Features
BIGSOUND 2011 Days 2-3: Spiral, Chuggie & The King
By Matt Shea
A shattered MATT SHEA powers through the final two days of BIGSOUND, picking up practical management tips and hearing Chuggie drop the F-bomb 38 times. Photos by ELLENI TOUMPAS.
Thursday, September 8: Day
I arrive late for “From Little Things Big Things Grow”, the first panel of the day. Thankfully, there are still plenty of seats available, the heady night before having taken its toll on the morning attendances. It’s nice to watch a bunch of industry professionals get so into their conversation that it simply spills the information organically onto the gathered audience. The major point to come out of the panel is that for a touring band it’s important to build your success from the ground up – Jarrah Records’ Phil Stevens throws up Boy & Bear and The Jezabels as examples – and establish a support network in your local area first before trying to go national.
It’s not all such sensible information: Bonnie Dalton and Paul Watson, managers of Little Red and Dubmarine, respectively, tell some great stories about blagging their way past airport baggage limits, including Dalton’s MO of slipping a foot under guitar cases as they’re thrown onto the scales. An unintentionally funny moment comes during the audience Q&A when an artist manager asks Premier Artists’ Scotty McKenzie how she can find support slots for her eight-piece band. She baulks at McKenzie’s suggestion to maybe cut the band in half for the long distance tours, claiming the numbers as a point of difference – I’m not sure she’s been paying attention recently.
I head back into the main auditorium for what probably turns out to be the best keynote of the entire conference. Tim Clark and David Enthoven are best known for previous careers with Island Records and EG Records, respectively, but their current management company ie:music is no small player with a roster that features Jimmy Page, Robbie Williams, Ladyhawke and Passenger.
Inertia Records MD Colin Daniels does a great job interviewing these two, and they happily rise to the occasion. Perhaps it’s their age, but they don’t pull any punches when assessing the current state of the music industry, deploring some of the draconian digital age tactics utilised by the majors. Enthoven argues that a large part of the tension in the industry today boils down to artists increasingly trying to hang onto their rights. Of course, these guys do most of their current work with Robbie Williams, and it’s fascinating to hear how they went about essentially rebranding the singer in his post Take That days. It’s great stuff, and if the BIGSOUND organisers had any regrets about Alan McGee they would have almost certainly been wiped out by the contributions of Clark and Enthoven.
After lunch, it’s time to go a little more niche with “Punk & Hardcore Music Scenes: The Outsiders”. There’s a lot of chewing gum and tattoos in the audience as Dan Condon leads an informative panel on the challenges of getting exposure for your punk band. Once again it seems to be about starting small and picking your battles, with The Agency Group’s Dave Shapiro stressing how important it is to not over extend yourself when it comes to touring and the size of the venues you play. As for the local industry, Soundwave cops a bit of a drubbing from The Staple Group’s Jaddan Comerford, who recognises its value to fans as a live music event but decries the company’s approach of not working together with other punk and hardcore promoters throughout Australia. There’s a lot of passion on this panel, and that in itself makes it both a fun and informative hour and a half.
“The Greatest Australian Albums of ALL Time” is the kind of thing you grab some popcorn for: a bunch of music writers and radio presenters scratching each others’ eyes out over their favourite albums. Unfortunately I didn’t notice the sub-heading “A Case Study” until afterwards, which would have forewarned of the relatively prosaic discussion that eventuated. For a time there’s a danger of this devolving into a question of what actually constitutes an Australian album, with the panelists umming and ahhing over Back In Black and anything recorded by Crowded House. But the discussion soon gets back on track, with an interesting contrast made between the book The 100 Best Australian Albums, which panelist John O’Donnell co-wrote, and the recent results of triple j’s Hottest 100 Australian Albums of All Time.
