All posts tagged scene

  • A Conversation With Yannis Philippakis of Foals, 2010

    I interviewed Yannis Philippakis [pictured right], singer/guitarist of the British pop act Foals, for Scene Magazine in late December 2010, ahead of their Australian tour as part of Laneway Festival 2011 (which I reviewed for The Vine).

    Our interview originally ran in condensed form as the cover story of Scene Magazine #811. Here’s the full interview transcript.

    Andrew: I’ve got a confession to make. [Foals’ second album] Total Life Forever is one of my favourite albums of 2010.

    Oh, thank you very much.

    I discovered [Foals’ 2008 debut album] Antidotes a couple of years ago, but Total Life Forever sounds like an entirely different band. I like this band more. Do you?

    Yannis: It’s not a different band…

    I know it’s not, but the sound definitely has changed quite a lot.

    Yeah. I mean, I don’t really like the idea of making albums adversary to each other. I find the whole ranking, hierarchy that happens every year kind of repellent and equally… I don’t really have the same perspective on it, obviously, as an externalist, but to us in the band it’s a very linear progression. It never really felt like we had a break, even after we finished Antidotes. I think the production is a hell of a lot more fully realised on Total Life Forever. At least to me, I still have a fondness for a lot of the songs on Antidotes, but I don’t listen to that record largely because of the production. I think that it’s great that people are acknowledging the progression, but to us it is one linear thing. We want to make a body of work. It’s not us trying to eradicate our past, as such.

    Was there any self-doubt within the band, when your style of song writing started shifting after Antidotes?

    There’s self-doubt every day. Of course. Not to do with writing new things, but there’s just… most of them comes from a wish to complete something that isn’t whole. Self-doubt is part of the game. It’s been there always and unless we write ‘Symphony No. 3’ by Gorecki – which we can’t, because it’s already been written – I don’t think we’re ever going to feel sated or complete. It’s just part of the fun as well, the masochistic element of it.

    The moment we stopped recording Antidotes, we started doing b-sides for Antidotes, it started to change a lot, and there was much more experimentation. We started to implement a lot of the things that we learned from Dave Sitek, and make stuff that I think actually bridges the two albums quite closely. There are some b-sides; one in particular called ‘Gold Gold Gold‘, and another two called ‘Titan Arum‘ and ‘Glaciers‘. That’s what I mean; it felt linear. It didn’t feel like we ever stopped, we just always worked on stuff.

    All that really happened was that, at the beginning when we started the band, there was a very definite and conscious process. It was a conscious aesthetic, that we wanted, and it was to do with techno, it was to do with a style of guitar playing, a visual aesthetic. Everything was very conscious and we wanted to have parameters on it. We were in love with the idea of bands like Devo that had a distinct world that they occupied.

    Everything since then, once we felt like we attained that, everything now is about undoing that process and getting to a point which is kind of the reverse of that, where nothing is conscious and if I had the choice, I’d have a lobotomy and cut out the conscious part of my mind, so that I could just make music direct from the gut. I don’t know. Did that answer your question?

    For sure. You mentioned the style of guitar playing the band has. I’ve always been fascinated by those little needly, palm-muted riffs that you guys come up with. Were there any particular artists that inspired that style of playing?

    I think it was just something that we heard. I think there are a lot of bands, a lot of styles of guitar or even just playing strings [instruments], everything from string players in a classical piece, to [‘math rock’] bands like OXES and Don Caballero, and African Senegalese guitar. I think the main thing, at least personally for me, there was something about that way of guitar playing that just attracted me. I was never that fascinated by chords, and I actually neglected to learn how to work chord sequences and stuff. Instead, everything became about these ‘guitar tattoos’. It was more I had a lot of different types of music and different types of bands and wanted to cannibalise it and make it our own.

    That’s always been a main bit of the band. We start playing stuff lower down the guitar. We play with chords sometimes now, but I think that will always be part of the sound because that is just the way that I play, naturally. It’s become muscle memory, now.

    It’s certainly one of the band’s most distinctive elements. Did you always intend that to be the case, or did it arise when you started playing together?

    You kind of progress, but yeah, it’s always been there, it predates the band. It’s how I learned how to play the guitar. I used to mimic and ape the guitar lines I liked, and they usually were like staccato, tight little phrases, that’s how I liked it. As I said, I was never really attracted to chords, or distortion pedals. I like the idea of a transparent guitar sound; a guitar sound that’s unashamed to be a clean guitar. I think that you can get as much power out of a clean guitar as you can out of a distorted guitar.

