Industrial Strength: December 6
FACE THE MUSIC “BIGGEST YET”
Organisers of the weekend’s Face The Music in Melbourne officially declared it the “biggest yet”. It drew 1,010 attendees over two days to its State Library Victoria hub. Other notable figures were 151 speakers, 50 events, 124 volunteers, 126 speed meetings and 17 showcasing artists.
Videos and podcasts of some of the sessions will be uploaded soon. Highlights included Bandcamp’s Andrew Jervis’s live-streamed keynote (“we’ll always be independently artist driven”), sign language interpreter Amber Galloway on accessibility and safety within music, Federal Arts Minister Mitch Fifield using the event to announce $1.16 million in secured funding for Sounds Australia, an unofficial world record for most people wearing Australian T-shirts during a Australian Music Industry Network photo shoot and a finale with a Women In Electronic Music showcase with GL, CORIN, Linying and BUOY.
Face The Music Director Peter Chellew, noting that feedback called it the best to date, confirmed, “We’ll be back in November 2017 for Face The Music 10, with a large-scale artist showcase program, new parties and exclusive masterclasses.”
STICKY FINGERS TAKING HIATUS
Sydney band Sticky Fingers(pictured) are going on an “indefinite hiatus” following their summer festival commitments. “For some time we’ve been dealing with some internal issues in the band. They’ve heightened to the point where it’s not fair to anyone involved for us not to do something. We have looked for help to try to get through this and will continue to do so.”
The issue seems to be singer Dylan Frost who later outed himself as being addicted to alcohol and suffering mental issues. “In recent times my behaviour for a large part has been unacceptable,” he confessed.’’
Last week, singer-songwriter Thelma Plum accused Frost of racially abusing her (details here) – although she later wished him well after the hiatus was announced to allow Frost to confront his demons.
On an Up escalator ride since forming in 2008, last year Sticky Fingers axed UK and European dates citing the “stress: of touring.
CANBERRA LOSING ANOTHER VENUE?
In the wake of a report that AIS Arena could scrap music concerts comes news that one of Canberra’s essential live music venues for the past 30 years, ANU Bar, could be finished next year. Plans for the redevelopment of Union Court and University Avenue indicate the demolition of the ANU Bar – along with the ANU Arts Centre, Gods Cafe & Bar and cabaret spot Teatro Vivaldi.
MUSICA COPA RAISES $10K FOR CHARITY
The Sydney music industry’s charity football game Musica Copa, played under soaring 35 temperatures last Friday with 400 spectators and players, has raised $10,000 for charity. Winners Lucky Entertainment donated their $7000 to Reach Foundation. Runners up, Universal Music, awarded $3000 for their charity Musicians Making a Difference (MMAD). Musica Copa has pushed the overall total beyond $40,000 since it began in 2013.
REPORT: AUSSIE MUSIC STREAMERS TEND TO SELF-CURATE
One of the key findings of a new report on music streaming from OMD is the high degree of Australians preferring to personalise their own playlists because it soundtracks their lives. OMD Soundscape – Audio Landscape Research, put together with Pandora and Spotify, was aimed at giving marketers and advertisers an insight to how important music is to Aussies and what factors go into their listening habits.
QLD MUSIC AWARDS DEADLINE EXTENDED
The deadline for submissions to the 2017 Queensland Music Awards is pushed back to midnight Sunday December 11. They are held at Brisbane Powerhouse on Monday March 27. Joining the 60+ strong judging panel are Craig May from Red Bull Records (UK) and Patrick Walch from Nuclear Blast GmbH (Germany).
WHICH SONGS BANNED FROM JAILS?
It’s a given that songs with swearing, anti-social language and gang terminology are denied access to inmates of prisons and youth detention centres. But the list is a closely guarded one on security reasons, the NT News discovered when it asked for one.
A Corrections Dept. spokesperson explained, “Providing lists of music titles that are excluded from prison play lists might assist elements who want to communicate with prisoners by incorporating messages into songs. They could use this information to tailor messages inserted into new songs in an attempt to bypass the filters that are used to identify songs for exclusion.”
URBAN OVERTAKES AC/DC IN CANBERRA
Keith Urban’s tour promoter declares that ticket sales to his Canberra show on December 10 at GIO Stadium “have outstripped any other music act in the ACT in the last decade, including AC/DC in 2001.” Only a handful of tix are left for the December 16 and 17 shows at Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
In New Zealand, Urban offered free tickets for emergency service crews who worked to help others following the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura quake.
