The following "blog" is a combination reflection / opinion / comment on my years (ie. 40) in the music / entertainment Industry seen as an Australian musician ..... you are free to agree or to disagree with it, and it in no way represents the ultimate definitive summary, it is just one man's side of life.
July 2006

I am one of those baby boomers who grew up in a small outer suburb of far off Melbourne, Australia. Those were the days when we put money on the top of empty milk bottles at night on the front lawn and full bottles appeared in the morning. It was a time of musical transition, the 1950's, a time in Australia when the top 40 was an amalgam of Perry Como, Bobby Darrin, Johnny Mathis, and the smooth groomed crooners who I couldn't stand. On the other side, musically speaking, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and The Comets represented a musical time bomb just waiting to happen. In those days records were bought from furniture stores and cost (ie. An LP) about $1.25 (in Australian dollars) and they were all in monoaural sound (i.e. Mono) as stereo was yet to be common place in recordings. We had a "radiogram": a monolith standing in the lounge room with a turntable (and a central spindle on which one stacked 78 rpm's and then 33 rpm's) and in radio, all on top of a cupboard in the bottom which held your ten records (as buying records had not become the overwhelming pursuit of youth that it became in the early sixties) and there was a small speaker in the middle: if it was good it was a Phillips, but it was only three inches so the sound was literally to die for... it resembled the sound of the early answering machines (thin and weedy). I was lucky in that my parents had bought 78 rpm's (made of shellac very brittle and would sometimes break if too many were stacked on the spindle) of jazz bands (Graham Bell) and 45 rpm's of Ray Charles, Nat "King" Cole, and the boogie pianist Winifred atwell, so I grew up listening to classical, show tunes and a strange hybrid of music based on the "tritone" an interval that was known in the C10 C12 as "la intervale diabole", on "the Devils Interval". This interval is the basis of it all Dominant 7th chords which in turn form the under pinning of the Blues music...hence the Blues was known as "the Devil's Music". The record industry was not a separate entity at this stage and LP's were generally confined to Classical, Show Tunes (eg. "The King and I", "Camelot" etc.) and the very top selling artists like, Perry Como, Peggy Lee and others...it was only later in the 1950's, early 60's when Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" exploded onto the world scene that serious "contemporary" musicians focused on the LP as a serious vehicle to flex musical muscles.

It is by no mistake that at the same time, the Record Industry started to blossom (i.e. Increasing sales) and music became the focus of my generation. CBS (later bought by Sony) became the first company in the USA to gain its own national distribution and then companies such as Warner Brothers records spread. To the people who understand any business, goes the knowledge that distribution is the major factor in business success as if it is a good system it will provide the cash flow that any business needs to survive and prosper...and make no mistake, hide under as romantic dreams; the Record Industry is a Business, it is not a playtime occupation on "pie in the sky" foolery that some conservatives would have the masses believe. And, any business needs profits to continue so in the late 1950's to about 1962, the Record Industry was focused on the successful exploitation of artists to sell singles. The major players were EMI (in the UK) and RCA, Warner Brothers and CBS in the USA. Australia was dominated by EMI (because of our association with the Commonwealth) which basically distributed most of our more popular records. Radio played the Top 40 (means the "Top 40 selling singles of the week"...it still does) and relationships were formed with advertisers who stuck with their "own" radio station. The primary focus of the Radio was to play an attractive mix of the Popular tunes of the day, interspersed with broadcasts of football, cricket and racing. These stations would have gardening shows, talent contests and shows brought in from the UK: it was all very conservative.

Today's musical market, on business environment reminds me of the 1950's in the fragmentation of the market (and target market segments); the accent on singles, not LP's, and the live work that is creating so many young solo acoustic artists and this demand in time creates a lot of varied genre venues .... and the independence of youth...it was ever so, but times are hard for many kids these days and they are much more focused on survival then we were: there was a lot of work in Australia at that time...to be continued.

In Australia in the 1950's, venues were usually local coffee shops or dance halls, and there was no alcohol sold...it was all Coca Cola and cigarettes (this was before cancer was associated with smoking). The girls had black eye make up and teased hair, the men had short back and sides and desert boots. It was a time when the Shadows and Bill Haley created a guitar (usually a nylon string acoustic) craze and everybody learnt "Apache"...or in George Harrison's case "Raunchy". I used to sneak into dances via back doors to watch bands from the side of stage. The artists I saw were the Red Onions Jazz Band, the Strangers, Bobbie and Laurie, MPD and others...I was too young to understand musical influences, but for me, it was always Blues music, or blues based rock that attracted. The actual Top 40 chart was an important single sheet that came out every week, courtesy of Melbourne's 3UZ, and it was studied with great interest...this was about 1962, and I was 10. There were gigs at lunch time in Melbourne and the favourite for me was "10th Avenue" where I saw "The Bay City Union" and learnt to smoke cigarettes , a pastime that took years to be rid of and one that raised much ire (and the dreaded "strap") from the teachers at school.

Then came the Beatles...... (to be continued)