A quick non-photo post for a change.

I was interested and slightly bemused a couple of months ago when I heard that Plan B creator/editor and ex-Melody Maker writer Everett True was relocating from Brighton to Brisbane. As weekly Melody Maker readers back in the day, we all used to hate ET with a passion, largely due to his constant self-referencing in his articles. Having said that his review of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted made me go out and buy it, so some good came out of his writing.

He has been blogging for New York’s Village Voice website, including writing about the Brisbane scene since his move, and started blogging last week for The Guardian. Being new to Brisbane he obviously wanted to get off on the right foot, make friends and influence people, and so chose to write about Australian music press…

Although I agree with a lot of what he has said in his first Guardian blog I think he is covering a number of slightly different, if related, topics and, as such, there is some degree of confusion and a resultant weakness in his overall argument, even though there is truth in most of the points he makes.

The most interesting comments for me are the ones that deal with the lack of criticism in Australian music press, as it is a subject very close to my heart.

There is a lack of real criticism in Australian music papers and magazines, although I think JMag and Rolling Stone are probably even worse than street press, who his blog seems to be mainly aimed at. Australian Rolling Stone is one of the poorest excuses for a music magazine I’ve come across. And I’ve flicked through the pages of Q magazine in the newsagent in recent years… JMag is far too close the bands via Triple J, far too tied up with indie coolness, and with having bands/singers actually contribute to the magazine is never going to be anything but a large Sydney-centric celebratory circle jerk, much like the radio station.

As far as street press goes, one of the main troubles, especially in somewhere with a music scene as small as Brisbane, is that a lot of the writers know the local bands. On one hand you’ve got street press reviewers saying that it’s not worth the grief and abuse they get every time they leave the house if they ever criticise a local band. On the other hand, when you get reviewers reviewing singers that they used to manage and are good friends with, editors reviewing their housemate’s album and singers writing their own reviews it does make a mockery of the whole thing.

I did comment on TOMB that if ET was going to write a regular blog on the Australian music scene that he was on a hiding to nothing. If there’s one thing that gets your average Australian’s back up more than telling them that their shit stinks, it’s when they get told it by someone English, and so I feared that his blog would just end up looking like a typical comments page on the Courier Mail’s website.

Much to my amusement, the Courier Mail and its sister-site http://www.news.com.au picked up the story and really went to town on it. Funny, you’d think ET wrote for them and they were milking it for all it’s worth. Oh…

• Silverchair an abomination and so are Oz rock writers, says Brit critic
• UK Music blogger whinges about the lack of a critic on Brisbane’s streets
• Everett True says Silverchair, The Vines ‘musical abominations’

In typical xenophobic Courier Mail-style they couldn’t help themselves but push the ‘Whinging Pom Hates OUR Bands’ angle (I was always very disappointed that Grant McLennan let them use ‘Streets Of Your Town’ for their TV ad…) and they were joined a day later by the Sydney Morning Herald, pushing the same angle.

Fighting words from Brit critic (the front page headline link was more sensational and, from memory, based on the ‘Brit says Silverchair = Abomination’ comment)

Having made the papers, all the Australian music forums have also picked up the story:

• Faster Louder: Everett True says Silverchair, The Vines ‘musical abominations‘
• The Dwarf: Everett True’s Brisbane Blog: Street Press in AUS
• Mess & Noise: Everett True disses Aus street press

But it’s quite interesting and somewhat surprising that despite the usual ‘Love it or leave’ and ‘whinging Pom’-type comments you would expect in the Courier Mail and Sydney Morning Herald, a large number seem to be agree that he has a point when it comes to a lack of criticism.

I think a good example of the lack of criticism in the Australian music press can be seen in UK music website Drowned In Sound ’s review of Powerfinger singer Bernard Fanning’s solo album and single. Would any Australian publication give Bernard Fanning a review like DiS’s?

