This Must Be The Place Podcast This Must Be The Place Podcast

“Things fall apart- it’s scientific” is a line from the Talking Heads song “Wild Life”. Like most Talking Heads songs, including the one from which the This Must Be The Place podcast takes its name, the lyrics are a bit bookish.

“Wild Life” seems to be a reference – one I haven’t actually fact checked – to popular scientific accounts from the mid 20th century, theorising the trajectory of the universe and of life in it. Entropy, or the second rule of thermodynamics, refers to the “general trend of the universe toward death and disorder”. And in 1944’s “What is Life”, Schrodinger put forward the idea that life itself is a kind of negative entropy machine, defined by a temporary state of order-from-disorder. Aside from sometimes passing on copies of our DNA, however, the ends of our lives are as apparently inevitable as that of the universe.

Meanwhile and despite this cheerful thought, our lives are temporarily put together from bits and pieces, material and digital. People attempt at various times to curate, purge, hoard, systematise or selectively narrate piles of memories and things and files. Friends and relatives might do the same for us after we pass away. Music, and the changing technologies through which music is created and duplicated, forms one part of this. In “This is your Brain on Music”, Daniel Levitin writes about how music can connect people to times and places long after their more practical memories have faded. Side note – the music we remember the most vividly tends to be from when we are 14 years old.

I was not 14 years old, but I remember the first time I heard the Talking Heads song “This Must Be The Place” because it was on the soundtrack to the film “Wall Street”, which I watched on a rented VHS tape in 2001 before I first travelled to the US. David Byrne of Talking Heads later discussed the effects of a century of music technology in “How Music Works”. The study of technology and media as part of the social and historical record is not new – in coining the term “the medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan in 1964 proposed “communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, should be primary focus of study”. Radio and records are central to Ken Burns’ History of Country Music – previously, songs were reproduced and adapted through live performance. The Carter Family’s early recorded songs were said to have been “captured, rather than written”.

But what of the music so many people now record themselves, and which does not form part of the broader popular or cultural memory? How do people give order to their own songs and recorded music over the course of decades, during which mediums for recording and sharing music have come and gone, and changed fundamentally? The topic has been more in my mind and conversations of late in light of the recent death, from Motor Neurone Disease, of an old friend of my husband. Two decades ago, they and others spent years writing and recording music together in garages and warehouses. But you can’t always find, let alone access old recordings. Listening to a song is one way of putting yourself into a place and time. Music is geography and is also technology. In the shift to digital, each new technology promises less physical stuff, less clutter, perhaps even a kind of longevity. It’s an illusion – the archiving and curation of our own music is contingent on constantly changing technologies and media which are as fallible as the material world. There are extremes to navigate – you might have only one copy of a song, or you might have hundreds of copies of lurking old CDs. I’ve put together a rough chronology of different technologies for recording and sharing music that I’ve used, over the 1980s to 2020s. I’ve included example songs where I could find them – its own saga. Radio, cassette, VHS, studio and home recorded CDs, social media, digital releases, vinyl, the cloud, an

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio, David Nichols of This Must Be The Place podcast interviews Sabina Andron - a cities scholar specializing in creative and transgressive public cultures, with a specific interest in the semiotics of urban walls and surfaces. Sabina is the author of “Urban Surfaces, Graffiti and the Right to the City”, to be published in 2024.

Although graffiti (or “stuff on walls”) is shorthand to describe Sabina’s research, it’s not really a fair description – Sabina’s interest is in documenting and understanding how urban culture articulates itself onto the visible surfaces of cities. In trying to understand cities by reading walls and surfaces, Sabina spends a lot of time walking around noticing the urban forms of relatively humble streets and walls, but more broadly studies both endorsed and illegal forms of markings as well as how surfaces are managed, regulated, maintained and cleaned. Sabina started in photographic documentary methods, but is also trying to pay attention in different ways of seeing urban surfaces, such as written note taking. She has recently filled a notebook with all the names mentioned in the Brunswick stretch of Sydney Road. Many of these are ubiquitous but unnoticed corporate and security signs – text that is permitted or sometimes required in urban space. People notice tags, but “there is so much of everything as well, we just don’t question them – we should challenge that because it is about who has a right to be visible”.

