A Conversation With John Birmingham, Brisbane-based author, journalist and blogger

I met with Brisbane-based author, journalist and blogger John Birmingham in late June 2010, to discuss his newest book, After America, for a story in The Big Issue. You can read that story here.

Full transcript of our conversation is below. It begins in the middle of discussing the book – which I’d only finished half an hour before we met – and ranges from discussing the characters and writing process to the merits of genre fiction, time management, and his social media usage.

Beware: for those who haven’t read After America, there are spoilers.

Andrew: I’m sure it was no coincidence that much of the descriptions [in the book] are quite cinematic. [note: John's publisher, Pan Macmillan, also commissioned a teaser trailer for After America ahead of the book's release]

John: Yeah. I mean partly, yeah – I’d like it to be a movie. There are guys in the U.S. at the moment arguing with each other over the rights to do the previous series [Axis Of Time] as a movie, but this one would be so much easier to do. Partly because I’m writing it easier, but also the more I get into the thriller headspace… It’s a cinematic form of storytelling. It’s got lots of colour, lots of movement, you’ve got that whole Bruckheimer accelerated narrative thing going – every seven minutes something has to happen! Yeah, so I guess it’s not surprising that people start seeing it in terms of movies.

One of the things I like doing when a book comes out, any book comes out like this, is I wait a couple of weeks and then I put a blog up and run a discussion on who everybody would cast in the various roles. It’s always interesting, because I have very strong ideas about who should be there. The problem is no one agrees with me.

I must admit I haven’t read any of your other fiction work. This is the first one.

That’s actually not a bad thing, because the books are all so are fucking different. It doesn’t strike me as an odd thing but it does put the zap on some peoples’ head that I’m writing something like Leviathan one year, and then I turn around and do Weapons Of Choice the next year. You’re not necessarily coming with a disadvantage for not having seen the other books.

I found myself more drawn to Miguel and Sofia’s side of the story, instead of the military stuff.

I really like Miguel’s character. I really liked his relationship with Sophia. It almost didn’t happen. In the first draft of the book, he’s alone. The deal with Miguel was to be almost a biblical burden that he had to carry, and his family… [spoilers]. In the first draft, his family wasn’t killed. They were just kicked off the farm and driven away. He decides he’s got to get to Kansas City to tell Kipper because he has this naïve faith in Kipper to save him.

I wrote the entire book where he was just travelling with his two dogs; the dogs were basically to give him something to talk to, and emote to. But it just didn’t fucking work. We just kept asking ourselves, “why is this guy off on his own when his family are travelling on their own through the badlands that he himself says are fucking badlands?” And also it didn’t emotionally justify how fucked up he was in the story.

So having sort of gone through it, we agreed in the end that the family had to die. But then of course to kill them all off, he was just going to ride down there and go out guns blazing, and so that’s why he has Sophia with him, to give him one last thing to live for.

And as a storyline, I loved this Caitlin storyline. I love just inverting all of the old action thriller tropes; you know, how the two most dangerous characters in the book are both chicks. One is not pregnant, but breastfeeding, and just recovering from pregnancy.

But I gotta say, writing the book, the most satisfying story to dwell on – and you do dwell on it, it’s so fucking long you live inside the story after a while – was the Miguel story. I’ve always liked cowboy movies, and again the nice thing about his was it’s a very traditional, a really fucking traditional cowboy story. It could be any of the Steve McQueen or John Wayne movies, you could easily lay that template over and it would match, millimetre perfect. It’s not because, of course, Miguel is a Mexican; it’s actually his ethnic background which gets him into trouble and kicks the story off.

You really did heap it upon him though, even at the end. He didn’t get a break.

No, he doesn’t. I’m not a religious person at all but I do like the idea of the story of Job where some poor average prick just gets pounded and pounded and pounded to see whether or not he’s going to break. That is Miguel’s role, to just see how much one person can take. In the third and final installation of the series, there will be the whole idea of biblical vengeance that I’m going to work through as well. I’m with you; as a storyline, it’s probably my fave, despite the fact that as a character, I think Caitlin’s my actual favourite.

This was always going to be a three book series. I wonder if your feelings toward the arc of the series have changed as you’ve been writing it.

Yeah, the first one for me worked just as a standalone book. I was very much aware and remained aware that a lot of people like the idea of a series. They like the idea of being able to go back in another book with the same characters. If they enjoyed the first one, they’ll enjoy the second one. They also hate fucking series because you have to wait a long time for the big questions to be resolved.

I agree with them. I’m a huge fan of Peter F. Hamilton’s work: he writes these huge arcing space operas that just go on and on and on. I love them, I’m addicted to them, but it just drove me nuts to have to wait 18 months to two years between each of them.

I wrote Without Warning so that you could read it, close it, and if you wanted to, you could walk away from it. It’s got a dénouement at the end where you obviously set up another story, but it didn’t have to go on. And I found After America really fucking difficult to kick off because I was really happy with the first book as a novel, as a book really. I haven’t written any others that I’ve been as happy as I was with that.

Having written what, to me, was the perfect book – although others would disagree vehemently – I just thought “Fuck, how do I top that?” And I had about six months where I just sat around. I know what I have to do in this second book because I’d already plotted it out, but it was just really difficult firing up.

And then when I finally did fire up, I broke my arm. I’d written the first draft and I was just about to sit down and edit that. That is actually where I did most of the work, in editing the first draft. I busted this arm in a training accident in Jujitsu and I had a plate inserted here [he shows me]. Although I was in plaster and then in a splint for only about seven or eight weeks, I didn’t get range of movement back in the arm for months. It threw everything out by about a year, which compounded the initial difficulties I had coming at this story because it was a perfect excuse not to engage with it. “Sorry, I have a broken arm – I’m not doing anything on this fucking book for a while now.”

The funny thing is I reckon it was, in a sense, a left-handed gift. The enforced break allowed me to sit back and actually spend about two months in my Relaxo lounge chair thinking about the characters, thinking about the stories. When I could literally lay fingers on a keyboard, I came back much more charged up. Miguel was actually part of that because I had changed his story completely. I really liked the idea of working in a very old fashioned western narrative under the guise of what’s virtually a military techno thriller. It changed a lot. Doubtless, the third one will be the same.

Did you do much storyboarding for this one?

No. I knew there were certain things I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to have a cattle drive, which is afflicted by a giant flood. Originally it was just an image I had. I saw these guys driving a big herd of cattle through a dead city and a flood comes through. So again, it was a cinematic vision – how fucking cool would that be?

When I was doing my very rough outline I just had this note, “Must have cattle drive and flood together. It will be awesome.” I also knew that, with Caitlin, I wanted her to parachute into New York at night with a battle going on. Again, I just thought that would be a great scene for her as a character, because the essence of Caitlin is isolation, and you don’t get any more isolated than freefalling through sub-freezing air into a dead city. So I knew that was coming, but in terms of structuring the entire narrative, as you do with a movie, I didn’t. I learned that lesson with Designated Targets; I did storyboard that out scene by scene.

I could tell you before I’d written the first word what this chapter would be about and what that character would be doing in that scene, hundreds of pages before they were written. And although it was a really efficient way to turn a book out, I wrote that book much more quickly than the other books I’ve done. It was also incredibly frustrating because the thing about characters is once they take off, once a character comes alive, which takes about 30 or 40 pages, they start doing their own thing and talking and speaking their own dialog. You actually don’t need to think stuff up.

Someone tweeted [at me] earlier today, they had a review copy and they said their favourite line in the book was on page 453, where Caitlin talks about the definition of disingenuous. I thought “What the fuck are you talking about?” I went and got the book, and it was really good. I had no memory of writing that at all because I really didn’t write it. That was just Caitlin speaking.

What you lose with really rigid storyboarding is that spark where the characters just do what they want to do. So although I block out the story and I know where I effectively want people to go, I don’t do it in the minute detail that I had in the past.

I follow you on Twitter, and I’ve subscribed to your blog [Cheeseburger Gothic] for a couple of years. I’m intrigued by how often you call upon your followers and your fanbase for motivation, for inspiration, for the little facts that crop up. I wonder; do you know of many other authors that are doing that? It seems really obvious.

