Ian Keith Rogers is a research and teaching academic. His work is primarily focused on music scenes, music making and the music industries. As an academic he has a range of teaching and administrative competencies ranging from lecturing and course coordination through to studio experience and events management. He is a novelist and hobbyist musician. Supervisors: Graeme Turner and Melissa Gregg Address: Melbourne, Australia
This volume explores the ways in which music scenes are not merely physical spaces for the practi... more This volume explores the ways in which music scenes are not merely physical spaces for the practice of collective musical life but are also inscribed with and enacted through the articulation of cultural memory and emotional geography. The book draws on empirical data collected in cities throughout Australia.
In terms of understanding the relationship between music scenes and participants, much of the existing popular music literature tends to avoid one key aspect of scene: its predominant past-tense and memory-based nature. Nascent music scenes may be emergent and on-going but their articulation in the present is often based on past events, ideas and histories. There is a noticeable gap between the literature concerning popular music ethnography and the growing body of work on cultural memory and emotional geography. This book is a study of the conceptual formation and use of music scenes by participants. It is also an investigation of the structures underpinning music scenes more generally.
In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonize... more In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonized classic of the hardcore genre – and following a period of legal dispute and touring hiatus, My War was diverse and polarizing; side two of the album featured three slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signalled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by the Melvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.
Australia’s concentrated population presents particular challenges for touring music acts. The co... more Australia’s concentrated population presents particular challenges for touring music acts. The country’s capital cities are few, and the distance between these cities is not dotted with the type of vibrant regional music scene commonly found abroad. Yet due to an array of state and federal arts grants – all aiming to subsidisze music touring – many Australian inner-city acts venture out to these destinations hoping to find conductive performance environments. In this paper, we map the experiences of a number of Melbourne and Brisbane bands – via interviews and case study – as they tour outside of their local/city scenes
Career Path: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle study reveals workers with music busi... more Career Path: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle study reveals workers with music business careers are passionate and nimble, but sector disruption can lead to career instability. The Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO) worked with RMIT University to interview 27 Victorian music business professionals with over ten years’ experience to understand the skills, strategies, challenges and opportunities people require to sustain a music business career. Career Paths: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle acknowledged common themes, including the: multi-access points to establish and maintain a career in an ever-shifting and evolving music industry; nimble skills and strategies required to sustain a music business career; challenges and roadblocks within the music industry; and ongoing opportunities to support and development music business careers.
Australian Metal Music: Identities, Scenes, and Cultures, 2019
Masculinity and heavy metal share a clear and well-documented relationship, with many of the key ... more Masculinity and heavy metal share a clear and well-documented relationship, with many of the key texts on metal centering around its representation of gender (Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991). Less discussed is masculinity in Australian metal, as Australian metal itself remains underrepresented in scholarly research. In this chapter we discuss the music, media and image of Parkway Drive – a popular metalcore band from Byron Bay, Australia – via a reading of two of the band’s feature-length rockumentary films. We draw on concepts and theories of gender (Butler, 2006), and public image (Leonard, 2007), as well as studies of Australian masculinity, specifically those pertaining to mateship, surfing, and adventurousness. As the metalcore subgenre has not been widely studied, this approach provides a basis for understanding the subgenre as well as its relationship to gender, commercial success, and Australian heavy metal, focussing on the decidedly Anglo-Australian representation of masculinity performed by Parkway Drive. We argue that the band typifies a distinctly Australian type of hegemonic masculinity, one that draws on discussion of Australian identity, beach culture and surfing. We further examine the band’s use of ‘rockumentary’ tropes to build their public image and to tighten affective bonds with viewers.
Within academia, popular music heritage projects often rely on repositories of secondary data. Wh... more Within academia, popular music heritage projects often rely on repositories of secondary data. While fieldwork and primary collection is prevalent, the interface between popular culture and the academy hinges on intermediaries. In this chapter, I investigate a set of recent media relations – all online – and examine how the precarity of this environment may shift priorities within music heritage projects. In short, I argue that the academy might be wise to move some of its preservation energies into projects that retain and/or curate key secondary data sources within popular music studies. These projects would be conducted in lieu of losing significant archives of music commentary and journalism to the extraordinarily brittle marketplace for online content. Later in this chapter, I provide two case studies that speak to the dynamics of these market realities, providing examples of how data is lost and the speed of its disappearance from the commons.
