Tom Hawking speaks with SLAM co-founders and Bakehouse studio owners Quincy McLean and Helen Marcou about the rally and the issues involved.
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Tell me a bit about SLAM - Who’s involved? How did it start?
McLean: We all went to the Tote
rally – the Tote was pretty much our local pub. I used to go there a lot and the first time I played there was in 1982 – February 23, to be precise – which, completely coincidentally, was the date of the rally, and also the date my son was born. Everyone was pretty emotional at the Tote rally. A lot of people just looked shocked and stunned. We went to the gig the next night, and it was fantastic, but really emotional –
grown men crying into their beer, all that sort of thing. And we just felt something had to be done. It took Helen and I a week of whinging and saying, ‘Someone has to do something about this,’ before we decided that it should be us.
Marcou: After the Tote rally, we were aware of [Fair Go 4 Live Music spokesman] Jon Perring and his delegation’s meetings with the Minister [for Consumer Affairs]. We were waiting of the outcome of that [meeting]. When we found out that nothing had happened, we got on the phone to a lot of friends, and people we knew who were active and could get stuff done, and that’s how we formed the first SLAM committee.
McLean: We threw it together. No-one got voted in, no-one got appointed – we called up people we knew. Through Bakehouse we had a lot of connections – we called up the RocKwiz guys, we called up APRA, Triple R… graphic artists, and pulled together a pool of people who could help us get the job done.
Marcou: We’re a bunch of individuals acting for ourselves. We don’t claim to represent anyone, but we want to see change. Anyone can start a campaign. We’ve tried to get to the bottom of the problem, because we were aware that there had been some first amenity issues a few years before in regard to local pubs, but the licensing thing was new to us – we’re not licensees, we run a music studio. Pretty quickly it became clear…
It’s crazy when you start to look into it.
Marcou: Outrageous. And the more we looked… We’ve become experts in the past two weeks, and it’s incredible.
McLean: Well, I wouldn’t say ‘experts’, but we’ve got a bit of a handle on it and it doesn’t seem to get any more sensible the further down the track you go. The whole law was put in place back in 1996, apparently, or at least the clause about ‘live and amplified music’ was put in back then. It was created because of three venues on opposing corners in Frankston, where there was a lot of violence. They saw that the link between those three venues was live and/or amplified music, so they drafted up this clause and let it sit there all this time. It’s only now that it’s become a serious issue.
It seems amazing that there’s no distinction made between live and amplified music.
McLean: I think it’s even more amazing that music ended up in the mix in the first place. Music is not the cause of the violence. It’s got nothing to do wit the violence. They could blame the bad chicken parmigianas they’re serving in the three pubs.
Marcou: It’s as sensible as that. It’s just a common link they were looking for.
So what are you hoping to achieve with the rally?
McLean: I think most importantly, we may as well make the most of the fact that people are pissed off, and they want to get out in the streets and do something about it. Everyone talks about Melbourne being one of the greatest music cities in the Southern hemisphere and one of the greatest music communities in the world, and it seemed a great chance for that community to get out on the streets. For them to see each other, and for the public to see them. We’re hoping that it will solidify and galvanise the community and make people realise that it really is special and it really does need to be protected. And we want the Government to see that there’s a lot of support. The whispers around are that the powers that be think that musicians couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. So we’re hoping to hit it home to them that this isn’t going to go away, and that they have to do something about it. A little pub like the Tote… It’s only little pubs that are affected, because big places, the 2,000 or 3,000 capacity vertical drinking places in the city can absorb these costs.
Is there anything specific you’re calling for?
McLean: The main aim is to call for a de-linking [of music and the high-risk category]. We’re calling for the word ‘music’ to be removed [from the legislation] – it’s up to [the Government] to find another proxy.
It’s the Tote closing that’s catalysed this community support, but from what I understand talking to Bruce Milne and other licensees, this trouble with Liquor Licensing Victoria has been going on a long time. Is this what you’ve found?
McLean: Yes. The first pub to really suffer was the Railway Hotel on Nicholson Street in North Fitzroy. It’s just the quietest little pub, with a bunch of old guys who get up and play – really seasoned players, fantastic musicians – and they get up and play bluesy jazzy stuff to a crowd of people where the youngest person in the room is 45-50 and the oldest person is well into their 70s.
