ROCK AND ROLL REVOLUTION
WORDS BY EM TOBIN, MEDIA BY @sofialyl
Published May 26th, 2025
Brisbane, 1975; a wasteland of police violence and rock and roll.
As quoted by punk icon Rod Mcleod in Andrew Stafford’s Pig City, “a place practically under police curfew. You fucked and fought, got stoned, got married, or got out of town.” His statement is a tribute to the manifesto of the historical rise of rock and roll in our very own metropolis, Brisbane. The music of the 1970s saw local lyricism take an unpredictable turn from the bubbly, primal sounds of bands like the Bee Gees to a fully-fledged renegade revolution.
Opposing Vietnam conscription and policing, music was harnessed as a means to voice public unhappiness and distrust in local politics. Brisbane saw the world’s first-ever punk bands, including The Saints begin a musical revolution. The band’s 1976 hit, I’m Stranded, a telling description of life in the city. With lyrics, I’m lost babe, I got no direction, And I’m stranded on my own, it envisions the cultural landscape of the time. And as Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens quotes, Brisbane has become integral to his lyricism, “it’s been there from the start.”
The Saints: Brisbanes first ever punk band. Source Supplied
As a self-proclaimed kid in a DIY scene, I am fascinated by the historical evolution of music in Brisbane. Today, the industry experiences the same issues the pioneering scene in the 70s did: friends in bands claiming they need to leave town and move to Sydney or Melbourne to take off in the industry. Yet for a city considered largely irrelevant in terms of music history, Brisbane prevails as a cultural hub of exceptional bands. The likes of The Go-Betweens, Regurgitator, Custard, Powderfinger, and Savage Garden, were born and raised in Brisbane.
Today, it is no secret that the influence of the 70s scene is prevalent, with a large part of the Brisbane music industry being the work of self-funded, independent, and community-orientated artists. The all-ages punk shows of my youth are no exception.
Inner city Brisbane kids often spend their Friday and Saturday nights as follows:
You miss the bus from Queen Street Mall and one of your friends has greened out before you arrive at the venue. Teenagers stand outside the local hall with smoke spilling from their teeth. You have a cigarette although you are far too young to buy a government-regulated packet. Before the show, girls with septum rings and boys with long, unruly hair unload drum kits and sound gear from the back of cars. Someone has a film camera and is working as an unpaid photographer, taking snaps as the opener sets up. The sun begins to set and above you, in the sky, there is a silver pepper of satellites that move over the horizon.
Yet it is never the catastrophe of youthful angst and freedom that you remember - it is the music. Brisbane’s current music scene is an awe-inspiring blend of punk, indie rock, alternative rock, and post-punk. What began in the mid-70s has become tradition, and teenagers with guitars still dominate our city’s ever-evolving industry.
To understand the revolutionary nature of the Brisbane music scene of the 70s, one must reflect on the lasting influence the punk scene has had in what was arguably the most conservative city in the country. Today, the city is a breeding ground for both talented musicians and a new generation of producers, managers, and self-funded record labels. Independent music has taken to the spotlight and as a result, a huge community of musicians and music lovers alike has formed. The underground subculture has arisen at a pinnacle time for the intermingling of genres, sound, and production.
Yet it is the grassroots, independent, and all-inclusive aspects that pose a double-edged sword for our city. Although DIY shows give individual artists a much-needed ‘leg-up’ into self-sufficient music communities, the lack of government funding poses a challenge for independent musicians and struggling venue owners. Emerging out of the suburbs, the punk music of the 70s was performed despite the active efforts of a special undercover Task Force specifically briefed to eradicate it. In true Brisbane spirit, bands fought back with songs about police corruption, violence, and issues informed state politics, including racial and gender injustice.
In his Out of the Unknown: Brisbane Bands 1976-1988, Doug Huston writes, “Brisbane proved not to be an isolated haven for (bands) to polish their art, but a repressive, aggressive town.” This was in the time of Joe Bjleke-Peterson’s rule. That the pioneering punk scene was faced with animosity and police violence was a prevalent truth experienced at local music events. So in a response to Bjleke-Peterson’s revolt at creative expression, Brisbane’s music subculture began to establish spaces where local noise could survive. The sort of places that were unknown.