It works for me, but I’m a bit unusual because I worked in journalism for 10 years before I wrote Felafel, for instance. I like people. I love literary festivals. I love going on tour. I just love this [gestures between us]; sitting in these bizarre, shitty little cafes in back streets, talking to people who I’ve never fucking met. I love all that stuff. Twitter is almost the perfection of that way of dealing with people. So it works for me. Other people would just die of horror.

I know publishers – all publishers, but mine in particular – are trying to get their authors to take up social media in the same way, for exactly the same reasons; to reach out and talk to their readership, to create bonds. They’re all coming at it from a commercial point of view: you create that bond and the next time you put a book out they run out and buy it. That is the core of their thinking; it’s quite cynical.

And yet, I’ve got great friendships out of Twitter. As you can see from reading the blog – when I travel now, I say I’m going to be in Melbourne next week and they all sort of gather in one spot, and we go out drinking and we have a good time. So there is a real personal bonus to doing it.

Other writers? I know Nancy Kress, who is an American sci-fi author, runs a blog. Peter Temple runs one, I think. Who else? There’s half a dozen or so, usually mid-list authors. If Stephen King or, God forbid, J.K. Rowling, was on Twitter, it simply wouldn’t work. You know exactly why it wouldn’t work.

I follow Eliza Dushku [pictured right]; me and 100,000 people follow Eliza Dushku [on Twitter], and we’re all firing our little tweets off. She was in Sydney the other week, and I just said she was shopping and I sent this tweet off to her. I said “You’re shopping around QVB, you should go to Pendalino for lunch,” because I went the other day and it was beautiful. That would have been one of maybe 600 tweets that came in the previous minute. There is no fucking way that somebody like that can afford to pay any attention at all to what’s happening in the tweet stream.

But for someone like me, who’s much more of a microcelebrity, it works really well. Having said that, most authors I know are social cripples, and they just would not have the wherewithal to pull it off.

It’s funny that you made these realisations yourself because you are a people person, whereas the publishers are looking at it from a commercial perspective. I’m not sure that Twitter would work if you had to hit them with a stick, saying “You must do this.”

No, a lot of [authors] don’t even like touring. I can think of some very big names who won’t sign books. If you’re getting that close to a reader, it’s such a horror to them that they just refuse to do it. It’s madness, but a lot of them are the same way.

I wonder if you have any thoughts on the divide between literary fiction and popular fiction.

I do. There was a very funny piece by Tony Martin on Scrivener’s Fancy. There was a panel discussion on Jennifer Byrne’s TV show with Matt Reilly, Di Morrissey, Bryce Courtney, and Lee Child, and the interviewer was asking this very question.

Lee Child [pictured left] is an interesting guy. He’s really fucking smart. But he writes thrillers. He’s not writing literature and I suspect that he decided he was going to play with this interview and so he just acted like a pompous git saying his books were every bit as good as literature. And anyway, Tony Martin wrote this fucking hilarious tear down of the interview. It’s totally worth going and Googling it up this afternoon, if only for your own benefit. Your life will improve having read it. [note: it's here]

He just pointed out there’s no way what Child’s does is literature, with this brutal demonstration. He took apart a couple of pages from one of Child’s books. I would never ever be so fucking foolish as to make that claim. I do entertainment. That’s it. Not completely low-brow, but upper middle-brow… not even that, lower middle-brow entertainment with a lot of explosions is what I do in the thrillers. And they’re great fun. They’re read by people who are not going to read literature and they’re read by people who like literature.

But [the books] aren’t literature themselves. There’s not a lot of point trying to compare and contrast because it’s like trying to compare and contrast first person shooters with traditional theatre. They’re both mediums for telling stories but they do very different things in very different ways; both are enjoyable and they both have validity.

One is not necessarily worth more than the other. They’re just very different things. I’ve had a lot of fun over the years making fun of literature, but I read it and at times I love it. I think the best writer working in Australia at the moment is Matthew Condon. Everything he’s written since The Pillow Fight has been absolutely fucking stunning, and it’s all ‘big L’ literature. Matt doesn’t do mere entertainment. He’s a really great fucking writer.

But he doesn’t sell a lot of copies at Woolworths and Kmart, and I guess the thing that energises this debate is that people, particularly literary critics and some literary authors, get themselves really worked up because they perceive, quite rightly, that literary authors are working really hard to not get the rewards they deserve.

And they do deserve the rewards, because they do work every bit as hard as the rest of us and their craft is honed to a much finer point than ours is. And yet they’re selling 1,500 and 2,000 copies of their books sometimes. Their writing is usually their second job. And their first job, if they’re lucky, is in something like journalism where it’s at least a related field. If not, some are in advertising, which is slowly losing their fucking soul from being sold day in and day out. It upsets people. There was a great review of After America in The Australian by their chief literary critic (Geordie Wilkinson) a couple of weeks ago who –

I didn’t read the review, as I didn’t want to spoil the book.

Well, you’ve read the book. Go read the review now. It’s fucking fascinating because this guy, he hates doing it but he admits the book is well written “for a thriller” – and you have to capitalise FOR A THRILLER. But he finds the politics of it, and the business of thrillers so fucking poisonous that it just fills him with hate.

I emailed one of the eds at The Oz and said “Everyone thinks I hate that review. Could you just pass on the word to Geordie, that I actually really liked it.” I enjoyed reading it as a review, and as a piece of advertising for the book… it worked. But I did enjoy it. And then the reviewer sent me an email back and said “Thank you very much”. I can’t publish it because it’s private correspondence, but one thing I can reveal is that for most of the time he was reading that book, he was seething, absolutely seething because he thinks I’m writing beneath myself. Which in one sense, I guess you could say I am. In the other sense he’s talking through his fucking arse, because thrillers are really fucking difficult to get right.

There are so many things that can go wrong and you do need to actually bring some skill and consideration for your audience to the business of putting them together.

I read an article in The Australian that was written when Without Warning came out. At the time, you said that you feel your primary audience is “security guys, military, ex-military and gun bunnies”. Do you think that’s still true?

I’m constantly surprised by my audience. Before I wrote thrillers I was surprised to discover I even had a geek audience. I was doing research for Dopeland [pictured right], where I travel around the country smoking dope and writing about it, and I ended up at a science fiction convention in Perth with these utter fucking freaks. And every one of them had read my books, every fucking one of them and most of them could quote slabs at me. It was a disturbing revelation, but a revelation nonetheless.

I try not to make suppositions about people who read my books, and it’s a good thing because I’m constantly surprised. A lot of chicks read them. They’re certainly not in the majority and they’re not half of my readers, but they’re probably about 35-40% of the readership, and they’re not the sort of chick you’d necessarily expect to read the explodey thrillers.

You do have strong female characters.

Exactly. My publisher Kate explains it that way. She says, “You write great female characters.” My old agent, Annette, who was a fiery, fiery fucking woman, emailed me about an hour or so ago to curse me because she’s supposed to be putting together a festival up in Noosa or something and she hasn’t been able to get to it because she’s been stuck in After America. And the reason is she loves the female characters; they’re tough.

I guess the sort of gun bunny thing comes from the fact that my blog regulars, there’s a preponderance of ex-military, ex-serving cops and security guys who hang out at Cheeseburger [Gothic, JB's blog]. So they set the tone of the place. Having said that, they’re a fraction of the people who pull through. I have lots and lots of lurkers… like you. You don’t strike me as a gun bunny. But they’re happy just to drop in. And some of those guys are very fucking funny. Boylan is just a comedic genius. I will scan my own blog looking for a Paul Boylan comment because I know there’s always going to be a big payoff.

I couldn’t tell you who reads them now. I know it’s 60% male, mostly over the ages of 18 which is reasonable enough. I don’t think they’re appropriate books for school kids. They’re incredibly violent. Beyond that, I couldn’t say. As an example, my friend, my blog buddy MonsterYuppie, who lives down the road here – he’s a monster yuppie. He owns his own medical technology company, he’s someone that flies all over the world first class, spends 200 days a year running it.

When Without Warning came out, I actually ran into him on his way to the airport. I had a box of Warning on me and said, “Here, take this for your flight.” “Thanks,” he said. He popped on the flight and texted me later on. He was in first class. There were five businessmen in there and three of them were reading Without Warning. [laughs] I would never have imagined that.

