Industrial Strength: October 18
Image: Studios 301 in Sydney
MUSIC VICTORIA SURVEYS MUSIC-FRIENDLY CANDIDATES
In the run-up to the Saturday, October 22 local council elections in Melbourne, Music Victoria did a survey of 2000 candidates in 79 municipalities to find out which of them had a vision for their electorate’s music fans.
51% felt there was currently not adequate funding for music in their municipality, 97% would support an increase in funding, and 98% would support increased use of council facilities and buildings for musicians to rehearse, record music and hold all-ages events.”
Whether it’s bands, a community choir or a music store, every municipality has a music industry,” Music Victoria Chief Executive Patrick Donovan said. “Many Victorian councils have shown great support for contemporary music over the last four years … and we urge all Victorians to review their candidates’ responses before voting.” To see the full survey go to musicvictoria.com.au
MUSIC FOR PARRAMATTA BARS, BOUTIQUES
A month after the City Of Parramatta in Sydney and Live Music Office went into a partnership to boost the local music scene, two initiatives have been announced.
Live And Local will put emerging musicians in non-traditional venues as bars, boutiques, and hairdressers, allowing them to also develop personal relationships with their owners.
AMPLIFY will help local music businesses for 12 months with issues as marketing, production, ticketing, licensing, booking and sourcing underage audiences.
FINALISTS FOR MELBOURNE MUSIC BANK
Bank of Melbourne announced the four finalists of the 4th Melbourne Music Bank competition as voted by Victoria’s public. They are Anna Oliphant Wright, Birdhouse, Bloom, and Tempus Sun.
The four perform before a panel at the finals on October 25 at Hamer Hall. The judges are Bank of Melbourne’s Head of Brand and Marketing Jac Phillips, Beat editor Cara Williams, Emily Cheung from On The Map PR, manager Matt O’Connor, Damian Costin from 123 Agency and Frank Varrasso from Varrasso PR.
The $60,000-worth prize includes studio time for an EP, a video clip, 500 copies of the EP, a radio plugger, manager and booking agent, media training and styling, On the Map PR services for a month, an East Coast tour and a slot on the Beyond The Valley festival.
CONCERT FACES MENTAL ILLNESS
The Entertainment Assist and Victoria University study last week exposed the high incidence of unchecked mental illness in the music industry. Now Out From Under is a concert on Monday, November 21 at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre in Sydney with Debra Byrne, Silvie Paladino, Rob Mills, Ben Abraham, Casey Donovan, Heather Mitchell and Damien Leith.
SECRET DAUGHTER TOUR?
Will we see a tour of the music from Seven’s hit show The Secret Daughter, and with performances from its star Jessica Mauboy and singer-songwriter J.R. Reyne who plays Dan her boyfriend? Songs include Flame Trees, Good Times, Photograph and Wake Me Up, as well as Mauboy’s own Risk It and Home To Me.
DAVERN BOOK TURNING INTO TV SERIES
Grinspoon guitarist turned book/music store co-owner Pat Davern has a new career matched out with his expansion into children’s books and music. His album Alexander The Elephant In Zanzibar (ABC/Universal) received an ARIA nomination. It featured the voices of Megan Washington, Pete Murray, Alex Lloyd, Toni Mitchell and Tom Williams. Alexander The Elephant is being turned into a TV series, and Davern says he’s planning to start work on a second book.
WA’S CULTURE COUNTS GOES GLOBAL
A Western Australian-made innovative app called Culture Counts which allows the state’s arts organisations to collate real-time data on public, artist and peer feedback is finding a global market. The app is provided free to organisations which get grants from the Department of Culture and the Arts and have to report feedback data as part of their funding.
WA’s Culture and the Arts Minister John Day says that it allows each organisation a saving of $25,000 which it would otherwise have paid for market research. That’s $950,000 in total a year of all organisations. The app is now being used in the UK and the US and trialled in China.
