By Walter Marsh

Does Adelaide have a music scene? It’s startling how little the average Adelaide resident knows about the kind of music that is happening on their own doorstep. At venues like the Metropolitan Hotel, The Jade Monkey, Jive, The Grace Emily, and Rocket Bar, week-in week-out, there exists a small, familiar and damn vibrant musical community.  A cross-section of the “scene” would show a few key groups, vaguely linked by genre and friendship circles that overlap and intersect, share members and rub shoulders with each other at gigs, with the vast audience majority of most shows composed of other musicians. When I consider it this way, it is a little sad to think, in the grand scheme of Adelaide’s otherwise magicalnightlife, how little attention the dynamic live music scene receives from the average Adelaide party animal and dilettante. Catchy-named, over-hyped club nights fill spaces far better than local bands, even ones who have been consistently playing for up to three years (a milestone by Adelaide standards). So, for the average young South Australian hesitant to venture out from the holy trinity of Red Square, Dog and Duck, and The Duke, here is an attempt to introduce you to your local scene.

On the surface at least, there seems to be little competition or animosity between bands, save for the occasional rush to snare a high-profile interstate touring slot.

“It’s no different to any other small city scene; its not hugely competitive because there just isn’t enough money around for anyone to compete for anything,” said Ben Revi , local musician.

That seems pretty true. There exists effectively no label infrastructure for making and releasing records outside of the trusty old “local artist” shelf at Big Star Records, and shows alone are rarely so lucrative to wholly support a band’s costs. That gets compounded with the fact that most medium-level international and interstate touring bands of the kind that would warrant local bands to support them often pass over Adelaide due to a mix of financial and geographical disincentives and the unfortunate uncertainty of whether or not anyone from Adelaide will turn up to a show.

A word that gets thrown about a lot is “incestuous”, which is something that, frankly, is an utter necessity in a town as small as Adelaide with such a consequently small pool of enthusiastic musicians. One could probably map out a family tree of inter-band relationships (both musical and otherwise), that would be so convoluted it begs belief.  Oh what the hey, here’s one:

Just as an example, Jeremy Lake plays drums in, at present, 20th Century Graduates (with whom he also sings and writes the songs) and The Keepsakes, but a few months ago actively played in another two. This might make sense, as most musicians know, since practically every second person you meet will ‘dabble’ in guitar, but competent drummers are harder to come by. Through Jeremy however, we meet guitaristAnthony Wignall, who at present leads The Keepsakes, as well as actively participating in Melbourne based synth-pop outfit Deja Entendu. How he does that I’m not sure, but this current workload is perhaps one of his lightest, as he also played in Zeta and Oh My Guard!, and has been known to play up to five gigs across a single week. Then there’s the aforementioned Ben Revi, who plays a lead role in two bands, Humble Bee and Cheer Advisory Council, who both share the same seven- member lineup. People just can’t seem to sit still in this city.

Then there’s the generational life cycle of local bands: they form, play consistently for a year and a half, begin to assert themselves as a quality band and win the favour of the small music-loving community, and release at best a couple of EPs before breaking up. Then, soon after, members of that band will resurface in a whole bunch of new bands with former members of other acts who have similarly packed it in around the same time. Generation Zeta, Lumonics, The Warsaw Flowers and Poly&TheStatics dies and reconfigures itself into Steering By Stars, Sunsettler, 20thCentury Graduates, The Honey Pies and Billy Bishop Goes To War. It’s kind of like Doctor Who in a way. Okay, maybe not.

This certainly ties into the sense of insularity and intimacy of inter-band circles, where most musicians have shared not just bills with each other but have in the past shared stages. While one could easily contend that this phenomenon is found in all cities, and not just in music circles, the intimacy and small scale of Adelaide’s musical contingent makes the trend all the more prominent and obvious. Of the many local bands I can think of, only a few have been going for more than 2 years; Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! could be regarded almost as elder statesmen, but have in fact only been around since 2006, and have been through enough line-up and stylistic changes to be in effect an entirely different band.

I’m wary of painting this as a negative picture. The scene is friendly, vibrant, and always changing and reinventing itself as a result of all these factors, which makes for an interesting little melting pot, the prolificness of which defies its size. Invariably, I would say that if you went to say, three separate shows featuring at least two local bands on the bill, you would have met or seen a substantial proportion of the musician and active music lover population, and still find new things to be amazed about by the fourth.

So my advice to you, the young (and poor) Adelaide student and music fan: save your money from that one Big Day Out ticket and spread the same cost across a whole year; you’ll see bands that are at times just as vibrant, lively, edgy, catchy and hilarious, with a significantly reduced risk of sunburn, bogans and Powderfinger.