Tonight, the Troubadour is a name dropper’s paradise. An incredible range of music industry professionals are in town for the Big Sound conference and according to a delegate I chatted with at the bar, they’d all been drinking free booze since 5pm. Nice. Tonight’s show is an industry only showcase, which meant that the five bands played for approximately 30 minutes, hopefully showcasing their best songs and impressing the hell out of the assorted industry people. This was serious, folks.

I sat down next to Seymour Stein (the man who signed Blondie, The Veronicas and The Ramones) who was absent-mindedly singing along to the song being played on the P.A and waited for Brisbane ex-pats The Boat People to take the stage for their 8pm start.

The Boaties played a flawless set comprised of songs from their latest album Chandeliers, with the exception of the Q Song award-winning “Unsettle My Heart”. Bass player/singer James O’Brien’s songs and performance definitely stood out (sorry Robin!), his dancing threatening to take out guitarist Charles Dugan. It’s been a good two years or so since I’d last seen a Boat People show and while it was a joy to see them again, they seemed a little subdued. Never mind , it was a tough crowd after all. I saw Jeff Lang bopping his head to the music and their performance cemented my resolve to purchase their latest release.

The room was packed by the time The John Steel Singers took the (very cramped) stage in what singer/guitarist Tim Morrissey dubbed their “PG timeslot”. Although the band initially seemed nervous about the prospect of a room full of industry members watching them play, their summer circus pop got even the most jaded record exec nodding their head and smiling. Opening with “Smashing the Speed of Sound…”, band members swapped instruments and performed with aplomb, previewing new song “Overpass” alongside material from their The Beagle and The Dove mini-LP. Horn-heavy “Evolution” closed the set, complete with a drummer-swap halfway through. Earlier on in the day Triple J legend Richard Kingsmill predicted big things for this band and judging by the rapturous crowd reaction from a bunch of jaded industry members, he shouldn’t be far off the money.

The crowd performed a mass exodus after The John Steel Singers finished, which was disappointing. Abbe May & The Rockin’ Pneumonia rocked their hardest and it was hard to fault the combination of their fuzzed-out blues with Abbe May’s rough but seductive voice. I’m not sure whether it was getting too late in the evening, or the crowd wasn’t engaged enough for the band to feed off their energy, but it was disappointing to see such an emotive and technically tight set fall flat.

A friend overhead Jeff Lang ask his manager backstage “What is this again? What are we here for?”. If he was genuinely unaware of the apparent significance of tonight’s event, it would go a long way towards explaining his emotive but relaxed and professional performance. Lang is an extraordinary guitarist (one of John Butler’s biggest influences), and a vastly underrated songwriter. His incredible fretwork never gets in the way of the story in the song and is in fact integral to his songwriting. Creating soundscapes by feeding his traditional bluegrass finger picking through a collection of pedals, Lang drew the crowd back together again after the fragmenting effect of the previous band.

The Gin Club was the second of two large bands attempting to pack themselves onto the small Troubadour stage this evening. Opening with “Ten Paces Away” from their recent double album Junk, the crowd that left after JSS suddenly returned, albeit much boozier than before. “Oi! A bit of quiet here!” shouted the group’s leader Ben Salter. “This is a sad one.”
The crowd kept talking.
“Fucking hell.”
Salter’s apparent annoyance with the audience only fuelled the band’s performance onwards and upwards. Coupling the strong songwriting of the band’s 7 songwriters with technical brilliance, The Gin Club are a hard band to ignore in the live arena.

As dozens of drunken conference delegates wobbled their way down the stairs of the Troubadour into the Brunswick Street Mall, I felt more proud of Brisbane’s music scene than I have in a long time.