Bora Bora Ibiza The Magic Years. An Interview With Gee Moore.

To get that feeling back from the floor touched your soul.”

“I was happy on the beach as I could feel the place growing. With Etienne gone, it was left to myself and my Argentinian friend Raj to run the beach club. We signed a new deal with the assistant manager of Bora Bora, a cool Ibicenco guy called Bernard, who encouraged me to do it by myself as he had noticed that I was receiving a great response and the bar takings were higher when I was playing. Jesus was the manager, and I got on great with him. He loved me because the venue took away three big black bin liner bags of cash daily. I would be out eating at local restaurants, and the owners would pay for my bill. Overnight I had become an unexpected cash cow for them. Word of my success was spreading fast, and I soon got asked to play in all the clubs when I finished my set after midnight at Bora Bora.”

In the first week that Bora Bora opened in 1997, roughly 30 people turned up. They told their friends, and within a month, that crowd had risen to 5000 people, such was the popularity of the new beach club concept. Its overnight success ensured it was noticed by the island’s Disco Mafia, especially across the road at Space. Its neighbour was becoming increasingly jealous of its success and saw Bora Bora as a competitor even though it operated as an after-venue for Space when it closed at midday. There is a popular narrative in Ibiza, supported by the UK media, that Pepe Rosello was an innocent good guy hard done by the people at Hi who stole his club from him. Pepe Rosello was first a successful businessman, and to rise to that position on an island of pirates, you need to be tough and ruthless. Pepe was no saint when it came to playing hardball with his competitors; ask the owners of DC10, Pacha and Bora Bora, about his form. When you live by the sword, expect to die by it, and all the crocodile tears he is currently shedding over the Space saga would be considered Karma by some. But we digress from the story at hand.

In 1997, Ibiza was a different island. I first holidayed there in 1995, when it was much more innocent and liberal, and the locals were happy to facilitate and adopt imported concepts, a typical Ibicenco trait. Licensing laws were either non-existent or less restrictive than today, and almost everybody who first opened did so illegally. That was just the way the island operated. Even Space was operating illegally in its first few seasons, as was DC10 and many other venues. Everybody pushed the envelope of the local laws, which were rarely enforced as the club scene contributed significantly to the local economy. The people that worked in Ibiza for the summer did so to fund their party lifestyles. It was never about the money; the music, the party, and the drugs came first. Many of the people who were part of the original Bora Bora family were workers, locals, and international travellers, and this crowd helped to establish the venue.

Moore was christened DJ Gee by DJ Mag journalist Ronnie Randal after Gee pretended to be Spanish to disguise his British identity as he didn’t want the San An crowd visiting. He was also known as Beachbum Gee, an alias coined by Mix Mag during the early years of his residency at Bora Bora. “I think they nailed it with “Beachbum Gee” as that was my new ambition to live on the beach. I’d had it with everyday life and just wanted a fun one. I always remember, as a kid watching a Bacardi TV ad and thinking how idyllic a beach-bum lifestyle of freedom would be. I also had fond memories of the house parties that took place every weekend in different houses on the estate where I grew up in the ’70s/’80s. So with Bora Bora, I wanted a combination of the two, parties on the beach with friends. Playing those long sets every day transported me to a new pace of life. Most of the time, I didn’t know what day it was or what was happening outside this happy utopia. I was living in the now, with no worries about the future and, for sure, no thoughts of the past.”

Gee was soon creating seismic sound waves on Playa Den Bossa beach, a predominantly family-friendly resort back in the late nineties. The uber-trendy Ushuaia Beach Hotel was a three-star family venue named Hotel Club Playa den Bossa, and the Yann Pissenem era was well over a decade away. At the same time, the Matutes group hosted kiddies’ discos and animation shows on the same stage that international superstars play today. It can be argued that Moore had sowed the Ushuaia concept seeds under the Bora Bora palm trees in 1998. Back then, it was a Balearic mix of music styles, very much in keeping with the island’s energy, which played to Gee’s crowd-pleasing strengths. 

“I could always tell the nationality of a person by the way they danced and expressed themselves. There was a particular group of French, Belgium and Dutch girls who sold a little gear on the side to survive that I bonded with when playing my sets. Like many in those days, they made their money to enjoy, not profit. I would play to them, and the rest of the room would follow and grow. DJ Magic Marc from Germany, who made the first island cave parties, was another. They were such beautiful muses, and I would feed off their energy, which would dictate my track selection. No club DJ likes getting requests but playing so close to the crowd and being one that interacted intimately with them in a far more in-your-face way than a nightclub; it was the natural vibe of the place. I would have fun with friends and communicate with people a lot while playing; it was customary for people to sit on the side of the bar in the first years, and If I wasn’t saying hi and passing pleasantries, I had shots with those around me and friends that had arrived throughout the day, and that would influence my mood. 

