Will A Non-Victorian Or NSW Act Ever Win The AMP?

22 January 2015 | 3:39 pm | Steve Bell

Not at this rate...

The announcement of the shortlist for the 2014 AMP had tongues wagging this week because of the proliferation of Melbourne acts (seven out of nine does seem rather weighted towards the Victorian capital), but if you look closely at the results of the AMP since its inception in 2005 the bigger issue is probably the fact that once again eight out of the nine listed acts come from New South Wales and Victoria.

No doubt these two states house the biggest scenes in Australia, but one has to wonder whether their domination of the AMP to date is actually a reflection of their actual supremacy of the Australian scene.

Here’s a list of the winners of the AMP over the years so far:

2005 – The Drones (Melbourne)
2006 – Augie March (Melbourne)
2007 – The Mess Hall (Sydney)
2008 – Eddy Current Suppression Ring (Melbourne)
2009 – Lisa Mitchell (Albury)
2010 – Cloud Control (Sydney)
2011 – The Jezabels (Sydney)
2012 – Hermitude (Sydney)
2013 – Big Scary (Melbourne)

Now, dismissing out-of-hand smokescreens like The Drones originally being from WA (they’d been a Melbourne institution for years by 2005) and Cloud Control and Hermitude being from the Blue Mountains, the only winner we’ve seen that’s not from Melbourne or Sydney is Lisa Mitchell, who’s from Albury – on the NSW/Victorian border, pretty much halfway between Melbourne and Sydney.

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And sadly this pattern of people from Melbourne and Sydney handing out trophies to each other doesn’t really show much sign of abating if a quick study of the bands nominated for the shortlists over the years and where they originate from is any indication:

2014
VIC – 7
NSW – 1
Elsewhere – 1 (Blank Realm, Qld)
 
2013
VIC – 4
NSW – 4
Elsewhere – 1 (Jimblah, SA)
 
2012
VIC – 2
NSW – 5
Elsewhere – 2 (Tame Impala, WA; Jess Ribeiro, NT)
 
2011
VIC – 2
NSW– 3
Elsewhere – 3 (Gurrumul, NT; The Middle East, Qld; Abbe May, WA)
OS – 1 (Kimbra, NZ)*
*probably to be filed under her place of domicile in Australia ie Melbourne
 
2010
VIC – 4
NSW – 4
Elsewhere – 1 (Tame Impala, WA)
 
2009
VIC – 4
NSW – 5
Elsewhere – 0
 
2008
VIC – 5
NSW – 3
Elsewhere – 1 (Tom Cooney, Qld)
 
2007
VIC – 5
NSW – 5
Elsewhere – 0
 
2006
VIC – 4
NSW – 2
Elsewhere – 3 (Bob Evans, WA; Jackie Marshall, Qld; The Grates, Qld)
 
2005
VIC – 3
NSW – 4
Elsewhere – 1 (The Go-Betweens, Qld)

Which combines for the overall tallies of:

VICTORIA – 40
NSW – 36
QLD – 6
WA – 4
SA – 1
NT – 2
NZ – 1

So as you can see from the evidence, it’s pretty unlikely that an artist from outside NSW or Victoria will ever win the AMP because it’s next to impossible for them to even get onto the shortlist. You’d seriously have to assume that if Violent Soho’s beloved postcode was 3122 or 2122 instead of 4122, they’d be swimming in AMPs by now (or they might have perhaps made a shortlist), and you think of other bands like Tame Impala (who’ve at least been nominated) and what they’ve achieved both here and abroad without bringing home the AMP bacon and you have to wonder what’s going on. NB: the fact that bands like Parkway Drive and The Amity Affliction can’t get a look-in is another issue altogether.

Obviously (you’d hope) this is all more a reflection of the music industry being predominantly centred in NSW and Victoria, hence the judges mainly come from these states, and when critiquing art there’s an inherent bias towards what you see before you on a regular basis – not an actual subjective bias, just a built-in tendency to lean towards acts and people that you’re more aware of. Because, in all honesty, even taking into account population differentials and any other factors that may be deemed relevant, if you truly believe that the Victorian music scene is 10 times stronger than the WA scene, or roughly seven times stronger than the Queensland scene – as the above figures would seem to indicate – then you’re either (a) completely fucked in the head, (b) totally ignorant about Australian music, or (c) a little bit of column (a) and a little bit of column (b).

But anyway, I’m picking that this will all be a moot point by the time the 2014 AMP is decided because Blank Realm will romp it in, their Grassed Inn album easily the equivalent of any of the releases by their shortlisted competitors. Plus they get talked about on overseas blogs AND played Glastonbury last year, those being the sort of things that seem to get southerners sitting up and taking notice of bands who come from outside the “traditional music cities” of Australia. I mean, it goes without saying that they’ll never be as good as “The Mess Hall” or “Lisa Mitchell” or “Cloud Control”, but this could just be the year for crazy upsets. And if for some insane reason they don’t pull it off this time, all they have to do is move down south before they drop their next long-player and that year’s AMP is pretty much in the bag.