History + ON + ON + ON

History is all about perception.

For most people in Australia who've seen the vision, it's historical fact that James Graham sunk his teeth into the ear of Billy Slater in the NRL Grand Final and was found guilty by a panel of peers. For Mr Graham and the rest of his Bulldogs brethren who've claimed his innocence all along, historical fact couldn't be further from the truth.

If you're John Howard, the new Australian history curriculum taught in schools isn't correct because it emphasises parts of the past he doesn't particularly care about, while glossing over what he holds dear.

And if you've got any interest in repetitive music underpinned by the sub-bass thud of a kick drum, the generally accepted gospel truth is that not much really happened until some Poms went to Ibiza in 1987 and came back with the meaning of life.

That trip to the White Isle for Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, and the guys who aren't really so famous anymore for whatever reason spawned 1988's Second Summer Of Love, 21 years after the first one sent everyone to San Francisco with flowers in their hair.

This journey of discovery was mythologised again recently on the British television documentary Idris Elba's How Clubbing Changed The World, in which the bad-arse motherfucker formerly known as Stringer Bell ran through the 40 key moments in the evolution of dance music and club culture.

Like anything list-based delivered through populist channels, people who think they know better are bound to have a bit of a whinge, and a follow-up blog post from veteran UK DJ Greg Wilson is revelatory in that it presents a counter history of moments that the original program ignored. It's fascinating reading, with a comments section that goes even further into all sorts of personal rabbit holes of dance music discovery, and it's right this way.

“We both have truths,” sang Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar. “Are mine the same as yours?” Which is to say – does the popularly accepted (though debatable) view of what constitutes dance music history carry more weight than the individual perception of it?

Because I'm a dance music enthusiast of a relatively seasoned vintage, and it certainly didn't begin for me when the first Australians invented clapsticks and doofs sounded a little like Peace Division remixing Yothu Yindi. It didn't begin at the Paradise Garage or in the Northern Soul scene, at Shoom in London or when Expo '88 brought ecstasy to Brisbane. It didn't begin when Guru Josh and Ride On Time were in the charts, or even when a mate's older brother played us his cassette of Qudrophonia's Cozmic Jam for the first time – we were just 14-year-old kids from Toowoomba, as if we knew what this music was really about.

No, for me dance music history begins at Rezerection at The Powerhouse, Saturday 25 November, 1995 – and it'll forever be inextricably linked to waking in a psychedelic haze the next morning to a phone call from my Mum saying my grandmother had lost her battle with cancer. It wasn't the first 'rave' in Woombie World – in fact, a club called The E-Spot somehow managed to operate in conservative regional Queensland quite successfully for a number of years prior. But the night that Thief and MC N03 and Custa bought the sounds of, umm, whatever the fuck it was that they played to Toowoomba was the First Day AD for me, and many fellow Toowoomba escapees I've met since.

Just down the highway, Brisbane was experiencing its own halcyon days as the legendary, sadly departed DJ Angus variously ruled The Tube, The Beat, and The Roxy alongside Edwin, Jen-e and Barking Boy.

Those days were nearly done by the time I got to Vegas, but from 2001-05, I found myself up to my neck in a subculture of live electronic acts with the Empire Hotel Moon Bar's breakbeat boom at its epicentre. Led by the Resin Dogs and Soma Rasa, who'd earlier cut their teeth down the road at The Zoo, that fertile period begat acts like The Visitors, Zephyr Timbre, Kid Kay Ferris, Teschnik, Statler & Waldorf, Pty Ltd, Sanyasa, Whispa, Superfluid, D-Ko (disclosure: their drummer was, and still is, an opinionated jerk) and many, many, many more.

Unless you were there, it's highly unlikely you've heard of any of those acts. What's even less likely is that their place in the annals of dance music history will be debated the next time Stringer Bell, Greg Wilson, or anyone else decides it's time to document it.

But those were amazing times, soundtracked by amazing music, shared with amazing people – none of whom realised at the time that we were in the midst of something special. And if the Thursday night in 2003 that Kid Kay Ferris sold out the Moon Bar for the launch of their Colour Me Badd LP – then promptly leveled the joint with the electro-breaks stormer Phil Collins Running – isn't a key moment in the history of clubbing, then I've wasted  a lot of the AM hours of my past 17 years.

So keep your eyes and ears open, because key clubbing moments are happening all around you.

And if you must chow down on someone's ear at a kick-on, check for camera crews first.