National SLAM Day is to be held this Saturday 23rd February, with over 300 venues hosting bands with over 200 gigs to be held all over the country, and the team at Save Live Australia’s Music has decided not to pursue government funding for their campaign this year, instead opting to crowd-fund the initiative.
Helen Macrou, a co-founder of SLAM, told The Music that “we’re often critical of the Government and we don’t want to be put in the position where we’re beholden to a Government.” So instead, their focus has turned to the general population, in the hopes that people will chip in to help save the live music venues they love.
SLAM is working to politicise and publicise the issue of live music, and encouraging the government to change laws and actually support the live music industry, the public can help with the crowd-funding initiative by pledging their money to help the SLAM campaign, for as low as $10. Greater contributions can also gain punters access to dinners with musicians and backstage passes.
“There is no way for SLAM to be sustainable after three years without coffee money, so to speak,” added Ms. Macrou, emphasising the state of Australia’s live music scene was in dire straits in the lead-up to the national SLAM Day.
The SLAM campaign started three years ago with a rally in Melbourne. Over 20,000 people protested the introduction of harsh new liquor licencing restrictions, put into place because of an inferred link between live music and violence. In the past weeks, live venues have again been put in jeopardy due to lack of government concern.
“There is no way for SLAM to be sustainable after three years without coffee money, so to speak.” – Helen Macrou, SLAM“It seems an irony that leading up to SLAM Day we have [crises] with venues closing across the country. There are issues that have distracted our attention over the last few days, but the message of music and small gigs is getting out there,” said Ms. Macrou. Iconic venues such as The Annanndale in Sydney, The Old Bar in Fitzroy, Pure Pop Records in St Kilda, and The Prince Public Bar In St Kilda are under pressure due to financial woes and noise complaints.
According to The Music, Victorian law designates ” live music is in the same category as hospital waste, automatically presenting it as a negative”. Preference is often given to residents of new high-rise developments, over that the interests of many of our greatest small music venues.
The peace of mind of residents should be a government concern, but this should not come at the expense of supporting Australian music. Particularly because potential residents should have the common sense to research an area before they move somewhere. If noise is not something they can deal with, perhaps that area is not for them.
Melbourne Times Weekly reported that the owner of Cherry Bar, James Young, was expecting to spend $80,000 to re-soundproof the brick walls of his venues. This is a preemptive attempt to avoid the legal headaches associated with noise complaints. Moreover, the expectations put on venues to maintain disabled-access ramps, sprinklers, and fire exits can exceed $100,000. Not all venues have that kind of cash just lying around.
Even record stores are not safe. North Melbourne cafe and independent record store Wooly Bully is likely to close at the end of its lease this year because of dwindling profits. The co-owner Mitch Marks said there needed to be a lot more money injected into the business for it to be feasible, especially because Wooly Bully is often so limited by “council restrictions and pointless revenue-gathering permits.”
“We’re a long way off because SLAM are a very small group of un-funded volunteers,” said SLAM co-founder Helen Macrou to The Music. “Our job is to politicise and publicise. All we can do is encourage Governments to change the law. And it takes a long time to change the law,” she added. Macrou also pointed that NSW liquor licensing laws took “six years to change” though managed to fast-track those changes in Victoria following the original SLAM rally.
“Communities can get distracted pretty quickly as well… We can make the Government nervous but now is the time – more than ever – for people to get involved,” says Ms. Macrou.
The best way to support the campaign is to actually be a part of it, by getting out and listening to some of the great musicians playing this Saturday, something we covered in our opinion piece on why Melbourne needs another SLAM Rally.
