AlSymerz

Armored Saint

Another Geriatric Old Geezer

AGED
 

Deep Purple - In Rock

Tassie had a couple of Noo Zeelund thrash bands booked for October or thereabout which got cancelled due to NSW's covid outbreak that they shared with the rest of the country didn't they? I seem to remember three bands being cancelled just before the bubble exploded.

Mortillery - Shapeshifter

We'd have loved to have gotten rich from metal but the reality is while the Melbourne scene was thriving there was so many people it was never going to happen, that is why we branched out into all genres of music. Hard rock/pub rock bands were good bread and butter but most of them hired regular crews and toured with them. We did earn more from gigs with those bands but for one of our bands that might have got $1500 a night a band like The Angles or Rose Tattoo would easily pull 5 figures, but they had more people and more crew that wanted more money.

The best part of those gigs though was that many of those 'charting' bands would lets local metal acts play on the same bill, there was of course some arguments, but to see a band like the Baby Animals, who despite having a cute lead singer were not metal, play on the same stage as a few kids playing punk and a local thrash band that hadn't even recorded an album was good.

Our station relied on local subscribers and companies, we had to do subscriber drives every 6 months to keep the station running. The owners of the station were devout Christian and for the first 5 years of ownership refused to even have hard rock. The station had a subscriber base of about 2000 and if it wasn't for the ads we had to run once an hour it would never have survived.

Damn, as an addition to the post above I read this morning that our production levels are once again screwed. Not only did the Victoria government get caught out not supporting the local paper industry by mandating the purchase of Chinese made paper for all its departments, today they are moving to Chinese made PPE. Last year while international shipping was almost shut down they forked out millions to give local companies the chance to modify their factories and produce all manner of PPE gear and now it's too expensive to purchase locally and the government want to save money.

Led Zepplin - I II III & IV

Friday night used to be gig night, it's wasn't good leaving the pub before closing.

But it was also not good turning up drunk. Because of sponsors and guidelines etc we weren't allowed to play songs with swearing in them. Each DJ got three warnings if it was in a song and not really obvious, but there was more sever cases for obvious ones. The powers that be used to listen to tapes of our shows over and over to prove us wrong, but the only time we got caught was the time we drank too much and played Overkill's Blood Money instead of Thanx For Nothing.

Friday night shows were good for those at home, but shitty for those that had to stay sober (technically), drive to the station, stay awake for two hours, and then drive home

White Spirit - White Spirit

We don't produce that much on the mainland either. This time of covid with closed borders and limited travel would have been a perfect time for Australian manufacturing to stand up but it just seems like too many put that sort of thing in the too hard basket now days.

I'm not embarrassed to say, we did it for the money, it was our jobs, we needed to pay bills, but we were far from rich. We did spend years, at the same time, working with youth groups, helping them put on gigs and record bands etc which was all free work but we were definitely out there working for a dollar.

There is no way I could have continued doing all that stuff, by the mid 90's I was fucked. More injuries than I could imagine, more effort to get up each day and the pay didn't really change. So I went into driving trucks for someone else. Long haul rigs, across the country, sea to sea, on the road 6 out of 7 days. The time on the road was nearly the same but as a long haul driver I just got to be a steering wheel attendant, all I had to do was make sure the rig got home in one piece. But even that was a shit job for a family man so I moved into computers and really haven't looked back, but kids, and distance have kept me from a lot of gigs.

My memory is shit, I can't remember when the first Metal for the Brain was, for some reason I was thinking it was the 80's.

Three Hours of Power was a huge help. There was other community radio stations that helped too but many of them had such a small transmission range that they couldn't be heard outside the suburbs. I know at one stage I used to have a 100 foot antenna which we needed for VHF TV from the city before UHF was a thing and well before digital and I was able to stick an FM antenna on top just to pick up some Melbourne stations, but FM signal does not travel well. Even so for those in the city I remember there being about 20 metal shows a week on public broadcast, but some were lucky to get more than a few listeners. We did a a radio show ourselves, got the lovely time slot of 12-2 Friday nights and 12-1 on Sunday nights!