HEALTHWAY SPONSORSHIPS HELP WA ARTS
Sponsorships by Healthway covering anti-smoking, anti-drugs and Act-Belong-Commit campaign for mental health, will provide $809,000 to 18 arts and community organisations in Perth and across regional WA, the State Government reported. These cover classical music, ballet, theatre, street art and film.
Those in contemporary music getting funding are $80,000 for City of Swan’s Hyperfest to promote Drug Aware, $10,000 for City of Joondalup to “make smoking history” through its Music In The Park events and $3000 for Shire of Dandaragan to promote Drug Aware through the urban, graff and hip hop Spray the Grey Youth Festival 2017.
RADIO ADELAIDE GETS LEGAL ON NEW ABC NAME
ABC Radio’s rebranding of local stations to reflect their cities, has created a problem in Adelaide. Plans by 891 ABC to become Radio Adelaide has put it in a legal collision course with the 43-year old community radio station.
A cease and desist letters winged its way from its lawyer while Radio Adelaide’s Chairman Iain Evans was more succinct: “The ABC can go and get stuffed!”
MORE ON EASYBEATS MINI-SERIES
Screen Australia has released more information on The Easybeats mini-series Friday On My Mind. The two-part ABC biopic will be made with Screen NSW support by Playmaker Media’s successful producing duo David Taylor and David Maher (The Wrong Girl, The Code, Love Child, House Husbands).
RIEU MAKES $1M AT AUSSIE BOX OFFICE
CinemaLive’s first week screening in Australia of André Rieu: Christmas with André opened first week at #2. It grossed $1.08 million, with a screen average of $8,370 from 130 screens. As reported in TMN, the two-hour movie – which included a Q&A and a personal tour of his hometown – broke his own cinema record in the UK and Ireland last month for a single day screening drawing 70,000 and grossing a total of £1,162,000 (A$1,952,060).
DELTA TO START SHOOTING ONJ DOCO
Reports say that Delta Goodrem will on December 12 start shooting as the lead character of Seven’s Olivia Newton-John documentary. The singer’s name has been linked with the Film Victoria-funded project since Seven and FremantleMedia announced it late last year. According to New Idea then, ONJ tried to stop the doco, had sent a cease-and-desist missive to the producers and, according to the magazine’s “sources”, was furious with Goodrem for being involved. But TV Tonight reckons that OBJ is now “on board”.
IGGY MAKES TIME’S WORST SONGS LIST
Iggy Azalea’s Team was ranked #3 in Time magazine’s ‘Top 10 Worst Songs’ of 2013. Justin Timberlake‘s Trolls soundtrack hit Can’t Stop The Feeling was deemed the ghastliest, followed by Meghan Trainor’s Mom.
Behind Iggy at #4 were Fall Out Boy & Missy Elliott’s Ghostbusters (I’m Not Afraid), and then Machine Gun Kelly’s Bad Things, Mike Posner’s I Took A Pill In Ibiza, the appropriately named Gnash with I hate u, I love u, Trainor again this time with No, Britney Spears’ Private Show (and you knew she’d turn up somewhere) and finally Lukas Graham’s 7 Years rounding off the Top 10.
NEW OWNER FOR THE VINE
Australian pop culture site The Vine has been bought over by Sydney-based Junkee Media. Its former owner Tom Pitney was offered a role leading the roll-out of a new product associated with social mobile video.
WA MUSIC FOLKS RALLY ABOUT STEVE GIBSON
The WA music community is rallying around local musician Steve ‘Gibbo’ Gibson, drummer for The Wasted Sons and guitarist/vocalist for Los Porcheros. After undergoing treatment for bladder cancer, a follow up test found that the Big C had returned. This means 6-9 weeks of chemotherapy and the removal of the bladder. Friends have set up a GoFundMe campaign at https://www.gofundme.com/gibboneedsahand to raise $25,000 for medical bills and lost wages. Acts as The Waifs and The Kill Devil Hills (he was their drummer) are among the names who’ve thrown their weight behind the crowd-sourcing. By last night, it had collected $16,185.
TOYOTA STAR MAKER GOES FREE
Next month’s Toyota Star Maker quest, a flagship event of the first week of the Tamworth Country Music Festival, makes a major change in its 38 year history. It will be held for free for the first time, on Jan 22, at Toyota Park with all ten finalists judged on the night.
