The Untold Story Of Let Them Eat Cake! Feat Jerry Poon Festival Owner
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How did Jerry Poon’s move from Singapore to Australia shape his early music career?
One, two, three. Welcome back to Danny Rant. This week, we have a very special guest. Every week, we have a special guest. This guy across from me is one of the best underground promoters in Australia, to the point where some of his events do thousands of people. If you've heard of The Dot, Let Them Make Cake, all the operatives, and you've attended one of these events, you know who I'm talking about. Mr. Jerry Poon, how are you today? Good, thank you. Good to see you, mate. Likewise. Always so good to see you. So, doing a little bit of research, right? Yep. Not always do I go back to the beginning. And I found out that you moved to Australia in 1999 from Singapore.
Yep.
Were you doing stuff with music before that?
No. So I was in the army prior to that. I was a tank commander in the Singapore military. Obviously, it's conscripted, so you have to do it. uh and i moved to sydney in 98 actually for a year of uni there and then decided um because i had a big group of singaporean friends who were you know while getting into you know the music scene i i'd come to melbourne several times uh in my year in sydney and realized that it was more the city for me really i think just with that kind of level of um arts music culture food you know and i'd originally come out to be to study to be a chef But, you know, I worked at Punchlane as a kitchen hand for, you know, almost two years while I was at uni. And during the first six months of that, I quickly realized that I didn't want to spend 70 hours a week in the kitchen, especially at that level.
But also at the same time, you know, in the house, we were collecting music and a friend of mine, Crispian, And I guess they had a pair of turntables. And I started to go to my first kind of drum and bass parties with groove therapy. And so that kind of initial period, I was getting really into jungle, drum and bass, buying the records, playing it. uh and you know i guess you know within that kind of time frame you know six to seven months in of djing we were like you know i'd love to play and the first gig i ever got was actually on at uh the public bar on monday nights uh where it was dollar pots and four dollar jugs of uh geelong bitter and ended up uh what was his jaden jaden racy sadler he he gave me my first gig over there
But also at the same time, we started to want to play gigs, but couldn't really get booked. I mean, quite a lot of it was reasoning because we're not from here and we don't have that kind of link in with the scene, I guess. So we ended up starting our own. And progressively that started off with Elements Sound Collective with my friend Roger. And we started booking internationals. Clarkie was our first RIP. And it kind of progressed on to us doing a fortnightly drum and bass party, which we found to attract mainly, I guess, the immigrants. It's like the New Zealanders, English, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Southeast Asians. And that was our audience. And that built quite quickly. And then, you know, fast forward to sort of 2004, you know, after doing quite a lot of that, I was still in uni at the time, you know.
But, you know, it stayed on. And from 2004, I started booking Platform One. And that was with Chris Mitchell, who obviously now is doing a whole bunch of his own stuff with the Velodrome and Northcote Theatre and Spiegel House and whatnot. But we started booking the venue then. And that's when I started The Operatives. So I kind of broke through because I wanted to create something that was, I guess, at the initial period, intrinsic to developing a space for artists from the Asia-Pacific. uh so australians new zealanders um asians you know it's like trying to find a market for a place and start to build something that you know i found it really difficult and found a lot of barriers to entry to actually do it and you know progressing on from that you know um booked the red bull music academy when i was here and um then went to roxanne parlor uh oh no sorry miss libertine was miss libertine was the first proper full-scale like venue that i had like full curation on
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How did Jerry Poon’s move from Singapore to Australia shape his early music career?
0:00–5:22
2
What sparked Jerry’s transition from kitchen work to DJing and his first gigs?
5:22–13:17
3
Why did Jerry and his friends create their own events and what was Elements Sound Collective?
13:17–24:25
4
How did The Operatives and Let Them Eat Cake originate and evolve in Melbourne?
24:25–53:16
5
What’s the story behind booking Flying Lotus and other now‑big artists for early festivals?
53:16–54:14
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Danny Rants
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