The scene in Covid central is terrible because we shut down every few weeks , but pre covid it's a bit sad to say but it was mostly pop music. There is some hard rock bands and pub bands getting regular gigs and small tours but not that much. Venues know it's cheaper to pay a DJ who can play anything rather than a live band that might not score with the locals. There is still some hard working thrash/metal bands like Descerator, Harlott, In Malice's Wake etc working their butts off in the city but I'm not sure of the numbers they are getting these days.

anger

There is no doubt that metal had it harder. We did gigs for all sorts of bands from country bands to metal bands. I worked with a lot with younger bands and I worked with venues to gets bands on stages. Getting bums on seats, or standing, was harder and harder as time went on. Ticket prices got higher, even at gigs were we had complete control and set everything from ticket prices to the price of chips it was difficult. Kids just wanted some music and to have fun, but they couldn't get it because they couldn't afford $50 for a ticket that we had to charge to break even.

Between arsehole bands with illusions of grandeur who requested $12000 riders for fundraiser gigs where every other band played for nothing with no riders. To power costs to keep to lights on. To massive insurance bills that had to be paid even before the gates opened. Putting on gigs got harder in the 90's for all bands. Sure the Gudinski's of this world with their coke....oops I mean money, could put on arena shows but putting on a gig in the suburbs so that everyone can turn up became so cost prohibitive that it just wasn't worth doing.

It used to be said that the shit that happens in the government sector wouldn't happen in the private sector. The private sector demands more of it's people and people are more answerable in the private sector. But that's far from true these days, the grunts at the bottom still do all the work while the pricks at the top get richer by doing less.

Hobbs was an excellent band and Peter was a legend, I worked many times with the guy and there wasn't a more genuine person in Australian Metal. But I understand his music wasn't to everyone's liking, everyone has different taste, I dislike a lot of stuff most metal heads seem to love.

We never needed a Big 4 here. If we'd had an official Aussie Big 4 so the rest of the world could see it we'd then have needed a state by state Big 4 because it would have turned into a competition. We also didn't have the media interest, both local and international in the 80's to generate enough interest in such terms. Our mainstream media ignored metal as much as they could, the local mags like Hot Metal (which strangely enough has turned into some pay walled/donor pays conspiracy website these days) cared more about overseas metal, and international media only did small stories on our bands. Every state had their own scene from about 83 onwards, how strong that scene was was dependant on the people in it and many survived quiet well into the 90's and beyond as they adapted.

TBH I'm not surprised King Parrot only had 40 people!! Although I'm not a fan so I would say something like that

We did regional gigs with multiple bands on the bill for less than 100 people in the 80's, it cost me more to fill the truck with diesel than we made from ticket sales. It sucked but if bands wanted to get their music to the regional areas they had to do it. There was plenty of places in the country it just wasn't viable to tour, but there was bands who used the big cities, Melb, Syd, Bris, as their finance for regional tours. Bands could get about $1500-2000 for a solo show at a night club/pub/venue in regional Vic and NSW in the 80's, but with crews of maybe 6 or 8 people and bands of 4 people it was not about the money it was about the exposure.

The guy isn't metal obviously but Slim Dusty was a prime example of how to be popular and make money touring Australia. Metal bands could never have hoped to have his success but more of them should have followed his lead and taken the show to the people rather than waiting for the people to come to the show.

garden

nail

For all the praise other countries offer Australia for it's free health system it really is a shambles in so many areas. So many different areas fall through cracks that should not be there but appear because of bureaucracy. While our politicians don't have to answer for their fuck ups and while they can continually pass the buck when it suits them they'll continue to take money from where it's needed then argue that it's not their fault 5-10 years down the track when it gets out of hand. But it's not just them, too often the people at the top of these organisations are gifted their jobs without having the experience to do them properly.

30 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Metaldom in Australia literally collapsed overnight.  When I started high school in 1993 there were lots of metalheads, by the time I finished in 1996 I was the only one except one guy who liked Motley Crue and nothing else!  

  

Decided to keep this out of the Mike Howe thread....

Aus Metal did suffer a bit in the early to mid 90's and it sucked even more in regional areas unless there was metal bands in the area. But if you think it collapsed then I suggest you watch Thrash Or Fuck Off the multipart YT doco about thrash metal in this country. Sure much of it was in the city but the scene was thriving in the 80's, and early 90's, then it did die off a bit but it certainly didn't collapse. Through out the 80's and 90's I worked with a heap of bands that did regional tours, mostly Vic and NSW but there was other states and there was other bands.

I grew up in regional areas and started tech school well before 93 but I do remember the other "metal" fans I went to school with thinking metal started with Bon Jovi, ended with Motley Crue and had Poison somewhere in the middle. But that was school, outside of school there was metal bands playing gigs. None of them ever made it big but some of them kept the music going into the 90's. Some guys like Peter Hobbs, never gave up fighting for metal in the country.

Meanstreak - Roadkill