In 2007, American online retailer Amazon.com launched both the Kindle ereader device and its asso... more In 2007, American online retailer Amazon.com launched both the Kindle ereader device and its associated independent publishing platform Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). In the years subsequent, the integration of KDP within the Amazon retail environment dramatically altered the digital self-publishing landscape, effectively paving the way for today’s vibrant — and, at times, crassly entrepreneurial — self-published fiction communities. These communities operate in a chaotic zone of production located beyond the ‘knowns’ of traditional publishing. In this paper, I aim to map out some of the dominant beliefs and values extolled by successful self-published fiction authors. Over time, the fiction community around these writers have enacted various tactical approaches that specifically strive to tame their chaotic marketplace, and they have occasionally succeeded. Taken as a whole, their approach is lofty, effectively aiming to further democratise publication via increasingly sophisticated virtual and translocal scenes. In the doing, these ad-hoc communities act to geographically re-centre publishing’s production hubs and foreground histories and business practices seldom discussed within the traditional book industry. Yet despite their brash commercialism, these authors desire operational autonomy, stable revenue-streams and fulfilling craft-based production within a field plagued by a disparity of capital and power.
There are currently few examples of popular music being officially celebrated as heritage in Aust... more There are currently few examples of popular music being officially celebrated as heritage in Australia. Interest in this area is growing, however, and this paper examines how Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria, has recently named three laneways after rock artists, namely, AC/DC Lane, Amphlett Lane and Rowland S. Howard Lane. Using interview and observational data collected at the laneways, we demonstrate that these spaces respectively reflect aesthetic cosmopolitan heritage (AC/DC Lane), national heritage (Amphlett Lane), and sub-national heritage (Rowland S. Howard Lane). The number of visitors to these laneways varies greatly across the sites, and reflects the national and international success of the artist commemorated. The laneways’ success as commemorative sites is also related to intersections of globally circulating ideas about what constitutes ‘rock’, what urban spaces should look or feel like, and how heritage is expected to be enacted (especially for tourists). Within this field, there are specifics relating to the Australian music industry that appear to find clear reflection in the sites chosen and their level of success as memorial spaces
This article uses analysis of media articles and archival materials to pursue two aims. First, we... more This article uses analysis of media articles and archival materials to pursue two aims. First, we investigate the effect of Riot Grrrl and grunge’s gender equality impetus in the Australian context. In pursuing this, we discuss the rise of female musicians in Australia around the time of grunge and into the late 1990s, particularly in women-only or mostly-women bands, and bands for whom gender was a key defining factor. Second, in keeping with the goals of feminist historians (although this is not a historical paper, as such) we aim to document the activities of some of the female musicians who were active in Australia during the 1990s. Given that this area has been otherwise neglected in academic accounts of Australian popular music and of Riot Grrrl/grunge, it will provide an important starting point for further studies to expand upon. We demonstrate here that the Australian intersections between feminism and rock music are unique, as are the dialogues, debates and solutions proffered, as they combined immediate, local grassroots activity with support from international acts who themselves, while notable in their celebrity, had similar ties to the type of direct action cultural communities exemplified by the Rock’n’Roll High School concept.
The live music venue has long been regarded as a space of critical importance in relation to musi... more The live music venue has long been regarded as a space of critical importance in relation to musical experience. Like music artists themselves, venues often come to embody the zeitgeist of a particular genre or era. Liverpool’s Cavern, New York’s CBGB’s, and Brisbane’s Cloudland are but three examples of an ever-growing list of live music venues (closed down, demolished, renamed) achieving iconic status due to a connection with important and galvanizing moments in music history. Significant in this are the ways in which collective memories become textured by particular venues and how memory works to forge strong collective associations between former audiences. Drawing on theoretical frameworks utilized in space and place research and memory studies, this article will investigate the significance of unofficial, unlicensed music venues and the way in which the memory of these particular sites constitute a potent form of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary society.
