CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 064: Vicious celebrates 30 years as a music label

Words by Patrick Staveley.

To run a highly successful music label for thirty years, you’ve got to be doing something right. As trailblazers for the dance music scene in Australia, John Course and Andy Van continue to build on what will be a lasting legacy with their label Vicious. Futuremag Music Assistant Editor Pat Staveley sat with them both to discuss the journey that’s led them both here, the evolution of dance music in Australia, and its success as an overseas export.

Founded by John Course and Andy Van, Vicious is the music label that kickstarted the careers of Avicii, Madison Avenue and Dirty South.

FMM: What were your first introductions to music in general? How’d you end up finding your passion in dance music?

Andy: When I was 12 I went to Holland and at this stage Australian radio didn’t have much of an electronic music element. Holland was a whole new world; there were dance clubs, night clubs. It was a whole new world of electronic music that I’d never heard before. That influenced me to go into DJ’ing when I was 18 and we were playing electronic dance music in clubs when the radio was playing no electronic dance music. Our world was night clubs and dance music and that’s when Vicious started – out of frustration that there were virtually no labels (for dance music) in this country.

John: My introduction to dance music was more around the hip hop scene. I didn’t really know what DJ culture was until I saw the movie Beat Street and I decided “Right, I’ve got to get into this.” I just started getting into the DJ side of turntable-ism and beats and all that side of stuff and that led into house music. My introduction was a little different to Andy’s and ironically Andy heard me playing some of that music with the hip hop crew that I was with. He came up the stairs to look at what was going on and that was how we met. He’d heard a song coming out of this little space in our suburb on his cousin’s mixtape and he was wondering how he was hearing this sort of music in Frankston. That was how we met and Vicious started about four or five years after that.

FMM: Are you happy with where dance music is currently at in Australia?

Andy: Oh definitely. Everything from monster artists like The Kid Laroi to dance artists like Aston Shuffle and Fisher – I think it’s about as healthy as it’s ever been. Obviously, there’s so much social media and so much exposure now, so someone could be recording a song one night and playing it the next night and hundreds of thousands of people could hear it the next day. So, for us, we were literally a little office in Frankston, Victoria. We couldn’t even send a song – back in fax machine days – we had to post it! So we could fax someone and say ‘We’re going to send you a song’ but it sure as hell wasn’t getting there quickly. We ended up flying to the UK and playing it to some labels.

John: Arguably, Madison Avenue was probably the first Australian dance music export that really broke through internationally on a major, major level. HMC was doing stuff out of Adelaide on an underground techno level but I think the success of artists like Fisher and Dom Dolla and RÜFÜS are having now as Australian dance music artists – one of the first to do that was Madison Avenue. That distance that used to be a bit of a barrier for Australian artists – in many ways the digital world has got rid of that. Then you’ve got all these artists who are doing stuff on a global level and it’s really keeping us on the map. I think we’re still in incredible shape.

Vicious co-founder John Course and a young Avicii.

FMM: Andy, your own group Madison Avenue achieved great success and it helped to be able to link that with the label Vicious. What was that like to be able to release your own music through your own label?

Andy: I thought Madison Avenue sounded cool and international and at the time our studio and Vicious the record label were just in one garage. I couldn’t separate it because John was sitting three metres away from me in the office while I was in the studio making the music, so John heard everything I was working on. It wasn’t the most professional, separated studio because he could hear everything and ironically – this is an even more fun story – Cheyne was not supposed to be the singer on every song of Madison Avenue. She was just doing a guide vocal. She wasn’t actually going to be the singer on Don’t Call Me Baby, so in the acappella of that, you can hear John on a phone call in the background. She did what was a test vocal for the other singer, but we never found the other singer and we ended up going with Cheyne’s vocal. To answer your question, because John was there in the office, we wanted to put it on Vicious because it just made the most amount of sense. For us, Vicious was started out of frustration that dance music wasn’t being released by Australian labels. That was the main reason why we started Vicious because we wanted an outlet to release dance music so that’s why it’s on Vicious.

FMM: How’d you both forge your ideas into what you wanted Vicious to accomplish in the future?

John: I don’t think we really thought that far ahead to be perfectly honest (laughs). A few friends had played us records that they wanted us to play out and people that we connected with through the early rave and dance scene in Melbourne – a guy called David Walker gave us some tracks and we said “we should get these out.” At the time another DJ friend, Colin Daniels initially started the label with us and he was working with a vinyl importer that used to import dance music. We said “hey let’s press some stuff and sell it to the same shops you sell all the import stuff to and let’s try and sell some of our stuff to the overseas shops and let’s try and sign some of these records that our mates are giving us.” (In terms of distributing music), that’s a fully grown mature tree now and you can see all the branches. When we started we were just a seedling in the ground, we didn’t know it was coming or how it was going to grow. Our expectations grew as we learnt more about running a label and we saw more about what our music could do.

