HISTORY
In the first in a series of articles charting Brisbane's indie music history, Pig City author Andrew Stafford looks at the early history of independent labels in Brisbane.
FATE, FATAL AND FATALISM: AN EARLY HISTORY OF INDIE LABELS IN BRISBANE
By Andrew Stafford
LIKE so many good things, it began by accident rather than design.
Ed Kuepper, guitarist with Brisbane’s original punk heart-stoppers the Saints, had left school and was working in a Brisbane warehouse for Melbourne-based independent label Astor Records. The label operated from the 1960s through to the early 1980s, experiencing early success with pioneering Australian garage bands the Loved Ones and Masters Apprentices.
Working for Astor was a critical postgraduate education for Kuepper. Not only did he get his hands on slabs of deleted singles, it helped him unlock the mystery of the recording process. The Saints were already tearing up their neighbourhood with hot-shot high-energy rock & roll, but for the guitarist, everything that happened between the band’s sporadic live performances and his record collection was a mystery.
Among other duties at Astor, Kuepper was fortunate to be in charge of handling requests for custom pressings. He began to receive tapes – often from truckies who played a little C&W in their spare time. Independent recording was far from a new thing, in Queensland or elsewhere. But until the penny dropped in Ed’s mind, no Australian band before them had ever thought to do it themselves.
Those three magic words, Do It Yourself, provided the keys to the kingdom.
Really, though, there was no choice. The Saints weren’t necessarily miles ahead of their time in world terms – the Ramones were getting it together in New York, and when Kuepper first heard the band, he was famously disappointed for feeling beaten to the punch. But Brisbane ain’t New York. Even in Sydney, no record company was game to touch the equally reviled Radio Birdman.
Emboldened, the Saints booked themselves into Bruce Window’s 16 track studio in West End. Two hours later, they emerged with three minutes of history. (I’m) Stranded was released on the band’s own Fatal Label, was sent around the world, and by September 1976 – before the Damned, before the Pistols and the Clash – the Saints found themselves a momentary cause celebre, thanks to a stunning review in London’s Sounds magazine. (And then got signed by EMI which, for the band, is where it all started to go downhill, really – another story.)
Of course, there had been other Brisbane bands, great ones too: the Purple Hearts, the Five, and of course the Bee Gees and Railroad Gin. On a local level, though, none of them had anything like the impact of the Saints, and the reason – apart from their thundering live shows to maybe a few dozen converts – was that first single.
The making of (I’m) Stranded was seminal to the development of music in Brisbane for a number of reasons other than its sheer magnificence. (Playing it right now, the 7” single still roars from the speakers in a way the LP cut doesn’t quite.) It was the fact that it existed AT ALL, and that the band had made it themselves. They owed no one.
This, combined with the bone simplicity of punk, represented a democratisation of music-making that horrified the majority of radio programmers and record labels but emboldened anyone with sufficient drive to emulate the Saints’ move. As the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster told me, “I think we all felt brushed by the Saints’ wings.”
The Go-Betweens, of course, were the other crucial pillar in the development of Brisbane’s music scene, and while they developed along entirely different lines to the Saints, what the two bands shared was a singularity of vision – at least some of it deriving from the very place where they had come. This was massively inspiring, not only to musicians, but to other artists, writers and thinkers from Brisbane who had thought of their town as a cultural backwater they couldn’t wait to escape.
The Go-Betweens wrote Lee Remick, the Numbers (later the Riptides) wrote Sunset Strip, and both songs – along with a third, Task Force, by punk rabble-rousers Razar – were pressed at once in mid-1978. The first two appeared on the Able Label imprint and, in a historical curiosity, Razar’s single was given the serial number AB-002, incorrectly denoting it as the second Able single, due to an error at the plant where all three were made.
I’d like you to stop reading this article for a moment, and imagine the scene: of Robert Forster, Grant McLennan and the Go-Betweens’ then-manager Damian Nelson all sitting around a table in their house at Golding Street, Toowong, sticking labels on the vinyl platters by hand. Think of it, and imagine the naiveté, but also the immense empowerment of it. Independent recording and distribution is taken for granted now. It wasn’t then. These are the people who paved the way, and this is how it used to be done.
In Forster’s words again, the Saints (and, although he didn’t say it himself, the Go-Betweens) gave Brisbane, a town that usually chased history, a place in history. Today, the city boasts over a dozen independent record labels, from the massively successful Dew Process to garage maniacs Turkeyneck.
I’m sure all of them would be happy to say that they – and we – are all truly lucky to have had such a phenomenal example set before them. That example is one of the primary reasons Brisbane has punched so far above its weight as a place of musical innovation since.