“I played everything. I would start with chill-out, into lounge, then progress through deep tech into US Garage, Speed garage, House, Tech House to hard house and onto a fusion of techno and Trance. I would spot an incoming jet flying over Dalt Villa and time my mix to it, dropping the treble to allow the whistling roar of the jet engines to invade the room. Then, as it moved away towards DC 10, I would bring back in the bass, and everybody would go mad. It was mental; the noise from the floor would be more than when the Jet was flying over. I enjoyed those moments so much because it was the ultimate craziness. It was an amazing experience and one of the main reasons I did it. To get that feeling back from the floor touched your soul.”

This unique Bora Bora experience that Gee created was captured in the 2003 movie Its All Gone Pete Tong. Its director Michael Dowse filmed the opening scene in one take at Bora Bora as Gee played his set in perfect sync with the Jet overflying the beach club, much to the surprise of the film crew who blurred the shot. The crowd at Bora Bora was cosmopolitan, mainly German, Spanish, Italian, Belgian, French and Dutch. Tourists, party people, everybody, and everyone was its family. It was a niche of people who knew each other, world travellers who would later become Gee’s ambassadors, inviting him to play gigs worldwide. During these winter travels, Gee would discover new music and sounds that he would then play at Bora Bora the following summer.

“When I would play the BBC Radio 1 Essential selection at Mambo, Pete Tong would be all over my record box for the track listings, amazed at my collection of 12” white labels. He questioned me about where I got this track and who mixed this one. He was like a kid at Christmas when he opened my record box. In our first season, I remember playing b2b with this excellent German DJ I knew as Frank. He was a talented guy, and we bounced off each other well. I had this hot white label in my box that I was waiting to melt him with, so after he got me with one, I slapped my ace down on the turntable, and as I expected, the crowd went mad. The place was going off, and the whole beach went mental when the breakdown came in. It was like a hurricane, with sand flying everywhere and people jumping off tables. I looked at him, smiling, and said isn’t this track fucking amazing? He grinned and replied, “Yeah, I know it’s good; it’s my track!! Im releasing it as Da Hool, Meet Her At The Love Parade this summer. It went on to sell over 6 million copies on Kosmo records, home to Novy vs Eniac and Tomcraft. After that, he released a great track called Bora Bora as a tribute. Da Hool, aka Frank Tomiczek, now resides in Ibiza and, in those days, was known as DJ Hooligan, a very influential artist in the early Techno scene.”

In 1997 Moore championed the success of the classic dance track I Feel Love by CRW at Bora Bora. “My inclusion of I Feel Love on that year’s CD compilation and vinyl package, along with daily plays at Bora Bora, gave the track the exposure it deserved. It soon went to the top of the Billboard and National charts. The record label was so indebted to the fact that I had promoted a No1 for them that they asked if I would appear on Top Of The Pops with it. I could have realised another lifetime dream, but I gratefully declined as it wasn’t my track, and I didn’t want to become one of those people pretending to be a DJ on the show.” Gee Moore holds the record as the only DJ who has played a residency at each club on the island during the same season. This relentless 20-hour workload resulted in Gee passing out on the decks one night.

“The first year, I took E and drank a lot of caffeine-laden energy drinks with shots of whatever alcohol. I was getting to work a mess, a shivering wreck. Luckily I met and befriended a German woman living on the island that looked after me. There was something special about her; she was well-known on the scene, had a clothes store in the old town and was one of the original partygoers of the island. She had run away from Germany to Ibiza at the age of 14. She was my guardian angel and looked after me, vetting the people approaching me and advising on who to avoid and who to trust. With the first season’s success, we both agreed that we would enjoy the experience and not ruin it, so I came off the drugs and alcohol after the blackout episode. 

“In my second season, I remember I would get Es and different drugs shoved into my hands and mouth when playing. I couldn’t repeatedly tell the story about why I didn’t take them anymore, so I would discreetly stash it all into this Marlboro-styled plastic cigarette box I had behind the decks, which I would then give to somebody at the end of the day, come to think of it, Derek de Large got most of it when the Manumission crew would visit.”