While our current day scene may not feature the same loud, anarchist vocals, distorted riffs, or fast tempos, the philosophy of Brisbane’s pioneering punk scene has been adopted as common practice. Our local sound is developed and recorded by ambitious teenagers in independent studios and performed in hired community venues. In a city where the arts are still largely dismissed as lacking value, the music scene has flourished as a result of our individualist, self-sufficient attitude. New Brisbane noise is primarily advanced by young teenagers eager to establish a sound modified from the work of previous rock and rollers and their own, unique sound developed on pedal boards. The forefront of change in our city is still young musicians eager to protest politics with a guitar in their hands and mouth pressed up to a microphone.
The ostracization of bands and their subsequent drive to make their own spaces, sounds and audiences endures today.
Brisbane Scene Kids 2024 @ AHEPA Alleyway
Antidismal backyard show 2024 @ Northgate
Scene Fashion 2024 @ Ahepa Hall
EMPTY SPACE:
AHEPA HALL
WORDS BY AVA COOPER MEDIA BY JACK GAMBLE
For decades, A.H.E.P.A. Hall in West End has fuelled much of Brisbane’s DIY music scene. Now, its doors are shutting. Journalist and musician Ava Cooper invites two DIY heavyweights into the empty hall one last time to reminisce and reflect.
The A.H.E.P.A. (AHEPA) Hall sits tucked behind a real estate office on bustling Boundary Street in West End. Hundreds of people pass it daily, but know little of its influence on Brisbane music. The hall has housed many of our city’s musical icons, from The Bee Gees to The Go-Betweens. Its role in the evolution of the scene is remarkably unassuming, as could be said for many grassroots venues, but it has always been vital.
In recent years, AHEPA Hall has become a hub for much of Brisbane’s DIY scene. For aspiring underage musicians, restricted from gigs at 18+ venues, AHEPA Hall played an incredible role in supporting youth access to music. It was a safe space for musicians to organise gigs, master their live show, and build a fanbase. One such musician is Dustan Colliss.
Dustan founded Broken Records in 2023 to gain experience in the back end of the industry and provide a real and raw musical experience for Brisbane’s youth. As a 17-year-old hungry for access to live music, Dustan began organising gigs, with his debut show hosted at AHEPA Hall. He mentioned he was struck by the potential of the venue the first time he laid eyes on it in a Refidex. His first gig hosted a variety of local acts, blending rap with live rock bands and DJ sets.
“I just hired out the hall, got sound done cheaply, and tried to host an event to get exposure for what I was trying to build and also the space, because I saw the potential that it had back then. And what it’s flourished into now is like, it’s definitely evident of how important this place is and how special it is to the music community.”
It’s not hard to see why this place holds such a special place in Dustan’s heart. The stage stands proud over the hardwood floors, its teal velvet curtains bringing a presence of retro stateliness. When I step onto that stage, I feel the joy of possibility that permeates the hall. As though I’m at my school’s talent show as a child, about to sing a song to my peers, unaware of the concept of embarrassment, but instead filled with excitement and hope. Now as I sit on this stage, perched upon a dusty folding chair, I wonder why a place like this could ever close its doors.
“DIY gig venues are essential to the community,” says May Gleeson of Wisher
May Gleeson, founding member and frontwoman of local band Wisher, described hearing the sad news as a “big sigh, collectively from everyone”. Like many young Brisbane musicians, May cut her teeth playing live shows and assisting with running and organising events at community venues like AHEPA Hall. Without such venues, May doesn’t think Brisbane music can flourish.
“If you took a snapshot of the last two years of the gigs here and the kind of audience, it’s almost a zeitgeist for what that scene represented for all of us. So it represents the closing of a chapter for me”
She also shared her frustrations about the financial responsibility placed on musicians at 18+ venues to sell drinks and help the venue profit.
“It’s never just for the music.”
May is not the only one losing hope for Brisbane music. As the entire Australian music industry is swallowed up by major corporations, artists are left to fend for themselves. Small venues are a lifeblood for artists starting out. Without them, how can musicians gain a following to make themselves financially worthwhile? Independent 18+ venues aren’t trying to profit because of greed: they have no other choice. The cost of running a music venue has grown exponentially, and consumer spending hasn’t. But community-funded all ages venues like AHEPA Hall just may be the solution. They provide a space for young musicians to grow a following, gain immense experience, and learn how to play and organise gigs. And the following they build will become vital consumers for 18+ venues. But as venues like AHEPA Hall continue to close down, many local musicians are unable to find small enough venues to get the head-start they need. These places formerly provided an alternative to stringent, suffocating industry standards. But as they close their doors, young musicians are left with fewer and fewer options, and Brisbane is left in an all too familiar rut.
FIGHT CONTINUES FOR ALL-AGES GIG OPERATORS
Iconic all-ages venue Season Three has shut its doors.