    You’ve been touring pretty heavily this year, as we discussed. You’ve played a lot of shows. I’m interested to know how you keep it sounding fresh and feeling fresh night after night.

    Just do loads of drugs, basically. That’s pretty much it. [laughs] Do you mean like the shows, or the actual lifestyle, or my body odour? What do you mean?

    The music. If you’re playing the same songs each night, does it feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over?

    It depends. I definitely think there’s a point at which bands stop touring and sometimes you can’t tell when that point is going to be, and you have to keep on playing for a bit longer. But that rarely happens. Each show is different, and we don’t play exactly the same set every night. Even if we were playing a similar set, we have quite a lot of room to improvise… well not improvisation, exactly, but we have negative space that we’re allowed to do different things. We allow space for chaos in the set, so that it’s not so tightly rehearsed, that it’s mechanical. It’s not choreographed, in that way.

    I think that helps keep it fresh. I get tired of touring sometimes, but it’s not really often to do with the shows, more to do with the kind of… I don’t know, I’d probably be able to answer that question later on in the year because we’ve still got two more tours [note: this interview was conducted in mid-December 2010]. At the moment I feel pretty good about playing. I’m starting to feel restless about writing new things. I’ve been writing so many things and I think the more that appetite opens, the more pedestrian touring seems in comparison. The further we get away from the completion of the last record, the more difficult touring becomes, I think. Not because of playing the same stuff, just because there’s a new appetite that emerges, of wanting to do things.

    When I was researching for this interview, I was surprised to discover your age. You’re two years older than I am. Was it a challenge to get people to take a bunch of teenagers seriously when the band first started?

    How old are you?

    22.

    What do you mean? For who to take us seriously?

    People in the music industry, as you were getting introduced to labels, and so forth.

    I don’t know. I think that for a lot of young bands, that’s when the prime is, sometimes. I think people are savvy to that in the music industry. They kind of want to feed off young blood. You have a naivety. You’re not jaded in any sort of way. I think, if anything, it wasn’t an issue of persuading them, it was more like trying to have them not suck our blood. I’m the youngest, but I wasn’t that young. We’ve all been playing in bands for a long time. I don’t know, I didn’t really feel that. I don’t feel as young as I used to, though.

    Do you feel that as you get older you’re being taken more seriously?

    It depends on what you mean. Are we talking about people that listen to records, are you talking about critics?

    All of the above.

    Yeah, I think so, in some way. I think the critics, there is something that make critics recoil if you seem like a young, cocky upstart. When we started doing interviews and stuff, I really didn’t have that much of a filter on my brain. A lot of time I really didn’t know where I was, in terms of how things would be relayed in the press. I think that with time comes an understanding. I understand myself better now. I think as you get older – what were you like when you were 19?

    I was a dumbass.

    [laughs] Things change. I think it’s not just to do with age. It’s to do with the fact that we made the second record, and hopefully it didn’t stink, and the people believe in you that little bit more because you’re not just putting out a hype record that, in theory, is a one-hit wonder, and also a compilation of songs that you spent 10 years to write. I think that we’ve conducted ourselves, at least since the beginning, in a way that we feel proud of, and hopefully people have a belief in a certain type of integrity – or an attempt at integrity – which will mean that we gain some respect in that field.

    Yeah, sure. Before we finish up, I wanted to ask you about Oxford briefly. Earlier this year I came across a documentary called Anyone Can Play Guitar, which I note you’re involved with. I’m particularly interested in Oxford because I love both Ride and Swervedriver.

    Right.

    When you were growing up in the city, was there a sense of wanting to follow in the footsteps of other Oxford bands like those two perhaps?

    Yeah, it wasn’t those two, but there were other ones. There was a band that was pretty much our contemporaries, but a little bit older: Youthmovies. Oxford definitely was like a big factor in the way we started to think about music. I obviously knew about Radiohead and Supergrass, but Ride and Swervedriver in particular, I wasn’t that aware of. When I was growing up I paid attention to local fledgling bands. Those bands [Ride and Swervedriver], I don’t think they were really playing Oxford when I was growing up, so I wasn’t that aware of them. A band called Youthmovies had pretty much the biggest influence on Oxford in general and people my age, and it’s still being felt now. I think it’s a very interesting place to live, if you’re not an academic.

    Is there a sense of being able to give something back to the scene that helped foster Foals, now that you’ve got some attention?

