It was nominated for Most Outstanding Show at last year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), so naturally, Cameron James is bringing 'Electric Dreams' back for another round.
It's a show tracking Cameron's teenage dream of being a rockstar – an exploration of Cameron's green notebook from back in the day where he'd write songs about love, sex, and how weed should be legalised.
This is an opportunity to step back in time, and witness Cameron's 'Electric Dreams' in one show only.
Things really kicked off for Cameron when he was named national runner-up at the 2012 Triple J Raw Comedy Competition, part of MICF. Since, he's toured the country many a time across the comedy festival circuit, and even featured as a writer and performer with SBS's 'The Feed', and ABC's 'Win The Week' and 'Gruen'.
In the spirit of reflecting on those golden (?) years of teendom, Cameron lists five things every teen did in the 2000s (apart from dreaming of becoming a rockstar, of course!)
One
Agonised over their MySpace Top Eight. Tom Anderson, the creator of MySpace, is one of the greatest villains of the 21st century. He's not Trump bad. He's not even Elon bad. But his invention of the Top Eight feature on MySpace, allowing children to literally rank their friends from one to eight is arguably the cause of many mental health issues in 30-somethings to this day. I'll never forget the particular agony of realising I wasn't in my friend Squish's Top Eight, even though he was in mine. F... you, Squish. And f... you, MySpace Tom.Two
Spending $6.99 on a polyphonic ringtone for your Nokia 3210. This is going to make me sound ancient, but I was alive at a time when there was no iPhone. Crazy to think about. How did we take photos of our food? We didn't, we kind of just ate it, and then told people about it later. But the one good thing about living through these dark times means I was there for the Nokia 3210. A literal tank of a mobile phone that allowed you to send 160 character text messages, and the only app was a game called Snake (look it up). You could also buy ringtones for it! 8-bit, glitchy sounding versions of pop songs or TV show themes. They were crazy expensive, and they sounded like crap, but they were undeniably cool.Three
Spent all night at a movie marathon. Was this just a regional thing? I grew up in Newcastle, and it was a huge deal back then – but people from Sydney and Melbourne have no idea what I'm talking about. The local Hoyts in my suburb would put on these all-night movie marathons that started at 7pm and ended after midnight. You bought one ticket, and stayed for 3 or 4 of the most randomly curated films in a row. I swear I once watched 'Blue Crush', 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo', 'The Sixth Sense' and '2 Fast 2 Furious' all in one marathon. Who programmed that? Anyway, it didn't really matter about the movies – it was more an excuse for 13-year-olds to try to kiss and grope each other without any parents around.Four
Lived on MSN Messenger. How do I explain MSN Messenger to anyone who wasn't there. . . It's like the first version of WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger, or just any group chat you might be in right now. It was a chatroom, I guess? You just added your friends, and. . . Chatted? Even though you'd been chatting all day at school. You could also change your name to whatever you wanted, which in the era of emo music meant a lot of My Chemical Romance quotes. Fun fact: I first flirted with my now wife on MSN Messenger when we were 14. Her screen name was 'Black Rainbow', which should tell you everything about her.Five
Tried to trick your parents into letting you rent 'American Pie' from Video Ezy. I love teen movies from this era. If there's Blink 182 on the soundtrack, and if Seann William Scott pops up in it – I'm there. There's a mix of total sweetness and goofy comedy in these movies that really stuck with me (and if you come watch my show, you'll see why). I'm now old enough to watch 'American Pie' whenever I want, but when it came out I was forced to watch it with my dad, and I gotta tell ya, he did not laugh once. Worst 90 minutes of my life.Cameron James plays Max Watt's (Melbourne International Comedy Festival) 15 April.