The material objects of popular music have featured significantly in studies of popular music. In... more The material objects of popular music have featured significantly in studies of popular music. In particular, there are established literature on physical playback media (including the re-emergence of vinyl albums) and playback devices, from the Walkman to the iPod. Recently, as popular music scholars have begun to explore the everyday use of music and music technologies by casual listeners, music has increasingly been described as sound and as an ambient presence in our lives. Yet woven through these increasingly digital cultures are concrete manifestations of music listening and fandom. Drawing on the findings of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on popular music and cultural memory, this article considers the implications of such manifestations of materiality for the way we understand the significance of popular music, and its linking of the past and the present, in contemporary everyday life. Using fieldwork data collected in cities across Australia, the article considers how various aspects of popular music-related material culture became palpable objects for the writing of personal histories. In some instances, these material objects of participation were less foregrounded but still present. In these cases, materiality was resigned more to the past, but material cultures were actively digitized and distributed. This process was always ongoing and incomplete. This article examines and develops a central theme emerging from our research findings, namely that popular music objects acquire meanings that raise them above their everyday status via cultural means strongly influenced by the contextualizing effects of online technology.
The legacy of Napster is filled with bold claims that continue to circulate. As recently as 2013,... more The legacy of Napster is filled with bold claims that continue to circulate. As recently as 2013, Wired writer Angela Watercutter described the service as “strings of code that forever changed the relationship between technology and music.” In this paper, we set out to problematize this narrative by outlining a seldom–reported pre–history of Napster combined with an expanded examination of the alternative legacies surrounding the platform. One such legacy is the rise of eclectic music criticism portal Pitchfork.com, a media entity (and business model) that similarly traded on a revolutionary backstory.
As the third largest city in Australia, Brisbane has a long and established history of independen... more As the third largest city in Australia, Brisbane has a long and established history of independent and DIY music-making dating back to the early 1970s. Although generally regarded as a second-tier music city in Australia, several groups emerging from Brisbane have scored national and international success, notably The Saints and The Go-Betweens. Indeed, in recent years these now defunct Brisbane bands have achieved iconic status in global punk and independent music scenes. Moreover, as Stafford’s (2004) book Pig City reveals, such artists were merely the vanguard of a larger local independent music scene that often waged a hidden war against oppressive law enforcement agencies and cultural parochialism. While the socio-political scenario in Brisbane is today quite different, the legacy of the city’s past remains to the extent that the local independent music scene is still largely the product of small-scale and often ad hoc engagements for music-making (see Rogers, 2008). This presents a challenge when considering independent music heritage within Brisbane. While places of significant musical importance exist within the city, these sites rarely reflect the tone of contemporary youth music scenes. Yet, as the reception of Stafford’s Pig City together with an increasing number of local, small-scale initiatives (for example, photo exhibitions, websites, and collections of fan memorabilia) illustrate, there is increasing interest in Brisbane’s punk and indie music past, the bearing of this on current independent music activity in the city, and Brisbane’s links with independent music scenes in other parts of Australia and overseas. Drawing on data generated during a three-year project funded by the Australian Research Council on the theme of popular music and cultural memory, this chapter examines how cultural memory is becoming a critical driving force for a small but growing number of local music fans and enthusiasts in collectively retrieving and re-presenting Brisbane’s independent music heritage.
