If I filtered my early memories of Melbourne in the late ‘90s to early 2000s through a subcultural lens, there’s a handful of scenes that immediately come to mind. The blue of the Sailyards ramps sitting on black asphalt in the CBD, the violet ghosts left behind by buffed blacktop ink on train insides, the acrid smell of hitachi brakes struggling in summer heat, the exquisite struggle of belting up jeans that were six inches too big. Underpinning all these vignettes are memories of one brand — Blank TM.
Founded by Raph Rashid and Danny Young in 1995, the label came to fruition through a mutual respect for the youth culture of the day. In a world where nuanced micro-culture is the norm, it’s hard to imagine one label that encompassed so much, but that’s what Blank accomplished. They united b-boys, skaters, graffiti writers, hip-hop dudes, and hardcore kids with a single vision. This year marks 20 years since the brand’s founding, and the original partners have marked the occasion with a small collection of new gear.
Is it true that you and Danny Young met each other at Frankston train station?
We did. Frankston train station was just like one of those hubs, you know? There was this one really intimidating part that everyone who got off the train had to go past, that was where all the writers hung out. [Danny] was a bit older, we just met there and then got chatting.
I feel like that should been a central part of the brand narrative.
Maybe. [Laughs] It’s funny, you just sort of miss things like that.
What was the motivation behind establishing Blank?
We both wanted to work. For my 17th Birthday my parents gave me a screen-printing carousel so I could do four-colour prints. I thought it would be a means to make some t-shirts or something, even though I didn’t have anything in mind. I bumped into Danny not that long after that and he was like “Man, I’ve got these designs, I want to make t-shirts and I’ve been going to this local place,” but it was in Moorabin. I was like “Well okay cool, I’ve got one of these things, you know?” We just got along really well and formed this kind of partnership. Basically it was just something for us to sink our teeth into.
I’m guessing there weren’t that many 17-year-olds with screen printing carousels at the time.
Nah, how funny is that? I don’t even know why I got it, it was just meant to be. We both left school pretty early, he might have finished year 10 but we both finished school around 16 years old.
So if you were working at Central Station Records at the time, were you already pretty involved in the hip-hop scene?
Yeah, I guess I got involved around 13 or 14 years old. I started coming to the city, it sounds weird but that would be what you would do. You’d get on the train because you wouldn’t want to hang around Frankston all day, it would just be too boring. Everyone would be in the city. Before too long I got a job at Central Station, just breaking down boxes and doing dumb shit. Their business was going really well at the time, so it was a good stepping stone for me to get some clothes in there and start working with some people in the city.
Given Danny’s involvement in Eddy Current Suppression Ring and A.D. Skinner, I’m guessing he wasn’t listening to the same music as you back then?
He had a really broad musical appreciation. I was probably listening to one hundred percent hip-hop, he was probably listening to fifteen percent hip-hop. He was into way more diverse stuff. He was in hardcore bands as well, and that was a big market for us. In the early days, we’d just have hoodies in our backpacks and we’d go to shows, you know? We were hand-to-hand the whole time we got started, just selling at gigs. It was this brand that crossed so many places and yet it was never contrived. We called it ‘Blank’ because it was just something that could appeal to lots of different dudes. You didn’t have to be into any one thing, you know?
Do you think part of it is a suburban identity that forces you into a DIY mindset?
I mean we really just wanted to work. Even the records that we made, we were screen-printing the album covers you know? I’m sure we made badges by hand. We’d put the jumpers together and we’d put the swing tags on. It was just cool to be working, I thought.
Danny would pick me up every morning at 8am, he’d just be out the front because I didn’t have a car, and then we’d get to work. It was just this working-class mentality, like “Oh cool, we’ve both got jobs so we’ve got to get there at 8 o’clock and start.” The DIY thing has always been really strong with us, just to understand what the hell we were doing.
What was the cultural climate like in Melbourne back then? What was the scene like?
It was just really fun. That late ‘80s, early ‘90s graffiti scene was really fun. that was really good and really, really raw. And this sort of ’96 to ’99 skate scene in the city, that was really fun. There was no kind of street art stuff, so everyone was really cautious. There was still a lot of anonymity around, which I really like. The hip-hop gigs wouldn’t be that busy, it would be okay. It was before a whole bunch of stuff got going, so it was really fun.
Do you think it was kind of a self-supporting scene to that end?