As well as international examples and context, Sabina offers observations on Melbourne – for example, its rich outdoor poster culture, it’s laneways both touristed and otherwise, its pride in certain forms of street art but also its policies focused on order – Melbourne’s Mayor, for example, holding a pressure cleaning to reassure people “how important it is to keep the city clean”.

The discussion covers graffiti as cultural and artistic discourse, the relatively recent criminalisation of graffiti, David’s short career in train vandalism at age 15,
the material ecologies of things like posters (side notes – small birds seem to eat the paste, right? Or is it just Liz that thinks that?), murals versus graffiti, City Square’s “graffiti wall” which was basically a whiteboard, photographic books of graffiti (including the popular 1970s Australian volumes of ‘witty’ examples), the visual and cultural language of graffiti and how train tags came to be seen as an unsettling signal of decay, graffiti removal companies, coatings, designs that actively prevent damage from spray paints, and how Melbourne discourse, as in many places, tends to hate graffiti but love street art.

Music venue The Tote in Collingwood has sound restrictions based on vibrations that might damage the paint on the Keith Haring mural next to it – a 1984 mural preserved at substantial cost, as a community symbol. Although Serena asks - why are some things symbols and for whom? “We should perhaps start valuing the collective meaning and force of our capacity to write on walls”.

Also discussed is a recent Fitzroy residents’ meeting about graffiti – how the vehement dislike of tagging uses the language of viral invasion, and of threat and disorder. David wonders whether Fitzroy residents still fear the sanctioned “white anting” of the Housing Commission and Freeway construction days of the mid 20th century. Sabina argues graffiti often is read as an invasive threat, as the sign of a disordered environment, but that there are other kinds of threats – to civic rights and access to space - from a clean and ordered environment. The discussion is about specific places and surfaces – but “I think we are a bit naïve if we think that the form is the most important aspect of this conversation. It’s more about our right to occupy space”.

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio, Liz Taylor of This Must be the Place interviews Paul Long, Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries and a recent arrival from one music city (Birmingham) to another (Melbourne). Birmingham in the UK is known for its connections to diverse genres of music - heavy metal, conscious reggae, grime, bhangra, dance. “Brum” is branded as the birthplace of Black Sabbath and heavy metal, as well as of such ubiquitous bands as UB40, Duran Duran and (previously unbeknownst to Liz) ELO. Birmingham has also been home to a widespread unlicensed radio scene. Particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, unlicensed or ‘pirate’ radio served as voices (albeit periodically raided by police) for geographically and culturally specific groups such as Caribbean migrants, and as entry points for micro-genres and local scenes – broadcasting, for example, mobile phone numbers for dance party tickets. Here Paul reflects on the challenges of documenting and curating music cultures which are largely ephemeral, in places home to diverse communities and narratives, and in contexts where government intervention can be a virtue or its opposite –how “a place can take on these challenging narratives”.

As both listener and historian Paul describes “going in search of radio”, “trying to find traces and put them back together”, and how different technologies and places interact over time. As well as contrasting the radio and audio landscapes of Birmingham and Melbourne, the discussion covers trade-offs between amateur and professional programming, national and local content, and between celebrating past hits and continuing in the present. As is often the case for musicians “the longer you go on, the more you’re burdened with your own standards, your own repertoire”, and “the same happens to places”. Documenting music heritage in a music city like Birmingham involves, on the one hand, exhibitions and mythologies around famous bands. On the other are the more fleeting places, moments, and sounds which are nonetheless important to memory and identity – the value of “recognising not just the big names, but the also-rans, the never-rans, the thank god they never succeeded types - and thinking about what this means to people”. In the age of streaming and digital radio, Paul argues for tracing the origins of relatively recent music genres still matters - “learning about where this stuff came from, and preserving stuff that might otherwise disappear”.