The present article explores the ‘indie’ music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city unde... more The present article explores the ‘indie’ music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city undergoing rapid cultural and socioeconomic development. Within Brisbane, a dominant narrative of popular music-making has emerged from local history, promotion and music writing. This narrative depicts a commercially successful, professional present and, thus, separates Brisbane musicians of today from the city’s troubled cultural/political past. Unfortunately, such readings of local music-making overlook marked similarities between musicians past and present. Drawing upon face-to-face interview data collected from musicians currently working in Brisbane’s ‘indie’ scene, the present article strives to document current practice and to reconnect and contextualize the experience of this community with the city’s music history. The resulting analysis reveals a music community working within an isolated cultural space plagued by instability and a degree of antagonism, thus bearing strong resemblance to Brisbane’s mythologized punk rock past.
Like elsewhere, the music industry in Queensland is comprised of two tiers. The first tier is com... more Like elsewhere, the music industry in Queensland is comprised of two tiers. The first tier is composed of products and services engaged by major music labels and commercially successful artists who at times attract significant sales. The second tier, or what is sometimes referred to as the 'grassroots' (Gibson, 2002), largely consists of independent musicians, production personnel and producers attracting both niche and at times mainstream audiences. Characterised by informally networked micro-economies, independent artists, niche markets and the exploitation of new technologies, the second tier is also of interest to cultural researchers who have tended to concentrate on sub-cultural music communities and music produced outside of the mass market first tier.
A mapping survey, which examined the Queensland music industry in terms of size, location, income and activity, is complemented by interviews with musicians, label owners, production personnel and others involved in the music "scene". We explore how second tier practices (such as a reliance on social networking to achieve recordings and performance opportunities, as well as DIY culture and innovative business approaches) offer alternative methods for "doing music" and generating value in the creative industries.
This report analyses the contemporary music industry in Queensland in cultural, economic and indu... more This report analyses the contemporary music industry in Queensland in cultural, economic and industry development terms. It is one outcome from an Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled "Creative Industries in Queensland: Cultural Mapping and Value Chain Analysis". It should be read in conjunction with the two additional reports: Queensland Music Industry Basics: People, Businesses and Markets and Queensland Music Industry Trends: Independence Day?
This volume explores the ways in which music scenes are not merely physical spaces for the practi... more This volume explores the ways in which music scenes are not merely physical spaces for the practice of collective musical life but are also inscribed with and enacted through the articulation of cultural memory and emotional geography. The book draws on empirical data collected in cities throughout Australia.
In terms of understanding the relationship between music scenes and participants, much of the existing popular music literature tends to avoid one key aspect of scene: its predominant past-tense and memory-based nature. Nascent music scenes may be emergent and on-going but their articulation in the present is often based on past events, ideas and histories. There is a noticeable gap between the literature concerning popular music ethnography and the growing body of work on cultural memory and emotional geography. This book is a study of the conceptual formation and use of music scenes by participants. It is also an investigation of the structures underpinning music scenes more generally.
In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonize... more In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonized classic of the hardcore genre – and following a period of legal dispute and touring hiatus, My War was diverse and polarizing; side two of the album featured three slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signalled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by the Melvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.
Australia’s concentrated population presents particular challenges for touring music acts. The co... more Australia’s concentrated population presents particular challenges for touring music acts. The country’s capital cities are few, and the distance between these cities is not dotted with the type of vibrant regional music scene commonly found abroad. Yet due to an array of state and federal arts grants – all aiming to subsidisze music touring – many Australian inner-city acts venture out to these destinations hoping to find conductive performance environments. In this paper, we map the experiences of a number of Melbourne and Brisbane bands – via interviews and case study – as they tour outside of their local/city scenes
Career Path: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle study reveals workers with music busi... more Career Path: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle study reveals workers with music business careers are passionate and nimble, but sector disruption can lead to career instability. The Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO) worked with RMIT University to interview 27 Victorian music business professionals with over ten years’ experience to understand the skills, strategies, challenges and opportunities people require to sustain a music business career. Career Paths: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle acknowledged common themes, including the: multi-access points to establish and maintain a career in an ever-shifting and evolving music industry; nimble skills and strategies required to sustain a music business career; challenges and roadblocks within the music industry; and ongoing opportunities to support and development music business careers.
