Big Sound - Day Two
Thursday 10th September 2009

(Read Part 1)

Let me just get the pithiest thing I need to say right out of the way at the beginning: The second day of Big Sound 2009 is a lot like the first day except people seem more obviously hungover and slow-moving. 

Each day of Big Sound 2009 kicks off with a keynote interview/address and it proves a deft piece of programming. Being dropped into a panel on a ‘big topic’ (success, technology, success through technology) would make the clearest head swim at ten in the morning, so easing us slowly into day two is Everett True and former Nirvana/current Grates manager Danny Goldberg. Goldberg looks strangely as I expected: robust, well-turned out yet, impossibly, like a guy that would not completely embarrass himself in front of Thurston Moore. He speaks well, comfortable with the attention of the audience. Towards the end, when Everett starts digging through his green Coles bag mid-question, I’m struck by how tired he looks. Maybe I’m imagining things but today he displays a type of world-weariness I’ve seen in Clinton Walker and in every photograph of Lester Bangs taken from about 1975 onward. It’s something that seems particular to music writers. It frightens me a little.

Pleasantries aside, it’s time for ‘Smoke & Mirrors: What Tricks Should You Use To Get Your Music Selling - Online and Off?’ a ninety minute industry hell-ride into the heart of the matter. Here we have discussed everything people typically come to conferences to learn about: fast-tracks to success, the lies and benefits of the recording industry, Triple J airplay, new models, short-cuts, slow roads, slick execs and old dinosaurs. It reaches the ear via a barrage of advice, quips, arguments and ‘humour’ so cynical that it sounds black if considered for even a moment before the next person speaks. It’s not a great panel but also not entirely without highlights: watching Luke Bevans of Universal Music flame on and bully his way around and over arguments at least added something concrete to all the chatter. A developing theme of the conference had begun to emerge by this stage, one that inferred that online marketing failed to  truly aid developing musicians. David Carter from Griffith University gave these doubts a nice empirical backbone via his statistical report presented earlier but there are, of course, no certainties in the music industry and the operation of a major label obeys only one doctrine (success by risk aversion). So when Bevans proffered Short Stack as an example he – perhaps inadvertently - made a case for both sides of argument. Here is a commercially successful band that, all told, Universal plucked off the internet. You Tube to chart success - it’s a hard case to argue against. Yet, it was also impossible to forget that he’s talking about a band so unique (an abomination by definition is unique) that they could not have sprung from anywhere else.

The Australian Music Radio Airplay Project (AMRAP) sponsored lunch on Thursday. The food was exactly the same as the day previous which made me wonder what message AMRAP was trying to project but I ate that free lunch alongside everyone else without complaint.

In the afternoon, I had the misfortune of taking in something called ‘Hypothetically Speaking’ featuring silverchair manager John Watson, Glenn Wheatley, lawyer and Big Sound alumni David Vodicka, Luke Bevans from Universal as well as an agent and an exec from Channel V. Strictly for noobs (and probably of benefit to them), this session outlined the career track of a fictional rock band. As time slowed, we watched on  as a group of hungover/conferenced-out music guys laughed at each other’s jokes. There’s no harm in it and is perhaps all that could be expected so late in the day but it also feels like a wasted opportunity.

Night falls. The city staggers its way into the weekend.

The first act I catch at this the second and last night of the showcases is a personal favourite, Brisbane’s Giants of Science. It’s pretty simple: these guys are at the very top of their game at the moment, teetering as they are on the excitement of the new (having recently reformed) and the wild chops of the past. Tonight they play early and in an empty tent. It shows for a few songs and then, in the flash and clang of a middle eight, it’s all down to muscle memory and ‘ken watch this.

Sydney’s Cloud Control initially strike me as affected and annoying but I come across within a song or two. It’s a straight-forward way through: they sing well together, their songs cover some ground and tonight they have a bit of sparkle in the same empty shed most everyone else has had to drone away in. I’m impressed.

I finish off the night with two more local acts I’ve somehow missed of late. We All Want To is the new band from Screamfeeder’s Tim Steward, one of the city’s more evergreen songwriters. There’s a couple of missed steps along the way tonight but they don’t seem to mind overly and I don’t either. Finally, I drag myself to new venue X&Y to catch electronic pop act Hunz and leave glad I bothered. Hunz is something that’s borderline oxymoronic: an electronic musician with personality to burn. And burn it he does, during his set I think I smiled almost as much as he did.

DAY 1 | DAY 3