Among those who won early in their careers were Lee Kernaghan, Keith Urban, Beccy Cole, James Blundell, Darren Coggan, Travis Collins, Gina Jeffreys, Samantha McClymont, Kirsty Lee Akers and Kaylee Bell.
STUDY: TV STILL LEADS IN AUSSIE HOMES
A new study by Roy Morgan Research concluded that television remains the main entertainment in Australian households. The average Australian watches 18 hours of TV a week. She/he spends 19 hours a week on the internet, but only 13 hours is for entertainment. 42% surf the net while watching TV, including almost two thirds of the 14—34 demo. 37% shut the world out when we get home by flopping in front of the set.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said: “Australians’ average time spent watching television declined from 2004 to 2012, coinciding with the rapid growth in home internet and arrival of smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. However the time spent watching television has steadied over the last few years, suggesting we may be approaching a ‘base’ level of habitual TV viewership in the internet age—one that’s perhaps much higher than naysayers might have predicted.”
AUSSIE SINGER SCORES HARRY POTTER AUTHOR FLICK
Perth singer-songwriter Emmi scored a lucrative gig, singing on the soundtrack to Harry Potter creator JK Rowling’s next movie Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. Last year when director David Yates got in touch last summer to record a song called Blind Pig without knowing what or who it is for. Emmi was intrigued as there is no blind pig in the movie. She later discovered online it was the name of a club in it. “I thought it was some codename to cover up what the song was about. It’s been like a hilarious mystery.’ Emmi won MTV Brand New for Australia and NZ, donating the $10,000 prize to Telethon Perth, which raises money for medical research into children’s diseases.
RHEMA FM PASSES THE SALT
Sunshine Coast Christian radio station Rhema FM has relaunched as Salt106.5. Its CEO Phil Gray explains, “The station is a new kind of radio station in that its ‘not just for Christians’ (as it was), it’s a station that is focused on our community and positive family values.”
SCREENWEST MOVED TO ABC PERTH BUILDING
The WA Government has moved the offices of funding body Screenwest to the ABC building to be part of a creative hub. The idea is that a cluster will create partnerships, investments and job creation. At the opening of the new offices, Culture and the Arts Minister John Day said that the hub would offer “offices and co-working spaces for producers and creatives, for short or long-term lease” and allow film productions to borrow ABC equipment.
NEW DEAL OVER USING OVERSEAS PERFORMERS
A formal agreement between theatre producer Michael Cassel Group (Kinky Boots, Les Misérables) and the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) has set up new rules for the engagement of overseas performers for the next three years. It came into effective on December 1.
Cassel will send a cast copy to the union at the same time it approaches agents, will try and use an Australian lead, and consult with the union when it hires an imported name. Both the MEAA and Live Performance Australia have been concerned at the rise of foreign talent in local productions this year. The MEAA is encouraging other producers to follow the Cassel lead.
REPORT: HOW NZ ON AIR SUPPORTS NZ CONTENT
Media funding agency NZ On Air’s financial report for 2015/6 showed that it invested NZ$128 million in new local content. This included creating 228 songs and music videos, 3,369 programme hours on access radio in 42 minority languages, 897 hours of new television content (104 hours of drama and comedy), $14 million worth of children’s TV, 4.45 million in online-only content “attracting millions of views”, and $400,000 more on captioning and audio description services.
SANDY EVANS GET OZCO FELLOWSHIP
Jazz saxplayer, composer and academic Sandy Evans received the music component of the 2016 Australia Council Fellowship. It is worth $80,000 over two years. She will use the Fellowship to compose, collaborate and play saxophone for a new body of work with internationally renowned musicians in jazz, free improvisation and intercultural music in Australia, Singapore, India and Europe.
HAIRSPRAY CANCELLED IN PERTH
The three-date Perth run of Hairspray — The Big Fat Arena Spectacular, set for HBF Stadium in January, has been cancelled due to “poor ticket sales”. The Perth production – to include a cast of 30 including Simon Burke, Tim Campbell and Christine Anu along with 600 young performers aged 9 to 21 – was to be the biggest production of Hairspray in the world.
NIC BEZZINA LAUNCHES MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK
Award-winning Australian photographer Nic Bezzina is releasing a music photography book Release The Crowd. He is staging exhibitions in Sydney (from Saturday December 10 – Goodspace Gallery) and Melbourne (from Sunday Decemer 18 – BSIDE Gallery). Bezzina divides his time between Sydney and London, and has 100 photos from eleven major festivals in five countries.
