Welcome one and all and especially those survivors of a few episodes ago when we plugged the guitars into the gas mains. Sorry about your eyebrows. I don't really have eyebrows (or hair on my head) but not for that reason! Maybe I'll write about that another time but here's a cryptic clue regarding my lack of eyebrows.
This time around on the World Wide Woozle I'm going to share a few thoughts about local and homegrown music. I've been listening to plenty of new and varied stuff in the last week but that can wait for future blog entries.
Before I start, a few ground rules. In my opinion, local music is that indigenous to the general area you are living in. Homegrown refers to the country you're living in or from. I'm fortunate, perhaps, to have lived in a number of countries and as a result my idea of homegrown may well be slightly broader than yours. My musical tastes were mainly formed whilst living in both New Zealand and Australia and so they both feel homegrown to me. And of course, I'm originally from Scotland and grew up listening to a lot of Scottish music.
I started thinking about this topic when I ordered the new CD direct from the band Terraphobia. Mick from the band was an original member of a band called Lethal Dose who came from Moe / Newborough in country Victoria. That's where we lived when I went through high school. I remember being pretty excited to be able to buy a couple of cassettes from a local metal band even though this was when I was in my first or second year away in the Army. I didn't have the chance to see Lethal Dose play live but I did see Mortification a number of years later (at the Belconnen Youth Centre here in Canberra) and Mick spent time in that band.
I was introduced to the local music scene here in Canberra in a couple of ways. The first was by playing in bands. Even in our first covers band, Mr Walker, we had mates in other groups who would come and see us and we'd look in on them as well. I remember a fun but cliched moment when one of the guys from ASAP played the left hand bit on my guitar whilst I played the right. They were fun times and bands supported each other. My other entry to the scene was through my mate DJ DJ. We went to a lot of shows and because he knew almost everyone, and still does, it was easy for me to get involved. I remember initially being quite nervous to talk to people in some of the bands but it soon became clear that I needn't be. After my first show seeing Armoured Angel (1991) I went to Impact Records to buy their demo cassettes and had a chat with Lucy from the band who worked there. I was 19 or 20, short haired and in my Army uniform. He was long haired, pierced and all in black. It didn't matter one bit.
But this isn't just a jaunt through my heavy metal cassette collection.
There used to be a couple of ways for bands to make a living. One was selling physical copies of their music and the other was touring. Some bands would make some cash by selling shirts and other merchandise too. Today the money from physical media has dried up and revenue from streaming is small. To support local and homegrown bands you need to spend more than your monthly streaming service fee (if you actually pay for it). It's not hard to get involved and buy a CD, LP or t-shirt once in a while.
I won't lie, I use Spotify a LOT for listening to music. It's convenient, I like saving my own playlists and the algorithms usually recommend cool stuff for me to check out. Streaming music, however, also sucks. To start with, the artist is paid very little. I might stream two or three albums in a day (more on weekends) and that seems excellent value for my AU$22 per month premium subscription. Three albums a day is twenty one in a week and eighty four in a month. With weekends and listening binges I probably get close to one hundred albums a month give or take. If Spotify gets 22c per album then I imagine the artist gets two-fifths of sweet nothing. And that's before we remember that the premium account has four other family members attached to it.
Most of us have music in our lives on a daily basis. Whether it's in the car, at the shops, whilst we're exercising or background dinner music. Who's paying the artist to make that music? Are you stealing it? The reality is that if we don't pay for music then less and less artists will be able to afford to make and distribute it and that would be sad. Online offerings like Bandcamp give much more of the profit to the artist. Possibly the best way to support music creation is to buy directly from the artist where possible. Most have that option on their website and offer small incentives to do so. And, often you can have direct contact with them if that's your thing. I've had email responses from a few artists who were more than willing to discuss their music.
Of course, getting out to live shows has been problematic with the pandemic but that's changing. Most musicians I know really enjoy being up on stage and playing to other people whether the crowd is five, five hundred or more. As Joe Camillieri said, "One of the many things I love about musicians is they give you everything. If they're getting paid $100, a musician never says, 'I'll just give you $100 worth', they give you everything they've got." From personal experience I can assure you that nothing beats someone out there singing along or clapping after you've played a song. So get out and give some love to local and homegrown artists. You can pop into your local cafe and spend ten minutes actively listening to someone playing covers in the corner or you can spend a few dollars and go to a bigger show. Only we can keep music alive. Don't whinge about all the new music being boring until you've supported someone you like who is creating and releasing tunes.
Maybe I can be so bold as to suggest a couple of local and homegrown bands for you to consider listening to and supporting in one way or another.
I can't get much more local than my mate George who I used to play with. He's just released his latest album,
Songs from H-Country as well as another including Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 5 (yes, that's right) of his
Pensive Boogie Quartets. With the song title,
More People In The Band Than Are Sitting In The Crowd, you know that George understands the challenges of being a self-funded musician. Have a listen via streaming but please buy a CD or LP via
the website.
Press Club are from Brunswick in Melbourne. They've just released a new rocky punk album called Endless Motion. The band is big enough that you should be able to find the record at major retailers but if you jump onto their website there are bundles with shorts, totes and a cassette version too if you're as cool as me and still have a tape deck.
If you're looking for bands that are a bit more well known that you can go and see live then Goanna will be here in a couple of weeks and Redgum are coming to town next year. Just because you've heard them on the radio doesn't make them millionaires. I met John Schumann once...and all he said was, "can you buy me a beer?" I did not.
I heard Canberra band Safia being interviewed on the radio the other day. This alerted me to the fact that they have a new single which was released on Thursday this week (27 Oct). Trippy indie pop, electro grooviness here. Fingers crossed for another album before too long.
And, from Northland in New Zealand, a young man with a great voice and lyrics that cut deep. I almost wrote this off as fairly standard stuff but it is far from that. TEEKS has a heartfelt and honest delivery that really makes you feel the song. This, combined with tasteful piano and strings really works as a whole package.
That's enough from me for another episode. I hope you found this interesting or at least enjoyed one or two of the songs.
Rock on,
The Woozle.
"Once in a while I can see us dancing,
I feel the same as I did before..."