STUDIOS301 BUILDING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FACILITY
Sydney’s Studios 301 is constructing a multi-million dollar state of the art recording facility to open in 2017. During this time it will continue to operate with recording, mixing, mastering and audio digitisation at temporary locations in Sydney. Details will be unveiled on November 17 as part of Studios 301 90th birthday celebration.
VICTORIA STATE VENUES DRAW
Annual reports for Victoria’s nine state-owned creative and cultural agencies tabled in Parliament showed that they collectively drew a record 11.4 million visitors (their events included the David Bowie exhibition) and a 20% rise to a record 20.6 million online user sessions.
They included Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne Recital Centre, State Library of Victoria, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Museum Victoria and National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as well as Film Victoria and Scienceworks.
PRODUCTIVE PURSUIT LAUNCHES IN LAUNCESTON
Tasmania’s latest record label Productive Pursuit Record’s officially launched with a showcase at the Royal Oak last Saturday. The DIY punk label’s Brody Postuma said it operated on the model where consumers would pay what they thought a track was worth.
Showcasing were the original Sleepyheads, Cape Grim, Squid Fishing, and BrodyGreg.
MUSIC ON FOXTEL ARTS
Foxtel Arts channel’s November schedule includes a number of music specials.
Later… With Jools Holland on Thursdays at 9.30 pm includes Elton John (3), Iggy Pop (10), Bonnie Raitt (17) and Tame Impala (24).
The Australian premiere of Dolly Parton At The Glastonbury Festival is at 7.30 pm on Saturday, November 5.
The Australian premiere on Soundstage: Tom Jones & Alison Krauss is on Friday, November 25 at 10.35pm.
The Season 11 Aussie premiere of The Jonathan Ross Show is on Sundays at 5pm from November 6. The guest list is yet to be confirmed.
ABC RADIO NOW DOMINATES HOBART
In Hobart’s first radio survey in two years, 936 ABC Hobart maintained the lead with a 20.8% share, unlike the 2014 survey when the commercial stations came up trump lead by 7HOFM.
SCA’s hit100.9 was the best performing commercial station with an 18.2% slice and dominated the under-40 market. It was followed by HO FM’s 16.3%, and SCA Heart 107.3 with 13.9%.
LORDE DONATES $10K TO FAMILY IN NEED
Lorde donated $10,000 to a crowd-funding campaign by an Auckland family who had to leave their house for four months due to a leak and found it difficult to stump up the $260,000 to fix it up. The family’s financial woes were worsened by the fact that one of their three children, a 10-year-old, has severe autism and their father lost his job due to health issues. Earlier this year, Lorde donated $20,000 to a children’s charity.
MARIA AMATO FOR BREAKFAST
The next Women In Music Sydney In Conversation breakfast session features Maria Amato, General Manager at the Australian Independent Record Label Association (AIR). Jaxsta and MusicNSW present the event at The Works, Glebe, from 7.30 am on Thursday, October 27. Among her topics will be useful financial skills applicable across all aspects of the music industry. Register at MusicNSW’s site.
MUSIC AT LAUNCESTON AIRPORT
LAUNCH is a new program initiated by Music Tasmania where Tasmanian acts play at Launceston Airport’s James Boag Upper Deck, which is operated by Emirates Leisure Retail. The music goes live between 4—6 pm on Fridays.
“Friday afternoons are a peak time for Launceston airport and we hope that LAUNCH will entice people to stay a little longer to enjoy some great original music at Boags Upper Deck” Music Tasmania’s CEO, Laura Harper said.
ADELAIDE TO HOST SHOWBROKER
Adelaide is hosting Showbroker, a new national touring performing arts market, February 27 to March 1, 2017. It is put together by Arts SA and Adelaide Festival Centre. It is designed to complement existing markets by showcasing Australian tour-ready work and focusing on booking tours.
The market includes 15-minute pitch slots for tour-ready work, 20-minute live performance excerpts, full length shows presented as part of the Adelaide Fringe and selected for ShowBroker, and a contemporary live music touring and regional presentation focus.