Australian Metal Music: Identities, Scenes, and Cultures, 2019
Masculinity and heavy metal share a clear and well-documented relationship, with many of the key ... more Masculinity and heavy metal share a clear and well-documented relationship, with many of the key texts on metal centering around its representation of gender (Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991). Less discussed is masculinity in Australian metal, as Australian metal itself remains underrepresented in scholarly research. In this chapter we discuss the music, media and image of Parkway Drive – a popular metalcore band from Byron Bay, Australia – via a reading of two of the band’s feature-length rockumentary films. We draw on concepts and theories of gender (Butler, 2006), and public image (Leonard, 2007), as well as studies of Australian masculinity, specifically those pertaining to mateship, surfing, and adventurousness. As the metalcore subgenre has not been widely studied, this approach provides a basis for understanding the subgenre as well as its relationship to gender, commercial success, and Australian heavy metal, focussing on the decidedly Anglo-Australian representation of masculinity performed by Parkway Drive. We argue that the band typifies a distinctly Australian type of hegemonic masculinity, one that draws on discussion of Australian identity, beach culture and surfing. We further examine the band’s use of ‘rockumentary’ tropes to build their public image and to tighten affective bonds with viewers.
Within academia, popular music heritage projects often rely on repositories of secondary data. Wh... more Within academia, popular music heritage projects often rely on repositories of secondary data. While fieldwork and primary collection is prevalent, the interface between popular culture and the academy hinges on intermediaries. In this chapter, I investigate a set of recent media relations – all online – and examine how the precarity of this environment may shift priorities within music heritage projects. In short, I argue that the academy might be wise to move some of its preservation energies into projects that retain and/or curate key secondary data sources within popular music studies. These projects would be conducted in lieu of losing significant archives of music commentary and journalism to the extraordinarily brittle marketplace for online content. Later in this chapter, I provide two case studies that speak to the dynamics of these market realities, providing examples of how data is lost and the speed of its disappearance from the commons.
In 2007, American online retailer Amazon.com launched both the Kindle ereader device and its asso... more In 2007, American online retailer Amazon.com launched both the Kindle ereader device and its associated independent publishing platform Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). In the years subsequent, the integration of KDP within the Amazon retail environment dramatically altered the digital self-publishing landscape, effectively paving the way for today’s vibrant — and, at times, crassly entrepreneurial — self-published fiction communities. These communities operate in a chaotic zone of production located beyond the ‘knowns’ of traditional publishing. In this paper, I aim to map out some of the dominant beliefs and values extolled by successful self-published fiction authors. Over time, the fiction community around these writers have enacted various tactical approaches that specifically strive to tame their chaotic marketplace, and they have occasionally succeeded. Taken as a whole, their approach is lofty, effectively aiming to further democratise publication via increasingly sophisticated virtual and translocal scenes. In the doing, these ad-hoc communities act to geographically re-centre publishing’s production hubs and foreground histories and business practices seldom discussed within the traditional book industry. Yet despite their brash commercialism, these authors desire operational autonomy, stable revenue-streams and fulfilling craft-based production within a field plagued by a disparity of capital and power.
