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For my wife Karen, who taught me to look for the role of women in everything.
And to my children, Alex and Dylan who I love and admire.
Foreword
Victorians can’t get enough live music. Particularly local acts, in intimate sticky venues, where the singer’s sweat slaps you on the face like the salty foam of a Bell’s Beach wave as you call out for more, more, more!
I often get asked about the secret to Melbourne music’s success. What’s in the water? Why do Victorians continue to attend live music in record numbers? How can we boast the most live music venues per capita in the world, when there’s never been more competition for the entertainment dollar and live music audiences and venues are declining in major cities around the world?
In his fascinating and insightful book, Craig Horne provides some of the answers about how an isolated city on the other side of the world from the big bang of music became a globally recognised live music city.
In a rollicking ride that traverses the socio-political history of Melbourne from the early 20th Century, Horne analyses how the foundations were set for Melbourne Music City. Written with an insider’s view — Horne has continually worked as a musician in Melbourne for almost fifty years — the book traces Melbourne’s evolution as a live music capital from the early part of the 20th Century to the present day.
Along the way book reveals many secrets. Who knew for instance that the precursor to ASIO had fabricated lurid evidence against a visiting African American jazz band in the 1920’s resulting in their expulsion from the country and the banning of African American bandleaders from White Australia until the 1940’s. Who also knew the link between Melbourne’s Modernist Art Movement and the Australian Communist Party who together were early promoters of trad. jazz in Melbourne. That it was the youth arm of the Communist Party and the Eureka League that sponsored Graeme Bell’s Jazz Gang on a tour of Eastern Europe, Paris and London in 1947. And that the Communist Party had helped usher in the revival of Australian folk music in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It could only have happened in Melbourne.
I discovered local live music as a teenager in the 1980s, when bands with curiously Australian names like the Painters & Dockers, This is Serious Mum, the Meanies and Shower Scene from Psycho played all-ages shows at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and all ages initiatives like Rockin’ the Rails on trains. I was hooked on the energy, absurdity and community and joined up on the spot to be part of the cause — whether playing in bands, hosting club nights, DJ-ing, reviewing, reporting or lobbying.
When I lobbied for AC/DC to be honoured with a laneway name, I knew the band had tenuous links to Melbourne, but they moved here (and penned their ground breaking first two albums here) because of the live music opportunities.
The stats back it up.
When Music Victoria conducted the first census on live music in Melbourne in 2014, it revealed 465 regular live music venues that promoted performances at least twice a week. The follow up census in 2017 found this number to have dropped by two, but non-traditional venues in houses, at art institutions like Melbourne Museum and NGV were on the rise.
Now you can find live music at most sporting and cultural events, from Spring Fashion Week to the Australian Open. Victorians just expect it to be there.
Multi-national touring music behemoth Live Nation recently discovered that for the first time since they entered the Australian live music market, that ticket sales to their events in Victoria were higher than in New South Wales, despite the population disparity.
A recent report into recorded music listening habits commissioned by the Victorian Music Develop Office revealed that more than 60 per cent of Australians attend a live music event at least once a year, and in Victorian, 55 per cent preferred to see Australian music over international music — above the 49 per cent national average.
It can be easy to take for granted that we can see any style of music any night of the week, and discover the best new music through community radio stations such as Triple R, PBSFM and 3CR.
It’s because the champions — whether musicians, volunteer broadcasters and advocates – that drive this ecosystem and community largely do it for love over money, which is at the heart of this book.
Horne, with the aide of some hilarious personal anecdotes and insights, pays tribute to the true heroes of the Melbourne music scene — the musicians, who continue to record and perform, rain hail or shine.
He also investigates ‘the Melbourne Sound’ and the ’Melbourne Method’, where musicians benefitted from their isolation, and inventively incorporated many styles and elements into their own unique sounds.
This book has provided me with a newfound admiration for the trailblazers musicians of Melbourne, including Graeme Bell, Judy Jacques, Smoky Dawson, Margret RoadKnight, the Thunderbirds, Joe Camilleri, Andy Baylor, Vika and Linda Bull, plus the journeymen who keep the whole show on the road, Jeff Burstin, Bruce Haymes, Stephen Hadley, Paul Williamson, Sam See, just to name a few.
And I will look differently on Melbourne streetscapes imagining the magic brewing inside the sacred venues of yesteryear: St Kilda’s Jazz centre 44, Lorne’s Arab Café, Little Reattas, the Thumpin’ Tum, the Sarah Sands and the many Italian coffee houses that supported live music in the northern suburbs.
Like Horne, I have dedicated the best years of my life to live music. When I first saw those memorable bands as a teenager, I had no idea how they would help shape my life.
In 2014, after a 20 year hiatus, my band reformed. And the gift of live music, which had provided me with so much pleasure and brought me so many thrills, friends and memories — gave a bit more, when we were was offered the opportunity to perform alongside inspirations of mine like the Painters and Dockers, the Meanies and the Cosmic Psychos at legendary venues around Victoria. My live music adventure had come full circle. The gift that keeps giving.
Patrick Donovan
CEO Music Victoria
INTRODUCTION
the Live Music Capital of the World
News bulletins led with this headline when the Melbourne live music census was released early in 2018: more live music venues per capita than any other city in the world, that’s what the census highlighted. Over five years between 2012 and 2017 there was a twenty percent increase in the number of gigs in the city and an increase in audiences to over 112,000 people every Saturday night. That’s an AFL Grand Final’s worth of people combing the city and looking for that ‘hydrogen jukebox world,’1 as Allen Ginsberg once called it; all those people looking for the speed and sound of music made in Melbourne.
So what specifically is it about Melbourne that, according to the Melbourne Live Music Census in 2017, allows it to support around 553 live music venues as compared to, according to a Sydney Morning Herald article2 453 in New York, 385 in Tokyo and 245 in London despite its population being a fraction of those major world cities? I mean, let’s be honest, Melbourne’s weather can be brutal at times, every road awash then, minutes later, sun so hot it drills holes in footpaths. You’ve all heard that cliché about four seasons in one day. But despite flaky weather, the footy, the movies, Netflix, YouTube, Melburnians are committed to going out in great numbers in rain, heat, hail, sleet to listen to live music and find those bands and singers they’ve heard on records or downloads or discovered
