This episode focuses on my personal experience of Brisbane in the early '80s. I came to Brisbane from Townsville to study Humanities at Griffith University but stayed there for two years after graduation before moving on to Melbourne where I've lived ever since.
So that's only about five years but they still affect me. The illegal protests, cops breaking up indy gigs, legislation that ate into civil liberties and the sense that the great fist of the government and its politicised police force would be there forever. And nothing will make you feel more powerless in a modern developed country city than the sense that most of everyone you see around you supports that oppression (if only by not opposing it).
The politics of Queensland under the Bjelke-Petersen regime, like mosquitoes or mould, got into everything. That's why the punk scene and what it developed into was so sincere. Razar's snotty yell to the Task Force was not just youthful exuberance. We did feel Stranded. To evoke the Saints again, the title of the episode refers to the growling anger of their third album track Brisbane Security City.
But it was just thrashing punk anthems. As with the alternative scenes around the country and the rest of the world Brisbane punks were refining the sound with electronics, noise and multimedia. Xero made this transition, going from spiky punk rock to a synthesised sound of their very own that blended political statements with darker abstraction. Pork began with Casios and tape loops for a disruptive soundscape backed by slideshows of autopsy photographs which were impossible to look at for more than seconds at a time.
But everything gets diluted and sugared to popular standards and convention found us, absorbed what tasted nice and cast the rest on to landfill. If there had been a resistance to rock (which could easily be identified with the authority of police and government) it fell with the opening of more venues where the punters pined for four on the floor beats and guitar assaults. It got professional. It got skilled and reproducible. It was like none of it had happened.
But good things happen, too. A long and dogged investigation, ending with a broadside of a Four Corners report, brought the rat infested manor house of Bjelke-Petersen down to where everyone else walked and they were heard no more. Well, that's not quite true but you know what I mean.
This all still affects me because I can see the work of its descendants in the current political climate worldwide. The difference now is that no one bothers to pretend it's anything else. Anyway, rather than bum you out longer than is necessary (or fun) I'll make some recommendations.
Listening:
The Saints - (I'm) Stranded (album and song)
The Leftovers - Cigarettes and Alcohol
Pork - anything you can find
Xero - Lust in the Dust (mini album that has been digitised but not officially)
The Go Betweens - early singles and every album up to Spring Hill Fair
Mystery of Sixes - anything you can find
A lot of other stuff I will add to this list when I'm less hungover.
Reading
Pig City by Andrew Stafford - seldom was a book that celebrated a music scene so attacked by the I-was-there-mate brigade. I know of some exaggerations in the text but the book remains a solid account of a city making culture under duress.
Watching
Rockarena's nifty mini doc from 1988
Great Australian Albums episode on The Saints' (I'm) Stranded
Bjelke Blues (edited by Edwina Shaw) - recollections and accounts of the bastardy and repression of the B-J years including journalism, memoir, and fiction. A great read with a lot of continuing relevance today.
We made it grate in the Sunshine State
PJ
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