There are currently few examples of popular music being officially celebrated as heritage in Aust... more There are currently few examples of popular music being officially celebrated as heritage in Australia. Interest in this area is growing, however, and this paper examines how Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria, has recently named three laneways after rock artists, namely, AC/DC Lane, Amphlett Lane and Rowland S. Howard Lane. Using interview and observational data collected at the laneways, we demonstrate that these spaces respectively reflect aesthetic cosmopolitan heritage (AC/DC Lane), national heritage (Amphlett Lane), and sub-national heritage (Rowland S. Howard Lane). The number of visitors to these laneways varies greatly across the sites, and reflects the national and international success of the artist commemorated. The laneways’ success as commemorative sites is also related to intersections of globally circulating ideas about what constitutes ‘rock’, what urban spaces should look or feel like, and how heritage is expected to be enacted (especially for tourists). Within this field, there are specifics relating to the Australian music industry that appear to find clear reflection in the sites chosen and their level of success as memorial spaces
This article uses analysis of media articles and archival materials to pursue two aims. First, we... more This article uses analysis of media articles and archival materials to pursue two aims. First, we investigate the effect of Riot Grrrl and grunge’s gender equality impetus in the Australian context. In pursuing this, we discuss the rise of female musicians in Australia around the time of grunge and into the late 1990s, particularly in women-only or mostly-women bands, and bands for whom gender was a key defining factor. Second, in keeping with the goals of feminist historians (although this is not a historical paper, as such) we aim to document the activities of some of the female musicians who were active in Australia during the 1990s. Given that this area has been otherwise neglected in academic accounts of Australian popular music and of Riot Grrrl/grunge, it will provide an important starting point for further studies to expand upon. We demonstrate here that the Australian intersections between feminism and rock music are unique, as are the dialogues, debates and solutions proffered, as they combined immediate, local grassroots activity with support from international acts who themselves, while notable in their celebrity, had similar ties to the type of direct action cultural communities exemplified by the Rock’n’Roll High School concept.
The live music venue has long been regarded as a space of critical importance in relation to musi... more The live music venue has long been regarded as a space of critical importance in relation to musical experience. Like music artists themselves, venues often come to embody the zeitgeist of a particular genre or era. Liverpool’s Cavern, New York’s CBGB’s, and Brisbane’s Cloudland are but three examples of an ever-growing list of live music venues (closed down, demolished, renamed) achieving iconic status due to a connection with important and galvanizing moments in music history. Significant in this are the ways in which collective memories become textured by particular venues and how memory works to forge strong collective associations between former audiences. Drawing on theoretical frameworks utilized in space and place research and memory studies, this article will investigate the significance of unofficial, unlicensed music venues and the way in which the memory of these particular sites constitute a potent form of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary society.
The material objects of popular music have featured significantly in studies of popular music. In... more The material objects of popular music have featured significantly in studies of popular music. In particular, there are established literature on physical playback media (including the re-emergence of vinyl albums) and playback devices, from the Walkman to the iPod. Recently, as popular music scholars have begun to explore the everyday use of music and music technologies by casual listeners, music has increasingly been described as sound and as an ambient presence in our lives. Yet woven through these increasingly digital cultures are concrete manifestations of music listening and fandom. Drawing on the findings of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on popular music and cultural memory, this article considers the implications of such manifestations of materiality for the way we understand the significance of popular music, and its linking of the past and the present, in contemporary everyday life. Using fieldwork data collected in cities across Australia, the article considers how various aspects of popular music-related material culture became palpable objects for the writing of personal histories. In some instances, these material objects of participation were less foregrounded but still present. In these cases, materiality was resigned more to the past, but material cultures were actively digitized and distributed. This process was always ongoing and incomplete. This article examines and develops a central theme emerging from our research findings, namely that popular music objects acquire meanings that raise them above their everyday status via cultural means strongly influenced by the contextualizing effects of online technology.
The legacy of Napster is filled with bold claims that continue to circulate. As recently as 2013,... more The legacy of Napster is filled with bold claims that continue to circulate. As recently as 2013, Wired writer Angela Watercutter described the service as “strings of code that forever changed the relationship between technology and music.” In this paper, we set out to problematize this narrative by outlining a seldom–reported pre–history of Napster combined with an expanded examination of the alternative legacies surrounding the platform. One such legacy is the rise of eclectic music criticism portal Pitchfork.com, a media entity (and business model) that similarly traded on a revolutionary backstory.