FATE, FATAL AND FATALISM: AN EARLY HISTORY OF INDIE LABELS IN BRISBANE
By Andrew Stafford
LIKE so many good things, it began by accident rather than design.
Ed Kuepper, guitarist with Brisbane’s original punk heart-stoppers the Saints, had left school and was working in a Brisbane warehouse for Melbourne-based independent label Astor Records. The label operated from the 1960s through to the early 1980s, experiencing early success with pioneering Australian garage bands the Loved Ones and Masters Apprentices.
Working for Astor was a critical postgraduate education for Kuepper. Not only did he get his hands on slabs of deleted singles, it helped him unlock the mystery of the recording process. The Saints were already tearing up their neighbourhood with hot-shot high-energy rock & roll, but for the guitarist, everything that happened between the band’s sporadic live performances and his record collection was a mystery.
Among other duties at Astor, Kuepper was fortunate to be in charge of handling requests for custom pressings. He began to receive tapes – often from truckies who played a little C&W in their spare time. Independent recording was far from a new thing, in Queensland or elsewhere. But until the penny dropped in Ed’s mind, no Australian band before them had ever thought to do it themselves.
Those three magic words, Do It Yourself, provided the keys to the kingdom.
Really, though, there was no choice. The Saints weren’t necessarily miles ahead of their time in world terms – the Ramones were getting it together in New York, and when Kuepper first heard the band, he was famously disappointed for feeling beaten to the punch. But Brisbane ain’t New York. Even in Sydney, no record company was game to touch the equally reviled Radio Birdman.
Emboldened, the Saints booked themselves into Bruce Window’s 16 track studio in West End. Two hours later, they emerged with three minutes of history. (I’m) Stranded was released on the band’s own Fatal Label, was sent around the world, and by September 1976 – before the Damned, before the Pistols and the Clash – the Saints found themselves a momentary cause celebre, thanks to a stunning review in London’s Sounds magazine. (And then got signed by EMI which, for the band, is where it all started to go downhill, really – another story.)
Of course, there had been other Brisbane bands, great ones too: the Purple Hearts, the Five, and of course the Bee Gees and Railroad Gin. On a local level, though, none of them had anything like the impact of the Saints, and the reason – apart from their thundering live shows to maybe a few dozen converts – was that first single.
The making of (I’m) Stranded was seminal to the development of music in Brisbane for a number of reasons other than its sheer magnificence. (Playing it right now, the 7” single still roars from the speakers in a way the LP cut doesn’t quite.) It was the fact that it existed AT ALL, and that the band had made it themselves. They owed no one.
This, combined with the bone simplicity of punk, represented a democratisation of music-making that horrified the majority of radio programmers and record labels but emboldened anyone with sufficient drive to emulate the Saints’ move. As the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster told me, “I think we all felt brushed by the Saints’ wings.”
The Go-Betweens, of course, were the other crucial pillar in the development of Brisbane’s music scene, and while they developed along entirely different lines to the Saints, what the two bands shared was a singularity of vision – at least some of it deriving from the very place where they had come. This was massively inspiring, not only to musicians, but to other artists, writers and thinkers from Brisbane who had thought of their town as a cultural backwater they couldn’t wait to escape.
The Go-Betweens wrote Lee Remick, the Numbers (later the Riptides) wrote Sunset Strip, and both songs – along with a third, Task Force, by punk rabble-rousers Razar – were pressed at once in mid-1978. The first two appeared on the Able Label imprint and, in a historical curiosity, Razar’s single was given the serial number AB-002, incorrectly denoting it as the second Able single, due to an error at the plant where all three were made.
I’d like you to stop reading this article for a moment, and imagine the scene: of Robert Forster, Grant McLennan and the Go-Betweens’ then-manager Damian Nelson all sitting around a table in their house at Golding Street, Toowong, sticking labels on the vinyl platters by hand. Think of it, and imagine the naiveté, but also the immense empowerment of it. Independent recording and distribution is taken for granted now. It wasn’t then. These are the people who paved the way, and this is how it used to be done.
In Forster’s words again, the Saints (and, although he didn’t say it himself, the Go-Betweens) gave Brisbane, a town that usually chased history, a place in history. Today, the city boasts over a dozen independent record labels, from the massively successful Dew Process to garage maniacs Turkeyneck.
I’m sure all of them would be happy to say that they – and we – are all truly lucky to have had such a phenomenal example set before them. That example is one of the primary reasons Brisbane has punched so far above its weight as a place of musical innovation since.
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