Not much violence, then.
McLean: They’re the tamest crowd! And for them to have to put on two bouncers for the duration of an evening is just crazy. There needs to be protection for smaller venues. We’ve got to realise that if they’re going to buckle under these costs, something’s gotta change. It just can’t work that way.
Do you think the Government fundamentally doesn’t understand the nature of live music?
McLean: Yes!
Marcou: Yes!
McLean: We’ve had four meetings with [the Government] now. [At] the second meeting – the Premier’s round-table meeting – a lot of them, the Premier included, admitted that they haven’t been to a live music gig, especially in a small pub, for a lot of years. They’re getting all their information from their kids, and in the words of Penny Armitage from the Department of Justice, their kids are our greatest advocates. These guys’ kids are defending our cause. I don’t think the Government would argue… They know that there’s something wrong, and they know that they have to fix it – it’s a matter of finding a way of doing it. That’s the most frustrating thing – everyone knows this election is going to be fought on law and order…
Again.
McLean: Again. But they have to get the focus right. They’ve targeted the wrong people. The people who are creating the problems, [the people] in King Street, are getting off scot free, because they can afford to pay the bills.
It’s hard to see how the law serves anyone as it’s enforced at the moment.
Marcou: It reduces their policing costs. When there’s this blanket law, it gives them an angle of enforcement, rather than having individual placement for everyone with a liquor license.
McLean: Policing costs money…
Marcou: And research costs money.
Are you associated with the FILL party [the recently founded political party calling for “Fairness In Liquor Licensing”]?
Marcou: No.
McLean: We’ve talked to them, and I think it’s great that people are setting up all these different things… Facebook sites, etc – and I think that it’s great that [FILL founder] Mick Muck has done that. It’s great that people are taking action in whatever way they can. But no, we’re not associated with them.
When the first talk of a rally at the Tote started, Bruce Milne was a bit nervous about people turning up and starting trouble etc. Is that something that concerns you about the rally?Marcou: I think Bruce was very reluctant because there were a number of issues that closed the Tote, and also because a lot of publicans have been really quiet about this, because they’re really nervous about their licenses.
Do you think people have been scared to speak out, then?
Marcou: Absolutely. With the high-risk enforcement, I believe [Liquor Licensing Victoria] employed something like 40 private security officers, and they’ve been visiting licensed premises – and particularly our live music venues – and checking licenses up to five times a night when they have live bands on. It’s bordering on harassment. So yes, people are nervous to speak, so they’re copping it sweetly – or just pulling live music. The loophole exists at the moment that if you pull live music and just have drinking, or turn your venue into a sports bar, you don’t have these high-risk security requirements. We want to see that link [between live music and high-risk provisions] removed.
McLean: Here’s an interesting example. John Wardle, an academic from New South Wales, sent us an article from 2006 about the Anthony Mundine/Danny Green fight. It was televised on pay TV around the country, and around the country fights broke out in pubs [where it was screened]. One guy got head injuries and died, another guy was chased up a flightof stairs and fell through a roof… This is in sports bars, and yet sports barsget off scot free.
Marcou: And interestingly enough, Crown Casino put out a statement this week, which was on the front page of The Age, stating that they don’t believe people over-indulge on days of big sporting events. I find it to be the complete opposite.
McLean: But back to the rally, yes, we’re certainly putting the message out – on our
website, we’ve given people a list of things… an idea of how the rally’s going to run. And we want to make it clear that there’s strictly no alcohol, and that we have to be well-behaved. The whole issue is that we aren’t high risk. We’ve made the rally very broad, and we have a lot of high-profile people there, purely to get the message across to the general public. We loved the Tote how it was – the black t-shirts, the tatts, the nose-piercings, whatever – but we understand in the broader community that’s not going to appeal to everyone. But music does. We’ve got folk groups, we’ve got bouzouki groups, we’ve got bagpipers, because that’s what the issue’s about: it’s about the Greek deli that’s had to pull its bouzouki players. It’s about Nigel Kennedy at the Abbotsford Convent. It’s the nanny state, the ignorant state. Are we that ignorant about our culture that we can just allow it to be crushed? It’s just foolish.
Check slamrally.org for regular updates on performers and logistics for the rally happening at 4pm Tuesday 23rd February 2010 at the State Library in the Melbourne CBD.