As the third largest city in Australia, Brisbane has a long and established history of independen... more As the third largest city in Australia, Brisbane has a long and established history of independent and DIY music-making dating back to the early 1970s. Although generally regarded as a second-tier music city in Australia, several groups emerging from Brisbane have scored national and international success, notably The Saints and The Go-Betweens. Indeed, in recent years these now defunct Brisbane bands have achieved iconic status in global punk and independent music scenes. Moreover, as Stafford’s (2004) book Pig City reveals, such artists were merely the vanguard of a larger local independent music scene that often waged a hidden war against oppressive law enforcement agencies and cultural parochialism. While the socio-political scenario in Brisbane is today quite different, the legacy of the city’s past remains to the extent that the local independent music scene is still largely the product of small-scale and often ad hoc engagements for music-making (see Rogers, 2008). This presents a challenge when considering independent music heritage within Brisbane. While places of significant musical importance exist within the city, these sites rarely reflect the tone of contemporary youth music scenes. Yet, as the reception of Stafford’s Pig City together with an increasing number of local, small-scale initiatives (for example, photo exhibitions, websites, and collections of fan memorabilia) illustrate, there is increasing interest in Brisbane’s punk and indie music past, the bearing of this on current independent music activity in the city, and Brisbane’s links with independent music scenes in other parts of Australia and overseas. Drawing on data generated during a three-year project funded by the Australian Research Council on the theme of popular music and cultural memory, this chapter examines how cultural memory is becoming a critical driving force for a small but growing number of local music fans and enthusiasts in collectively retrieving and re-presenting Brisbane’s independent music heritage.
The present article explores the ‘indie’ music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city unde... more The present article explores the ‘indie’ music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city undergoing rapid cultural and socioeconomic development. Within Brisbane, a dominant narrative of popular music-making has emerged from local history, promotion and music writing. This narrative depicts a commercially successful, professional present and, thus, separates Brisbane musicians of today from the city’s troubled cultural/political past. Unfortunately, such readings of local music-making overlook marked similarities between musicians past and present. Drawing upon face-to-face interview data collected from musicians currently working in Brisbane’s ‘indie’ scene, the present article strives to document current practice and to reconnect and contextualize the experience of this community with the city’s music history. The resulting analysis reveals a music community working within an isolated cultural space plagued by instability and a degree of antagonism, thus bearing strong resemblance to Brisbane’s mythologized punk rock past.
Like elsewhere, the music industry in Queensland is comprised of two tiers. The first tier is com... more Like elsewhere, the music industry in Queensland is comprised of two tiers. The first tier is composed of products and services engaged by major music labels and commercially successful artists who at times attract significant sales. The second tier, or what is sometimes referred to as the 'grassroots' (Gibson, 2002), largely consists of independent musicians, production personnel and producers attracting both niche and at times mainstream audiences. Characterised by informally networked micro-economies, independent artists, niche markets and the exploitation of new technologies, the second tier is also of interest to cultural researchers who have tended to concentrate on sub-cultural music communities and music produced outside of the mass market first tier.
A mapping survey, which examined the Queensland music industry in terms of size, location, income and activity, is complemented by interviews with musicians, label owners, production personnel and others involved in the music "scene". We explore how second tier practices (such as a reliance on social networking to achieve recordings and performance opportunities, as well as DIY culture and innovative business approaches) offer alternative methods for "doing music" and generating value in the creative industries.
This report analyses the contemporary music industry in Queensland in cultural, economic and indu... more This report analyses the contemporary music industry in Queensland in cultural, economic and industry development terms. It is one outcome from an Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled "Creative Industries in Queensland: Cultural Mapping and Value Chain Analysis". It should be read in conjunction with the two additional reports: Queensland Music Industry Basics: People, Businesses and Markets and Queensland Music Industry Trends: Independence Day?
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Books by Ian Rogers
In terms of understanding the relationship between music scenes and participants, much of the existing popular music literature tends to avoid one key aspect of scene: its predominant past-tense and memory-based nature. Nascent music scenes may be emergent and on-going but their articulation in the present is often based on past events, ideas and histories. There is a noticeable gap between the literature concerning popular music ethnography and the growing body of work on cultural memory and emotional geography. This book is a study of the conceptual formation and use of music scenes by participants. It is also an investigation of the structures underpinning music scenes more generally.
Papers by Ian Rogers
slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signalled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new
hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by the Melvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.