I’m interested to know how you balance fiction writing for this book with your regular journalistic work. I know you have two blogs [for Brisbane Times: Blunt Instrument, and The Geek].

Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I fuck up. Sometimes I take too much on and I fuck it up. Particularly with feature writing, because to do features properly, they’re hard work. And I get paid well for them, but I get paid much better for the books, and it’s always tempting to go where the money is and to just – because I’ve written so many features, it’s really tempting to me to just go “I’ll throw this together at the last moment.” Of course, you fucking can’t. So you know, I could point to half a dozen stories, cover stories for big magazines I’ve written that… they’re not shit, because I’ve had enough experience that I know how to put a feature together, but they could have been a lot fucking better than the published version, because I just wasn’t very good at juggling my time.

I try and assign different parts of the work day and the work week to different things. Blogs for instance take nothing to write. I did a blog about ninjas last week. Twelve minutes, I think it took to write. Hugely popular.

The thing with blogs, however, is the work is all at the backend. It’s in the comments, managing the comments. A lot of gallery journos, for instance: they’re not writing blogs, they’re still writing their own columns but they’ve been opened up for comments. Those guys never, ever reply. Probably a good idea, because unless you’re willing to get down to the same level as your nutty fucking blog followers, you’re on a hiding to nothing.

I got hired as a blogger by Fairfax and I work as a blogger, which means I read every comment and I reply to as many to them as I can. That can chew up a lot of fucking time. I did one, which I knew was going to go off the other day, about the World Cup. I did it purely to piss off soccer fans. It’s one of my shameful joys in life. And it did; it went off. Like, 400 comments in an afternoon or something, and I’m fuckin’ sitting there reading every one. Which would have an ego cost if I didn’t have such a massive ego, because these guys just were fucking hammering me, from one end of the day to the other.

That sort of thing can be really addictive and distracting because although it is work, I’m sort of doing my job, even though my contract at Fairfax doesn’t actually require me to do anything other than file cop, I’m compelled to. Also, I think blogs suck if you don’t get in there and engage. But it can be incredibly distracting. So once I’ve written the thing [a blog], I tend to have set times a day when I’ll go in to read comments and answer them, because otherwise I’ll sit there waiting for them to pop up, responding to each one.

With books, I try and have one book that I’m working on full-time, which means it gets four hours a day, and then I’ll have another one which I’m bringing up to speed that gets maybe an hour or so a day. And then once that one is done, it gets shunted off into production and the other one comes up. It’s a very unromantic, production line way of putting out the words, but it means I can work as a writer.

It also means you get the day-to-day interaction with people rather than being lost in your own mind.

That’s exactly right. My friend Peter Robb, who I fucking haven’t spoken to in years – he wrote Midnight In Sicily, a great book, one of the great books of the 1990s. Peter is a funny dude. He loves the fine life, he loves a meal, he loves wine, and he likes going out to lunch with friends, but he is prone to locking himself away in his apartment for years at a time. He told me once that when he was writing his biography of Caravaggio, he went so long without human contact of any kind, that the first time he stepped outside of the apartment he had a moment of panic, that he had forgotten how to speak. It’s not good.

I avoid that. [laughs] Facebook is my friend.

Even if it’s typing, it’s still interaction.

That’s right.

I’ll leave it there. Thanks, John.

After America is available now via Pan Macmillan. Follow John Birmingham on Twitter, and/or subscribe to his personal blog, Cheeseburger Gothic.

Rolling Stone story: The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge

A short story for the September 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, about The Go-Between Bridge opening in Brisbane.

Click the below image for a closer look, or read the text underneath.

The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge

by Andrew McMillen

In the tradition of Melbourne’s ACDC Lane, Queensland now has Go Between Bridge. In 2009, Brisbane residents voted to name the city’s newest river crossing after The Go-Betweens, who formed at the University of Queensland in 1977 and went on to achieve international acclaim. On June 25 this year, Robert Forster marked the structure’s completion with a concert on the bridge itself. Ahead of the event, Forster described the naming as “heart-warming, and a bit surreal”. Forster opened with “Steets Of Your Town” from 1988′s 16 Lovers Lane. The song was written by band co-founder Grant McLennan, who died from a heart attack in 2006, aged 48. Beforehand, a crowd of 5,000 witnessed Yves Klein Blue, The John Steel Singers, Bob Evans and Josh Pyke perform adjacent to the silent Brisbane skyline.

The above photo was taken by Brisbane-based music photographer Matt Palmer.

Elsewhere: I reported on this show at length for Mess+Noise. I also interviewed Robert Forster for M+N’s ‘Icons’ series a few weeks before The Go Between Bridge opened.

The Big Issue story: John Birmingham

A story for The Big Issue #360 (3-16 August 2010), wherein I profiled Brisbane-based author and journalist John Birmingham and his new book, After America.

Click the image below for a closer look at the scanned article, or read the text underneath.

Afterwords

The prolific, genre-hopping John Birmingham discusses some recent achievements, which include a new thriller, a martial-arts injury and way too much tweeting

On March 14, 2003, the United States Of America went to hell – in John Birmingham’s mind, at least. His latest novel, After America, is the second part in a speculative fiction trilogy based in a USA subject to an enormous energy wave that decimated the majority of the country’s population.

Two years ago, Birmingham wrote part one of the trilogy, Without Warning, as a potential stand-alone novel. ”You could read it, close it, and if you wanted to, you could walk away from it,” he says. ”It’s got a dénouement at the end where you obviously set up another story, but it didn’t have to go on. And I found After America really fucking difficult to kick off because I was really happy with the first book as a novel; as a book.”

“Having written what, to me, was the perfect book – although others would disagree vehemently – I just thought, “Fuck, how do I top that?” And I had about six months where I just sat around. I know what I have to do in this second book because I’d already plotted it out, but it was just really difficult firing up. And then when I finally did fire up, I broke my arm. I’d written the first draft and I was just about to sit down and edit that.” He shows me the plate inserted into his left arm, which was busted in a Jujuitsu training accident.

“The funny thing is I reckon it was, in a sense, a left-handed gift. The enforced break allowed me to sit back and actually spend about two months in my lounge chair thinking about the characters, thinking about the stories. When I could literally lay fingers on a keyboard, I came back much more charged up.”

This series of novels isn’t the author’s first dalliance in the thriller genre: his Axis Of Time series (released from 2004 to 2007) are alternate history adventures that begin in 2021, when a US-led task force off Indonesia is sent back to 1942.

Axis Of Time seemed an abrupt about-face for someone best known for his grungy 1994 share-house memoir, He Died With A Felafel In His Hand and, more recently, as an essayist and non-fiction author.

Before his breakthrough with Felafel, Birmingham was a freelance writer for Rolling Stone and Australian Penthouse magazines. Then, five years after his first book, came Leviathan, a comprehensive (if unauthorised) biography of Sydney – another stylistic right-turn. After that, Birmingham smoked his way through a hands-on exploration of Australia’s marijuana culture in Dopeland (2003). Now, judging by his book sales. readers are becoming comfortable with Birmingham’s incarnation as thriller writer.

His latest book examines a nation in conflict through the eyes of several very different characters, including the President of the United States, a vengeance-seeking Mexican cowboy, a pair of heavily-armed smugglers and an adolescent fighting in the name of Allah. The book’s central locale is a crumbling New York City so beset upon by pirates, looters and conflict-hungry freedom fighters that the military is forced to reconsider whether it should remain standing.

The result is a non-stop adrenaline rush threaded across multiple narratives. Birmingham – who became enamoured of thrillers after reading Matthew Reilly’s The Ice Station – doesn’t mince words when asked about the divide between popular fiction and literary fiction.

“I do entertainment,” he says. “That’s it. Lower middle-brow entertainment with a lot of explosions. And they’re great fun. They’re read by people who are not going to read literature and they’re read by people who like literature. But [the books] aren’t literature themselves. There’s not much point in trying to compare and contrast, because it’s like trying to compare and contrast first person shooters [video games] with traditional theatre. They’re both mediums for telling stories but they do very different things in very different ways; both are enjoyable and they both have validity.”