VALE
* Ray Columbus was a New Zealand singer-songwriter who with his band The Invaders had a #1 hit in Australia and NZ with She’s A Mod among 14 hits. He then went on to attain music icon status as music manager and TV personality. Among his awards were APRA Silver Scroll (twice for top songwriter), the Legacy Award at the 2009 New Zealand Music Awards, Promoter/Manager of the Year and was the first pop musician in the British Commonwealth to receive an Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 2011 he released his autobiography Ray Columbus: The Modfather. He passed after battling illness for four years, aged 72. At his funeral last Friday, he made his final flamboyant appearance, in a bright red casket in a classic car, adorned with his trademark leather cap.
* Melbourne born (1942) jazz composer and performer Dr Allan Zavod spent 20 years in the US, where he collaborated with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, The Glenn Miller Orchestra and Eric Clapton. Ellington encouraged him to study at the Berklee Collge of Music in Boston, where he later served as a professor of music. Donations can be made to a GoFundMe campaign or to Zaitman Lawyers Trust Account at Zaitman Lawyers, Level 1, 480 St Kilda Street, Melbourne VIC 3004.
* Before Bob Horsfall OAM launched his radio career, he was an acrobatic dancer in the 1930s, the Australian Tap Dancing champion for 18 years and singer with a number of big bands. He presented shows at Melbourne’s 3KZ, 3AW, 3UZ, 88.3 FM and Golden Days Radio. He was also an actor and TV identity. He got his Order of Australia in 2011 for his contribution to entertainment. He passed at 90 from cancer.
AND A FEW OTHER THINGS…
Fleet Foxes reckon their 2017 world tour will see them in Australia in May.
According to US business magazine Forbes, AC/DC were the 7th highest earners in 2016, grossing US$67.8 million (A$91million). In the top end of the list were Taylor Swift (US$170m), One Direction ($110m) and Adele ($80.5m).
NSW Premier Mike Baird is considering delaying a loosening of lockout laws until late January, the Daily Telegraph reported this morning.
Wolfmother and Rose Tattoo have been added to Guns N’ Roses’ February visit. Imported Tatts records were essential listening for Guns N’ Roses members when growing up in the US. In 1993 when they toured Australia behind Use Your Illusion, they asked Rose Tattoo to reform to open. When the tour hit Melbourne and the Aussie band played a club show, Gunners members were in the audience taking photos and exclaiming, “Our friends in America will never believe we met Rose Tattoo!”
In Hearts Wake have made Conor Ward, who’s been playing with them on their Skywalker album tours, their full-time drummer.
Canberra band Moaning Lisa are the latest to take a stand against bad behaviour at their gigs. The last straw was four guys linking arms screaming obscenities and knocking over other patrons. Charlotte Versegi and Hayley Manwaring uploaded a video during which they note, “We love a drink, we love to get plastered, we go to shows, I don’t think I’ve ever hit someone or thrown a beer at someone on stage.” The video got 9700 views in the first few days and began a healthy dialogue with other music fans. The band has suggested that putting three fingers up should be adopted by venues as a sign of distress.
One of Melbourne’s most entertaining radio presenters, Richard Stubbs, is starring in a new show at the Arts Centre in February called Talkin’ About…Books, Music, Life And Love. It’s like The Letterman Show meets Ted Talks with a dash of Q.I. …intelligent and not boring. Stubbs says it’s “a show celebrating all the passionate things in life”, the ensemble includes Rusty Berther of Scared Weird Little Guys and independent politician Tony Windsor.
At the behest of the Australian High Commission, Paul Dempsey and NSW singer-songwriter Sophie Payten and her band played a number of shows in India last weekend. Meantime Dempsey’s London show this week has sold out.
Now based in New York City, Kimbra returns to Sydney for a fleeting visit to play a free one-off gig. Her headlining slot at the Celebrate Darling Harbour 2016 on Sunday December 11 is her first Australian performance in two years. The show will premiere some of her third album, which she’s recording with producer John Congleton (Goldfrapp, St Vincent.)
Work has wrapped up in New Zealand on Why Does Love Do This to Me. It’s the story of The Exponents, whose biggest hit of that name from 1991 is a traditional sing-along at any Kiwi sporting event.
X Factor Australia finalist Timmy Knowles has revealed that in 2011, he was at home in Surrey, England, when an armed gang burst in, and tied him and friend Mark Reid overnight. Next day, he got tied up in nearby woods while the gang burgled Reid’s jewellery show. Knowles’ biggest anguish: he had £10 tickets to a Ed Sheeran gig that night and couldn’t go!