‘rock’, what urban spaces should look or feel like, and how heritage is
expected to be enacted (especially for tourists). Within this field, there are specifics relating to the Australian music industry that appear to find clear reflection in the sites chosen and their level of success as memorial spaces
provide an important starting point for further studies to expand upon. We demonstrate here that the Australian intersections between feminism and rock music are unique, as are the dialogues, debates and solutions proffered, as they combined immediate, local grassroots activity with support from international acts who themselves, while notable in their celebrity, had similar ties to the type of direct action cultural communities exemplified by the Rock’n’Roll High School concept.
music and music technologies by casual listeners, music has increasingly been described as sound and as an ambient presence in our lives. Yet woven through these increasingly digital cultures are concrete manifestations of music listening and fandom. Drawing on the findings of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on popular music and cultural memory, this article considers the implications of such manifestations of materiality for the way we understand the significance of popular music, and its linking of the past and the present, in contemporary everyday life. Using fieldwork data collected in cities across Australia, the article considers how various aspects of popular music-related material culture became palpable objects for the writing of personal histories. In some instances, these material objects of participation were less foregrounded but still present. In these cases, materiality was resigned more to the past, but material cultures were
actively digitized and distributed. This process was always ongoing and incomplete. This article examines and develops a central theme emerging from our research findings, namely that popular music objects acquire meanings that raise them above their everyday status via cultural means strongly influenced by the contextualizing effects of online
technology.
A mapping survey, which examined the Queensland music industry in terms of size, location, income and activity, is complemented by interviews with musicians, label owners, production personnel and others involved in the music "scene". We explore how second tier practices (such as a reliance on social networking to achieve recordings and performance opportunities, as well as DIY culture and innovative business approaches) offer alternative methods for "doing music" and generating value in the creative industries.
In terms of understanding the relationship between music scenes and participants, much of the existing popular music literature tends to avoid one key aspect of scene: its predominant past-tense and memory-based nature. Nascent music scenes may be emergent and on-going but their articulation in the present is often based on past events, ideas and histories. There is a noticeable gap between the literature concerning popular music ethnography and the growing body of work on cultural memory and emotional geography. This book is a study of the conceptual formation and use of music scenes by participants. It is also an investigation of the structures underpinning music scenes more generally.
slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signalled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new
hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by the Melvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.
‘rock’, what urban spaces should look or feel like, and how heritage is
expected to be enacted (especially for tourists). Within this field, there are specifics relating to the Australian music industry that appear to find clear reflection in the sites chosen and their level of success as memorial spaces
provide an important starting point for further studies to expand upon. We demonstrate here that the Australian intersections between feminism and rock music are unique, as are the dialogues, debates and solutions proffered, as they combined immediate, local grassroots activity with support from international acts who themselves, while notable in their celebrity, had similar ties to the type of direct action cultural communities exemplified by the Rock’n’Roll High School concept.
music and music technologies by casual listeners, music has increasingly been described as sound and as an ambient presence in our lives. Yet woven through these increasingly digital cultures are concrete manifestations of music listening and fandom. Drawing on the findings of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on popular music and cultural memory, this article considers the implications of such manifestations of materiality for the way we understand the significance of popular music, and its linking of the past and the present, in contemporary everyday life. Using fieldwork data collected in cities across Australia, the article considers how various aspects of popular music-related material culture became palpable objects for the writing of personal histories. In some instances, these material objects of participation were less foregrounded but still present. In these cases, materiality was resigned more to the past, but material cultures were
actively digitized and distributed. This process was always ongoing and incomplete. This article examines and develops a central theme emerging from our research findings, namely that popular music objects acquire meanings that raise them above their everyday status via cultural means strongly influenced by the contextualizing effects of online
technology.
A mapping survey, which examined the Queensland music industry in terms of size, location, income and activity, is complemented by interviews with musicians, label owners, production personnel and others involved in the music "scene". We explore how second tier practices (such as a reliance on social networking to achieve recordings and performance opportunities, as well as DIY culture and innovative business approaches) offer alternative methods for "doing music" and generating value in the creative industries.