“One is not necessarily worth more than the other. The thing that energises this debate is literary critics getting themselves really worked up because they perceive, quite rightly, that literary authors are working really hard to not get the rewards they deserve. And they do deserve the rewards, because they do work every bit as hard as the rest of us. Their craft is honed to a much finer point than ours is.”

Outside of his recent successes with fiction, Birmingham is a widely read online columnist for Fairfax and a prolific user of Twitter, where he has amassed more than 5,500 followers.

“It works for me,” he says of the microblogging service, “But I’m a bit unusual because I worked in journalism for 10 years before I wrote Felafel. I like people. I love literary festivals. I love going on tour. I just love this. Sitting in these bizarre, shitty little cafes in back streets, talking to people I’ve never met. I love all that stuff. Twitter is almost the perfection of that way of dealing with people.”

by Andrew McMillen

After America is out now. Following John Birmingham on Twitter: twitter.com/johnbirmingham

Naturally, it was a blast to speak with one of my favourite writers for the first time. (It also helped that I’d finished reading an advance copy of After America half an hour before we met, so the story was fresh in my mind.)

The Vine album review: Die! Die! Die!

An album review for The Vine.

Die! Die! Die! – Form

By now, Die! Die! Die! have assured their allegiance to a idiosyncratic punk-rock aesthetic: gritty, bottom-heavy, and consistently confronting. Like the New Zealand trio’s previous releases, Form contains a sound most unlike many other bands on the planet. Their hyperactive rhythms inspire vivid imagery of movement, of change, of progress. Form – their third full-length, and their first under the banner of legendary Kiwi indie Flying Nun Records – marks an evolution in the band’s songwriting, most notably in frontman Andrew Wilson’s guitar parts. He regularly alternates between a clean, jangly tone – usually during the verses – and punches one or more overdriven effects during the chorus. His playing isn’t formulaic, though, nor predictable; instead, his vocal and six-string contributions form the melodic basis amid the rhythmic bedrock laid down by bassist Lachlan Anderson and drummer Michael Prain.

Musically, Die! Die! Die! describe a man-made wasteland built upon deceit, treachery and wasted potential. Their soundtrack is drums, bass, guitar and vocals. The images they conjure are frequently alienating, yet curiously, this music is addictive. Its disembodied, abrasive nature still manages to communicate a human warmth.

Full review at The Vine.

More Die! Die! Die! on Facebook. This album is brilliant. Video for the Form track ‘HowYe‘ embedded below.

Mess+Noise EP review: Mr. Maps

An EP review for Mess+Noise.

Mr. Maps – Nice Fights

Never a band to care for conventional wisdom or industry standards, Brisbane-based instrumental rock act Mr. Maps have limited this double A-side single – a teaser for their debut album, due later this year – to just 250 copies, and printed the cover on antique pianola paper to offer each payer a unique design. From the hammered-on clean guitar motif to the stomach-turning tempo changes and the subdued, cello-led midsection, the title track is immediately representative of the group’s vision and ability. ‘Nice Fights’ meanders organically, taking its time to unveil the beauty within.

The momentary pause toward the end of ‘Fly You Monumental Mistake’, however, is this EP’s dramatic apex. Everything before this point seems like padding for this money shot. In the one-second window that bucks the trend of streaming guitars and tumultuous drumming, Mr. Maps shine.

Full review at Mess+Noise, where you can also stream the track ‘Nice Fights’.

More Mr. Maps at MySpace. They’re great.

Mess+Noise story: ‘Splendour 2010: Your Questions Answered’

A transcribed public Q+A for Mess+Noise.

Splendour 2010: Your Questions Answered

What does it take to run one of Australia’s largest festivals? At a public forum on day one of last weekend’s Splendour In The Grass, co-founders Paul Piticco and Jessica Ducrou gave punters a unique insight into how they pull it off. Transcription by ANDREW MCMILLEN. Photos by JUSTIN EDWARDS.

How did Splendour come about in the first place? Why did it happen?

Paul: We got together on the idea of “we should do a little festival”. Boutique, start out small, something different. A camping event. We came to the conclusion that it was probably best to avoid the competition and summer traffic, and do it somewhere that people would like to escape to in the winter. And that was Byron Bay. That was 10 years ago.

What’s your vision for the future of Splendour?

Jess: Part of the reason for our move to Woodford is that it’s allowed us to steer the festival in a direction that’s quite different from Belongil Fields, and much closer to our vision, which is a camping festival. Ideally, we’d like to camp everyone on-site. The format this year is that gates open at 4pm on Thursday and don’t close until 12pm [on Monday]. You’re creating a city; your own experience. We weren’t able to do that at Belongil Fields, as we didn’t have the space to do it. It’s pretty satisfying being here now, and seeing where the festival has come, 10 years down the track.

Read the full article on Mess+Noise.

However! What’s published on M+N is an abridged version of what took place on the day. My editor cut around 2,000 words for brevity and clarity. For posterity, I’ve included the full 50 minute, 6,000 word transcript below.

Splendour 2010: Public Q+A

A new addition to the Splendour In The Grass program in 2010 was the Forum component, which hosted several events across the weekend. First up, though, at 10am on Friday was a Q+A session with the event co-founders, Paul Piticco and Jessica Ducrou. ANDREW MCMILLEN was there to capture the session, and ask a couple of questions. Monique Schafter from ABC’s Hungry Beast was the Q+A’s MC.

Monique: I’ll ask the first question, just to get us rolling. This is the tenth year of Splendour In The Grass; how did Splendour come about in the first place? Why did it happen?

Paul: Well, Jessica started out in the music industry as a booking agent, and I was a manager. We shared bands; I managed them, and she was the booking agent. How we modelled our business was pretty much a strategy where agents and managers in a lot of other countries use concert promoters to put on their bands’ shows. For a lot of Australian acts, we cut that link out, and the agent and manager take on the responsibility of promoting shows. So Jess and I already had that relationship, but Jess was also in business with another guy doing the Homebake festival. So Jess had that festival experience which I didn’t have, and the other side of our business we got working together on was promoting Aussie bands, essentially, and we got together on the idea of “we should so a little festival”. Boutique, start out small, something different. A camping event. We came to the conclusion that it was probably best to avoid the competition and summer traffic, and do it somewhere that people would like to escape to in the winter. And that was Byron Bay. That was ten years ago.

Monique: It’s certainly grown a lot in the last ten years. What’s your vision for the future of Splendour?

Jess: Part of the reason for our move to Woodford is that it’s allowed us to steer the festival in a direction that’s quite different from Belongil Fields, and much closer to our vision. Which is a camping festival. Ideally we’d like to camp everyone on-site. The format this year is that gates open at 4pm on Thursday and don’t close until 12pm [on Monday]. You’re creating a city; your own experience. We weren’t able to do that at Belongil Fields, as we didn’t have the space to do it. It’s pretty satisfying being here now, and seeing where the festival has come, ten years down the track.

Paul: Jess and I have had this ambition: we are fans, and have been patrons of the great festivals of the world. The Glastonburys, the Coachellas, and so many great camping events around the world. We didn’t really think that Australia had one. Our aspirations are to build an event that’s of that global standard. Something that Australia can hold up as its globally-recognised festival. That’s another thing that we’re aiming to get to, and we think we get a little closer every year.

[Audience questions begin]

Q: I’m wondering about the numbers. What capacity did you have ten years ago, and now, is it like a ‘big Australia’ policy? Or do you have a good level of people now? Have you felt at any stage during the ten years that, “Oh shit, that was a bit big that time.”

Paul: The first year was 7,500. There was a little bit of a joke among the international agents and booking community. When we were starting out, not everybody knew us, but they were like, “Oh, you’re the festival that sold out, but still lost money!” [laughs] That’s what happened in year one, because we weren’t very good at budgeting, obviously. We sold all our tickets and went, “Shit, we don’t have enough money to pay bills.” It started out at 7,500, and I think I’ll let Jess take the second part of the question.