    Yeah, we take bands that we like on tour with us, and I try to talk about them in interviews. But not really out of a sense of… there’s nothing magnanimous about it, it’s just that we like the bands and a lot of them are our friends. I’d rather talk about my friends, because it’s more personal to me.

    Last question. A friend asked me to say “pretty please, will you leak the Dave Sitek mix of Antidotes?”

    [laughs] Ehh, maybe.

    Okay, good. Thanks for your time mate.

    A pleasure. Thank you.

    ++

    For more Foals, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘Blue Blood‘‘ is embedded below.

    Elsewhere: a review of their 2010 album, Total Life Forever, for The Vine.

     

  • Scene Magazine cover story: ‘Foals’, February 2011

    The cover story for issue 881 of Brisbane street press Scene Magazine – an interview with Yannis Phillippakis of Foals. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    Foals – Lobotimising Consciousness

    Oxford-born quintet Foals had a spectacular 2010. In May, they released their second album, ‘Total Life Forever’, which followed their 2008 debut, ‘Antidotes’. They toured the world, including extensive treks through North American and Europe, before playing Australia for the first time as part of the mammoth Splendour In The Grass line-up. Anyone who witnessed their set that weekend would testify it was one of the festival’s best sets.

    Over the years, the band’s sound has morphed from a danceable form of math rock, to a more refined style of indie pop best exemplified on ‘Spanish Sahara‘, ‘Total Life Forever’s beautiful centrepiece. Ahead of their appearance at the 2011 Laneway Festival, Scene connected with Foals’ singer, guitarist and lyricist, Yannis Philippakis.

    When I compare ‘Total Life Forever’ to what I first heard on ‘Antidotes’ a couple of years ago, the two sound like entirely different bands.

    I don’t really like the idea of making albums adversary to each other. I find the whole ranking, hierarchy thing that happens every year repellent. I don’t really have the same perspective on it, obviously, as an externalist, but to us in the band, it’s been a very linear progression. It never really felt like we had a break, even after we finished ‘Antidotes’. I think the production is a hell of a lot more fully realised on ‘Total Life Forever’. I still have a fondness for a lot of the songs on ‘Antidotes’, but I don’t listen to that record largely because of the production. I think that it’s great that people are acknowledging the progression, but to us it is one linear thing. We want to make a body of work. It’s not us trying to eradicate our past, as such.

    Was there any self doubt within the band when the band’s style of songwriting started shifting, after ‘Antidotes’?

    There’s self doubt every day; it’s part of the game. It’s been there always and unless we write ‘Symphony No. 3’ by Gorecki – which we can’t, because it’s already been written – I don’t think we’re ever going to feel sated or complete. It’s just part of the fun as well, the masochistic element of it. The moment we stopped recording ‘Antidotes’, we started doing b-sides for ‘Antidotes’, it started to change a lot, and there was much more experimentation. We started to implement a lot of the things that we learned from [TV On The Radio guitarist/’Antidotes’ producer] Dave Sitek, and make stuff that I think actually bridges the two albums quite closely.There are some b-sides; one in particular called ‘Gold Gold Gold‘, and another two called ‘Titan Arum‘ and ‘Glaciers‘. That’s what I mean; it felt linear. It didn’t feel like we ever stopped.

    When we started the band, it was a very definite and conscious process. We wanted a conscious aesthetic: it was to do with techno, with a style of guitar playing, and with a visual aesthetic. Everything was very conscious, and we wanted to have parameters on it. We were in love with the idea of bands like Devo, who occupied a distinct world. Once we felt like we attained that, everything is now about undoing that process, and getting to a point that’s almost the reverse of that: where nothing is conscious. If I had the choice, I’d have a lobotomy and cut out the conscious part of my mind, so that I could just make music direct from the gut.

    You mentioned your style of guitar playing. I’ve always been fascinated by Foals’ needly, palm-muted riffs. Were there any particular artists that inspired that style of playing?

    It was just something that we heard. There are a lot of styles of playing stringed instruments; everything from string players in a classical piece, to [math rock] bands like OXES and Don Caballero, and African Senegalese guitar. I think the main thing, at least personally for me, there was something about that way of guitar playing that just attracted me. I was never that fascinated by chords, and I actually neglected to learn how to work chord sequences and stuff. Instead, everything became about these ‘guitar tattoos’. I heard a lot of different types of music and different types of bands; I wanted to cannibalise [them] and make it our own. We start playing stuff lower down the guitar. We play with chords sometimes now, but I think that will always be part of the sound because that is just the way that I play, naturally. It’s become muscle memory, now.