• Bernard Fanning: Wish You Well
• Bernard Fanning: Tea & Sympathy

The correct answer is no, not in a million years: He’s Bernard Fanning from Powderfinger, he’s a true blue Aussie, salt of the earth, down to earth bloke - as that press release in the DiS review points out, he is a “total legend”. So it would be “un-Australian” to even dare to suggest that his music is a bit shit. And that’s a large part of the problem with Australia; a good review from a mainstream music media publication is weighted more on whether the artists in questions are good blokes and whether you’d want to share a few beers with them down at the pub, than the music that they actually produce.

I think there are a number of reasons for all this; firstly, Australia does this whole siege mentality when it comes to its country, a real Us Vs The Rest of the World, small, isolated, underdog and the need to be seen as punching above its weight. Secondly, although connected, is that so much of what Australians are subjected to on the TV and radio – programs, adverts, news and sport reporting – and in what they read in the newspapers and magazines is about reinforcing ‘Australian-ness’, what it means to be ‘Australian’ and the ‘values’ that being Australian entails. But all this has done is create an atmosphere of fear where it is ‘un-Australian’ to criticise anything Australian.

Australian’s will retort to this with an argument based on the use of Tall Poppy Syndrome, but this has less to do with being good or bad at something and a lot more to do with getting ideas above your station, ‘values’ that again are considered ‘un-Australian’, and needing to be cut down to size.

Although not music related, the treatment of Jana Rawlinson reflects this; she might be a current World Champion but through her injuries in the last and current Olympics she is considered by a sizable majority of the Australian people to be nothing more than an egotistical, whining drama queen, to the extent that she was essentially made to apologise for being such recently when she pulled out of the current Olympics through injury. In addition her cause has not been helped by moving to the UK, and selling the stories/photos of her marriage and birth of her child to magazines, further alienating her from an Australian public that virtually demands that it celebrities remain accessible and keep their feet firmly rooted to the floor.

Although I’m anything but a fan of Silverchair, and they were by far and away the worst band I saw at this year’s Big day Out and one of the worst bands that I’d seen in a long time, the comments responding to ET’s blog posting are essentially following a similar train of thought; if Daniel Johns had stayed the same as he was when he was 14 then everything would be ok, but instead he’s far too pretentious, far too flamboyant, wearing makeup, moving away from the dull, derivative plodding rock music of his youth and trying to stretch himself as a songwriter and musician to endear himself to the average Australian. He’s no ‘legend’ like Angry Anderson or Jimmy Barnes that’s for sure…

Criticising anything Australian is like waving a red flag to a bull, even more so when you’re not Australian, and especially so when you’re English and have just moved to the country. But if the whining Australians spent more than 2 seconds to have a bit of a think about it they would surely realise that having a noted music journalist move to Brisbane and write in international publications about Australian bands might actually be a good thing in helping them get some overseas exposure. Like recent articles by a certain new Brisbane resident such as:

• Mick Turner + Five Brisbane Records I Enjoyed Last Friday
• The Gin Club
• Tenniscoats’ Totemo Aimasho (released on Brisbane Label Room 40) and a mention of The Young Liberals
• Brisbane Label Room 40
• I Heart Hiroshima, Dick Desert & The Country Club and More (Butcher Birds, Butterfingers, Warm Guns, Vegas Kings, The Whats, Black Mustang)
• The Twits
• News From Brisbane 1

But maybe that’s just asking too much from your average Australian… 

No good non-photographic blog should be without a list, and in keeping with this blog’s theme here’s a list of Australian bands/artists off the top of my head that I think are really shit, and who make me despair with the undeserved, positive and fawning column inches that they receive in Australian newspapers and magazines:

• Wolfmother
• Powderfinger
• Silverchair
• The Vines
• Missy Higgins
• The Living End
• Grinspoon
• Little Birdy
• Kate Miller-Heidke
• Pete Murray
• Van She
• Faker
• Cat Empire
• Hilltop Hoods
• Thirsty Merc
• Rogue Traders
• Sneaky Sound System
• Expatriate
• Airbourne
• The Galvatrons

Feel free to remind me of all the ones I’ve missed…