Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, April 28, 2005
 
Joh Bjelke II– the creative legacy
The article by Liz Willis* in the Sydney Morning Herald which I mentioned at the end of my previous post on Joh Bjelke-Petersen has prompted me to write a bit more on one specific aspect of the Bjelke-Petersen years – what Liz called “a remarkable oppositional culture manifested in music, theatre and art; media, comedy and satire.”

I''m writing this piece on a flight to Perth, having spoken earlier in the day at a forum at the University of Queensland against the federal Government's VSU plans. The bitter-sweet nostalgia I've found myself immersed in over the last couple of days was enhanced by returning to this campus where I spent the majority of my waking hours (and a few of my sleeping hours as well) from 1982 to 1988 – inadvertently ending my time there at the same time as the Joh era was ending.

The main reason I spent such a huge chunk of time on the campus wasn't because I was a conscientious student, it was because I was heavily involved in the community radio station, 4ZZZ, which at the time had its studios in the basement of the Student Union building. (By coincidence, its studios are now just down the road from my office in Fortitude Valley.) 4ZZZ was Brisbane's first FM radio station and a key part of its genesis was a view amongst some politically active and very determined people that there was a need for an alternative media to give voice to views which were not being heard in the highly conservative mainstream media.

4ZZZ's first official broadcast was on December 8th, 1975 – ironically just after the dismissal of the Whitlam government, an event which added enormously to the politically heady atmosphere. In the first couple of years of its existence, 4ZZZ's politics was not matched by its music, which was fairly mainstream – as a glance at the songs in its first Hot 100 list of listeners' favourite tunes would show. The number 1 song was the Beach Boys and there were a host of other tunes which may not have got a run on other radio stations of the day, but were none the less far from alternative. The next Hot 100 a few years later had the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" in top spot, which showed how much things had changed on the musical front at ZZZ. The Hot 100 concept was shamelessly stolen by ABC youth radio broadcaster JJJ a few year's later with great success, although ZZZ still runs its own Hot 100 to this day, with a very heavy presence of local Brisbane bands amongst the list each year.

Indeed, the key musical role that ZZZ played (and still plays) in Brisbane was not so much in its shift in musical styles from slick US adult oriented rock to grungy UK punk rock and then to pretty much everything else that wasn't mainstream (sometimes to the extent of dropping bands from the playlist if they 'sold out' by having a hit record) – it was their insistence on playing local Brisbane bands. In the same way that the political aim was to give a voice to stronger and more forceful criticisms of the Bjelke-Petersen government that could not be heard anywhere else on Brisbane's airwaves, a key part of ZZZ's musical mission was to give airtime to Brisbane bands who had no other chance of getting their songs played on the radio in their own town. Perhaps inevitably these two roles merged. Plenty of the music was crap, as were some of the political views, but the key part was that they were able to be aired – and in a town where the regular police presence at the gigs of local bands sometimes outnumbered the crowd, it was a great comfort, indeed in some ways a protection, to know that you had a radio station that was there telling the world what was happening to you.

As part of its 25th anniversary in 2000, 4ZZZ released a 2CD compilation set called " Behind the Banana Curtain" with recordings by a range of Brisbane bands covering the period of the radio station's existence (so far). The first disc covers from the 70s through to the end of the 80s, which by coincidence encapsulated the local music of Joh's era. (The second disc starts off with a fab song and then goes downhill from there, ending up with a bunch of unknowns like Powderfinger and Regurgitator.)

The song "Pig City", from 1984 - mentioned in a comment on my previous post –was like an anti-anthem of the time. The recording is scratchy (it is actually one of the few songs released that was recorded in the old 4ZZZ studios), the singing is atonal and the musicianship less then perfect – and the whole thing is fantastic (lyrics can be found here along with more reflections about the Brisbane of the time). I saw the singer and songwriter of that tune at the VSU rally.

Some other songs on that first disc from Behind the Banana Curtain are just as descriptive of the situation at the time. "Task Force" tells of the continual battle between the police and the bands of the time. "SEQEB Scabs" is riven with fury at Joh's treatment of the striking electricity workers of the time – and some of the current comment in Brisbane shows that fury has not abated. "Brisbane Blacks" tells a story of the aboriginal people in my city. "Cyclone Hits Expo" was about Expo 88, held in Brisbane that year amid fears of the impact on the surrounding community, including higher housing costs. (As an aside,in hindsight Expo was good for Brisbane, particularly in opening up the Brisbane River to the general public. It did help push up rents and housing prices in the local community but it's almost certain that would have happened anyway.) Of course, plenty of other bands recorded songs that reflected the political/social reality of the time, including some that I was in. (Inexplicably none of my bands were featured on the ZZZ CD, an outrage which I am still seeking an explanation for – I think people are just intimidated by genius.)