    It’s certainly one of the band’s most distinctive elements. Did you always intend that to be the case, or did it arise when you started playing together?

    Yeah, it’s always been there, it pre-dates the band. It’s how I learned how to play the guitar. I used to mimic and ape the guitar lines I liked, and they usually were like staccato, tight little phrases. That’s how I liked it. As I said, I was never really attracted to chords, or distortion pedals. I like the idea of a transparent guitar sound; a guitar sound that’s unashamed to be a clean guitar. I think that you can get as much power out of a clean guitar as you can out of a distorted guitar.

    Foals play Laneway Festival, at Alexandria St off St Paul’s Terrace, this Friday February 4.

    For more Foals, visit their website. For the full transcript of my conversation with Yannis, click here.. The music video for Foals’ song ‘Miami‘ is embedded below.

    Elsewhere: a review of their 2010 album, Total Life Forever, for The Vine.

  • Junior ‘Issues’ story: ‘Concert ticket scalping in Australia’, October 2010

    Junior is a new street press started by the folks behind Scene Magazine here in Brisbane. 115,000 copies are distributed monthly throughout QLD, NSW and VIC.

    I was commissioned to write a feature for their first issue on the topic of concert ticket scalping. Click the image below for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    Issues: To Scalp Or Not To Scalp?

    No discussion associated with live music is as emotionally-charged as ticket scalping. Junior spoke to several key players within the live music industry to gauge their opinions on the issue.

    “It’s a difficult issue, as in some ways it is a free economy and the laws of supply and demand apply,” begins Chugg Entertainment managing director, Matthew Lazarus-Hall, whose company is currently touring acts like Gorillaz and Rufus Wainwright. “The greater challenge is: would the general public accept dynamic pricing from the start? Do people really care that someone paid more or less than the person they’re sitting beside?”

    Lazarus-Hall refers to the practice of changing prices at regular intervals – every few minutes, hours or days – based on actual consumer demand. Introducing dynamic pricing would mean that the quality of a seat directly correlates to the ticket price. In real world terms, it’d mean that those sitting closest to the stage opt to pay more, while those poor souls stuck in the nosebleed section would likely pay substantially less.

    This differs from the existing systems offered by Ticketek and Ticketmaster, wherein a flat rate is applied to all seats within particular sections, regardless of their distance from the stage. For example, ticket holders Row AA in section 42 of the Brisbane Entertainment Centre pay the same as those in row ZZ, despite the spatial difference.

    “There are about 20 different price types on a plane trip from Sydney to Melbourne,” Lazarus-Hall continues. “Same destination, same experience, and people do not care. Whereas at concerts, people are far more emotional and there’s a perception that the person sitting next to you should pay the same – except when scalping is involved.

    “Our preference is that scalping didn’t happen, as the artist misses out on the revenue. We do the best we can [to avoid scalping], but we do not need more legislation,” he concludes.

    National ticketing company Moshtix – who provide service for a wide range of music events, like Splendour In The Grass – welcomed a June 2010 Commonwealth Consumer Affairs Advisory Council (CCAAC) review into ticket scalping by conducting their own survey, which garnered responses from around 750 Australian gig-goers. Over half of respondents (54%) had purchased a ticket through an onseller; around a third (35%) had paid more than the market price.

    According to Adam McArthur, Moshtix general manager, there’s simply no need for scalping. “We’re against it, because we’ve found that, with the use of some technology tools, you can eradicate scalping without penalising the original ticket purchaser.” These tools include limiting paper ticket delivery by issuing tickets electronically; collecting the names and birthdates of attendees and verifying these details at the point of entry; and a resale facility, which allows ticket holders who can no longer attend events to securely return their ticket to the market.

    No such measures have been adopted by Australia’s two biggest ticketing companies, Ticketek and Ticketmaster.

    “If they’re not being pushed to do it, then why bother?” asks McArthur. “Both Ticketek and Ticketmaster haven’t been challenged in that large arena market for some time. They just keep offering the same services, because they don’t need to change.” Despite these frustrations, he disagrees with the notion of Government intervention. “Legislation is really difficult to enforce in this industry, so the best thing the Government could do is put some broad guidelines in place.” McArthur notes secure ticket delivery and resale facilities as his top two concerns.

    “The government question is hard,” admits the man behind Andrew McManus Presents, whose company is presenting forthcoming tours from Brian Wilson and Guns N’ Roses. For him, it’s more about “the need to make people aware of the risks of buying a scalped ticket, rather than trying to stop scalping.” McManus does point out, however, that he’s against the act of scalping for profit. “On a personal level, it’s unfair for those who line up, wait for hours and miss out on tickets due to some loser buying 50 and selling them on eBay for three times the price, just because he knows the fans will buy it. We put on shows for the fans, not for scalpers to make a buck.”