In 1998 Manumission was the party of its day. It defined an era and a generation of clubbers in Ibiza for sex, drugs, and freedom. Nothing has ever come close in a club to Manumission for its free spirit and debauchery; it sat on the island’s throne of power during the second British invasion of Ibiza. The after-party for Manumission Mondays was at Space, and that after-party would continue at Bora Bora. The venue was also known for the cheeky signs that adorned the DJ Box. “Although I liked to interact with the Bora Bora faithful, some repetitive questions would get under the skin, so I started to list a few answers on the front of the DJ area next to a sign of my name. The famous “Drogas No” sign was in the toilets until someone, so desperate for a souvenir, ripped it off the wall with tiles and some brick attached. The signs in front of me started as a few, such as “toilets to the right” and “bar orders to the left”, but over the seasons, the small list revised itself into a more comical one to preempt any situation. They included, “No, I do not have any David Guetta”, “Please read the list before asking,” “No, I can’t look after your kids for a bit”, and “No, I’m not your father”. 

With Gee off the drugs, the business acumen accrued after years of hard grafting in England began to shine through. Bora Bora was making headlines as Gee utilised his writing and marketing skills to submit content for British industry magazines, which in 1999 were today’s social media outlets. DJ Mag, Ministry and Mixmag would publish, on average, 17 pages of Bora Bora material for each issue as it was so fresh and unique. Instead of dark night clubs, photographs would feature blue skies, warm seas, and bright images of bikini-clad bodies partying on a sandy beach as jets flew overhead. It was next-level content for Magazine editors and alerted a growing UK audience about the existence of a party island called Ibiza. A new generation of British visitors washed up on the island, many of them putting down roots and helping to build the industry into what it is today. Before the turn of the millennium, the only way to get to Ibiza was via weekly charter flights arriving and departing at the weekends. There were no commercial flights. Your options were a week or two weeks package holiday in Ibiza, so everything was much more relaxed and cheaper. I remember booking a two-week B&B holiday in September for £199, and the Peseta allowed greater spending power. Five pounds could be exchanged for 1000 pesetas which would purchase five drinks in a club,

The headlines and publicity in the music mags also attracted famous DJs and A&R people to Bora Bora to witness what was happening. “Seb Fontaine, Sven Vath, Da Hool, Nalin and Kane were the first DJs that started to come down. Danny Tenaglia, Sandy Riveria, Brandon Block and the Fat Tony three day and night stays were others I remember. Many young pre-DJs, such as Tiesto and Dyed Soundorom, were there, and so were all the top record labels. There would be 30 of them all lined up with new records. I had James from React, Simon Dunmore from Defected, Nick Halkes from Positiva, Mauro Picotto from Media and ZYX music which was big in Italy and Germany, and many other labels, A&R and independents. React Records were the first big label to associate with us, releasing compilation albums in its first few seasons, a significant milestone. These people were not in Ibiza for a holiday; they were there on a mission. They understood what we were doing was raw and would wait patiently to see how their white labels would perform on the dance floor; they used the crowds’ reactions as a gauge to decide if the tracks would be a good release or not.”

Gee’s professional direction soon paid dividends as he realised his childhood dream of signing a record deal. A dream that he came so close to signing in England had now become a reality in Ibiza. In 1998 Mauro Picotto signed him to produce several records in Italy. The island had spun her magic, and Gee Moore was on top of the world. Moore and his Bora Bora Music concept went on doing what it did best, partying on the beach and releasing a series of CD / DVD compilations, 13 official albums in total. He was kept busy playing world tours across Norway, Russia, The Americas and Asia. Bora Bora was going from strength to strength, but amid all the success, the island was starting to change.

The growing influx of party tourists powering the clubs did not impress the local Ibicencos, who were worried about losing control of the island. In response, they introduced new licensing laws in 2003 to curb the excesses of the clubs. People were dying, which was not happening before. The road between Amnesia and Privilege was known as Death Road due to the number of fatalities as disorientated clubbers crossed it after the clubs closed. Parents dropping their kids to school were witnessing sights no community would want to see on their doorstep. What was once a reasonably respectful and manageable crowd quickly became a monster. This was the beginning of the end, not just for Bora Bora but for the free spirit of the island so many people fell in love with. Dark clouds began to gather as drug gangs fought over territory. This led to gangland shootings, one of which occurred outside Eden in San Antonio. Clubbers were now being offered a cocktail of designer drugs as Ketamine became more popular than Ecstasy, and this started to influence the party scene, a change Gee noted.

“I hated Ketamine as it ruined everything around 2004. Everybody was not there, especially the Brits. They would come down for the day and be monged out on the beach; it was like playing to zombies. It was horrible to see and not a good energy or response playing to, as finding a common bond with them was not easy. It’s hard to react or get a vibe when they sit there spaced out on the beach. I didn’t want the people doing Club Space, DC10, and then coming down to Bora Bora. It was dangerous as people were dying in the clubs and on the streets. I was very proud of the fact that during my nine years at Bora Bora, nobody was ever hurt. I remember taking the time to reinforce the tables people were dancing on to ensure their safety, and I always provided water and attention to anyone in need. We had our crowd, and I didn’t particularly appreciate when an after, afters hour element invaded mid-afternoon. Those that could hardly walk into Bora Bora were refused entry.”