Jess: I guess there’s a financial reality that what we’re hoping to present costs money. All of the different areas that we’ve brought to this particular site cost money. The only way we can afford to pay for that is through ticket sales. But there has to be a good balance between economics and an experience for those coming to the show. There’s certainly been times at Belongil Fields where we’ve had crowd flow issues, and a general sense from people that there’s too many people at the show. We’ve tried to re-assess that in the following years. We might try and tighten up our guestlist, and try and open up more space. So there’s ways to do that. It’s very difficult once you set a precedent, in terms of what you’re doing with a festival, to move the costs backwards. The reality is, the show will suffer if you start reeling in the costs.

Q: So you can only get bigger?

Jess: No, but I’d have to say our vision in the long-term is to develop a program. And by developing the program, you’ll have to pay for it, so there’ll be more people. I think that the festival really is at about 50% of where we see it, and I don’t mean that in terms of capacity, but in terms of what we want to present. We want to have different musical genres. We’d like it to appeal to people between the ages of six to 60. We’ve started upgrading the kids area; we want there to be a kids festival. All of that costs money.

Paul: To touch on it, too, a lot of people primarily come here for the four or five particular acts, but it is this, [the forum] that we’re doing right now. This isn’t a revenue raiser. This isn’t something that takes money out of your pocket. These are the kinds of thing that we see increasing the vitality of the event, like Jess said. If you’re a parent, or will hopefully one day have the pleasure to be, we’ll have a giants kids area. That’s something we want to grow. We want to grow the forum; this is the first year we’ve had it. We’ll watch this over the weekend and if it’s great, we’ll grow it. These things cost; a lot of people work this show 300 days of the year. For your three days of enjoyment, there’s 300 days of wages to pay. We try to keep that fine balance between expanding the vision, but maintaining the amount of people we need – and the ticket price – to keep it relevant.

Q: How many thousand do you have this year?

Paul and Jess [simultaneously]: 32.

Q: Is that about what you’re comfortable with? What about 40,000 [next year]?

Paul: It’s hard. We don’t know. It’s one of those things where, usually, Jess and I will sit down, have an argument over a vision, then we’ll work back form the vision until we hit a budget. Sometimes those things get shot down; sometimes we go, “You know, that’s doable.” So just saying an arbitrary figure – “will you have 40,000 next year?” – is irrelevant, because we don’t know what we’re going to add, or what we’re going to expand.

Jess: We also need to see this show happening here for a few days, to have an opinion on how well this space can cope with what we’ve done this year. It’s definitely an intention for us to keep it intimate. That’s one great thing about this site, with all its different areas, to a degree there’s intimacy there. At the same time, you need a space to present the big acts, so that everyone can see them if they want to. We don’t know what we’ll do next year. We’re just going to try and get through this weekend.

Paul: We’ll likely be here next year. For 2012, we’re not sure yet.

Q: I’m Lou, and I’m from Melbourne. I’d like to know a bit more about why you’ve come to Woodford from Byron this year. Why did you move; what are some of the politics behind it?

Jess: There were two reasons for the move. This venue gave us the opportunity to present the show in a format that we wanted. In Byron, there’s currently not anywhere we can do that. And we also had the instant support of Bill Hauritz, the director of the Woodford Folk Festival, and the council, which was very appealing. And the other reason for the move was in reaction to a draft events policy that Byron Council were creating, which was going to limit the size, length and location of events [in Byron]. We were already feeling like we’d outgrown Belongil, and we really wanted to present some new areas for the show. It was more about survival.

Paul: Space was one of the primary concerns. Returning to the previous question about having an expansive vision, we simply ran out of room at Belongil Fields.

Q: I’m Gus from Perth. This is my first year at Splendour. We actually did a road trip from Byron, which is quite amusing, because it was the original home. I’ve got two questions. Paul, are you a perfectionist? If so, how do you deal with all of the stress that’s involved with running a function of this size?

Paul: I would say that we’re both very driven to detail. Jess has a different set of criteria to me, but the visual image of the festival is definitely more her bag. The attention to detail and the level of perfection that goes into that, as you know when you look around, that’s where that goes. How do I deal with stress? I’ve got a pretty stressful job. I run a record label [Dew Process], I do this, and I manage bands. Between all that, I just… let it go over. I just do what I an, and try not to freak out too much. Occasionally I fail, and have a meltdown, but generally I just make a list, try to smile through it, tick boxes and plow through. Otherwise, I don’t really know. Take multivitamins, they’re very good for you.

Gus: The second question leads in from the first. This is more of a gossipy questions. You don’t have to name any names, but obviously when you’ve got so many people that are a part of this event, you’re going to get let down. Is there any good goss you can hit us with about people who’ve absolutely left you floundering, where you’ve just gone “never again”?

Paul: We were very disappointing with Jane’s Addiction not showing [in 2009]. We caught Whitley with a golf buggy out on the main road. He was very drunk. I don’t think we’ve ever been let down catastrophically by anyone. Let’s just say that there’s almost too many to mention. You add 30,000-odd people, a thousand artists, three days of drinking, fun and food, and people do silly things. Nothing immediately comes to mind. I’ll come back to you if I think of anything.

Gus: On a more positive and less gossipy note, what are some of the bands that stand out as highlights?

Paul: Was it two years ago that Band Of Horses first played? [Audience confirms] When they played ‘Funeral’, that was probably the highlight and the lowlight for one particular song at the festival. I was so moved and emotional, I started to well up. That was the highlight, obviously. The lowlight was watching a lot of the road crew looking at me, going “what the hell is he crying about?” I was just standing there, crying. That was a great moment.

I was very proud the first time that Coldplay played [in 2003]. That was a coup for us, considering the size of festival we were at the time. The Grates have always had great sets here, I’ve always enjoy watching them.

Jess: The Flaming Lips last year was pretty awesome. Sigur Rós [in 2008] was a very left-field performance. We took a bit of a risk by putting them so high up the bill, on the main stage, as not a lot of people know their stuff. But it was such a phenomenal moment. I felt very proud of us; we did something that’s less obvious. I’m a huge fan of TV On The Radio, so I thought their main stage performance [in 2006] was a knock-out. And unfortunately, the one band I wanted to see two years ago was Band Of Horses, and I didn’t get to see one song. So I’m hoping that there are three or four bands that I’ll get to see this year, and that I won’t get dragged off to, you know, check out some portaloos overflowing somewhere and actually get to watch some bands.

Actually, I know a pretty funny experience. Brian Wilson…

Paul: [laughs] Oh yeah, this is good.

Jess: Brian Wilson played Splendour [in 2006] and I was smoking cigarettes at the time. I was standing side of stage. I’d had a drink. I was with my partner, we were chatting away. All of a sudden the side of stage crowd parted, and started looking at us. Brian Wilson pointed at me and said, “You are smoking. Stop smoking. I’m going to stop playing if you don’t stop smoking.” The whole 15,000 people in the tent were looking at me; I didn’t know what was going on.

Paul: I thought he was joking. I thought it was part of his banter, the old man jokey rant. But after about 20 seconds we realised, no, he was waiting for her to stub it out. [laughs]

Jess: And he just didn’t let it go for the whole set. I actually had to leave the side of stage. I couldn’t watch any more of the performance. I was quite traumatised by it.

Paul: Oh, another really proud moment for us. We’re also the concert promoter for Bloc Party in Australia. From their first tour, we’ve done all their shows, not just at Splendour but around the country. That’s one that we’ve really used for the festival. We’ve really brought them up – well, they write amazing music and have huge amounts of fans and hits, so it’s not all our doing – but how they’re perceived in the live arena. [Australia] is one of the biggest per-capita live markets in the world for them. So that’s something else we’re both pretty proud of, and a band we both love immensely.

Jess: Oh, watching The Vines play when they were our mystery band [in 2006]. I do all the agenting for The Vine. It’s been a long road; there are highs and lows, lots of cancellations along the way. [In 2006] they hadn’t played in a long time, and we were a bit anxious about how they were going to be. Craig [Nicholls, The Vines singer] doesn’t handle pressure very well. But it was fantastic watching them play, and pull off a great show.

Paul: [With The Vines] it’s always going to be a spectacle, one way or the other. Either an amazing show, or it’s not.

Q: Epic line-up this year. How do you decide who plays, and who doesn’t?