A book was released last year called Pig City, which seeks to tell of the Brisbane music scene in the Bjelke-Petersen years. I mentioned in a post I did a week before the election about attending the launch of this book. I have to be honest and say the book has a bit of the feel of a writer besotted with the perceived romance of the era and who really wished they'd been there. I think Liz Willis' article shows the difference between something written by someone who lived it, as opposed to someone who was told about it. However, the book is worth reading for some descriptions of the period. A few interviews with the author about the book and his view of the times based on what others told him can be found here, here and here.

The two Brisbane bands from the Joh era that were looked to and revered in the local scene more than any others were The Saints and the Go-Betweens, yet ironically both bands escaped/left Brisbane very early in their careers. The Saints formed in1973, recorded a fabulously thrashy single called "(I'm) Stranded", and left for England not long after. Stranded might be the icon song, not least for the film clip and album cover, shot in then-derelict mansions on Petrie Terrace (and just to show that not everything from the era ended up being demolished, these are now well restored heritage buildings), but the song that most obviously reflects the Brisbane experience of the time was from their final album (of what I think of as the 'real' Saints anyway) - "Brisbane (Security City)". The lyrics can be found here, but one excerpt probably says it all:
"Thirteen hot nights in a row/The cops drive past and they move slow/I start to feel I'm being used/In some scheme that's been hidden from public view"

The Go-Betweens left for Melbourne around the time of their first album and then went on to the UK, where during the rest of the 80s they regularly released albums to huge critical acclaim and almost zero sales – perfectly suited to the ZZZ mindset. Their songs (and even an album title or two) often evoked the atmosphere of Brisbane, without being overtly political.

The Saints basically became whatever band singer Chris Bailey had backing him at the time (which doesn't mean they didn't do some good stuff now and then), while the Go-Betweens eventually broke up in 1990 - although to be complete, some years later the two singers started recording and playing again under the Go-Betweens name. However, I can never think of them as the same band, despite having a couple of their subsequent albums – and even though I think both might be back living in Brisbane again, which wasn't the case when the 'real' Go-Betweens were together. In another case of paths converging years later in unexpected ways, the band’s drummer, Lindy Morrison, has stood as a candidate for the Democrats in recent elections.

I find the past is echoing all around me at the moment, even through the inflight movie which is "The Life & Death of Peter Sellers", a depressing movie but featuring a wonderful performance by Geoffrey Rush, another person from the Brisbane of Joh's era who had to leave town in order to grow.

As mentioned in the previous post, UK band The Stranglers were sufficiently 'impressed' by Brisbane to write a song about Joh, as did the Adelaide group Redgum, which started out life as a political/protest band. (In more ironies, the lead singer of that band, John Schumann, became chief media officer for Meg Lees when she was Leader of the Democrats. He seems to have his own legacy issues, as he appears to be driven to jump into print whenever he sees an opportunity to criticise me or Natasha Stott Despoja for voting against the GST which he helped shepherd into existence at a rapid pace when the chance unexpectedly presented itself.)

Music and politics is not always inseparable, and some of the dreariest songs I know are ones that try to be overtly political protest music. It is a measure of the extent of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's impact on his state that, while most of the songs might not be seen as overtly political, you could not be involved in the music or theatre of the time without being connected with the politics.

I was reminded the other day about a function to celebrate 4ZZZ's 10th birthday in 1985 at the now-demolished Rialto Theatre in West End (on this occasion, it was one of Brisbane's fabulous thunderstorms that in effect finished off that building, rather than the developers), where someone ironically thanked Joh "for bringing us all together". I'm not sure I'd go so far as thanking him, but while it was not by design, it is true to say that without him much of this wouldn't have been possible.

*I should mention that I know Liz Willis from the days at 4ZZZ in the mid 1980s when she was working as a journalist there. Our paths re-converged when she came to work for Senator Aden Ridgeway partway through his term (and I guess will disconnect again when her job finishes along with Aden’s term in the Senate on 30th June). She also took this photograph, which is the oldest of all the various photographs on my main website.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, April 28, 2005 Permalink
|


<< Home