This is chapter NINE. If you would like to go to start – here it is from chapter one
Alan M had a vision (or at least he had hijacked ours in respect to building a new industry association). The only thing was – he wanted to raise a million dollars to start the new EQO – Entertainment Queensland Organisation. It was 1993 and we had the second intake of students going into the Music Course at Southbank Tafe – or COTAH as it was known back then. The small band of 1992 students consisted of a talented bunch, many still after twenty years, working in and around the world in the music or entertainment industries. People like Glen Scott (now in Melbourne with one of Melbourne’s largest recording studio), Eden James (living and performing in New York) and Oliver Jones (also living now in Melbourne) along with Brandie, who was being pursued by Warner’s Music, Sydney, Greg Coulson and many more extremely talented musicians and artists (30 in first year of 1992).
Alan had some serious conversations with Darren Clarke and Frank Monteverde from Shawthing Agencies about merging their agency into the new EQO. Alan wanted Music Worx to be inserted along with a few existing local music businesses. Darren had been managing Tuffy and Solar Baby and Frank had Paris Texas. Shawthing Agency was at the time operating from Berwick Street, Fortitude Valley, alongside AUSMUSIC, Suzanne Snapes newly formed PR Company and upstairs from Time OFF Magazine. Alan had pushed the Shawthing Agency to be part of the new company, EQO, however, Darren and Frank had other things on their mind and agendas, Darren starting his long term relationship with the Ten Tenors and Frank with Tony Bennett – so they declined. Alan pushed on and was half way through developing the largest business plan I had ever seen (it was A3 and very detailed). It was also costing us for Alan to put it together and he had bought in a special Business Plan consultant, Mac, as he was looking for a large, or a group of smaller investors to back the idea.
At this time, Music Worx was in its 4th year and things were getting tougher. There had certainly been a decline in the amount of touring bands, due to the introduction of two major changes that affected the live music scene. The first was the RBT (Random Breath Testing) to reduce deaths on the road. A new legislation had been made tougher by the introduction of Booze Buses. This meant that those who went out for a traditional drinking night, then driving home, were high on the list to get caught. This was a good thing at one level and bad that the numbers of people going out to larger venues started to decline. Another was the introduction of Pokies into hotels and Clubs…this completely changed the live music opportunities on a downward spiral. So the idea of putting together a large record company with management, publishing, retail, touring and artist development was making sense. We had a catch phrase at the time – Act Local, Think Global.
This was all before the internet and the “super information highway” had even been developed – so we had a big vision and with the development of QMusic it gave us a voice to State Government and we pushed on with meeting after meeting with bureaucrat after bureaucrat and politicians galore. In mid 1993 we launched the inaugural steering committee to the broader industry. Over 400 industry people turned up for a gala event at the Underground night club on Petrie Tce, where the Barracks shopping precinct now stands. We had the Minister for the Arts, Dean Wells, open the event and I spoke as the Steering Committee’s inaugural President of QMusic along with a host of politicians and industry people. It was exciting that Arts Queensland, steered by Catherine Lowe from Arts Qld, to kickstart our association and get all on board with this new idea of uniting the popular music industry and its business with artists. It was hard to get State Development or the Export industry body excited about our little industry, as Queensland had very little history of success (I mean success defined at 10 million albums or more) within the international market.
Greg Shaw, who had formed Shawthing Agencies, was determined to take Keith Urban and his band to Nashville and to make a dent in the universe. This can be a story for Greg Shaw to tell you all one day.
Around this time, Harry Lloyd Williams from Acoustic Technologies, a local maker of sound systems for bands and nightclubs, had been running and sponsoring for a few years the Acoustic Technology, Battle of the Bands, at the Calamvale Hotel on Brisbane’s southside. So Brisbane had a major band competition with the ongoing Australian Academy of Music’s “Queensland Rock Awards” and the “Battle of the Bands” and more emphasis was being put on “new original music” – and the bands took up the challenge. There was an amazing energy and excitement at Brisbane bands and artists starting to be taken seriously and a few starting national touring with their new music and new attitudes.
Emerging were a whole bunch of grounded new original bands : Brasilia, Pangaea, Custard, Regurgitator, Red Edge, The Melniks, Chalk, Pale, Solar Baby, Jesus Garden, Dan Mullins and the Apalossas, Powderfinger, Bulldozer, Radio Rain and the list went on and on and on (feel free to add to it if you remember more).
With this background of new music evolving, Alan Maddams’ vision was quite timely. His vision was – To build an organisation of similar ilk to Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Records, however, the bad part was that Alan had no money to put into the game – and was looking relentlessly for a financial backer.
