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

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. 

Brisbane 1985 – 2010 (Thru Dodgey’s eyes) PART SEVEN

This is part seven of this story – if you want to go back to the start click here

A link to the interview in 2011 in Rave magazine

So Music Worx was becoming a “hub” for local musicians and touring artists as well.  We had trademarked all the names, Music Worx, Drum Worx, Road Worx, Rock Worx and the idea at the time was to grow our presence over the next few years.  Colin Barnes from Gold Coast Music Centre had moved in to the front area and had started a drum store, Drum Worx, with  the old remnants of stock from Billy Hyde’s Drum Clinic (who had been at the Woollangabba and then moved across the road from Music Junction at Latrobe Terrace in Paddington).   Colin brought in Neil Wilkes and the two of them operated a very successful Drum store, and in the back area we focused on Guitars, Amps, and Professional Audio (PA equipment).

Nigel Line and I had merged Smithy’s Second hand music gear into our business and had hired Cameron Gunning to oversee it for us upstairs in the building.  Nigel had hired a manager in his hire area, Denis Stokes, who had the interest of Brisbane Sound Hire on Nigel’s behalf.  Without going into too much depth here, however, Nigel and I felt it best to consolidate all the businesses (including hire) into one business so that we would not have any conflict of interest.  As it was, Nigel’s hire department was able to resell mixers and PA equipment and it was all a bit blurry to who could sell what and in the end we decided that Nigel would buy me out and I would slowly buy my way back in to the new to be emerged company.  Nigel went away for two weeks and on his return he thought it best for me to buy him out and we go our separate ways.

We put our mortgaged house on the line by raising a loan to pay Nigel a portion of the amount agreed and the rest to pay him over a year..     At the time I had Tim Mason working with us and Cameron Gunning, after Richard Waterson left us around this time.  It was tough, as it had left us “cash poor” – although we felt we could turn it around.  What I hadn’t seen coming was Yamaha Music decided to reduce our monthly account limit capability and also did Fender at the same time.  This meant I had to pay them back quickly also to get the account down to a lower new limit.   To put some more challenges in our way, two other important factors made it harder in early 1992.  One was that Nigel hired a guy, Ian, to open up two doors up from our store in Barry Parade and open a music store specialising in secondhand music gear and new gear.  Musican’s Pro Shop, owned by Mick Privatera, was sold to Gary Barr, who owned the Gold Coast store, along with Nigel Dwyer (a different Nigel to my old partner).   They also won a huge LOTTO prize and invested that into refit of the store next door and go harder than they had been since we had first started in 1989.

It was an interesting time in the Valley for music as the old Target building in Brunswick Street was being threatened to close down (the home to many emerging bands at the time) and Bruce Fogarty started a road casing business when we started the store and started to build music rehearsal space underneath our stores and the Musicians Pro Shop on the other side of us had rehearsal rooms also above their store.  So – a music hub was alive in Barry Parade and like bees to a honey pot, new musicians and old made their way to the Valley for music making activities.  We held many weekly workshops and clinics from visiting musicians from around the world and were also hosting local players showcasing the latest guitars or equipment from around the world.  I recall we had at this time, Keith Urban, showcasing the Blade Guitar range that he was an endorsee for at the time.

In 1992, the new music college, part of Tafe – COTAH, (College Of Tourism and Hospitality) established in it’s new space in Tribune Street, South Bank, and was one of the first college’s established in Australia that was effectively a “Rock School” (which it was named later and continues still today in at the South Bank Institute of Technology).  It had  a small intake of students of approx 30, under the guidance of Robert Brock, Milton Boyle and a few others in year one.  I  had been part of the ITAB (Industry Training Advisory Board) with a few other local music business people and some politicians and state government beaurocrats who lobbied hard to get it established.   The launch of the new “Rock School” not only focused on music creation and performance, but also a better run live  and recording production with music business management courses as well.  Twenty years on we can see how much of an impact this college has had on our local and Australian professionalism – through the work of some great teachers and mentors over the years (Rob Brock, Milton Boyle, Ian Taylor, Ross Williams, Mary Carden and many others, including myself from time to time, over the years).

With this college up and away, we were into doing more local industry workshops to assist change in the way we saw ourselves in the world.  “ACT Local and THINK Globally” became our mantra and this started us to continue more special training days and make it affordable and accessible to all.   A small group of us, John Kenny, Albert Terry and designer Kel McNaughton, decided that we would do a special one day event at an auditorium in Barry Parade (in the Telstra building).   We called it – “100% Juice” and it was stating that Brisbane was about to finally give birth to some great music – and be known for it’s quality abroad.  Of course, this was an ambitious and gutsy vision, however, we thought it time to bring in some great Australian minds to present on our day at “100% Juice”.

We called in some guest speakers from interstate and local who gave their time to educate our get a new way to thinking into our new music makers and artists.  Part of the guest speakers were Sebastion Chase (who at the time had established rooArt records and Phantom Records in Sydney), John Bromell (CEO of Warners Chappell), Michael Browning (artist manager) and Ritchie Yorke (author), John Kenny (local IP Lawyer) and a few others.
We presented two music acts, one being a band doing well at the time, Puzzlehouse and Pangae (this encounter with Warner’s was the start of Reguritator’s being discovered – more on that later).

It was ground breaking when one of the speakers told a 200 seated audience (all artists and new managers at the time) that if you wanted to make it in Australia ~ “get out and go to Sydney or Melbourne or overseas”.   The room went tense.   The talking after the day was that most believed we needed to build a local industry and if everyone ran away it would never amount to much.  A real successful day gave us the impetus to think grander thoughts.