WORDS BY JACK MONTAGUE, MEDIA BY JACK GAMBLE
Published May 13th, 2025
Last month in a flurry of midsummer afternoon daylight at Season Three, a DIY music venue on Wickham Street, I asked Nick Smethurst what he thought about where Everything stood. That much being: The state of commercial and local music; The history of Meanjin music culture, ‘pig city’, and its enduring effects; Failing, rejoicing and failing again; The Ins and Outs of ‘DIY’. And least of all, the impending shutdown of his venue.
Season Three was a brainchild, ephemeral in its application, set to leave what will be a perpetual legacy. It’s one of a grand few he’s had since commencing a career in the music industry at age seventeen (at which time he ran ‘610’, formerly a music space on 610 Ann Street with no traceable record of existence). I asked Nick about his view on the state of it all because as it happens, he seems almost to have seen it all. He has experienced the triumphs and the afflictions of DIY culture for live music spaces. Resultantly, then too, those of the people who have performed inside them, visited them, and reminisced upon them.
“I have watched people who I was ostracised by as a teenager in the music scene go through personal arcs of international recognition, heroin addiction, and whatever their life became afterwards.” - Nick Smethurst
We swiftly got to talking about that pressing notion of ‘failure’ and its hard-hitting relationship with conceptualising success. It’s worth noting that Nick doesn’t think Season Three failed and neither do I, and neither does sound engineer extraordinaire James Walker (who Nick says is “the best engineer in the country”). Quite rather the inverse. It resounds not only as a pillar of young and fresh-faced DIY music, but as the sort of personal remuneration that Nick would go on to regard as ‘spiritual dividends.’
Sound engineer James Walker is ‘extraordinary’, says Smethurst.
James Walker - Sound Engineer of Season Three
I found myself most enamoured with the concept of frustration in Nick’s world of DIY. So, we explored it from two perspectives. Frustration with the self; and frustration with the external world. Here’s a fundamental truth:
Nick: “The right wing is concerned with systems of power blaming the individual. The left wing is concerned with the collective blaming systems of power. That characterises the difference between the two. We need to start blaming systems of power.”
Nick could, if he chose to, blame an infinite number of individuals, not barring himself, for any cockup with the PA, or making impossible promises, or ticket miscalculation, or you name it, that’s occurred in his career. But would that be a sound evaluation? No. Right. So, then it must be equally impossible to blame a premier; CEO; landlord; board of directors; for anything we don’t like about the way the music industry is run. Yes.
So, what is it that’s going wrong with the current systems of power?
Let’s take an analogy.
David Crisafulli’s crackdown on youth crime focuses on the incarceration of youths. A solution, then, that acts as a direct consequence to the action of the individual (the young criminal in this case). That is an example of a system of power blaming an individual. In a parallel scenario, the system of power would first work on understanding the discrepancies within itself that lead to early youth crime. What it might identify is a few things. Boredom being one. Lack of interest or engagement, aloneness or ostracization another. Why might a young person feel that way? A good place to start would be the ‘opportunity gap’.
“Growing up going to a stable private school, coming up with the same group of friends whose families share the same socio-economic background, in a predominantly white context, all going on to work similar jobs and live a stable life, is a valid experience. But it’s an incredibly narrow one.”
It’s also one that makes it very easy to ‘fit a mold’.
Season Three will be forced to shut its doors this month.
People who don’t have that opportunity, often those of a First Nations background, are still called to live up to the same narrative. To educate oneself and serve a capital dominated society. So, when the inevitable inequalities prevail, and an Indigenous student drops out of school due to an economic or trauma-based disadvantage, the immediate sense must become ‘there is no other way I can fit the mold.’ The system of power has failed them by promoting solely that narrow idea of success. And still, the same system of power has yet kept under wraps the whirling undercurrent that is Brisbane’s music and arts fuelled sub-scene. A scene that sustains itself solely on the char of creative passion.
Smethurst and Walker are searching for spaces to continue Season Three’s legacy.
“This place is not financially remunerative for me. It loses me money every single week. James and I do this because we have good equipment, we are happy to share it, and we can just afford to run it, and it happens to be our only calling in this world.”
I’ll leave you with this:
The capacity of Season Three is 110 people. In a scheme, tiny.
If a room with no bar: no alcohol license; no bathroom; $20 ticket prices; can break its capacity with a racially and gender diverse crowd of creatives multiple times every single week: what does that say about its audience?
It says, ‘something here feels just right.’
Nick and James @ Season Three
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