Links –
Amplify -
https://amplifies.blog/2023/09/27/pirate-radio-schedule/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amplify-story-resistance-radio/id1704273057
Paul Long, Monash University – Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries and Director, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre - https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/paul-long
Birmingham Music Archive - https://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/
Paul Long’s RRR Brum-a gems playlist -
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6pnFpV208Ve3LKqV4K4zO0?si=cddd34c664be4f81&nd=1

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio Liz Taylor of This Must be the Place talks with Shane Homan and Seamus O’Hanlon about their book “Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy” - looking back on Melbourne’s music spaces from the 1950s to now. From town hall to stadium to pub, how have the physical spaces of popular music changed alongside a dramatically changing city? What are the ingredients of a music city, and what role does government policy have? Shane argues music cities are “a bit more complex than making sure you have enough live music venues in your city, add some funding and stir – each city as its own histories and settings”.

The book starts with the arrival of rock and roll (and other transformative changes, like television) in 1956 after which Shane and Seamus chart the emergence and declines of different music circuits in Melbourne: e.g. drawing on interviews with musicians of Italian background who came to Melbourne in the mid 20th century and created their own Italian ballroom circuit across suburbia. These shows would attract thousands of people, playing hits from the Italian hit parade for local consumption. Another example is unlicensed discotheques of the 1960s – at one point there were 25 in the Melbourne CBD, such as Catcher in Flinders Lane which served as a space for late night jams. Not having liquor licenses, discotheques were hard to shut down, but police were in “a constant search for what we can do these venues for”.

Seamus argues that as economic conditions change, new spaces become redundant, and “one of the really interesting things about music is that it’s really good at taking over redundant spaces” – whether suburban theatres, boxing rings, hotels, and later warehouses. In Melbourne, culture and tourism became seen as sources of economic growth after the decline of manufacturing in the 1970s - “in the 1950s and 1960s it was all about factories and come and get a job. By the 1980s they were gone. It was all about, come and have fun instead”. Alongside these broader economic and social upheavals, beer barns and the pub rock scene come to prominence. Melbourne changed from an almost parochial but vibrant music scene, to a self-consciously globally connected city promoted for its local live music scene of smaller venues and sub-genres. Looking back on Melbourne’s specific music scenes, Shane argues that what they have all had in common is a “do-it-yourself enthusiasm from communities finding their own members, with venues building from there”. Governments, generally, have tended to not notice them until years later when they’re under threat.

The interview covers liquor licensing, demographics, migration trends, noise complaints, moral panics, planning and policy settings like Agent of Change, broadcasting and the origins of community radio, Sydney and Melbourne rivalries, recording labels, publishing, and cultural policy; but also lands back on the inexorable pressures of housing and land costs. The contemporary challenges in Melbourne and other expensive and unequal cities are “how do you keep the small hole in the wall venues going?” and how do you create the conditions for new venues and opportunities to emerge? “Venues aren’t just bricks and mortar, they have a heritage component in terms of memories of both fans and performers”. With music venues facing hostile conditions, new ideas and models include the Collingwood Yards precinct, and the Tote’s latest iteration. But does place and live music still matter? You can record music to high quality on your phone, but “seeing it performed live- there’s still something about it” – at least for now.

Links –
https://amplifies.blog/2023/09/27/pirate-radio-schedule/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amplify-story-resistance-radio/id1704273057
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/music-city-melbourne-9781501365720/

Urban Policy and Research – 40th anniversary journal party

This episode of This Must Be The Place is a live recording from the party held for the 40th anniversary of the journal Urban Policy and Research, which took place at Melbourne University in early 2023. The episode begins with Liz briefly introducing the journal and its history – including one of the co-founders, Jeremy Reynolds - via an anecdote about Margo Huxley and her paper on chicken by-laws and the TV show “The Good Life”: (“In search of ‘the good life’: Being a political economy of certain local government by-laws within the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Victoria” published back in 1985. - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111148508522607).