Ausmusic were a national body and were interested in music training for popular music, amongst other things.  Most of this was being aimed at schools and Tafe colleges.  Ausmusic were also looking at closing their local branches, headed by Jacinta Brongeest.  Jacinta and I had a coffee in the Valley mall and decided that we should start a new music organisation.   The MIAQ inc. was very inactive, due to the debt created from the older regime who had left it, so it was time to get a  new organisation off the ground.   We decided to get some letters of endorsement from national music industry heavy weights and from there we would assemble a group of “like- minded” people to work with us, having little experience in this area, although keen to make it happen.

Apart from running Music Worx, sitting on the ITAB etc, I was also, managing a new artist and his band, Dan Mullins and the Apaloosas, and keen to know more about the way the industry worked.

We put out a media release and a call for interested parties in the world of “new music” or popular music (we called it contemporary music) to come to a meeting to discuss what may be possible to create.  We had the Musicians Union watching us -however – we were more interested in the music industry “infrastructure” and not just the musicians.   We wanted to establish record labels, studios, radio, music agents, music publishers, artist managers and better touring management etc and build like you would a “film industry”.

We held an evening upstairs at St Paul’s Tavern in Spring Hill and over 250 people turned up to hear of our plans.  At the back of the room a very british speaking man asked a question of the people in the room.
“Hands up who has sold more than 10,000 records/CD’s in this room?”    No hands were raised.   “How many have sold 5000 CD’s then.?” he said.    Still no hands.   “Then you ain’t got an industry”, he claimed and he started to walk out of the room.    I gave him my card and the next day we talked.   This little brief encounter with this POM was the start of QMusic as we now know it….and loads more .. read on here for chapter eight.

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

This is part six of this story – if you want to go back to the start – click here 

It was 1990 and we had claimed that year to be “1990 ~ year of the WORX”. We had started a quarterly newsletter from day one and we had built our database up to 2000 local musicians. We did not own a computer, so we had to hand write and cut pictures and assemble them onto a template to develop the newsletter. It was informative and critical of changes going on at the time and went beyond just “selling musical gear”. We even had our accountant, Cameron Patterson, a guitar enthusiast at the time, write about setting up your band as a business (still a new concept in 1990 to 90% of musicians) and comments about the local “industry” as we saw it.

One great grab from this little newsletter is a piece I wrote about in 1990, talking up the new acts at the time. Tower Principle, a funk band, had just won a national Yamaha band competition, Fear of Falling, a Brissie indie band with the talented Neil Coombe (ex-42^nd Street, Mr Meaner), Kerry Lee, Mark McElligott, and Caroline Grubb had been a feature act on the latest rooART compilation album and signed with legendary Sydney label Phantom Records and Keith Urban was building some local momentum within the national music scene and winning the 1990 Country Music Star maker award. My article goes onto say that great acts CAN come out of Brisbane and this was a new sign of the times. My article goes onto say that great acts CAN come out of Brisbane and this was a new sign of the times. I also put my arse on the line by stating that Keith would go onto international fame (How would i truly ever know this? Greg Shaw was his dedicated Artist Manager and had focused solely on Keith and his career, setting sale to Nashville a year later – and what a ride that was. (more on that later).

So another year clicked over and 1991 presented a wave of more bands starting to ramp up locally and the buzz across a range of music styles from indie, country, rock, pop, metal, grunge were being born.

Rave magazine was also being born. This created some real headaches for the locally established “Time Off” Magazine, which had been a first in Australia and had started back in the mid ’70’s. Sean Sennett, had bought the magazine in 1990 from the receivers and at that time Gavin Sawford was the Editor and Linda Woodhead was the Advertising Manager. They saw a window of opportunity and kicked a rival weekly street paper, Rave, as a good juicy “alternative” competitor for the established Time Off (which started back when the first Brisbane FM station was established,in 1975, 4ZZZ ~ 102.1FM).

Tainted Violets were a hard working original band, rehearsing intensely and getting few gigs. Not being able to recall all the specific details of the band’s evolution, however, they had just had a major signing to the newly established BMG, who had set up in Australia. They went through a name change to ABS (Atomic Beat Squad) and recorded an album around this time. The key songwriter was Peter Kahn. We were all very proud of this band and what they had achieved, going to a launch that had a very large crowd in Brisbane and Ritchie Yorke (established author and journo talking them up). I remember that one day, out of the blue, there was a change in BMG record label management and Atomic Beat Squad were erased from Brisbane music history.

It was also the year that saw the creation of a compilation CD – The Spark. It was effectively a local collective of bands that put out a series of joint shows and a CD. It was a great idea and certainly for bands like Chalk, Pale and Jesus Garden amongst them, they gained some local attention for the indie scene.

The MIAQ struggled and major changes were needed. The government were interacting with the contemporary music world (thanks to the vision of Rob Brock and Milton Boyle) and it looked like the new music industry college was about to be started at SOUTHBANK  TAFE college the next year, as part of COTAH (catering, tourism and hospitality school), which was also showing how out of touch the government were at this stage to the truth behind exports (who could blame them when the most successful Queensland band at this time was Wickety Wak – going on to sell two nights full house at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in 1992). But where was the new original music??

At the close of 1991 I had an invite to go see Powderfinger supporting a rising local band, Bulldozer.

Who would have known then that the band playing Neil Young covers and just starting to write their own music would be a part of an ocean of change about to grip Queensland.

And my own life was also going through change when I decided to buy out my business partner, Nigel Line, in Music Worx.

To be continued…….