It was, but it still had all of the leftover tall poppy syndrome that had been kicking around for a while. Aussie rap hadn’t found its feet yet commercially. The sounds were really raw because people were making records just to sell 200 copies. It was a really good time, and Triple J weren’t anywhere near us. A lot of things were done because people just wanted to do ‘em. They were just making them and doing whatever it took.
Getting guys like Trance or Puzle or Perks to do guest design seems pretty prescient in retrospect. Was that just a reflection of the people you were hanging out with?
Ultimately that was Danny. In my eyes he was the king of the Frankston line, and I got to kick it with him every day. We were definitely peers, but I just had a massive amount of respect for him. Danny was always really low-key, I’m a little bit different so I would be in the clubs and I’d be meeting people. We got talking about this idea of a guest [designer], and I think one of the first designs was the Puzle print. I’d just seen him around a bunch and just got talking and he goes ‘Yeah, I’d love to do a print.” That was something that I could help make happen.
All the guest artists were really into it, I think ultimately because they really resected Danny. There was no contract or anything like that, we were just happy to get them made and all the artists were super cool. Either they’d be people that we’d go and do some graff with, or we’d just be kicking it with. It was really simple that stuff, all the stress didn’t really come until companies like Hardcore started to really change the model of business. That’s when it became really stressful, because the budgets had all changed.
You had a Pubes design, that must have been a pretty big deal?
That one sold really really well. I really liked that one. Then I think Dorps did some after that.
You guys ended up getting bootlegged, right? I remember seeing knock-off hoodies at the Caribbean Gardens Market.
Yeah, that was probably the turning point for the whole thing getting kind of boring. That just sapped us of so much energy. It was basically over every market it Melbourne, it was just really frustrating. We thought that we’d go and do things the right way and hire lawyers and it caned us. Nothing really happened until we just went in there and stamped it out ourselves, it was really really annoying.
I guess it’s a compliment, but probably not the way you’d like.
It’s interesting isn’t it? since then I’ve done a few other things that have been replicated in the same sort of way. I’ve managed to keep my own little thing ticking underneath the whole thing and let the mainstream do whatever it wants.
You put out three skate videos, Dirtbags, Blank Vandals, and Crashing to Earth, correct?
Yep.
Did Chris Middlebrook produce all three? How did you guys link up?
Middsy definitely did the last one. The first one I did myself, the second one I did most of the editing, and Chris did most of the filming. We just had really good energy working on those, in the end it was just really raw. It wasn’t a job at all, it just flowed, and it what we were doing anyway. The premier for Vandals was ridiculous, it was just so big. The Classic Cinema was freaking out because there was people sitting in the aisles. I was like “If you try to stop this it’s just going to be pain,” so they sucked it up for half an hour. [Laughs.]
I remember having Vandals on VHS when I was 13 years old and just being blown away that it was a skate video that also spoke to graff culture. It ticked all those boxes for a bored suburban teen.
It’s funny isn’t it? At the time we were making it we were just like, “This is just what we like.” That was pretty much our ethos for the whole business, and my ethos for my current businesses as well [Beatbox Kitchen, Taco Truck, Juanita’s Peaches, All Day Donuts]. If I like the taste of this thing, that’s what I’m going to try and put out and hopefully this speaks to some people.
I feel like the reason that Blank still has that cultural currency is that on some level it tapped into a wider shift that was happening at that point.
It definitely was, I remember that there was a festival in Melbourne called Summersault [’95/’96] and we had just got started. Summersault was an amazing festival, I think it did lose a lot of money, but it was a really good time. All of a sudden all these bands and skaters came to town, and I was like “Oh man this is cool, is this some new shit.” I felt like that was a bit of signal as well that new things were about to happen.
You know the great thing about the business was that we started it and we didn’t really have a network or anything, we were just kids in Frankston. We all lived in a sharehouse and it was the house that everyone dropped in to. We had probably 30 friends, and each one of those friends bought a hoodie and a t-shirt. I think that’s really important for any new business, that if you’ve got a close friend network. I put a lot down to those 30 guys that all bought stuff, and put stickers on their car, you know? That is just that little bit of groundswell which gave us the confidence to just keep going. We were cool if we sold a hoodie a day, we didn’t care. The beauty was that we didn’t need that much money to survive, so we didn’t put that much pressure on it to do anything except be a cool job every day.