Musexpo-State of the hostnation@ Hilton, Perth,(18/10/09)

Fri 23rd Oct, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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By Sunday of One Movement everyone was looking a whole lot more comfortable. People were more familiar with each other, the venues and the purpose they were meant to be serving there.

The Australia- State of the Host Nation Musexpo discussions in the ballroom of the Parmelia Hilton had a particularly fascinating panel of speakers. With identities from all across the Australian music industry landscape, it delivered a well rounded explanation of exactly where the music industry is at locally right now.

In the laid-back spirit of the event, all in attendance found out Chuggy had disgraced himself the night before and photographic evidence was not far behind. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see it, which was a shame, with Chuggy present in the room, the tirade of funny-as-hell – œfuck this/fuck that’ comments that would have come from his mouth in response would have been, well, funny as hell.

The panel was moderated by Ian James, who is the managing director of Mushroom Records. With a quick sense of humour he proved himself a more-than-worthy replacement for Mark Pope of Mark Pope Music and Events. From left to right the panel went something like this Iain Sheddon (Music writer for the Australian and drummer of The Saints), Richard Moffat (Founder of Way Over There who created Parklife), Richard Kingsmill (Richard Kingsmill), Paul Piticco (Industry all rounder, manages Powderfinger), Tim Prescott (CEO of Albert Music- AC/DC’s label) and Ed St John (Chairman, President and CEO of ARIA and Warners Music Aus.). So it was clearly evident event organisers had mined the local industry pretty damn thoroughly.

Richard Kingsmill always has something interesting to say about music and he looked comfortable up there in front of a crowd rather than a radio control panel. He’s been music director since 2003 and said there’s only 40 people that actually work at Triple J full time, which doesn’t seem like much really for a national radio station. It was a privileged insight into what happens behind the scenes at the national icon. Being a government owned station, Kingsmill said they had a strict policy against accepting gifts from anyone and on his first day as Music Director he got sent a carton of beer from a record company and sent it back- now that’s commitment! Triple J is a station you wouldn’t expect to have much of a concern for ratings, given that it’s funding isn’t based on commercial interests. But from what Kingsmill said it seems that they really do care about ratings. If you have noticed that Triple J seems to play the same songs over and over a lot more than they used to, that’s because they do. Kingsmill told the audience that they used to play a larger range of songs from new artists but audience numbers were dropping. So they reduced how often they were playing new artists and now the audience numbers were at the highest they had been. He also said if you’d sent a cd to Triple J that didn’t get any response, then it probably wasn’t good enough. Yes this is a man that has to make the tough decisions, but hearing him talk leads you to believe he knows what he’s doing and has the ear for the job.

The radio discussion was neatly followed by Richard Moffat who said when deciding on acts to pick for Parklife he mainly chases bands who are getting played on the radio. He said that if people know the songs then they tend to have a better time at the festival. He said the festival landscape was good in Australia but used the recent financial disaster of the Blueprint Festival and the failings of Global Gathering last year as an example that the market could only handle so many. As well as Parklife his company programmes Falls Festival and operates venue hire for The Corner in Richmond. He said times had never been better for The Corner, as a place that tended to capture great acts final shows before they became too big to play bars.

Fellow festival organiser, manager of Powderfinger, founder of Secret Service Artist Management and general everywhere-man of the industry Paul Piticco, expectedly cast a bright light over Australian music. He happens to be the founder of Splendour in the Grass as well. He too used the example of the Blueprint festival as a blueprint (couldn’t resist) of what not to do. He said Splendour worked as a three day festival because it had become an event people put in their plans. He said bringing a three day festival out of nowhere that hadn’t built up a reputation yet, was always going to be a disaster. He talked of the increasing expense of tickets to shows and said it was a result of the increasing expenses of servicing and putting on shows.

From these smaller, middle-tier, indie types, the conversation switched to a couple of industry heavyweights. Tim Prescott and Ed St John deal in music sales that most in the industry couldn’t even imagine. Prescott said he thought the Australian marketplace was a very fair one, which was pretty easy for him to say after coming off a year where AC/DC beat the Beatles in album sales. AC/DC sold six million copies of Black Ice last year; when Prescott touted that stat even his industry colleagues next to him shook their heads (all night long) in amazement.

An interesting question was asked of St John(ARIA chairman), from the crowd. One of the punters almost prophetically asked him why Ladyhawke had been nominated for an ARIA. We all know Ladyhawke has this week said she doesn’t want to be nominated if it’s stepping on anyone’s toes. St John said that the labels nominate artists for an ARIA and the only criteria is that the artist must have been living in Australia for six months and applied for citizenship. He said the association doesn’t investigate artists that have been nominated but just trusts that the label has done the right thing and the artist is eligible. So as it turns out all parties ended up looking rather silly, she wasn’t eligible and she’s now pulled out.

Iain Sheddon, as a writer and rock legend, said the local industry is really good. He said Melbourne had a real rock culture that was lacking in Sydney because of Sydney’s lack of rock venues and smaller gig spaces. Now for the best part, he was asked by Ian James about the quality of music journalism coming through the next generation of writers. The first example he gave- Fasterlouder. He said it was driven by good writers who do it for the love of it. Finally.

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