Paul: We fight, short answer. Like brother and sister, cats and dogs sometimes. Because we have a pot of money, right. It’s like this: put you and your best friend in a room, and you go, “OK, we’ve got this much money to spend on the ultimate line-up,” and then you start arguing. So it goes back and forth, and through attrition we agree on things. Sometimes one of us gets lucky over the other, because we both want something and my option’s not available, or Jess’ is, and I go “well, we’ll have to take that then.”

Jess: But in saying that, there’s a lot that we agree on.

Paul: Yeah, we do. We ultimately agree.

Q: Who wanted what this year?

Paul: Let’s see. The Strokes have been on our list forever. So have The Pixies, but they’d just been here [in Australia], so we agreed on that. Temper Trap I erred Jess toward, a little bit; maybe the other way around for Florence [+ The Machine]. LCD [Soundsystem], Jess was a slam dunk, I didn’t even bother. That was definitely something she was big on.

Jess: We really put a concerted effort in. We started booking the line-up about six months before we announced the show.

Paul: In October/November last year, we were making lists, and negotiating deals overseas. Before Christmas this year we’ll be overseas again, probably making two or three trips around LA, New York and London, booking talent for next year.

Jess: So to buy a band, you should go and sit in the agent’s office, and see what they’ve got available. Often what they’ve got available is based on whether they’ve got a new record coming out. So there’s that, but there’s also a hitlist which, for instance, The Flaming Lips, The Strokes and Pixies are probably three that have always been on the list and we don’t care if there’s a new record or not, we just want them to play.

Paul: There’s quite a few still on the list. But we won’t tell you who they are.

Q: Band Of Horses were on everybody’s lips last year after their set. It was a little bit of a surprise, I don’t think everybody expected that going in. To hazard a guess, have you got any idea of who might be on everybody’s lips after these three days? Someone who’s a little less obvious, maybe?

Paul: Well, there’s a lot of bands on that are huge, but not everybody’s seen. Like Mumford [& Sons] and Florence, not everybody caught when they first toured because they were quite small, so I think they’ll be pretty big.

Jess: Personally, I think Surfer Blood are worth checking out. After The Strokes, I’m most excited about seeing Alberta Cross, who’re on Paul’s label. Yeasayer. The Magic Numbers…

Paul: I saw Band Of Skulls at SXSW this year, and that was a thing for me. I think they’ll do really well in this country. Their sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne have sold out. There’s a real buzz in the live community about them. They’ll go on to be a bigger band, so I’d make sure people saw them.

Q: Out of your budget, how much money do you have to fork out for your headline acts, like say The Strokes, or The Pixies?

Paul: We can’t really say the specific fee, but it would be safe to say that the line-up of talent for the show is in the multi, multi millions of dollars. Just to give you some idea, it’s our biggest cost – and believe me, tents, fences, staff, they don’t come cheap – but still, talent is… We spent a lot of money on the line-up. For us, it’s [the] core of what we do. We probably could have taken 10 bands off this bill and substituted them out with cheaper options, but it’s not in our style. We start out with a utopian line-up, and we try to make it affordable for us.

Jess: To give you some perspective, we set a budget to spend on bands. This year, we spent $1.5 million over that budget. And I mean, that money has to come from somewhere, so we were just really intent on creating the best line-up that we could.

Paul: The feedback that we’ve got on the line-up has been immense, this year. It’s pretty gratifying, too, because we were moving site, we had a history in Byron Bay… It really felt to us that the line-up was so strong that everybody was going to come with us [to Woodford]. And you did, which is great. But part of the thinking, too, was that it was our tenth birthday and we were in a new location, and we wanted to make it a special year. It was worth every penny. Well, we haven’t seen it all yet, but we’re hoping it’s worth every penny.

Q: G’day, I’m Melissa. I’m wondering with the change in location, what – if any – support you guys got from the Queensland Folk Federation?

Jess: Well Bill Hauritz, the director of the Queensland Folk Federation, has been a friend for many, many years, and just a fantastic supporter of the arts in general. When we were in this quandary about how we could develop the festival, and also feeling frustrated by the Byron Council’s draft events policy, Woodford physically is exactly the property we’d like to be on. Knowing Bill, we just rang him and said, “This is a kind of crazy question, but are you interested in having us?” And the timing for them; if we’d asked the year before, they wouldn’t have been ready to accommodate us. Bill, Amanda and all the people who work on the Woodford Folk Festival have moved heaven and earth to welcome us here. They’ve been so incredibly supportive. They’ve been really integral to allowing us, and not trying to restrict what it is that we wanted to present. And allowing us to stick a yacht in the dam ['Ibeefa'] and running with us on some of the crazy ideas we come up with.

Q: Are there other events that you get inspiration from, or model your event on?

Jess: Plagiarism’s rife.

Paul: I went to Burning Man [held in the Black Rock Desert, Navada] a couple of years ago, and their arts program is off the hook. I had ideas from that. Jess travelled to Glastonbury, Coachella…even little ones, not just big ones. See something that works! Go, “Hey, wow, great idea. Look at that! A mobile lemonade stand for people who’re standing in the queue,” or whatever it might be that you think is a good idea.

Jess: Then you go and take photos of it, and come back, and try and call it your own. [laughs]

Paul: To go back to the Band Of Horses questions, I’ve just been having a look at the line-up. Delphic, I think could have a really big set. Also, Two Door Cinema Club are amazing. The Drums, amazing live. Frightened Rabbit. LCD. Oh, and early reports – because we’re the promoter of Foals, who’ve done shows in Adelaide and Melbourne in the last few days – which went crazy. Nuts. They all sold out, so you’ll have to check out Foals as well.

Q: Just regarding what you were just saying about good ideas. I thought the whole exchanging a used can for a dollar off a drink was a really good idea. Was it just costs that made you rethink that?

Paul: I’ll explain what it was, then I’ll let Jess answer why we’re not doing it this year, because that’s the easy part and she’ll have the hard part. What happened in the past was that we put a $1 surcharge on a drink item, so if it was $6, you paid $7 for it, but there was inherent value, then, of the dollar in a can. So if you returned the can to a recycling station, you’d get a $1 drink ticket back. So you could technically accumulate 10 or 15 cans, and go get enough money to pick up a couple of drinks. That was the system, and it did keep the site very clean.

Jess: This site is quite complicated for us. We were really stretching our resources just trying to accommodate such a large amount of people in the campgrounds. That [can system] is quite complicated. It has so many ramifications beyond putting a cost on the drink ticket, which is everything from staffing it t, to making it work for people. And also, while it’s a great initiative, a lot of people object to even the idea that their drink seems a dollar more expensive. They can’t wrap their head around the fact that it’s only paid once, and they can actually get it back in the long-term. So we went, “look, let’s just try to get the show right,” and then hopefully we’ll look at all of those issues and we’ll try and do it next year. We certainly haven’t let it go, we’ve just put it on ice for a while.

Paul: And just to elaborate a little bit on that, too. Once again, consumer sentiment might have been guys drinking beer going, “well, a beer is a dollar extra,” but we’re not bringing that money in any more. We’ve had to divert a lot of money, obviously, into an increased cleaning bill. Everything gets recycled, regardless of whether you guys were picking it up and getting a bargain, or a cleaner’s picking it up, it’s all going to be recycled. But it was just a change of the balance, to see if we could make more people satisfied by not having a more expensive drink. The reality was, the majority were paying for the minority to pick up the cans. Which could work, but I guess maybe the majority weren’t satisfied with paying additional money for their drinks.

Q: Just with the mid-strength alcohol laws in Queensland, how’s that been?

Jess: You know, it’s incredibly disappointing. We went to inordinate lengths to meet with licensing to try and beg and plead to get full-strength. It’s not something we’ve had to do before. The reality is that we’re in Queensland, and to a degree, we have to toe the line with what licensing want to give us. That said, we’ve had some really great wins, like at the wine bar, you can buy a bottle of wine, and we’ve been able to operate quite late hours, as well. In many ways, we’re running longer hours than we were at Belongil Fields. But yeah, it’s a pain in the arse.

Q: Many of the ideas that come into the festival, are a lot of them the Splendour team’s ‘brain children’, or do a lot of outside people who want to run cool stuff come to you?