    Andrew McManus Presents always set a per-transaction ticket limit for their shows in an attempt to curb scalping. The ticket limit “varies from show to show, but is always in place. We also monitor eBay and other similar auction sites,” the promoter says. “Anyone found selling our tickets for profit runs the risk of being reported and having their listing removed, or even having their tickets cancelled. I don’t think sites like eBay should intervene on their own, but if a promoter tells them to take something down, they should. And for the most part, they’re pretty good at doing that for you.”

    “We do get the odd request from venue owners and promoters, but it’s very rare,” admits eBay Australia‘s Head Of Corporate Communications, Daniel Feiler. “Generally though, unless it’s legislated, we don’t remove the tickets. In Australia, there are laws in Victoria and Queensland around resale of certain types of tickets.”

    At present, the only Victorian event impacted is the AFL Grand Final, to which tickets cannot be sold above their face value. In Queensland, it’s unlawful to sell tickets for events held at eight venues – including the Brisbane Entertainment Centre and Suncorp Stadium – for above 10% of their face value.

    “If someone does sell a ticket that’s above 10% for an event where the legislation applies, it’s up to the Queensland Police,” says Feiler. “If they want information about either the buyer or seller of that particular trade, then we’ll provide them with the registration details of those people. Then it’s up to them to choose to make an arrest or issue a fine.”

    Feiler points out that, for a “blockbuster” event held at Suncorp Stadium – which holds around 52,000 people – typically, only a few hundred will end up on eBay.

    “That’s the story that people don’t necessarily hear about,” he says. “There’s an assumption that just because the tickets are being sold on eBay, they’re being sold above face value. Our experience has always been that if you put the tickets in the hands of genuine fans, they’re unlikely to sell them, as they desperately want to go to an event. It really comes down to the promoter, and whether they want to put the systems in place to make sure that genuine fans get tickets first. We don’t see it as eBay’s role to fix up an issue that may or may not be created by poor original distribution in the primary market.”

    Enough philosophising about this issue. Junior went straight to the source, and spoke with a pair of ticket resellers (or scalpers, depending on whether you consider it to be a pejorative term): one who operates on eBay, and one who doesn’t.

    Stuart Hamilton runs a full-time ticketing business under several eBay usernames , including Chilli Entertainment, though eBay accounts for only “a small part” of his customers; most of his business comes from corporate clients. At the time of writing, Hamilton has over 100 ‘buy it now or make an offer’ listings for events which range from concerts like U2, The Wiggles and Iron Maiden, to non-music events like the AFL Grand Final, The Footy Show and Robin Williams. Is the business profitable?

    “Yes and no. At the end of the day, I cover the over heads and make a good wage similar to a middle manager’s wage at any major company,” says Hamilton, who started the four-year old business after leaving his role as senior sales manager. His decision came at a cost: “I often do 10 hours a day on the computer, doing the shit that needs to be done. It’s high stress and high risk: you can lose thousands on a concert if you get it wrong. The trick to this game is to know when to cut your losses, quick. To be honest, I wonder if it’s all worth it at times, and I do have my eye open to new opportunities away from reselling.

    “Sometimes we get a big premium for an outstanding located seat,” he continues. “These are usually purchased by a wealthy person who just wants the best. But we don’t get many of the best tickets – maybe four or six per concert if we’re lucky – so we have to make the most of the ‘big hits’, as it’s not always roses.”

    To illustrate, he points to his tickets to Powderfinger in Perth, which he’s currently selling for half price ($49 each), thereby losing about $70 a ticket. “With 30 of them, that hurts,” he admits. Some of his customers are happy to pay $60-$120 more for a good ticket simply because they “don’t have the time to go through all the stress and headaches of purchasing from Ticketek, whose internet systems often crash during a big-event sale.”

    Hamilton seems content with his role as reseller. “We provide a good service for those who want convenience of purchase, and we’ll often get a better ticket than they could get themselves anyway. If it’s through a safe marketplace like eBay, 99% of the time, no-one will get ripped off. Let the fans have a choice: they don’t have to buy off a reseller, but they then have to make sure they make the effort to get their tickets early.”