VALE
Discovering Aphex Twin in his early teens, Melbourne born Fergus Miller recalled beginning creating techno on his home computer. He scoured op shops and second-hand stores for an array of instruments, playing all of them and posting them online before being signed by Spunk Records. He adopted the moniker Bored Nothing for two albums which he shut the page on in 2014. Prolific and fiercely DIY, he played/ worked with Pansy, Milkshake, Revenge Surgery and, most recently, Wedding Ring Bells. Fergus Miller passed away after a battle with depression. He was 24.
AND A FEW OTHER THINGS…
Jimmy Barnes’ book remains at #1 on the book top seller for a third consecutive week. Meantime, accompanying shows in Canberra, Warragul and Thirroul have sold out.
In the meantime, Cold Chisel buddy Ian Moss was back in his hometown Alice Springs playing basketball as part of the Masters Games series. He was involved in five games in three days for a team which included 8HA manager Roger Harris. They’ve known each other since kindergarten and played music together in their early teens.
Another reality TV music series Australia could see is social media & technology The Stream. It originated in Norway and has just ordered by NBC in America. Wanna-bes’ post their own performance videos on a dedicated platform, and the 100 most streamed will be slowly shortlisted while being connected with top artists and industry tastemakers.
New Zealand media has revealed that while the Culture Club tour sees them hit Auckland and Christchurch in December, Immigration New Zealand reports that Boy George has yet to file for a visa. He needs special clearance, going back to a ban from the US in 2008 while awaiting a trial in the UK for falsely imprisoning an escort.
Natalie Imbruglia is one of the six featured in the next season of SBS’s Logie-winning First Contact. Made by Blackfella Films and hosted by Ray Martin, it takes celebs into indigenous communities to combat them with their own prejudices. Also going are former BMG Records marketing executive-turned-media person Ian “Dicko” Dickson, comedian Tom Ballard, former Miss Universe Australia Renae Ayris, actress Nicki Wendt and former One Nation politician David Oldfield.
Newcastle bands Doc & The Delegates, The Fux And The Sound, Jucy Lucy, Karma Collective, Rebooter Red, City Shrimp and Sugarbob play a fundraiser this weekend at the Croatian Wickham Sports Club for the Students of Sustainability conference next July. Chompies supplied by Food Not Bombs.
Radio station 3BO Bendigo threw a celebration for friends, family, and colleagues of breakfast presenter “Cogho” Coghlan hitting the 15-year milestone. The man who gave him the job, Vinnie Shannon, rang to wish him “50 years on the breakfast shift. He corrected himself, adding, “Your jokes feel like they’re fifty years old anyway mate.”
NZ singer-songwriter and this year’s NZ Golden Guitar winner Alice Fraser plays a fund raising concert in Invercargill on October 30 so she can attend a two-week program at the-Australian Country Music Academy in January to develop writing and performing skills, and then represent Southland and New Zealand at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Aside from three nominations at the NZ Music Awards, as reported in TMN, NZ act Kings is also up for Best NZ Artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards, to be announced on November 6 in Rotterdam. Late last year while in Fiji, the impromptu shot a video using his iPhone for an unreleased track Don’t Worry ‘Bout It. He wasn’t to know it would explode, with 500,000 YouTube views, 2.5 million Spotify streams, topping the NZ singles and radio airplay charts and being certified gold.
Melbourne bluegrass duo the Davidson Bros were in Launceston on the weekend playing a fundraiser for disability service provider Possability.
After beating ovarian cancer despite being told by doctors she had less than a 50% chance of making it past this year, WA singer-songwriter Nat Ripepi unveiled new song The Gift about her recovery at a St John of God Foundation cancer fundraiser in Nedlands.
Documents show that the South Australian Government considered paying The Rolling Stones $1.25 million to play the opening of the Adelaide Oval.
As part of an art exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art about changes over 100 years to Papua New Guinea’s secretive Tolai people, Tolai musician George Telek and Australian musician-producer David Bridie drew around them friends and family as well as those of Tolai historian and cultural artist Gideon Kakabin, to tell the a Bit na Ta story through new recordings of Singing Tumbuna (ceremonial song), string band, Lotu church choir style and contemporary soundscapes.