From Bankstown to the globe, and home : popular music in Sydney

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The tabloid, the dance party, and the Premier: the policy legacy of Anna Wood

This paper reviews one of the nation's most intense recent contemporary moral panics, the media and public concern about ecstasy use at dance parties that raged immediately after the death of Sydney schoolgirl Anna Wood in 1995. The reportage of one Sydney tabloid, The Daily Telegraph Mirror, is assessed for the roles it played in producing this panic: first, it's visible and self-proclaimed task in setting the key terms of debate about ecstasy consumption and dance parties; and second, in influencing the policy responses of the state government at the time. The ongoing legacy of the moral panic engendered by Anna Wood's death is evident in the ways that media and government articulate discourses of 'risk' in relation to young people's ecstasy consumption when compared with the contexts and uses of alcohol. Further, the paper reveals how these different discourses have produced clearly iniquitous policing strategies in relation to Sydney dance clubs and hotels

Cultural industry or social problem?: the case of Australian live music

The live music pub and club scene has historically been regarded as the source of a distinctively Australian rock/jazz culture, and the basis for global recording success. This paper examines the history of live venue practices as a case study of a local cultural industry that often existed outside of traditional policy structures and meanings of the arts industries. Confronted with a loss of performance opportunities for local musicians, it is argued that traditional cultural policy mechanisms and platforms used for cultural nationalist outcomes are no longer relevant. Rather, policy intervention must engage with administrative obstacles to live creativity, specifically the series of local regulations that have diminished the viability of live venues. The decline of the rock/jazz pub continues in the face of current federal government support for touring musicians. A closer inspection of the local administration of cultural practice remains the best means of understanding the devaluation of the social and industrial value of live performance

Access all eras: careers, creativity and the Australian tribute band

In his overview of the global music industry in the place of Music (1998), John Lovering notes the popularity of 'cover' or 'tribute' bands on Australian live music circuits. The Australian live music scene has produced many such acts, perhaps beginning with the formation of Beatles copyists The Beatnix in 1980, a group of (ever changing) musicians who have extended their touring schedule into Asia. This paper examines the historical contexts of a mimetic live performance culture, in particular the evolution of an Oz Rock [ie mainstream Australian rock] canon of performers deemed worthy of imitation (Midnight oil, Australian Crawl, AC/DC et al). The benefits of the popularity of such bands for Australian musicians - providing opportunities to acquire performance skills and reliable employment - will be examined in light of increasing criticism that the synthetic nature of live performance limits opportunities for original composers. In redefining notions of 'authentic' performance, the phenomenon has also changed local music communities. Lawrence Grossberg his previously analysed "the historical conditions of rock's possibility" (1994:48); here I wish to explore the historical and rhetorical conditions of imitation in Australian popular music venues

The mayor's a square: a regulatory history of Sydney rock venues, 1957-1997

"November 1998"Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English, Linguistics and Media, 1999.Bibliography: leaves 352-386.In 1957 Australian audiences witnessed the first live rock and roll performances in Sydney town halls and hotels. This thesis adopts the city of Sydney as a case study in examining the development of live rock/pop performance in Australia, with particular emphasis on the industrial-legal structures framing its production and consumption. The thesis begins by identifying two related contexts which have impacted on venue governance: the social construction of live performance venues paralleled by understandings of the performer and fan as 'unruly' subject by media, government and the music scene itself; and the commercial development of live music. Further, a third context can be identified in the competing discourses between these broader themes, in which the state's desire for manageable citizens remains in conflict with historic notions of the rock and roll subject. The project draws upon the history of subcultural theory in re-assessing notions of the bohemian/deviant subject. The creation of 'moral panics' in the formation of rock and roll as societal threat is similarly identified in governmental procedures and social control strategies. These aspects are assessed within changing notions defining 'uncontrollable youth' and youth leisure governance. Three broad stages of development are posited in the history of live rock in Sydney: the appropriation of formal civic spaces (the town hall and ballroom) as initial sites of public performance in the 1950s; a subsequent period of consolidation in the 1960s, during which modifications to stage practices ensured rock's place in registered clubs; and the profitable 'Oz Rock' period (1978-1988), when the New South Wales hotel circuit benefited from the expansion of performance sites in radio and television. A final era of change is documented in the decline of the live pub scene, with an accompanying shift to dance musics as the primary concern of popular music regulation in the 1990s. The project incorporates interviews with rock musicians who have performed in Sydney to describe venue conditions and stage practices, and uses local, State and Federal government archives to document and assess legislative change. The nature of liquor, building and noise laws, and other legislation relating to venue governance are considered as an alternative means of analysing the extents to which live performance opportunities have been constructed or diminished. The centrality of live performance to national popular music industry mythologies, embodied in the 'Oz Rock' tradition, is explored within the contemporary decline in live performance venues. Because of the conflicts in the historical construction of the rock subject identified above, the social and legal factors involved in the establishment of music venues presents continual challenges to Sydney venues. It is argued that the presence of live rock and roll within the city remains a matter of negotiation. This thesis provides a reassessment of how policy environments inform live performance opportunities, to argue for a broader understanding of the nexus between culture and administration.Mode of access: World Wide Web.vi, 386 p. il

Popular music

Perhaps more than any other medium, popular music intersects with and influences the uses of other media in everyday life. It is now inescapable at both leisure and work—in the car, the department store, the elevator; on television, film, radio and the Internet. Pop songs have been used to lend credibility to a tired commercial product (Microsoft's use of The Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' to launch Windows 1998; the National Rugby League's use of Chumbarumba's 'I Get Knocked Down' to launch the reunified code in 1999). Alternatively, popular music has been drafted by politicians seeking cultural authenticity (Pauline Hanson's unauthorised use of 'We Are Australian', written by ex-Seeker Bruce Woodley, in 1999). Studying Australian popular music shows how we might understand the development of local media and cultural production within Australian ways of life. Like other national cultural/media histories, popular music reflects, and feeds into, local debates and mythologies concerning the formation of national character and a distinctive 'Australianness'