Article for The Australian – Western Australia feature (Sept, 1996): WA music industry
It was during a small, suburban park cricket match in late 1995 that many of us finally realised that Western Australia’s largely unheralded music ‘renaissance’ had finally broken through. Halfway through the Treadmill Eleven’s dashing batting effort on a slow but true pitch against Perth’s X-Press Magazine, the booming strains of Ammonia’s Mint 400 album came wafting across the field from a brick and tile suburban dwelling.
We all stopped to gawk at the house, venetian blinds hiding the obvious scene of a couple of kids pogoing to a band who actually lived just down the road from them in nearby Applecross. They didn’t know or care about how this CD came to be, up against every obstacle the Australian Industry could stack against it. They just knew it for the radio hit Drugs (soon to go Top 30 in the US) and the string of airplay-grabbing singles. But we all knew what this singular moment of suburban airplay meant – acceptance by those beyond the know – and the sweetest charting moment of them all.
It is now two years since X-Press Magazine’s Bob Gordon wrote of our “City’s Music Scene Undergo(ing) a Renaissance” (The Australian, August 5, 1994) complete with a huge photo of Ammonia. Since then, the fledgling renaissance has evolved to a full-blown revolution unlike anything the larger portion of Australia could ever realise. It is not just a physical triumph, it is more an attitudinal triumph. Almost gone is the incessant whingeing of ‘the tyranny of distance’ by Perth’s musical commentators, replaced instead by a two fingered salute to the other capitals and a dogged belief in our own self generated and encapsulated industry.
“Channel 10 rang me to get my comments for the usual whinge story on the struggling Perth music scene”, muses Jeff Halley, WA’s APRA licensing representative, ex-manager of current Australian tourists Header and band member of European conquerors The Chevelles.
“I basically told them ‘look, as far as I’m concerned the industry is doing okay. We’ve got more bands signed to the majors than we’ve ever had, there are more bands touring interstate and overseas, more bands signed to the independents and forging their own labels’ licensing and distribution deals than I’ve ever seen in my life. Okay, so we’re not being played on PMFM and Triple M but who cares? That avenue hasn’t been open to us for more than ten years so get over it!'”
While Perth supergroups like Sony signings Ammonia, Six Mile High and now Jebediah (whose debut EP Twitch debuted at number one on the WA charts in August, knocking off the nineteen US singles in their way) do now garnish the flaccid commercial airwaves along with Mushroom Records’ ‘surprise’ find Header, almost all of WA’s biggest bands are now equipped with a defiant snubbing of the waste of their energies on old-school Australian industry apparatuses. “Yeah, we are seceding,” laughs Jo Ward, Coordinator of Fremantle’s Music Industry Skills course, Vice President of the Fremantle Original Music and Arts group and Homegrown coordinator (Perth music’s link on RTR-FM, public radio).
“We all now realise that we have got the very tail of any semblance of recording industry backbone in this country. We’ve realised that they’re not going to help us and so we’ll just have to do it ourselves. And in 1996 as more bands take off to Europe, North and South America and Asia, we’ll discover we can do it. Maybe just cover costs for the first few times, but capitalise nonetheless.”
Triple J ‘Unearthed’ winners from Kalgoorlie, The Early Hours, did just that. Recently back from a self-funded and European label assisted 29 date tour of Spain, France and Germany, The Early Hours surveyed Australia’s archaic and Sydney-centric industry with the same critical eye and realised that Australia’s system is solely geared to the too slowly-evolving, middle of the road tastes and importation mentality of the Meldrum era.
“The Europe that I saw loves Australian music and Perth music in particular”, says Sean Carthew, guitarist for the Early Hours. Similar sentiments come from Jeff Halley, part of The Chevelles and the swag of WA bands who have laid the groundwork in Europe over the past few years. “There is a vibe for our music that we really didn’t know about until we got there, having been under the Australian industry blanket for so long,” confers Halley.
“Early on it became apparent that we didn’t want to slug it out on the Oz pub rock circuit for the rest of our lives, what we were playing wasn’t really where Australia was at, so naturally we would have been pretty unsuccessful playing the old game and realised it early enough to save ourselves.”
While these direct export opportunities continue to open up for the jaded many, an even greater number continue to pour their energies into forcing the staid old industry’s hand from within, with similar success though against familiar barriers. Though now it is a case of know thine enemy. Pete Carroll, WA State Manager of Sony and an instrumental figure in getting Perth’s three Sony signings up the ladder, sees leading by example as one way to beat the system.
“While there is exciting and truly organic music here, it is also a scene which is generating more and more brilliant bands each day which just struggle to be heard. The one or two breaks by Ammonia, Six Mile High and Jebediah have been fundamental in opening the doors and negating this distance.
“If anything, major signings haven’t just helped these three Sony bands but also forced the other labels to say ‘shit, if Sony Music is taking an interest over there then maybe this is something we should be investigating.'”
Ammonia’s Simon Hensworth, earning a six week reprieve following the recording of demos for album number two and a hectic US and world tour, can certify these experiences. “Each state is accepting Perth for different reasons. The way I look at it, Sydney has all of the industry mechanisms but all of the talent is scalped from Brisbane and Perth. It’s almost as if each state has assumed its own role of providing talent, providing gigs (Melbourne) or providing industry (Sydney), all thousands of miles apart.”
And underneath, while the heat is scorchingly applied to the big five record companies, there is also the stable foundation of the Perth industry which is not only kicking against the pricks but forging its own identity. “There is no such thing as a national industry anymore,” states James Nagy defiantly as President of the Western Australian Music Industry Association (WAM).
“Anyone who thinks that someone is just going to come along and sign them up is in dreamland. The issue becomes whether or not their business skills are any good. If they haven’t got themselves shipshape to enter negotiations, deals or even the export market directly to capitalise on niche markets, they know they wont go anywhere. It’s as simple as that and finally everyone knows it.”
Such is the presence and foresight of Perth’s local organisations, structures and pressure groups: WAM, the Music Industry Skills courses (now incorporated into many high school and TAFE curriculums), management forums, export marketing initiatives (to MIDEM Europe and Asia) and the encompassing industry symbiosis with the music magazines and public radio. Perth can’t afford to hold back any more punches. Do or die, the scene is now also a breeding ground of their industry’s futures.
All Ages committees, made up of high school students and unemployed band members have brought kids and their needs back to Perth’s contemporary music – once the biggest sector of music consumption, trashed by a conservative Australian industry over the past ten years. “I’m sure that all people from the ages committees like Act of Youth (Perth) and Generation Gap (Fremantle) will actually be involved, toughened and critical in the industry for years to come,” says Nagy.
“They are the future, either as musicians, audience, managers, bookers or someone on the scene. We have never before had this amount of contact with these kids and their enthusiasm to actually tackle real events, promotion, organisation and accountability. They feel they are part of the action, it’s a young person’s game so let us let them call the shots.”