Paul: Both, I think, is the answer. Under us, and predominately under Jess, there’s a raft of event managers – partners, almost – across all different areas: environmental stuff, décor, theming, running different areas. They all bring IP to the mix, and how it can be improved. They’re all fairly proactive. We get pitched all the time. We do have resources that we offer back out to the community, and we have artists pitch to us. Those kind of things come from outsiders. But we also have funding with which we deliberately engage other artists, which Jess might want to talk about.

Jess: I just want to go back to our managers. A lot of them are very involved in the show. They come up with some awesome ideas. One of them is the boat in the dam ['Ibeefa'], which started out as, “How about we do a piss-take on Ibiza and make it as cheesy as we possibly can?” And we’re all like, “Yeah! Let’s embrace it, let’s create this little world.” A lot of the things around the site are ideas that people have come to us with, and we’ve developed them. I think that’s why we have such a great team, because everyone really feels like they can bring things into fruition. It’s certainly not Paul and I sitting here, coming up with everything. There’s a lot of people contributing.

On the artwork front, we’re constantly fielding ideas, whether they come through our website, or people who know people associated with the event. If some of those ideas are good, we’ll embrace it. It does get to the point now, though, where our program is so complicated that we physically can’t do everything, so we’re going to have to work out a way to keep engaging in those ideas, and to develop them. Which just means more people to organise it, really.

Paul: Do you want to talk about [the arts program] Splendid?

Jess: We were spending quite a lot of money on our arts program, for many years. We had this great bloke, Steven Alderton, who’s the director of the Lismore Regional Gallery and a bit of a mover and shaker in the arts world. He saw what we were doing and approached the Australia Council, and said “These guys are sinking truckloads of money into the arts, we should collaborate with and fund them for a couple of years”. So what came out of that is we’re spending $150,000, and they’re spending $450,000 and counting to present three years of collaborations in this artist workshop. There are three on site this year, I don’t know if you guys have seen them. There’s the [giant inflatable] ‘up yours’ hand; there’s the ‘best time ever’, which is a stairwell and sundial up on the hill; and ‘where the party’s at’, which is a balloon installation. We still fund other aspects of the arts program.

Paul: So those joint arts projects are also a way to bring up to Splendour, that we’ve funded jointly with your taxpayers’ dollars, through the Australia Council, and then also those works get to be seen by people not necessarily at Splendour. They can tour those works to other festivals around Australia, or around the world. So there’s a program that’s internal, then there’s a kind of, if you want, a ‘give back’ aspect to it, where those works can go on and have lives, and have other people enjoy them.
Q: I’ve heard the Government is going to invest some money into developing the site. I just wondered what kind of plans there are.

Jess: Are you talking about the $3 million that was announced yesterday?

Q: Yeah, I heard it on the news.

Jess: So if the Labor government win the next federal election, they’ve pledged to give $3 million to Woodfordia, to help upgrade their site. I can’t really speak on behalf of Woodfordia, because the money’s going to them, not to us. But from what I read in the press release, it would go towards putting in more permanent toilets, showers, upgrading roads, sewerage and power. All those kind of things that you guys don’t really notice, that make it much easier to run events. So let’s hope the Labor government wins, and Woodford will be a better site.

Q: Hi there, my name’s Ros. Can you please let us know what’s happening with the site you guys purchased outside of Byron? Where are things at there? Is that under the Byron Shire Council still?

Paul: We have a property – 620-odd acres – at Yelgun, as some people know. We bought that property after some consultation with the Byron Shire Council. As we went through the approvals process, I think the Byron Shire Council changed their opinion, potentially, about the viability of it. We went through the Land and Environment Court, and there was a zoning issue with some land that made the Council’s approval null and void. It got a little sticky at that point, going forward, and got to be a bit of a political hot potato, wouldn’t you say, in Byron Bay?

Jess: I guess we lost the support of Council when there were a very vocal minority who were opposed to us being at that particular site. I think if you break it down, their objections are really based on that they don’t want to live next door to it. I can completely understand; who would want to live next door to a festival site?

Paul: These people might, the festival-goers.

Jess: We have had the support of Byron Council, and they did approve our trial event, and then we lost over a technicality in court. Since then, the [NSW] state government took on the application and they realised the potential that [Splendour] and other events could bring to that particular region, and so our application for an events venue is about to be lodged with state government in the next week. We’ve spent years putting it together, and a lot of time working on everything from the ecology, to traffic, to noise; it’s a fantastic project, and that will then sit with the Department of Planning for probably six months, and we’ll get a response then as to whether they’ll let us operate back in Byron.

Q: I came in a little late. Just wondering, are you guys here again next year?

Paul: We think so.

Q: Hi guys, Andrew from Mess+Noise. I want to ask you about Brisbane sideshows. Aside from Goldfrapp, and more recently The Pixies, it seems that Brisbane tends to miss out on sideshows. Why is that, and do you see that changing in the future?

Paul: The why is that generally most of the Splendour audience comes from Brisbane, so to keep the exclusivity of our event, we will often not announce sideshows. One of things that we’ve found in the past, also, is that due to Brisbane being a smaller city than some of the others, the ticket trends for bands who did do sideshows were pretty bad. Brisbane could be, for certain acts, quite risky. So it was a combination of making sure that, for the Brisbane market, Splendour was seen as an exclusive opportunity to see those bands, and also a way of taking out a certain element of risk. Will it change in the future? I don’t see it changing radically. A couple of bands did it because they were under exceptional circumstances, so we permitted it. Our policy to this date, is to not [allow Brisbane sideshows].

Like many countries. I know a lot of acts who go and play Glastonbury, or V Fest in the UK, those are their only UK shows, full stop. They don’t play any other cities at all. I know it frustrates music fans in Brisbane, but it’s a slippery slope if we start doing shows in Brisbane, then you’ll probably start off a chain reaction of people who, when Splendour goes on sale, waiting to see which sideshows are announced before they buy a ticket, and then Splendour might not sell out. It’s a chain reaction that we’re probably not too game to experiment with at this point.

Andrew: Have you considered a contractual clause wherein, if Splendour does sell out, then you can announce sideshows?

Paul: Yes, but then people learn to expect that.

Jess: We have done some Brisbane sideshows, but they just don’t work. The reality is that we’ve lost money on every single show we’ve done in Brisbane, because the majority of people come to Splendour. I think if there was a huge demand, and shows were selling out, we would probably run with it. The reality is that there’s just not [a demand].

Paul: The Pixies playing at The Zoo, that would sell out in a heartbeat. They wanted that as a warm-up date, to physically grace the stage before they hit the big stage. I don’t even know if Goldfrapp has sold out; they’re playing The Tivoli. If it hasn’t, that would be an indicator as to what we’re trying to explain.

Q: Looking at the timetable, at a clash like Foals and Yeasayer at the same time, is there a reason you do that so early in the day?

Paul: You know, can I just say that if that bothers you, we’d switch it out, but then it’d bother someone else. We can’t make everybody happy with scheduling. It’s just a fact. We needed LCD Soundsystem to be in the Mix Up Tent at the same time as whoever in the main Amphitheatre, so that we don’t have 35,000 people trying to get into the Amphitheatre at the one time. It’s a safety responsibility.

Jess: It’s just a reality of a festival. You’re going to have overlaps, unfortunately. We really try and keep each act in mind when we’re placing them, and also, some can only play on a certain days because they’re got international obligations. So suddenly you’ve got acts of the same size that you need to put on.

Paul: We have bands that fly out tomorrow [Saturday] to go and play Fuji Rock in Japan on Sunday, so those bands all have to be on the Friday. As Jess said, if they’re of a similar size and they need to be off-site tonight a certain time, we don’t really have much choice.

Q: My name’s Calvin, I’m one of the Splendid artists. I came a bit late, but what’s your reasons for not making this a touring festival? It’s obviously one of the best organised festivals going around. Why have you chosen not to tour it?

Jess: Because it takes us a year to organise this show. Turning it into a touring festival would mean that we’d have to stretch our resources to different cities. I’d rather make this the biggest, the best, the most fabulous experience, [rather] than water it down to make five or six [events] around the place. Also, I’ve been doing events for a long time, and Paul as well, and I just don’t have the energy to do that many shows. It’s fucking exhausting.

