Melbourne and Sydney's live music scenes are changing, researcher says

Updated

The Punters Club, the Hopetoun, Bombay Rock — the anecdotal history of live music in Melbourne and Sydney is one of closing venues and diminishing opportunities.

A researcher from RMIT is mapping the changes in the cities' live music landscape as part of her PhD.

Sarah Taylor, who is also a musician, has mapped data from local gig guides over a 23 year period from 1983 and compared it with census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

She said "pretty clear patterns were emerging" even though her research was not complete.

"I was also surprised that the patterns weren't exactly the same in Melbourne and Sydney," Ms Taylor said.

The data shows how the number of bands in each city increased, while the number of performances from each band decreased.

In the meantime, live music venues had become more clustered around inner-city live music "hubs", especially in Melbourne.

Bands had 'clear route to success'

On a cool, clear Friday night in August 1983, Sydney ska legends Strange Tenants were playing the Dee Why Hotel, Radio On were playing at Parramatta's War and Peace Hotel and Hijnx were playing at the Comb and Cutter in Blacktown.

Most listed venues 1983 Melbourne Chevron Hotel (City/Prahran)

The Club (Collingwood)

Her Majesty's Nightspot (South Yarra)

Green Man (Armadale)

Central Club Hotel (Richmond) Sydney Strawberry Hills Hotel (Surry Hills)

Tivoli (City)

Sydney Trade Union Club (Surry Hills)

Old Push (The Rocks)

Britannia (Chippendale) Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT

In Melbourne, Paul Kelly played the Pier in Frankston rather than a pub in Fitzroy.

The cities' live music scenes were different to today, said Ms Taylor, in that there was "a lot more money sloshing around", she said, and a "clear route to success".

This route involved playing inner-city gigs before branching out to the suburban venues.

This suburban touring circuit was largely controlled by booking agencies, who were strongly aligned with record companies, which meant it was in their interest to book bands for as many gigs as possible.

That same weekend in 1983 saw Melbourne psychobilly act the Corpse Grinders play three shows in three nights at the Tote, the Seaview Ballroom and Melbourne University, while the following week, the Choir Boys played the Village Green Hotel in suburban Mulgrave on Tuesday, the Chevron in Prahran on Wednesday and the Cross Keys Hotel in North Essendon on Thursday.

Some bands would play more than one gig in a night.

"It would be quite common [for booking agents] to say 'you're playing Fern Tree Gully then you'll go across town and you'll play in Geelong the same night'," Ms Taylor said.

This meant bands needed to be on the right side of the booking agents as well as the right side of their roadies.

Ms Taylor said early 1980s bands were mini-industries which turned up to a gig with their own sound and lighting equipment, carried by their own roadies from their own van.

"Pubs didn't have their own PAs and equipment was much bigger back then," she said.

"In order to actually be heard in these large suburban venues... you had to expect to be bringing your own equipment and lugging it in."

The format of gigs was different and there was not a distinction between cover bands and bands that played their own original songs.

"They would play three sets and some of them would be originals, but most of them would be covers," Ms Taylor said.

A well-established band would earn several thousand dollars for a show, while smaller bands would earn about $300 - not adjusted for inflation.

Map: This chart shows Melbourne and Sydney gigs between 1983 and 2006

Late 80s and early 90s a time of change

Ms Taylor said the late 80s was a time of change.

"I keep honing in on the late eighties as when times change and when things started to get more familiar to what I see in music nowadays," she said.

In 1988 the last episode of Countdown was broadcast on ABC TV, marking the end of an era for Australian musicians.

"Countdown was this thing that everyone understood, if you got through Molly [Meldrum] then everything was OK," Ms Taylor said.

The suburban venues worked in the 1980s partly because an appearance on Countdown would ensure an act became a household name, she said.

Triple J would eventually fill the void left by the disappearance of Countdown, however Ms Taylor said there was a 'wilderness period' where worry gripped the live music industry.

Most listed venues 1994 Melbourne Punters Club (Fitzroy)

Esplanade Hotel (St Kilda)

Arthouse (City/Carlton)

Public Bar (City/North Melbourne)

Rainbow Hotel (Fitzroy) Sydney Harbourside Brasserie (Walsh Bay)

Sandringham Hotel (Newtown)

Annandale Hotel (Annandale)

Metro (City)

Kinsela's (Taylor Square) Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT

"There's definite reports, especially in Sydney of things dying, drying up," she said.

