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Positively Malachy
The godfather of Bay Area rave and house culture speaks.
By Amanda Nowinski

HUNDREDS OF CARS left the city well past midnight on Monday, March 8, 1993, in search of the Full Moon rave. By 3 a.m., alongside Highway 1, we'd found it.

Equipped with nothing more than water, blankets, and smokes, we stood at the edge of the cliffs at Bonny Doon, gazing down at the swirling masses of people on the beach. We were buzzing with anticipation as we raced down the sand cliffs, guided only by the white light of the moon and a few raging bonfires. Boom. Boom. Boom. Like magic, the sound system kicked in, and everyone on the beach simultaneously jumped to their feet. At last, the house music ceremony could begin.

It was, all in all, a typically wild full moon night. Dancers and drummers pounded the sand flat as cement around the makeshift DJ booth as dogs frolicked, naked people dipped into the ocean, and groups of friends and strangers gathered by fires and tents, all united by this new, euphorically pagan experience. We felt acutely alive. People held hands and shared water, cigarettes, jackets, joints, blankets – whatever was needed, someone would surely provide. We were highly conscious of being in this moment together, although we didn't know exactly what it all meant.

As the sun rose we collected our belongings and posses, kissed everyone good-bye, and struggled up the cliffs. We sat in silence riding back to the city, exhausted and entirely content.

Later that morning, Malachy O'Brien, a founder of the Full Moon and Come-Unity parties, searched for his ride back to the city. It had already left. So Malachy helped the remaining crew carry the sound system up to a van. After the vehicle was packed, Malachy and his dog Una climbed into the back, directly behind the sound system and generator. The van puttered away toward the city.

Strange how fate operates.

"I always wonder why it all happened," says Malachy, from inside his small, windowless room on the ground floor of a South of Market warehouse. But on that particular morning, nearly seven years ago, as Malachy and the other passengers in the van nodded off, so did the driver. The van tumbled off the road, right near the exit to Candlestick Park – ironically, the site of previous Full Moon raves. The van rolled into a mudflat and the sound equipment tumbled onto Malachy, crushing his spine and neck, leaving him paralyzed. "I tried moving my hands, but it was like I was in thick oil, or underwater," he recalls. "I couldn't move my arms, but I could in my imagination. To this day I still do that – I can feel my toes and feet moving but they're actually not."

When the paramedics arrived, they carefully removed Malachy from the van. Una dashed out onto the freeway and was instantly hit and killed.

Word of the accident shot through the underground faster than wildfire. "I was staying at S.F. General, and the doctors complained that too many people were showing up to support me," he smiles. "At the time I didn't have enough energy to talk to people, but it helped me through, knowing that people were out there dancing for me." Members of the Wicked, Gathering, Full Moon, and Come-Unity parties immediately threw a benefit for Malachy, who does not have health insurance to this day. "Being the New Age hippie that I am, I could really feel the energy during that benefit party. They had hooked up an early Internet mechanism that allowed me to hear the party, and people came on and gave me messages throughout the night. I swear the next day my finger moved a little bit."

Along with his partners, DJ Simon and Kosmic Jason, Malachy helps organize the monthly Come-Unity party at Ten 15 Folsom. The monthly club night is the longest-running house party in northern California and is Malachy's sole source of income. Later this month he and fellow native of Ireland Ciaran O'Hara will release a double-CD compilation, Unity, which will serve as a benefit for Malachy – who faces eviction in January and needs a new electric wheelchair, which can cost up to $20,000. The Unity compilation features a host of local and international talent, including Orbital (who donated an exclusive Sasha remix of the track "Belfast"), Doc Martin and DJ Buck, Dubtribe, Single Cell Orchestra, Garth, Simon, Onionz, and Scott Hardkiss, to name a few. The CDs are mixed by DJs Tony and Simon, and capture the psychedelic, funkier sides of house, as well as the tranced-out, jungled-up sides of just plain buggin' out music.

Malachy's contribution to the birth of the Bay Area's house and rave scene began in 1991 and is chronicled in Simon Reynolds's book Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. A native of Cookstown, Northern Ireland, Malachy moved to San Francisco in 1989 from Manchester, England, where he was studying computer science. Once in S.F., he soon found a job bar backing at Ten 15 Folsom, where he worked with a few other future rave progenitors, including Preston (who helped start Toon Town, the city's first major mixed-gay-and-straight house club), as well as his Come-Unity partners, Simon and Kosmic Jason. Talk about back in the day.

By 1991 the house scene was just starting to kick off, at parties like Osmosis at the old DV8, Sundays at Mission Rock, Colossus, Love, Mr. Floppy's Flop House, and Do Not Sit on the Furniture. Malachy, who had witnessed the beginning of rave culture in England, was ready to take it to the next step: outdoors.