FMM: You helped artists like the late, great Avicii, The Potbelleez and Peking Duk emerge onto the scene. What’s it like seeing these artists emerge onto the scene after putting your faith into them?

Andy: Back when Avicii was a young guy, I was in a group with my wife called Vandalism and we did a gig in Stockholm. Avicii had just started. He was months into his career and he’d just started doing that sort of music. He had played me a couple of demos because I was over there and we signed him to Vicious. We were seen (by his manager) as a good place for Avicii to develop which was brilliant for us because we were able to sign an artist who would sprout into one of the biggest dance artists in the world.

John: It’s super rewarding being part of that process because artists don’t break by themselves. What a good label provides is really good feedback to help make an artist (improve gradually). All of that feedback and interaction is where we’re imparting our knowledge as a label, out of our experiences before. There’s millions of little bits of advice that go into an artist’s career and when it all comes together and Peking Duk’s accepting an ARIA for a record we put out, or Madison Avenue’s winning record of the year – it’s super rewarding. It’s one of the best parts of having a label – uplifting everyone you work with, it’s pretty awesome.

FMM: Congratulations on 30 years. It’s an incredible milestone! What do you credit to the longevity of the label in what can be such a cutthroat music industry?

John: I think one of the most important things is we’ve always kept our head in the game in that we’ve never thought we’re above anybody and never been arrogant or disrespectful. We’ve been smart enough to know what’s going on and as DJs, we still play clubs now. We love dance music so we’re embedded (on the scene) and I think that passion (is important where) it has to be music first. In terms of longevity it’s a thing I think of keeping a level-head. You’re only as good as the next record you put out in a way. I think staying humble and staying in touch with where music’s at – that’s probably the two biggest reasons why we’ve had longevity.

Andy: DJs just live music. Every single day for mine and John’s life for about 35 years has been about music. It’s who we are and how we live our lives day to day. It’s the glue that keeps us as a company together and keeps us as a machine moving forward – we just live music. We’re inspired by and passionate about everything from the underground right through to commercial dance or pop hits.

FMM: Looking back on 30 years of Vicious, are there any favourite memories or events for you both?

Flashback to the formation of Vicious Recordings | Studio Sessions 1995.

John: When Don’t Call Me Baby went to number one in the UK, Andy called me and we were like “yep we’re there.” It was pretty special. There’ve been Australian records to get to number one, but this was a record that was made firstly by two of my friends; secondly in a studio in our hometown of Frankston; thirdly written, produced and released by an Australian label. That’s a pretty special moment. I remember the first time me and Andy went to London (circa 1995) and we heard one of our releases in a club while we’re standing waiting to get a drink and we think “hang on this is our song coming on,” - a record we put out on vinyl in Australia and it’s getting played in a club in London. I also remember being in a petrol station in France and hearing a song that we put out on Vicious come on the radio in France thinking “wow how is this happening?” The success of Madison Avenue and the way it was embraced around the world – it really just made us think as a label, as a country, as a collection of producers, as a business – the world’s your oyster and we can do this again.

Andy: I have a super awesome memory of the ARIAs of when we won song of the year. This was chosen by a couple hundred musicians and people in media.

John: I might add, the song of the year is all categories, all styles. The song of the year won over Powderfinger, so it was genuinely regarded as just a great record as opposed to being just a dance music thing. It was just a great record.

Andy: It was such a special moment (on the back of the success of Madison Avenue). I was offered a gig at the UK Love Parade in Leeds and there were 300,000 people. I was on over 30 hours without sleep and I got offered to do main stage (when another performer got stuck in traffic), so I was DJ’ing to 300,000 people on 30 plus hours of no sleep. For me, that will never ever leave my mind but it was an amazing moment.

FMM: 30 years. What comes next, another 30 years? What’s on the horizon for Vicious?

John: Since I’ve been running the business side of the label, one of the main goals has been to make sure we move forward and remain savvy to the music industry in the future. My job in the business is to make sure that we are set up to work as a record label in the 21st century and can continue to get music out around the world in the digital age. On a creative side, it’s still about music. Music and content is still the king as far as the music industry goes. You’ve got to have great records, you’ve got to have artists that want to strive to get better and make better records. Our job as a label is to provide that environment so that’s my goal, to make sure we keep creating an environment that allows our artists to flourish in the market that we’re in because it’s very hard to make music.

Andy: Maybe in 30 years our children will be running the label!

John: When we started the label, (the dance music industry) was only about seven years old. Now it’s 37 years old and I don’t think any of us knew that this dance music thing was going to remain so relevant for so long and now it’s just permanently cemented into the music culture.

Select Vicious releases over 30 years.