“What more could I want?” are the words Abram says down the line from his office at William Angliss Institute in Melbourne of which he is the Entertainment Operations Program Manager and has been since 2000. On top of this, Abram is completing his Master of Education at Melbourne University. It’s a heavy work load but the man who can survive on four hours sleep a night wouldn’t have it any other way. “Sometimes when I try to take holidays, I end up going to work,” he says, his London accent slipping through. “You go in there, you’ve got all the dance team to work with; you’ve got the fashion shows going on… it’s everything. It’s a dream.”
Abram has achieved what most young people wanting to get into show biz, event organisation or the entertainment industry, dream of. Having spent seven years working in Berlin and 10 years in London promoting club nights, organising local, national and international tours, working in theatre, film, radio, dance and fashion events, Abram says it wasn’t all fun and games. “I think I’ve done every crap job you can do,” he says. “Once, in London, I lost my sponsor when I was doing an event and I had to go to work as a garbage man because I needed the money. I had two weeks to get the money and the only job I could get that same day was a garbage man so I went to work in a rubbish dump.”
Abram used to cough up blood every night as result of the de-sweated insulation involved with the job. “The ventilation would come down and there’s all this fibreglass particles which would get shot into the air and you would breathe it and it would make your lungs bleed,” he says.
It didn’t matter that Abram was an ex-serviceman when he went for odd jobs to make ends meet and support his event endeavours. The discipline the navy gave him is what Abram carried into his work in the entertainment industry. “Really, in entertainment and show, particularly for performers, discipline is absolutely the key,” he says. “It’s just so easy to become undisciplined.” Abram says he must’ve launched over 100 careers through the William Angliss Institute and is more than happy to hang out with young people and graduates who haven’t got a penny. He believes that if they’ve got a goal and he thinks they will come around one day, it’s important to encourage and nurture their talents and help them get into the industry.
The saying ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ has definitely been a part in Abram’s career but talent most certainly comes into play. “I thought it was pure luck but I actually think it’s a bit of a talent for being able to identify other talent because that’s really the only great talent that I’ve got – is being able to see other talent in other people,” he says. “It’s really important to make it happen for yourself, you’ve got to be able to identify talent, to be able to see it in somebody else and that’s the way you get in the network – not just going to the right parties or sucking up the right people.”
Ironically, Abram isn’t much of a party man. “I hate parties,” he says. “To me they were just an exercise in meeting people – ok meeting girls when I was younger – but it was an exercise to network and things like that. It’s just keeping it all in perspective. Go to a party but don’t be the last one they drag out the door.”
Abram says a lot of young people know they want to be involved in the entertainment industry but don’t know what area they want be involved with, let alone how to get involved. This is where the William Angliss Institute helps out – giving students a real insight into what can often be a tough industry. Despite the encouragement of having ‘more strings to your bow’ to survive in today’s world, Abram says this could work to one’s detriment. “It is [important] but you have to try and focus on one [interest],” he says. “I stopped DJing in about 1993 and I made a decision that I was going to purely be the promoter, be the organiser… you have to be able to multi skill but you do have to have one specialist area.”
Having been an events producer and director for Melbourne’s Metro Palace Nightclub and the conceptualiser and producer of the first European festival to be toured as a club event in Australia (Dr. Motte), Abram says Melbourne is the best place he’s worked. “Because people are healthier,” he says. “In Berlin, they all look about 90 years old when they’re only 16… it’s so healthy here because you’ve got the whole outdoor scene and it’s the Australian culture of giving people a go.
“Melbourne’s more fair… one thing about Berlin is that they don’t forget – I could go into a cafe there now and I could get free beer. If you’ve done good work there, they just don’t forget you. A lot of them are eccentrics – that’s a bit of an issue I have with Melbourne – a lot of good people who’ve done very good work in the past aren’t getting a very good deal now.”
Abram says more money given towards the arts, specifically; smaller independent promoters could really help the industry flourish. “So much money goes to opera and ballet, how about a few bucks out there for promoters and DJ/club type things?” he says. “It’s a sad industry really because there are so many people who were geniuses, they were the big guns 10 years ago and they’ve just become nothing now. You see them out working in the markets and things like that; trying to make a buck and it’s all because they didn’t professionalize themselves at the right time.”
Despite the ruthlessness of the industry, Abram remains a realist, but a realist with more than a few unreal achievements. “It’s a tough industry but I think it’s the best industry.”
