Once each year during September sleepy old mid-week Brisbane is transformed from its usual stupour into a bustling musical mecca, courtesy of the annual BIGSOUND Live extravaganza. Over one hundred Australian bands of all shapes, sizes and sounds – plus a handful from around the globe – converge to strut their stuff in front of the industry figures who've also been drawn like moths to a flame for the conference side of proceedings, and that's not even taking into account the dozens of bands who play the unofficial gigs which spring up around the event.
Punters who buy a ticket for BIGSOUND Live can get into the twelve participating venues on either Wednesday or Thursday – or both nights for the more intrepid amongst their ranks – and experience acts such as Billy Bragg, Robert Forster, Regurgitator, Adalita, Busby Marou, Bleeding Knees Club, The Jungle Giants, Megan Washington, Eagle & The Worm, The Audreys and Spit Syndicate (to list just a cross-section of this year's participants) in their natural environment. There's no other place or time in Australia where you can have access to all of our homegrown talent so easily and conveniently, and nowhere you'd rather be when it's all going down.
This year is the fourth and final year that BIGSOUND Live has been co-ordinated by Executive Programmer Graham 'Asho' Ashton – next year he's handing over the reins to this year's Associate Programmer Nick O'Byrne (currently the General Manager of AIR) – and he feels that BIGSOUND Live has really come into its own in recent years.
“My job used to be to go and persuade people to be part of this and it's completely changed – everybody wants to be a part of it,” he smiles. “And for me one of the most exciting things was how Billy Bragg, Regurgitator and Robert Forster came to us and said, 'Can we please showcase at BIGSOUND?' I don't have to tell you how fucking remarkable that is compared to where we've come from as an event; two of the most important artists to ever come from Australia and one of the most important artists ever to emerge from anywhere in the world want to showcase at BIGSOUND. I probably shouldn't say this, but I also love all of the unofficial stuff that springs up around the showcases, it just makes it all so vibrant. It's one big conduit to this musical exposure, it's great.
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“I think we've worked really hard to delete the word 'industry' from anything to do with BIGSOUND and replace it with the word 'community'. I think the strongest message that I've tried to get across has been that it's about the music community and it's about the artists first and foremost. I love the fact that there's no backstage at these gigs, so that when a band's not onstage they're out there with everyone else watching other bands. As a punter, that's an opportunity to see people you admire up close – it's a great party, and for me that community side of it is what makes it truly great.
Feel the vibe. Photo from Q Music.
Obviously the hardest aspect of the programming role is narrowing down the list of who's going to play from the deluge of eager applicants – this year in excess of 900 bands applied for the 120 showcase slots available.
“I'm really relived that I got to work with Asho this year, because I don't think I was quite prepared for the amount of work that it is, so watching Asho do it was a good primer,” O'Byrne offers. “I was pretty hands on though – in terms of choosing the artists I think we were fairly even in our contribution. Asho trumped me on a few things as the senior guy – he knows the way the whole thing functions better than I do in terms of different stages and different nights – but definitely the artist line-up was a fifty-fifty job.
“You can only pick from the artists that apply, so if it's a good line-up that's got a lot to do with the calibre of the applications – I don't think that Asho and I can take that much credit. The hardest thing is just balancing it, because it's not necessarily a matter of picking the best 120 bands – or the most advanced 120 bands – there's a need to cover a lot of different genres and get a good spread of career trajectory and that sort of stuff, so balancing the line-up is harder than choosing who your favourite bands from the list. I'm sure that if people could see the list of bands that we had to say 'no' to then they would think that we're ridiculously stupid.”
But mainly punters heading to BIGSOUND Live should be seriously excited about the magnitude of musical delights awaiting them.
“I honestly think it's the best line-up of Australian music that exists anywhere – it trumps any festival and any showcase – and I thought that long before I was involved,” O'Byrne marvels. “If you're actually interested in new Australian music then there's nowhere else to be, in terms of pure volume and depth. There's always two dozen bands that I'm dying to see – for the punter it's like a 'choose your own musical adventure'. If you wanted to you could stay on one stage and get a great line-up of five bands and it would be a very satisfying night of music, but of course there's twelve stages so most people run around. Plus the vibe on the street is awesome – everyone's running around trying to see different bands and you cross paths time and time again – you feel like you're part of a community and that you're in on something.”