"It was like, 'oh my goodness, there's not many venues'.

"That worry subsides because more exciting things came along early in the 90s."

This included the national expansion of Triple J, the establishment of the Big Day Out music festival and the emergence of grunge.

"Certainly by the time you have Silverchair come along the excitement that you might win a competition... was enough to quell that worry about what was happening with the live scene," Ms Taylor said.

She found no evidence of the live scene dying off in either Sydney or Melbourne.

In fact, the number of gigs in each city has steadily increased, much to Ms Taylor's surprise.

"My purpose from the outset was to map [the gigs] and then figure out what was causing their decline," she said.

"During the course of the research I kept going 'when is it going to happen, when is it going to happen' and it never did."

What happened instead was a change in the geographical distribution of live music venues, with the distance between gigs becoming smaller.

"You can see why people are saying there's a decline because in terms of their day-to-day experience they're probably playing less and have a less obvious route to getting a career out of it," Ms Taylor said.

This concentration of live music venues was particularly pronounced in Melbourne, with new establishments clustering around Fitzroy.

Map: This chart shows artists are now performing less often than they used to in the early 1980s in Melbourne

"Most people who were in Melbourne in the 90s remembered it very fondly because there was lots of things happening in a small area," she said.

With bands playing less, and being paid less, many young musicians were content to play at venues with an in-house PA system close to where they and their fans lived.

Meanwhile, the situation in Sydney was "quite unstable".

Ms Taylor said new venues would open in Sydney only to close down the following year, which contributed to the perception that there was no live music scene there even though the number of gigs did not actually decrease.

"You have more people leaving Sydney at that time - or if you're the Whitlams you start singing about how much your city is not meeting your expectations," she said.

Ms Taylor thinks Sydney's geography could be partly responsible for its lack of a central live music hub.

"It's more like a city of villages, it's a little bit fragmented, so when it started losing its suburban circuit it was a little bit more in trouble in terms of finding a place where people could bunker down and make their own scene," she said.

She also points to the vastly different licensing structure for venues in the two states during the upheaval of the late 1980s.

Liquor licences in Sydney could cost $50,000, she said, while a small Melbourne bar would pay just a few hundred dollars.

"It's absolutely unimaginable to pay $50,000 a year for a liquor licence and then go 'I might just put some bands on'," Ms Taylor said.

Instead, Sydney licensees looked to poker machines for guaranteed revenue.

Internet age eases concerns

The first decade of the new millennium saw musicians embrace the opportunities provided by the internet.

Ms Taylor said her research has highlighted 2006 as the year that local musicians started to use social media to build their profiles.

Most listed venues 2006 Melbourne Esplanade Hotel (St Kilda)

Revolver Upstairs (Prahran)

Pony (City)

The Tote (Collingwood)

Ding Dong Lounge (City) Sydney Candy's Apartment (Kings Cross)

Hopetoun Hotel (Surry Hills)

Basement (Circular Quay)

Sandringham Hotel (Newtown)

Mandarin Club (Haymarket) Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT

Source: Sarah Taylor, RMIT

"In the interviews I've done a few people have referred to it as 'my internet year'," she said.

By the end of that decade, however, musicians again found themselves concerned by the state of the live music scene, with public protests in Sydney and mass rallies in Melbourne over venues closing.

"You could sell your music anywhere but what people are most worried about more than ever is 'where can I play here'?" Ms Taylor said.

Ms Taylor said it was harder than ever for musicians to find paid gigs, with Sydney in particular offering unpaid "showcases" instead.

She said that while Sydney had introduced licensing reforms, many gigs were in apartments and "seedy places" above restaurants, which were cool and exciting but not sustainable in the long term.

In Melbourne the venues remain clustered around Fitzroy and the inner city while increasing rent prices have pushed musicians further out into the suburbs.

"There are lots of venues in Fitzroy and I'm quite sure that not many musicians are actually living near them," Ms Taylor said.

"There's more venues in the city now and I wonder, this is just my theory, I wonder if it's just because everyone's so spread out that the only way you can... convince other people to come is to go to a central location."

Ms Taylor aims to complete her research by July.

Topics: rock, geography, melbourne-3000, fitzroy-3065, sydney-2000

First posted