Brisbane 1985 – 2010 (Thru Dodgey’s eyes) Part NINETEEN

This is chapter NINETEEN. To read this from the beginning  GO HERE

For the blog that starts in 2001 with Weekend Warriors – GO HERE

                                                                                                                            

  (Boardroom Blitz – Brisbane Entertainment Centre 2004)

Athol Young was the head of the Creative Communities for the Brisbane City Council.  In 2014 we had started working on developing the youth music initiative at Glenala State High School with over 30 music school students (predominantly Indigenous and Polynesian students) and we had appointed the coaches, Daniel Spirovski, Louis Obertuleter plus husband and wife team, local indigenous performers, Troy and Trevelyn Brady. The desired outcome was for the music coaches to work closely with the school’s music teacher, Leanne, and inspire the students to collaboratively create, write and perform their own songs.  This would give them real skills to understand the process of songwriting and teamwork, plus the opportunity to showcase, in front of their peers at the local Indigenous Hip Hip festival, Stylin’ Up.  We had provided all the music gear from local music stores, as the school had little resources to run this style of programme. The whole process took many months, however, it had also attracted the interest of Dr Steve Dillon from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), along with a Music Therapist, Felicity Baker, from the University of Queensland.  We started to document the process in more detail to look at the students, in terms of engagement with school, school results, attitudes, resilience etc.  The students had decided to call the project, “BNS – The Band Thing“.  It was a huge success that continued through to 2016.

We continued to regularly meet with Athol and his team at Brisbane City Council (BCC), Roz Trappett, Charlie Cush and Jeremy Wellard, and one day Athol asked if I would be interested in offering a similar music engagement initiative to the Weekend Warrior programme, but give it a whole new name, energy and focus.

Come Together was the new name and the first derivative of the Weekend Warrior program to have a predetermined social benefit, and was the first to receive significant government funding. In the years leading up to 2004, one of Brisbane City Council‟s (BCC) Events Officers noted the situation facing the suburban, middle-aged males living in and around Brisbane.  Athol Young revealed that council perceived this specific demographic as “isolated” and the local government saw this as a situation of concern. Subsequently, BCC commissioned a WW styled program that directly aimed to increase social interaction amongst this cohort.
Athol collected key statistical indicators from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to identify Brisbane‟s outer suburbs, which had a high representation of the isolated demographic.
Determined to reach this demographic, Athol was aware of the inability of typical advertising strategies to target this cohort. We used posters and flyers as the only form of advertising, displayed in specific locations in the identified suburbs – veterinary practices, hot bread shops, and mechanics garages.
The expected number of attendees for the introductory meeting of Come Together was between twenty and thirty participants. On the first day ninety participants attended, only two of whom were outside the target demographic. The culminating first performance of Come Together occurred at the Algester Sports and Recreational Club and drew a crowd of approximately 300 people. It was reported that the club had never sold as much food and beverages as it did during that event.
It was great! Participants were bringing their ex-partners, and their kids. Some even brought their parents along with them. The focus was not on the music, the focus was on the pride gained by participants.
After the event a flow of positive anecdotal benefits and testimonials from participants prompted BCC to facilitate and partially fund the program in similar suburbs for another three years. By 2005 Come Together was active in four suburbs: Algester, Jindalee, Albany Creek and Zillmere.  It also engaged many younger people, who had no problem performing with the Baby Boomers and many kids were happy to be in the same band as Mum or Dad.

Boardroom Blitz was in full flight again in 2004, becoming a larger and more popular event.  Ray Smith, Managing Director of local film post production company, Cutting Edge, was one of the key corporate drivers, in partnership with the Cerebral Palsy League.  Ray also wanted to learn guitar, so I offered to teach him in his office.  We would get together weekly and after 5 minutes of teaching, we would end up in a one to two hour conversation about life, business and Boardroom Blitz.  Ray would never practice – so we gave up on that after many months of connecting up.

