at Vega! January 1997.

This is where it gets truly awesome. The presentation of the lineup is hilarous. Caspar as Jimmy the Gasman, hahaha! Pics by jonask, as far as I can see from the front. Well done!

Yes yes, you want a closer look. THIS IS SO GOOD. (Uh-oh. Did you notice? The skin switching theme has been reintroduced again! What REALLY lurks inside of everyone? How can anyone possibly know by now…)

This is funny, too. Pandemonium at Huset. I wrote a few lines about this in my diary: “Exquisite vibe. Like a piece of art. Lots of reuniuons with people I haven’t seen for a while. Unfortunately the party was closed at 4. We jumped on the bike and went straight to Pakhus 11 for the Totem thing. Just awesome. All those good trance people.”

Whauw, and look at this. Jungle Experience at Vega, 1997. I brought a whole bunch of friends from university to this one. Dance show by Out of Control! I remember this clearly. Steen Koerner made a HUGE impression on me that evening! – not surprisingly. (For extra flyer geek bonus: Spot the mistake).

Okay, this list could go on and on and it has to end at some point. So here’s a goodbye wave from the past. And London. And yes, those subversive logo tops were HUGE in the 90s.