Richard Kingsmill, looking resplendent in a pair of blue jeans (no cargos this year), points out how hard it is to separate emotion out of the equation, before the panelists get down to the nitty-gritty of naming their favourites. INXS’s Kick, Radio Birdman’s Radios Appear, and The Go-Betweens’ 16 Lovers Lane all pop up as number ones, but by my rough estimation the album the panel seems to be able to agree on most is The Avalanches’ Since I Left You. I’m initially surprised that more people haven’t turned up to this, but I look around the room about two thirds of the way through and everyone in there, including myself and each of the panelists, is clearly a card-carrying music nerd. At the end of the day it’s not much more than a sideline to the main part of the conference, but it’s a highly entertaining one nevertheless.
Night
Five o’clock comes and it’s time to hit the Warner Music Party. I check my pocket for earplugs and a wet bandana and venture back into Black Bear Lodge, where Owl Eyes is causing a stir on the venue’s low-set stage. The Melbourne chanteuse known to the 2008 Australian Idol judges as Brooke Addamo has developed into a proper pocket rocket, slicing through a slick series of cuts, so it’s a shame her band is the greatest collection of dorks in music history – perhaps some sort of TISM-style masks are in order. Still, they’re tight enough, and Addamo sings to and leans off them in a way that reminds me of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ video clip. It’s cool enough for a German record rep standing next to me to ask who she is. (Cue two minutes of fruitless shouting at each other and me widening my eyes and flapping my arms like a total prick before I give up and type it into my phone.)
Naturally, it doesn’t take long for the Lodge to start creeping me out again, so I zip out to grab some dinner before heading back to The Zoo for Hootie & The Blowfish Busby Marou. This Rockhampton band pack both a backhanded charisma and an excellent guitarist in the form of Jeremy Marou, while bearded frontman Tom Busby is so enthusiastic about being here tonight that he could don some red pants and pass for Michael Anthony (don’t know who Michael Anthony is? Yes you do. Click here). Over a clutch of impressive tracks these guys give the impression they really have the potential to blow up, in an MOR rock kind of way. There’s nothing fancy about them (despite Marou’s work on ukulele, which makes the other 100 musicians packing one this week look like fucking pretenders) but they do what they do very, very well.
Busby finally wear a little thin when they break into a cover of ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’, so I head back to Black Bear to spy The Adults. I’d seen Jon Toogood (Shihad), Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) and Julia Dean (Fur Patrol) the night before at the Kiwi music party and they’d been solid, but they’re much better in these more intimate surroundings. The instrument swaps still create total chaos, and it remains more of a project more than an actual band, but there’s a collection of great moments onstage tonight, particularly when Carter is allowed to curl his lip and cut loose on guitar. Street Chant’s Billie Rogers fucking loves it, and right at that moment I think I do too.
It puts me in a good headspace to make it to the open stage in Bakery Lane and check out Sydney’s Papa Vs Pretty. I witnessed these guys support The Vines in Byron Bay a few short weeks ago, and on that occasion they were just OK. Tonight, however, they’re well and truly firing on all cylinders. Early 2011 single ‘Wrecking Ball’ in particular makes everybody go absolutely mental. I’m not yet convinced of their songwriting, but in the live sense Papa Vs Pretty well and truly have it nailed down.
Ball Park Music are one of the biggest draws on the Brisbane music scene at the moment, and tonight a massive crowd squeeze into Woodland Bar to witness the fitness. The band are indeed a hit with the punters, and so I’m yet again forced to question myself as to why I don’t quite get what all the fuss is about. To me, Ball Park Music try so hard to be something different that they forget to be themselves. But never mind, because I’m well and truly in the minority tonight: ‘It’s Nice To Be Alive’ and new single ‘All I Want Is You’ cause everybody to go crazy bananas.
The live music component of my BIGSOUND 2011 wraps up back at Black Bear Lodge with the right-angled dance rock of King KSSR. It turns out to be one of the strangest gigs I witness at the conference. Many of the delegates have thrown in the towel and already pissed off to the after party, but a few dedicated label reps stick around to watch a band that is essentially shadowboxing to a half empty room. With that in mind, they do a very good job. I cringe when frontman Kiss Reid quips at the hesitant crowd, “My judgment is a lot harsher than yours” (you’re performing at a music conference, dude), but these guys really deserve a larger audience. One over-eager industry type delivers them a round of drinks halfway through the set, he’s that impressed, and I don’t know whether to feel happy or bad for the band when he bails them up after the gig.
