Members to the Left, Plebs to the Right: When The Club Medallion Ruled

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Illustration: Ashley Goodall
Images: Stew Farrell

The club medallion was big in 90s Melbourne. Small pieces of metal or plastic that would hang from key rings​ or slip into wallets, medallions were as much part of Melbourne club culture as strobe lights, drink cards and photo galleries in the mid-week street press.

Used by clubs to attract a certain clientele, and reward regulars for their patronage, the coveted medallions and memberships became a symbol of status,  style, and social-connectedness.

Membership had it's privileges alright, and that included the short line outside the club.

At a time when club security was mainly unregulated and arbitrary, the membership medallion helped separate the wheat from the riff-raff. A piece of bouncer kryptonite, the medallion was a status symbol during the day and a passport to partying pleasure by night that assured your place at the head of nightclub queues throughout the city.

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"Basically, they were a great way to say thanks to regulars and to get the cool peeps into the venue quickly," explains Kari Elise former booker at South Yarra's legendary Revolver Nightclub. "We made them pretty unique so they were hard to copy.

"I used to have people call me all the time trying to get them. It was at the discretion of management as to who got them. At one point we realised that they were being handed around and the door staff were getting a bit slack checking them off so we cancelled all the current memberships and reissued new ones."

"Sometimes questionable behaviour resulted in cancelled memberships but not often because, well it was Revolver and questionable behaviour was kind of the thing there."

For many, The Lounge on Swanston Street was a fortress. Notoriously hard to get in , weekly residencies such as Cocoa Butter and Purveyors were consistently rammed. Basically, if you weren't a regular, you weren't getting in.

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For eleven years Mad Rod and Rudeboy ran the Lounge's weekly Wednesday techno night Filter.

Their membership regime was one of the city's more creative. A camouflaged membership for priority entry; a 'hologram' membership designed to be placed inside a special hologram machine. Then there was red, silver and gold membership for regulars.

But the strangest membership was the 'non membership – no entry membership'.

"We were a fuck off underground club and hated the so called 'new wave' of techno protocol - and still do," explains Rod.

"There was always someone trying to swindle their way in for free. People would climb the balcony or the large tree in front of the club trying to get in without paying. Many underage techno freaks could not get past some of our security when the laws got tougher in the later 90s. The hysterical thing was from the time we began we had a policy; if you really couldn't pay, just say so and we will let you in!"

In the history of Melbourne club medallions perhaps none was more sought after than one that allowed easy access into Checkpoint Charlie.  Formerly the Market Hotel, the venue on Commercial Road, Prahran, cost $5 million to build and exued privilege and exclusivity. As co-owner Brett Kochner told The Age​ in 1988, "We wanted to get away from the 17-year-old screaming kids at Chasers and go for the design-conscious artistic crowd."

Club medallions weren't limited to dance clubs. Small, short lived nights such as Ollie Bobbitt's Hopscotch night at The Club in Collingwood was one of the few hip-hop nights to have a membership card. The biggest hard rock night in Melbourne was Hard 'N' Fast at Chasers.

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"There was no Hard 'N' Fast medallion per se, only a Chasers one and people would do all manner of depraved acts to get one," says Hard and Fast promoter and DJ James 'The Hound Dog' Young

For more recent rock club medallion folklore one has to cross the Yarra to Collingwood.

Local musician and raconteur Wally Kempton operated the notorious Control Headquarters for four years in the mid 2000s. It had a secret, unlit entrance attached to the side of Collingwood venue A Bar Called Barry.

More of a members bar than exclusive nightclub, it catered to local and touring musicians and friends. Members were given a 'fob' that would automatically unlock the door.

"We just wanted to keep out the riff-raff, have somewhere to go where you could just blend in and not get harassed, be surrounded by like minded folk" says Kempton.

"We were very open to non-members coming along too, just as long as they were with a member and they weren't a dickhead, which we relied on our members for a lot. Bring a dickhead and you lose your membership. Plus, if you knew where to look there was a phone number on the wall near the door so if you forgot your membership fob you'd just ring the bar and someone would come down and let you in".

"The bathrooms saw a lot of action of all description… the overall vibe itself was one of a relaxed nature. Everyone that was there felt lucky to be there and treated the place with respect….

it was kind of private and seemingly exclusive which kept the fuckwit factor very low. We had one dust up in there in all four years and even then it was the members who stopped the fight and ejected the guy who started it".

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A construct of venue owners and promoters, importance was placed on a tiny bit of key-ring plastic. A status symbol of sorts, an idiotic amount of time was spent talking about or trying to obtain one.

Final word goes to venue owner and DJ James Young, "I reluctantly admit I put a friend's Toorak address as my own in my Chaser's application form because I knew they wouldn't want a kid from Glen Waverley in their esteemed ranks. Oh the shame of it…"