At the same time, Jet Apartments, the owners of the Bora Bora building, were trying to take back control of their venue. After the first year, Gee redesigned the Bora Bora logo from the two palm trees its owner had copied from a bar in Tenerife to the more modern red and white one with the Jet and hands on it. Gee also registered the Bora Bora trademark for music and as a club under his name, which he had carefully moulded into a successful brand. This move did not go down well with his Ibicenco landlord, and they contested the ownership rights to the Bora Bora Music concept. “After I had left the island with my brand, they took me to court twice but lost dramatically by a long shot. Before me, it was a bar only, not a music venue or beach club. I made that logo specifically for the unique beach club concept. After I left, they tried to pretend it was business as usual and put in a replacement DJ who copied my bio and history and put his name on it. It was pure identity theft; the DJ even admitted in court that he was jealous of my success and craved what I had. A bit crazy but sad when you think about it. You can’t copy a concept when it’s born of an individual’s personality, energy and musical style.”

In 2003 The Disco Mafia, led by Space and supported by many others, came together to denounce Bora Bora for not having the correct music licenses. It was like a perfect storm rolling off the Mediterranean sea and sweeping its sandy foundations away. Gee does not want to revisit those dark days that led to his departure in 2005. As he did in England a decade earlier, he walked away with his integrity intact to explore new horizons. He travelled the Bora Bora music brand to enrich and progress its sound. After Ibiza, Gee opened two new venues in Brazil and Tunisia and continued to hold Bora Bora Music tours and radio shows. He also established himself as a writer for the Brazilian press. During our interview, I always felt his love for Bora Bora and its family of free spirits who helped him realise his dream. He was keen to transmit the good times and the light and energy it projected during those early years of existence. Like moths to a flame, Bora Bora attracted happy and carefree souls who embodied Ibiza’s free party spirit. They were, in essence, electronic hippies, heralding a natural ending of that era after four enlightening decades of peace and love on the island.

“You can’t bottle that magic or replicate it, as it is part of your soul, the energy, the musical backdrop. It was purely organic. Looking back, I know I was in a unique time, place, and energy that will never be repeated. It was like the invention of the wheel, a real eureka moment. We were all swept along on the whole emotion of the place. For most people, this was the few weeks they had after working hard and saving all year to be on holiday; They wanted a sense of freedom to do and be who they wanted to be. Something special happens when people would turn up for their wedding receptions there; it must have been something if people wanted to include us in one of the biggest events of their lives. I was very grateful and aware of this privilege. I will always remember the blood-red moonrise that would shine across the sea, the sand under the records, and the turntables getting hot. The marathon 19 hours, plus closing parties. The fake DJ stands designed to fool the police; after the tip-offs, they were on their way to shut down the music. My house next to the Pirate watch tower at the end of the beach, where echoes of Bora Bora music would float in on a breeze through my bedroom window. Those memories will stay with you for a lifetime. It was the most beautiful thing I ever created, and I hope people will remember it for that and not what it became after I departed”

Today Gee Moore enjoys a healthy Plant-based vegan lifestyle, his body clean and his mind clear. He is at peace with himself, happy, and living in South America, close to a beach in Balneário Camboriú. The beach was recently awarded a coveted Blue Flag thanks to the efforts of a group of residents that included Gee. Bora Bora Music remains close to his heart and has built relationships with nearby Warung Beach Club, Green Valley, and Surreal Park. During our interview, I was impressed by the clarity of his memory and the detail he went into to communicate the essence of the original Bora Bora. Gee still courts his first love, music, producing and recording new material from his home studio. Marco Carola played his music this season in Ibiza, and Gee released his first solo album a few years ago. He continues to release 120 BPM-style tracks on Bandcamp and Beatport and has created four labels ranging from deep house to techno to experimental and live. He is a person who still has more to give an industry he helped shape in Ibiza over a quarter of a century ago. It was a privilege for me to get the opportunity to record his story for prosperity, as those years were magical and defined a golden era in dance music. We were the X Generation that loved and hugged each other. We broke down institutional walls and built bridges to replace them. We helped change the world through a shared spirit of peace and harmony with music. This was our church. This was where we healed our hurts. Enemies becoming friends. Where bitterness ends. God was our DJ

Check out the Bora Bora Music website and follow Gee’s social media platforms below for many free compilations and his latest music releases. 

Image credits Ivana Risianova.

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