"I was working at Ten 15, and one night word got out that we would do a party at Baker Beach," he recalls. "There were only 50 or 60 people that night. The DJ decks were set on a crate, and Jëno had to kneel down in a hole in the sand. It was very renegade."

Soon Malachy joined forces with the Wicked posse (Marky, Garth, and Jëno), and Martin O'Brien of the Gathering, and set the Full Moon parties on their full-scale, legendary path. That same year, he and Simon also launched the Come-Unity parties at Ten 15 Folsom, which Malachy viewed as a communal, peaceful platform for his eco-spiritual views on house music culture. Still an active environmentalist and unabashed left-wing radical, Malachy was the first to articulate the one-love philosophies of the underground in San Francisco, which he disseminated through Xeroxed leaflets at Come-Unity. One reads, "When used with positive intention, Group energy has the potential to restore the plan of Love in Earth. When you open your heart and trust the whole group you dance with; when you feel love with everyone, and they return it, a higher vibration can be reached. This happens when a crowd is deep into the vibe of house."

"I'm still trying to figure out certain obvious things that we learned from that early time," says Malachy, who dreams of someday picking coffee beans alongside the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. "Those were mind-opening times – there was an explosive curiosity that perhaps had a deeper impact on society as a whole, such as the confluence of technology and spiritual ethics, and a new ethos of self-employment. Hopefully we can direct ourselves into helping each other, and not just focus simply on surviving alone."

Malachy is hopeful that the new generations will rediscover the early rave- and house-culture ideologies. "It's hard to disassociate or give up on those ideals," he says. "I want to see it come back again strong. Not to be evangelical, but to see the message come through again would be very positive. Those feelings that we had at the time seemed pure; we thought we could change the world."

Changing the world is something that occupies Malachy's everyday thoughts. His room is filled with evidence of political and spiritual enlightenment; literature on Greenpeace, Native American histories, Irish resistance, and South American, Asian, and African American activism line his bookshelves. An Indian tapestry, and an altar with Gaia imagery, decorate the area near his computer, which he is able to operate since gaining some control in his bicep muscles. He hosts ecology-information video nights in his warehouse, collaborates with Food Not Bombs, and plans to establish a veggie-burger empire in the near future ("When I get my act together.").

Still, his living situation is shockingly bare bones. He is able to afford assistance only Monday through Friday mornings, from his share of the funds from the monthly Come-Unity party, but aside from that and the help of friends, he's really on his own. He receives medical assistance – since every hospital is required by law to treat such cases – but only in times of emergency.

So why doesn't he return to his family's home in Northern Ireland, where he could receive free medical assistance? After the accident, Malachy did return to Cookstown for two years. "The weather is terrible, and Northern Ireland is not at all set up for people with disabilities; buses cannot accommodate you, so it's impossible to get around on your own. Plus, the country is still very confrontational and unsafe." As it is for the hundreds of other ex-pat free spirits who have migrated here, San Francisco is Malachy's true home.

"Although I know things aren't healthy enough for me right now, I have to live dangerously," he says. Bearded, and dressed in a stocking cap, work pants, and a flannel shirt, Malachy looks the part of the anti-materialist Marxist icon. "Isabel Allende was talking about America, and she said that here there is the possibility that you can be and do something new, and not face too much criticism. I've been exposed to a lot of that energy here. The Bay Area is full of some of the most progressive consciousness on the planet. This was the Golden Gate-way to the '60s. Here your mind can open up to synchronicity, to new senses, psychedelic ideas. Here you can be more sensitive to good vibes and keep things on a positive tip." He rolls his eyes and lets out a shy chuckle. "Whoa – I think I just had a flashback!"

Malachy's unlimited optimism is profoundly inspiring to others in the house community and beyond. "Malachy was one of the very first people of my generation that I heard openly and fearlessly talking about gentleness, spirituality, and a positive sense of community through these gatherings and dance parties," says Sunshine Jones, of the Dubtribe Sound System. "He never lost his head, nor did he ever get too big for his boots. No matter where you were, or how amazing the party was, you could always speak to him, dance with him, and let him know you loved him."

Malachy anticipates the release of the Unity CD, which he hopes will help spread the "energy and vibes" of the San Francisco house movement. He is also confident that he will walk again. "I won't ever give up the idea that I will walk again," he says. "I don't think I could accept that very easily. There is so much healing I need to do myself, which might allow the power to come through. But I do believe in the power of the mind, and the energy that's out there. When I talk to someone I don't know who says, 'I was at your party!' all that energy comes back to me. I know it's out there in the cosmos."

Malachy's fund: Malachy O'Brien, c/o Life 604-A Haight St., S.F., CA 94117.

. PHOTO: FARIKA

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Source: www.sfbg.com/AandE/34/10/lead.html