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 What options do you have if you’ve played every venue you can in Brisbane? You want to choose your own line up or maybe you want to give the under 18’s a chance to see more live music? There are alternatives to playing the pubs and clubs. Informer’s CRAIG PETERS lends an historical insight in the first of a two-part series on the current crop of alternate music venues and space conversions in Brisbane. First up, the demise of 610 and a return to the house party…
Familiarity breeds contempt. There are rare species within bands that would rather forgo the banalities of pubs and clubs and play shows on their own terms. For reasons as disparate as subscribing to an overly dogmatic approach to DIY, frustration at playing at a pub, under a TV screen that is replaying that evenings Rugby League game or annoyance at sound restrictions and ego driven staff who run the venue (or merely the old adage of “boredom through tradition”) there’s only so many shows you can do in the same old bars and café’s where a thousand tired, uninteresting local bands have plied their wares before. Regardless, bands that yearn for something more interesting have in the past taken to putting on shows wherever they can, whenever they can.
Brisbane in the ‘80s had the Target Building, which was a huge squatted building in the middle of the Valley; every floor was a different colour. You could come and go as you pleased, have shows and rehearse wherever you wanted. In many ways the original 610 was the Target Building’s second coming. When it first opened, the basement of 610 was built for destruction, no cops, no hassles and an alternate to the norm. Over the course of six months to a year some of Australia’s most interesting and intense bands played there, kids got beyond fucked up, stairs fell in, and when jocks entered starting trouble they got beat up. It encapsulated how shows could be exciting. It was a new guard within a tired and boring scene.
Once the era of 610 was over it was back to the same old licensed venues. Several attempts at similar style DIY all ages venues seemed to fail. As much as 610 was revelatory in a town like Brisbane where anything can happen but it never does, it is the humble house show which has been the most consistent avenue for independent shows, which reinstall excitement and power back into an otherwise “going through the motions” process. Without security guards, expensive drinks, sound guys lecturing or promoters screwing you out of money, you get to the bone of 100 or so people crammed in a living room, without a stage and without the performer/audience dichotomy. You are left with bands playing the show of their lives, circle pits starting in the smallest of rooms, every person you have never met in Brisbane turning up and coming together in a way that isn’t as impersonal as a show at a venue.
The best advice for house shows? Batten down the hatches, hide valuables, lock the doors to the bedrooms so you are essentially in an empty house, if there is nothing to break, there is nothing to worry about. Don’t ask bands to turn it down, the cops eventually come (they always do) and they will give you the warning. Generally if you open your house up for a show, people will respect the house. Most kids who come to these shows aren’t idiots, they are grateful of the fact you have put your house on the line for a night and nothing will get destroyed.
Choose bands wisely, if you want a fun party, get a band who are loud and fun, on the contrary if you are having a wine and cheese night get a more mellow folk band. House shows offer bands and punters the opportunity to see bands for free in an environment where you feel that anything can happen. There is no rulebook or manifesto, the whole point is to do exactly as you please and put on shows where and when you like if only for the reason that you can - and for christ’s sake, sometimes when you’re in a town like Brisbane, it feels like the only thing you can do.
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