Weekend Warriors was also keeping us very busy, training music store owners and their staff around the country, how to promote the idea, run the jam sessions and then how to roll out the process of rehearsing, coaching and running the concert.  Ian Harvey and Sara Hood were the Executive Officers of the Australian Music Association and they had been ramping up through 2003/04 a new national initiative, The Music Makers Fund, engaging local and international suppliers, wholesalers, (over 30 importers; Roland, Yamaha, Fender, Australis Music, Electric Factory, Pro Music etc) to help the local industry lobby Federal government to take an interest in the benefits of music making.  The AMA had decided to further boost the exposure of the Weekend Warrior programme around Australia (with over 40 music stores being trained by mid 2004) and they suggested we should do a National launch of Weekend Warriors in Melbourne at Federation Square.  Of course, we now had a few sites running Weekend Warrior programmes in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and some rural Vic and NSW.  Our big day was to be “live” on the channel 7, Sunrise breakfast show, with Kochie and Mel, crossing over with Grant every half hour for interviews and showcase in the weather segment.  Co-ordinating all the bands from across the country, we also decided to make a day of bands performing in Federation Square after the national launch and a night time, social jam, at  a local venue.

                                                                                                                    (National Launch of Weekend Warriors 2004 – Federation Square, Melbourne)

The whole day went off without a hitch and the fax machine ran extremely hot as over 300 new applications flooded into the AMA office to distribute around the country. We had an amazing day and had so much fun with all the characters we met from around the country.  Many of them I had seen at their first jam sessions and at the concerts, so it was a tribe that was now national and had so much good, positive energy.  The AMA had also allowed the Weekend Warriors to continue to perform annually at the Gold Coast at their annual music convention, this allowed the Warrior associations to develop stronger links and forge better ties between them.  Well, that was the idea, and all ideas have concerns when implemented by some of the people who were not inclusive – or had not connected with our vision.  These things happen as things become more successful and it attracts all types of characters. They were all about their band, or their group of bands and I could see friction and tension starting to evolve between associations and between bands.  I realised that not remaining close to the association and their progress, there were people within the groups who had new ideas about what they should be doing.  This was all OK and sorted itself out in the end, however, I was also stretched with our youth music programmes, Amp’d Up, The Band Thing, Boardroom Blitz and now Come Together.  Locally, Weekend Warriors at Ellaways Music was powering along and the only other music store in South East Queensland that started another programme was Paul Carroll and Matt Jones at Carroll’s Music at Capalaba.

By the year ending 2004, I had hosted my last Weekend Warrior programme for Ellaways Music and had decided to leave them completely, so I could focus on all of the new music programmes we had going on.  We parted ways, mutually and respectfully, however, they also knew I like to stretch my wings and continue on my journey.

It was at this time, I needed a new challenge.  As I mentioned back in a previous chapter , the Australian Academy of Music, had gone into administration in 1999 and Peter Hayward from Australis Music, had purchased the business along with the building to keep the largest independent music store, at that time, in Australia from disappearing altogether.  Every year Peter had a new manager appointed and by 2004 it was Mark Richter, who was at the helm.  I had met Mark, who had been the previous store manager at the local city store, Allans Music (formerly Brashes, formerly Palings Music etc) and had moved up from Canberra around 1999.   Mark was not happy that Allans Music (his old employer) had just purchased the Australian Academy of Music from Peter Hayward’s company, Australis Music, as Peter said at the time, “we had a $16million a year business and we had shrunk it to under $4 million a year, time to go”.