Paul: Can I just add: this is untourable. It’s just not tourable. Jess has been on-site for three weeks, I’ve been here for two weeks. There’s people doing works out here, prepping, weeks and weeks in advance. I mean, it’s a mini-city. We have a police station, we have a fire brigade base here, we have a couple of ambulances. We have 38 electricians, 22 plumbers. It’s a city. It’s a little town. You just can’t tour little towns.

Monique: To finish up, what inspired you to introduce the Forum element to Splendour this year?

Jess: I just wanted for all the fun things out there, for there to be some kind of serious platform at the show, and an opportunity; even for us to be here, to be able to answer the questions that must drive you nuts, like the question about timetable clashes, which must shit you up the wall. To have the opportunity to answer those kind of questions is great. We’re trying to have a bit more of a dialogue, rather than people just coming here, having a drink and seeing some bands, if we can extend that experience for them, to talk about it; that’s why we’re here, and why [the Forum] is of interest to us. And if there’s 100 or 200 people sitting here, listening to what we’ve got to say, that’s a success to us. That’s worth persisting with.

Paul: Absolutely.

Brisbane City Council LIVE story: Penelope Bell

Each quarter, the Brisbane City Council pulish LIVE, a free pocket guide to arts, culture and entertainment events that take place throughout the city.

I was contracted to edit the copy for the 64-page July-September 2010 issue of LIVE, as well as writing a profile of Penelope Bell, an emerging Brisbane fashion designer who was one of the recipients of a $20,000 Lord Mayor’s Young And Emerging Artists Fellowship.

Click the below image for a closer look at the Penelope Bell profile, or read the article text underneath.

In Focus: Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowship
by Andrew McMillen

The seed of inspiration was planted when Penelope Bell witnessed Elizabeth Harrison, CEO of New York-based luxury brand agency Harrison and Shriftman, speak at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival in August last year.

Not long after this experience Bell discovered the Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowship, a grant for creatives under 30 years looking to develop their careers through international training, development and mentorship programs. In her application, she described an internship with Harrison’s agency as her dream role.

Earlier this year, dream became reality for the 25-year old Toowong resident, who, like the three other fellowship recipients, will benefit greatly from the opportunity to gain professional experience within her chosen field. In September, Bell will travel to New York to participate in a three month internship with Harrison and Shriftman.

The young designer completed an Advanced Diploma in Textiles, Clothing and Footwear in 2006 before starting the Penelope Bell fashion label; boutiques across the city have routinely sold out of Bell’s bespoke designs;

Bell’s drive and dedication to the Brisbane creative industries impressed the fellowship’s judges. The majority of her $20,000 award will be put toward flights, rent and living expenses for her three month internship. Upon returning to Brisbane, Bell aims to put these newfound branding and marketing techniques into practice by overhauling her label’s luxury product line and broadening her market scope to encompass international buyers.

“The fellowship’s not just for me,” Bell says, “It’ll ultimately benefit other local designers because I’m hoping to help build up the fashion industry here in Brisbane by passing on what I learn and experience as a result of the fellowship.”

The Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowship isn’t just awarded to fashion designers, though. Bell’s fellow 2010 fellowship recipients include Sally Golding of West End, a moving image artist and curator undertaking mentorships in London and the Netherlands; Clare McFadden of Bardon, a community cultural producer who’ll travel to Italy to learn international best practices for engaging children in the arts; and Sherwood resident Jillian McKeague, an arts curator and producer who will undertake a 21-week mentorship at the London International Festival of Theatre.

The Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowship focuses on supporting Brisbane’s young artists and artsworkers to realise their dreams and their full potential.

To view the LIVE program online, visit the Brisbane City Council website. According to BCC, LIVE is an “innovative, socially inclusive and diverse program of arts and cultural events that includes music, festivals, cultural activities and community projects”. You can pick up a copy from culturally-relevant stores throughout Brisbane.

Mess+Noise report: Splendour In The Grass 2010

I attended this year’s three-day Splendour In The Grass music festival on behalf of Mess+Noise. My friend Justin Edwards took photos; I’ve included a couple below. You can read an excerpt of my work below, and follow the links underneath through to the full report, which is split into two parts.

Splendour 2010: Day One

ANDREW MCMILLEN reports on day one of Splendour In The Grass as it makes its Woodfordia bow. Photos by JUSTIN EDWARDS.

Our decision to arrive at Woodfordia – Splendour’s new site after 10 years at Belongil Fields in Byron Bay – around midday on Thursday proved wise. Those less punctual were subject to queues that stretched back a reported 10 kilometres as security checked vehicles for booze. Upon winding down car windows, our friendly guard tried scare tactics.

“Where’s the booze?” he demanded.
“Pardon?”
“It’s easier to give it up now than face a potential fine of up to $1000,” he began, while his offsiders began rummaging through our vehicle. They came up empty-handed.

A great many passed these tests, however, judging by the amount of “BYO” consumption that occurred throughout the weekend. Note to self: never underestimate the human capacity to do whatever it takes to get fucked up.

These initial difficulties were seemingly compounded by the fact that the venue’s only public entrance is via a single road. Perhaps the venue could benefit from multiple entrances? Just a thought.

Once safely inside, Thursday was spent setting up camp in cowpat-littered paddocks and becoming familiar with the festival grounds. Gates eventually opened at 4pm. Though the Thursday evening program was limited – none of the three bigger stages were operating, though the smaller Temple Stage hosted some live acts and DJ sets until 3am – it provided our first glimpse of the festival’s new home.

Read part one in full on Mess+Noise.

Splendour 2010: Days Two-Three

ANDREW MCMILLEN reports on the final two days of the Splendour In The Grass festival, which sees stellar sets from Cloud Control and The John Steel Singers and a disappointing finale from The Vines. Photos by JUSTIN EDWARDS.

Day Two: Saturday, July 31

A 10am “Women Of Letters” event proves surprisingly popular among the bleary-eyed and literary-minded. Hosted by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, the gathering features the likes of Paul Kelly, Clare Bowditch and Jake Stone (of bluejuice) orating letters to songs they wish they’d written. Later, Wil Anderson chairs a panel discussion on social media and privacy. All of the forum events are lively, inspiring and, at the very least, entertaining. Full marks to organisers for coordinating such cerebral activities among the frivolity.

Read part two in full on Mess+Noise. Justin’s photo gallery is here.

The Weekend Australian story: ‘Tales Of The City’

A story for The Weekend Australian’s Review: a profile of Brisbane author and journalist Matthew Condon [pictured below], framed around his latest book, Brisbane. An excerpt from the published story is below.

Tales of the City

by Andrew McMillen

Matthew Condon’s literary ‘love letter’ to Brisbane is set to reignite debate about the Queensland capital’s historical origins.

HOW does one write a book that captures a whole city? This is the question that confronted Queensland writer Matthew Condon, who describes the opportunity to write Brisbane, the second book in publisher NewSouth’s series devoted to Australian capital cities, as the “singular most simplistic, liberating brief that I’ve ever received”.

Commissioning editor Philippa McGuinness told Condon to approach the book any way he wished, “which on the one hand is brilliant”, says the author, “but on the other, when you come down to writing [it], trying to put your arms around an entire city, it was very difficult. I deliberated for months and months: how do you go about it? Then I decided that it really is impossible to do it thoroughly. It would be endless. The city is organic. It’s constantly shifting and changing. So I had to give myself limitations.”

Eventually, Condon decided to ground his book in an examination of the location where explorer John Oxley first landed on the Brisbane River in 1824. “I decided, ‘Look, I’m going to go to where X marks the spot, where Oxley came ashore. That’s the Caucasian history of the city. I’ll start there, and I’ll see where it takes me’.” Notebook and camera in hand, the author visited the granite monument. Located at North Quay, which was erected to celebrate the centenary of Oxley’s landing, he says “it’s possibly the most unimaginative foundation stone of any city in the Western world . . . I stood there with the traffic roaring on both sides, and something about it struck me as wrong.”

Full story available on The Australian’s website.

If you have any interest in the story behind the Queensland capital, I highly recommend checking out Condon’s Brisbane.

This was a particularly enjoyable feature to write, as Matthew is one of my favourite feature writers – I hold his work for The Courier-Mail’s QWeekend magazine in high regard.