Never stop dreaming, never stop learning, laughter is a cure ... - APRA

Tania
Australian music online,
in time
Singer, writer, artistic director, and public
advocate of the arts, ROBYN ARCHER AO,
spoke at the launch of the Australian
National Library’s ambitious new project:
www.musicaustralia.org
Here, Robyn discusses the goals of the
new site and its implications for creators
and users of Australian music. Robyn
is currently Artistic Director, Liverpool
European Capital of Culture 2008.
By Kathy Grant, Manager,
Performance Verification, APRA
Summer 2002 in California.
The rolling green hills of
America’s wine country.
Six-piece Melbourne
band, The Cat Empire,
are playing their first
ever overseas gig – all
expenses paid, with wine
and food laid on! Several
months earlier, while
roughing it at the Adelaide
Fringe Festival the band
were approached by a
stranger with an American
accent. He promised to
fly them to Napa Valley
CA to play at his wine
auction – But he was true
to his word and here they
were living it up in the
sunshine, playing to some
of America’s wealthiest
wine moguls. A classy
OS debut indeed!
Cut to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
a few months later. It’s 3:00 am in the
dim, smoky confines of Late‘N’Live, a
stand up comedy room notorious for
its drunken hecklers. The Cat Empire
have begun their first gig of a 15-
nights-in-a-row marathon booking.
Not quite what they were expecting,
but they turn each night into a
party. Word travels and suddenly
Late‘N’Live becomes THE packed out
place to be for a culturally diverse
mix of Festival goers finishing their
night on an energetic high.
The Cat Empire’s genre-jumping
music has been described as “a
jazz-soul-hip-hop-Cuban-reggaegypsy
amalgamation’ or more
succinctly, “a cultural melting pot
stirred with a drum stick”. Starting
out as a trio, then growing to a
six-piece combo, they’ve built their
sound through live performances at
the tiny jazz clubs of Melbourne,
moved on to larger venues, then to
big festival stages.
After three years of playing together
live, The Cat Empire decided to
commit their sound to CD in 2003.
The debut album, made with the
help of family and friends, took
eight months and was recorded in
a variety of locations including a
country house on a macadamia nut
farm outside Byron Bay. All tracks
were recorded live in a vocal booth
fashioned out of mattresses. In
keeping with the band’s trademark
spontaneity, the recording included
the occasional sound of crickets
chirping in the warm night air.
While recording the album, The
Cat Empire played a large number
of shows around Byron Bay. They
rented a Tarago, toured the east
coast of Australia and played their
first WOMAD – WOMADelaide, thus
making an entry into this prestigious
circuit of world music festivals.
Tarago touring soon gave way to
international flights and gigs around
the globe: the UK, USA, Kuala
Lumpur, Singapore. An extensive
tour of Europe in mid 2004 took
the band from the Netherlands to
France, Switzerland and Austria,
followed by a road trip through
Italy to Spain where they played
in Barcelona and at the Kesse
World Music Festival. The return
journey included gigs at the
Three Elephants Festival in Lassay
les Chateaux, plus Karlsruhe in
Germany, and ended with another
Edinburgh Fringe. The venue this
time was The Famous Spiegeltent.
Back in Australia the group were
invited to open the 2004 APRA
Music Awards in Melbourne and
their self-titled debut album went
double platinum and earned six
ARIA nominations. In November
2004 the band headed back to
the studio – the Egrem recording
studio in Havana, Cuba, that is,
where Buena Vista Social Club,
Cubanismo and many other legends
have made musical history.
The album, Two Shoes, had to be
recorded in 28 days. Things began
well with drums, bass, percussion,
piano and trumpet recorded live
together in the first couple of weeks.
But dinner at a dodgy diner caused
food poisoning which floored every
member of the band for several days,
cutting into time for vocals and over
dubs. In the end it was all grist for the
mill for The Cat Empire – Two Shoes
was released in April 2005.
There’s no stopping them now. At
the time of writing the Empire had
two more shows to go in the US.
New York was sold out with over 18
record labels confirmed to attend.
Now that’s Empire building!
The line up
Felix Riebl percussion, vocals
- does most of the writing
Ollie McGill piano, melodica, banjo
Ryan Monro double bass, guitar
Will Hull-Brown drums
Jamshid ‘Jumps’ Khadiwala
DJ, percussion
recently spoke at the launch of Music Australia at the Australian National Library
I in Canberra. It was a lively event, hosted by Library Chair Sir James Gobbo and
featuring performances by Col Joye, the Stiff Gins, and the Australian Youth Orchestra
amongst others. Arts Minister Rod Kemp officially launched the new website.
Why was I there? There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, I have a long association
with the Australian National Library to which I have been donating my papers for
many years. We often think of the Library as a repository of things we may wish to
research, but the fact is that the ANL can be a huge resource for us personally. As
performing artists, the things we do are entirely transitory, and while we may have
scores and CDs, DVDs and even vinyl to record what we have done in our music,
it’s never quite the whole picture. The ANL gets interested in papers, photographs,
posters, hand drafts of songs, correspondence - the kinds of things which simply
rot in a garage somewhere unless someone catalogues and stores them properly.
This service means that if we, or someone else wishes to research our careers, there
is material evidence. This resource combined with the Australian Music and Sound
Archive (also in Canberra) means that all those years of performances that came and
went can be well documented.
Secondly, Robyn Holmes, Music Curator for the ANL, showed me Music Australia
during its development, and asked if I would be interested in having my website (www.
robynarcher.com.au) archived. I readily agreed. Robyn explained they wished to have
a comprehensive record of all music in Australia. While Music Australia is currently
and understandably weighted towards the past, the desire is for this website to
document all music from all fields including the most contemporary, and the more
scores, histories of bands, songs etc they have the better. We all know that some
projects we do, some bands, have a short time-span even when we wish them to
go on for years. By placing copies of CDs and documentation with the Library, and
archiving websites on Music Australia, there is a permanent record of what a band
or writer or performer was doing.
Imagine a film, theatre or advertising producer, from anywhere in the world,
searching Music Australia for ideas. This person, who is deliberately not going for
the high priced mainstream, comes across something you wrote ten years ago for
a band now vanished, and likes it. Bingo – a new opportunity has been created.
Even if that seems too good to be true, you can direct interested parties to where
they will find evidence of your work, and even at the research level, your work is
there to be included as a part of the history, present and future of Australian music.
I’m sure most APRA members would be delighted to think that their work has been
noticed somewhere.
Many artists have a reluctance
simply to hand over scores and
websites, but I believe that in this
instance the value of preserving
what you have done and expanding
your profile to a national and
historical stage, far outweighs
any danger of inappropriate use
in the is context. In any case,
you can always offer something
representative but perhaps sitting
in the dark drawer and no longer
of commercial value anyway.
Music Australia is an ambitious
project that shows collections
from all libraries and resources
throughout Australia. Its intention
is to demonstrate the breadth and
depth of Australian music from
start to present and already has
admirable records of composers,
single songs, musicals and
performers from classical to
contemporary. In that history, and
that company, it is an honour
to be able to type in your name
and see what work or evidence of
yours in held by which collections
in Australia, and an even greater
thrill for others to be able to get
a comprehensive look at what you
do, and even see scores online.
I’ve been an APRA member for many
years. I know both the energy and
concerns of our membership, and I
have no hesitation in recommending
Music Australia to you, as a
resource and a service. Have a look
at the site (www.musicaustralia.org).
If you’re not there, or something’s
missing, then only you can help it
get better.
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