Friday, September 9
“Chuuuugggggiiee!” I groan despairingly as my alarm goes off far too early the following morning. I’m wearing just my underpants, and for some reason my socks are under my pillow. Thankfully, I’ve dealt with this sort of situation before, and end up making it back to the Valley in plenty of time for ‘Exposing Michael Chugg’, where journalists Kathy McCabe (The Daily Telegraph), Iain Shedden (The Australian) and Lars Brandle (Billboard Australia) interrogate the iconic promoter on his life in the local music business.
Five minutes into the interview and Chuggie’s “Fuck-o-Meter” is firmly in the red zone. I always suspected that the whole industry line about Chugg being really a nice guy was patent bullshit peddled by people who couldn’t afford to say anything different. But listening to him talk with McCabe, Shedden and Brandle you begin to see where they’re coming from: he’s almost intensely likeable, as he speaks honestly about his experiences and what he thinks of the Australian music industry. The endless good-natured digs at competitor Michael Gudinski are hilarious, while Chugg tells some quality stories about Steve Kilbey, Bob Dylan and Robbie Williams. He doesn’t shy away from questions about his heart attack in 2002, either, and launches a broadside at Alan McGee for the Scot’s disinterested comments during the opening keynote. I come away from the session determined to finally read the copy of Hey You In The Black T-shirt that’s been sitting on my bookshelf for the past six months.
Chugg’s lively performance puts me in a good frame of mind to face “Boy & Bear – A Year On From BIGSOUND”. Sydney band Boy & Bear turned heads at last year’s conference, but since then they’ve truly exploded on to both the national and international scenes. The panel includes two music lawyers, two managers, an A&R guy and, most importantly, Jon Hart, co-writer and multi-instrumentalist for the band itself. It’s a fascinating tale, but almost a cautionary one as you realise the kind of manpower and pure luck you need to make it in the modern environment. Perhaps the most interesting stuff revolves around the band’s progenitor and chief songwriter, Dave Hosking, being discovered inside Macquarie University’s music department by manager Guy Morrow, who’s a lecturer at the college, although the stories of studio tension with iconic producer Joe Chiccarelli (brought upon by label pressure) let you know how close the band came to not making their shot at the big time.
After lunch, things are well and truly beginning to wind down. Amplifire’s Stu McCullough is another industry guy who threatens to outshine the journalists when he chairs “Making Records For The World”, which looks at why it’s so hard for Australian albums to find an international audience. This is a great panel, and includes both Sire Records’ Seymour Stein and Tame Impala manager Jodie Regan. Regan’s stories regarding the rise of Impala probably tend to dominate a little, but rightly so seeing as the band’s success speaks to exactly what the panel is trying to address. Stein once again illustrates the value of being a straight talker in the music business, while the differences in approach in the digital age between a large label like Sire and a smaller indie such as Paul Hanly’s Frenchkiss make for some interesting contrasts and comparisons.
BIGSOUND wraps in 2011 via a Q&A with Scott Kannberg, founding member of Pavement and recently minted Australian resident. Time Off editor Steve Bell leads the man sometimes known as Spiral Stairs through his career so far and Kannberg proves to be a relaxed interviewee, his unpretentious attitude being a nice way to close the conference. The Pavement years obviously dominate with Kannberg staring nostalgically into his beer as he reminisces in particular on the dramas surrounding the recording of both Wowie Zowie and Terror Twilight. He laughs about his youthful petulance and shrugs hopefully when asked if Pavement’s recent tour will lead to another record. Kannberg’s good people, and his need to simply work hard at making distinctive music is a nice little reminder of what the industry should really be all about.
It’s enough to have me awarding a points decision to BIGSOUND in 2011. The conference wasn’t nearly as business-driven as I feared it would be, and if the programmers can haul out a similar standard of international keynote speakers next year they’ll be in good shape. The music business in this country can take itself too seriously at times, and I guess BIGSOUND gains a lot of credit by not always reinforcing that attitude.
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PART ONE: Infomercials & Alan McGee