My own music store, Music Worx, was cash poor and it needed some dollars from somewhere to keep the ship afloat. We had met a mum of one of the rising new bands, who was prepared to invest in Alan’s new EQO (Entertainment Queensland Organisation) concept. We set up a meeting for Alan to discuss with a local lawyer – and while Alan, the investor and I were in the room, called his mate in Sydney who ran a publishing company, and told him all about the concept. In Alan’s view he had breached confidentiality. Alan was very pissed off and he stormed out of the room in anger. We sat looking at each other, the investor put the money into Music Worx and this enabled us to continue on for another two years.
Even though I learnt a lot from Alan about the music industry and the larger wheels of publishing and royalties and how this all flowed around, I realised that if Alan wasn’t going to put any “skin in the game”, then I was no longer in his game of EQO.
Alan had met along the way some talented young people and had started some recordings with Eden James, Craig James and Andrea Thomas, The ideas were amazing and it was starting to develop into something very new and exciting for them all. Around this time, a local band of two, Crush, had turned up with a demo of a few songs they had written and recorded. Daniel Jones, a keyboardist and guitarist, was the younger brother of Oliver Jones, a student in 1992 COTAH, and a singer, Darren Hayes. Alan listened to the demo and he had said that it had potential, however, Darren had sounded a bit like Michael Jackson and it was all a bit done to death, so he passed on the chance to further that relationship.
Alan and Jason Horton pottered on with an idea of putting together a large New Years Eve event at the old Bogga Road Gaol (jail). They had enticed local radio Triple M to be a sponsor and Alan had secured a small investment of $50,000 from a lady who had lost her leg in a car accident (who’s boyfriend was part of a local bikie gang). It was the close of 1993 and apparently they could not secure a liquor license as it would mean the insurance would have been far too expensive for the night (a major live, ticketed music event without possible alcohol on New Years Eve close to Southbank – where it was free). Needless to say, the night had about 300 payers which was far below the required to break even. The saddest part was that some great people had been involved and they had been directors of the company. It took a few months in 1994 to wind it all up and Alan vanished and left Brisbane – apparently in fear of his life from a group of angry bikers!!
QMusic had received it’s first government support of $40,000 to set up an office and pay a part time person. It was also time for the organisation to move forward and because Music Worx was having a tough economic fight for it’s life, I resigned as President and focused on keeping the music store alive. We had employed a new staff member in Scott Mullane, a long haired drummer from a local band, Jesus Garden, and he was a gear junkie and loved guitars and amps and PA systems as much as drums.
COTAH (Rock School) was now in it’s third year in 1994, it had started to develop incredible artists and it was also the breeding house for some of Australia’s finest Sound Technicians, with the appointment of Ian Taylor as a Rock School teacher, who had come off the road touring with The Angels and The Divinyls. Mary Carden, Ross McLennan were also teachers at the time and continue there in 2013. The numbers of students were increasing and the credibility of the school started to soar, however, Universities could see that they needed to offer more “popular” music courses to remain relevant and in 1994 there was some major educational linkages that were starting to shape up within the Tertiary institutions, QUT and Griffith University in particular.
One day in early 1994, I had received a phone call from overseas. It was a lady from the UK asking if I knew an Alan M. He had sent her a Music Worx envelope and she had called to find him. I has told her that none of us knew where he had gone and she asked if he had gone bankrupt again.!! Well – if only we had have known. That was his first wife chasing him too. The things you learn – never any regrets as we all learnt form the experience and knowledge he bought a few of us in the short time he was here in Brisbane. The truth is that if he hadn’t come to this town we may not have had QMusic, which now hosts a large annual seminar, Big Sound, and an annual Queensland Songwriters awards night and is still going after 20 years. As the old quote says, “Some people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” – and ain’t that the truth.
The two members of Crush, who Alan had rejected went on to send out over 150 demos across the world. Apart from Alan rejecting them, Mushroom, Sony and many more passed on the demos they sent out. In 1994 a newly emerging organisation, Music Managers Forum, had started to form nationally and internationally. It was being driven mainly by Sebastion Chase (MGM records) and the previous manger of The Angels and Baby Animals, John Woodruff. John had also received a copy of the demo from Crush (Daniel and Darren) and Woodruff formed a new company with them, over the next year, secured a deal with film distributor Roadshow’s record label offshoot, an independent distributed by Warner’s Music, with no proven track record. He then put the duo in the studio with Australian producer Charles Fisher who had previously created international breakthrough hits for Air Supply and Moving Pictures. How that all evolved over the next few years is an amazing story.
We will continue with that and much more in the next chapter TEN.
Greg Dodge ~ “Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” 