Allans Music were the largest national music retailer in the country at the time and already had financial strain some years before, although they had a footprint in most capital city central business districts (CBD’s) and were partly owned by the Roland Corporation (who helped them from falling over after the last collapse).  It was November 2004 and I had heard that they were keen to really get the Academy of Music back to it’s glory days.  I knew this, first hand, because I had been involved with a three day retreat, called the Music Makers Summit, where I had spent some time discussing items with Michael Brash (son of Geoff Brash) who was now the CEO of the Allans Music Group of companies.  When I heard the news that they had purchased the Academy at Spring Hill, I could see a great opportunity to restore the activities of the Academy back to life.   It made sense to restarting the band programme initiatives (including the Q’ld Rock Awards, the High School Rock band competitions, Festival of Music and so on) and I spoke to Mark Richter and we agreed it should work.  He wanted to leave as manager now that Allans were owning the business and I spoke with Michael Brash about starting to manage the business in the new year in 2005.   I had to consider my relationship with Athol Young and the BCC, along with Boardroom Blitz.  I was also developing a new school holiday programme, Powerkidz, at the Brisbane Powerhouse for 9 – 12 year olds, CreActive, with Daniel Spirovski and Louis Oberlueter, after a successfully run programme we had just completed at QPAC (Queensland Performing Arts Complex) at Southbank with the “Out of the box” kids school holiday program.  I also had to consider how Ellaways Music would react.  My loyalty was still to them in a way, although, they also knew I was a passionate human being, who could see an opportunity to go off and have some fun.

Scott Mullane (Aisle Six Productions) had been our regular production company for most of our music events and Scott was prepared to take over the running of Come Together for 2005.  Scott had also been a huge part of the Academy of Music management history and encouraged me that managing the Academy of Music was a good idea and that I should pursue it.  Also nationally Weekend Warriors was now well established and I would relinquish my role as National “warrior chief” to Dom Disisto, owner of Holden Hill Music.  Both of them, I had stated, if the Academy of Music, for some reason, did not work for me, that I would return back to my station.  I was ready for  a new opportunity to create once again and excited by the prospect.

When I was appointed as the new manager of the Australian Academy of Music, I had completely not thought through that the local store manager of the city Allans Music store, Robin C, would be so hard to get along with.  He had been running the new Academy business when Allans Music took it over in November.  He had increased the staff levels significantly and I started in Feb 2005, looked at the figures, and realised we were 8 staff to top heavy.  These were 8 staff who Robin had added that the business could not afford.  Needless to say, I had to terminate 8 staff and this made my first few months with the remaining staff, hell.  I could not get any traction, I had constant interference from Robin and his team from the city store, I realised that I was not coping well in a corporate environment and the toxicity of the games people play.  Within three months I quit – or they let me go – it didn’t matter really, but it was possibly the shake up I needed.  Here I was at the top of my game in the music industry in 2004, and by early 2005, I was out of work and wondering what I could do.  Scott was going well with Come Together for 2005 and he was ok with me taking it back in 2006.

Dom was now the National Weekend Warriors “chief” and would not let it go – and that was absolutely fine by me, I love constantly reinventing myself as you can tell.  I still had great links with my coaches and Daniel and the team were still doing the CreActive youth programme at the Brisbane Powerhouse every school holiday.  I also needed to get some paid work, so I sent an email to my large contact list asking if anyone would like a out of work music marketing guy.  Thankfully, David Young, who had been a Weekend Warrior and was also the owner of a local recruiting company, Australian Recruiting,  and responded to my email and said, “ever thought of recruiting?”  “What is recruiting?”, I replied.  He laughed and said I would enjoy it.  So for the next 9 months I donned a suit and tie three days a week (it was commission only) and worked as a recruiter.  And this is where it gets very interesting.  I had heard through one of my old contacts that there was a new start up company that required a Marketing Manager.  I went out to meet the CEO, Terry Boyle, and we discussed his requirements.  I then chatted to him about the music work we were also doing at the Brisbane Powerhouse and he said maybe we should talk further about this idea.  His new business, Capitol Kidz, was looking at an alternative to child care, and required new, unique activities to engage young people and music and creativity got Terry’s attention.   How this unfolds is all part of the re-building Oxygen42 and establishing creActive.

More of this to be discussed in the next chapter.