    Several independent ticket brokers operate outside of the eBay realm, three of whom were publicly dissed by Suncorp Stadium general manager Alan Graham on brisbanetimes.com.au in mid-September: Red Circle, worldticketshop.com, and ticketfinders.com.au. Simon Williams, manager of the latter website, was none too pleased by being tagged by Graham as an “unscrupulous operator”.

    “We’re not a fake website,” he tells Junior. “We source and supply tickets to hundreds of clients every year, and fulfil our obligations every time. We do not rip anyone off.”

    At time of writing, Ticket Finders’ prices for access to the ‘sold out’ 8 December U2 concert in Brisbane range from $175 (general admission) to $950 (‘Red Zone’ area); face value for these tickets were $99 and $350, respectively. Their web form allows customers to request up to 50 tickets per section.

    “Call it scalping if you want, but ticket broking has been around as long as there’s been tickets for events. We operate in a free market based on capitalist ideals. What’s the difference between buying and selling houses and cars, and pieces of paper?” Williams asks. “I think it’s hysterical that people get so worked up about it. Of course, a ticket’s got more of an emotional attachment to it.”

    “We provide a service: people can’t find a ticket, then we’ll find it. We pay a premium ourselves to find it, and we charge a premium on top of that. It’s not any different to people buying and selling cars or houses, or any commodity. It’s not like we’re selling drugs or weapons.”

    For more information on Junior, visit their website – which, at the time of publishing this blog entry, is still under construction.

  • UnConvention Brisbane 2010, a grassroots music conference

    Twelve months ago, my friend Dave Carter came to me with a concept called UnConvention, which originated in the UK a couple of years ago. He described it thus:

    UnConvention celebrates music. It’s purpose is to provide a forum for those of us who work at the grassroots. For artists and musicians that want to understand how to get their music heard and how to practice their craft. For labels who want to champion this music and to spread the word. For people who want to work with music whether they be promoters, publicists or creatives.

    UnConvention understands that the most interesting stuff happens on the margins. We don’t mind the mainstream. We just don’t find it relevant.

    UnConvention is a forum for ideas, for creativity, for shared experiences and knowledge and for seeing and hearing great artists.

    UnConvention doesn’t believe in ‘do it yourself’. We believe in ‘do it together’.

    Dave is a lecturer at the Queensland Conservatorium in music technology, and an acclaimed researcher (check out his online marketing research paper here, which was presented at last year’s Big Sound music conference). So I said: sure, let’s make this happen here in Brisbane.

    We asked Brett Wood – managing director of local indie label Starving Kids Records – if he wanted to get on board; he said the same thing. And as we set a date and found a venue and ironed out who we wanted to be involved, Maggie Collins – triple j radio presenter and manager of Brisbane bands DZ, The John Steel Singers, and Skinny Jean – approached us with enthusiasm. So we said: sure, you’re welcome to join us.

    UnConvention Brisbane 2010 posterNext weekend, 12-13 June 2010, the first UnConvention Brisbane will take place at The Edge, the State Library of Queensland’s digital culture hub. As the venue is in the heart of the city’s arts precinct, it’s the perfect location. There’s a poster to the right which describes what will take place: click for a closer look. Some information from the event website is below.

    UnConvention Brisbane is a grassroots-led music conference for independent promoters, labels, entrepreneurs, writers, technologists, innovators and artists. The goal of UnConvention Brisbane is to bring together like-minded individuals to discuss the future of independent music and how it will develop and flourish in the technological age. The weekend event will comprise panel discussions and networking events focussed around creating sustainable careers within the music industry.

    Access to both days costs $20, and tickets are available via OzTix.

    On the Sunday, I’m presenting the music & media panel discussion, which features the following lovely people.

    Sunday June 13, 2010, 1pm – Music and Media

    Music journalist and blogger Andrew McMillen will discuss the opportunities for mixing a passion for music with blogging, journalism, radio, marketing, publicity and other shady practices with:

    Check out the full program details here.

    We’re also proud to be presenting a free, all-ages showcase of some of Brisbane’s best independent acts on the Saturday night, which is sponsored by creative media educational institution, SAE.

    The showcase will feature:

    UnConvention logo. 'Do It Together'It’s a pleasure to be involved with an event that seeks to investigate how to sustain careers within Brisbane’s independent music industry. It’s important than ever to have these conversations. After spending a couple of years working in and around the local scene, I’m glad to be in a position to give something back.

    Follow UnConvention Brisbane on Facebook or Twitter if you’re so inclined. The weekend Facebook event is here, and the free, all-ages showcase event is here; keep an eye on the website to see how it all unfolds.