After that it’s a largely unedited live recording of the anniversary proceedings – we hear from Crystal Legacy, Paul Maginn, MC Peter Phibbs, and co-founders Brian Haratsis and Marcus Spiller. There’s two game shows including a “you can’t ask that” panel of Emma Baker, Alexa Gower, Nicole Gurran, and Mike Berry. Plus a quiz where you have to guess the date of articles over the decades. Part of the theme of the proceedings is looking back at change and at non-change: at the sometimes frustratingly circular nature of debate, with some ideas coming around repeatedly without necessarily effecting good outcomes. It can be hard to pick which decade an editorial about ridiculous housing problems comes from. Having said that, “Housing policy in the 1980s” has a particularly dated ring to it.

UPR was founded by a group of Melbournians in 1982 – and, as Marcus Spiller recalls, was actually launched by Gough Whitlam. Then as now, “the journal aims to disseminate information which is useful to Australian policy makers”. The recording has a few rueful laughs about trying to make that true, but also valuing the community of authors, reviewers and other contributors to the knowledge and influence of Urban Policy and Research. Most of the recording is a live recording, but with some light edits. There’s a fair bit of room noise, clapping and familiar voices. Finishing with a cover of “Little Boxes”, by the Taylor Project, and part of the requested song “Ballarat”. Alas the recording cut out such that the very end of the night cut off from the recording. ANYWAY you should also check out the UPR back catalogue and consider contributing an article or debate piece!

In this summer instalment of erstwhile podcast This Must Be The Place, Liz Taylor (no, not the actor – who is dead by the way) talks with Brendan Gleeson (no, also not that other actor). Brendan Gleeson is Professor of Urban Policy at the University of Melbourne and has had a decades-long career in publishing urban research. But since 2021 Brendan has for health reasons “stepped off the plate” from heading the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute – he hasn’t read an academic theory text in over a year, and has instead been rescaling his focus to the local and the everyday of life in the Hotham Hill area of North Melbourne. Brendan’s recent projects include setting up an independent press, Shiel Street Press (named for the North Melbourne street – also home of the Public Records Office), publishing a book of poems based on Gardiner Reserve in North Melbourne (“Records of the Loss Property Department of Gardiner Reserve”), and researching the life and times of a long-lived cockatoo (Cocky Duggan) who lived in a hotel in North Melbourne in the mid 20th century and was known for his “more than passable impersonation of men vomiting”.

Gardiner Reserve is a place Brendan suddenly spent a lot of time in, living and observing at a walking pace, and the “Records of the Loss Property Department of Gardiner Reserve” book is a faux-corporate drama made up of pictures and poems, in large part inspired by items left behind in the park that Brendan’s flat faces onto – beginning with the triggering sight of a set of sparkly children’s shoes discarded (but neatly arranged) in a playground. From these lost and found items – shoes, toys, milk crates, crochet rugs, single crutches, the routine sadness of lost cat signs - the discussion gets on to themes of loss, grief, time, decay, children gone and grown, and the broader cultural fascination of discarded objects. Liz ties it into Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and his theories of modernity and decay, and to “Found Magazine” including Speckles the proto-viral “Loss Cat”. Also covered are municipal micro-regulations, public trees, Blue Lake, urban noises (lots of them are in the background), the anxiety of public toilet announcements (“door locked – your maximum use time is…”), North Melbourne Swimming Pool, and of course concluding with the tale of Cocky Duggan of the Court House Hotel. It was a long conversation and most of the background on Shiel Street Press has been cut but you find more information here - https://www.shielstreetpress.com.