Perth; Unreal City: Perth in the song lyrics of artists from elsewhere (original) (raw)

Nothing happens here: Songs about Perth

Thesis Eleven, 2016

This essay examines Perth as portrayed through the lyrics of popular songs written by people who grew up in the city. These lyrics tend to reproduce the dominant myths about the city: that it is isolated, that it is self-satisfied, that little happens there. Perth became the focus of song lyrics during the late 1970s time of punk with titles such as 'Arsehole of the Universe' and 'Perth Is a Culture Shock'. Even the Eurogliders' 1984 hit, 'Heaven Must Be There', is based on a rejection of life in Perth. However, Perth was also home to Dave Warner, whose songs in the 1970s and early 1980s offered vignettes, which is itself a title of one of Warner's tracks, of the youthful, male suburban experience. The essay goes on to examine songs by the Triffids, Bob Evans, Sleepy Township and the Panda Band.

The Difference of Perth Music: A Scene in Cultural and Historical Context

Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 2008

In the present article, I think about the importance of Perth’s culture as a crucial context in which the popular music of Perth has developed. In the case examined in the present article, Perth music in the 1960s and 1970s can be understood as a scene that evolved in situ. Its localismwas certainly not a function of any attempt to market ‘Perth music’. Rather, as we shall see, the Perth music scene as I describe it has arisen in a particular geographic placewith specific qualities and, as I will argue, these qualities have had identifiable effects on the music produced in Perth.

Perth punk and the construction of urbanity in a suburban city

Popular Music, 2015

As a musical form, punk is often associated with urbanity, as embodied in the scenes in both London and New York, and in an Australian national context by the scenes in Melbourne and Sydney. In Perth, Western Australia – a primarily middle-class suburban city without a distinct inner city – punk was expressed differently. While the music itself exemplified many of the stylistic traits associated with the genre, punk in Perth was articulated through the city's isolation, its affluence and its suburban nature. Utilising interviews with key players in the Perth punk scene of the late 1970s, this paper seeks to illustrate the ways in which urbanity was constructed and voiced through Perth punk, in a city that constructed itself in opposition to traditional notions of the inner city's urban lived environment.

From Snake Pits to Ballrooms: class, race and early rock’n’roll in Perth

Continuum, 2017

In the late 1950s, rock'n'roll as both a musical genre and a pervasive youth cultural form spread from the U.S. to emerge in various regionalized forms throughout most Western societies. Through the development of various social, technological and industrial circumstances, rock'n'roll was the first youth subculture in Perth, Western Australia to develop widespread acknowledgement across popular cultural consciousness. From its roots in working-class culture to its eventual commercial embrace by middleclass audiences, rock'n'roll developed in Perth through a set of specific circumstances linked to both racial and class-based factors, distinctive to the city as a small, isolated and predominantly suburban location. Whilst the majority of historical analysis on early rock'n'roll focuses on Australia's east coast, this paper attempts to counter that by drawing from interviews conducted with a number of individuals who were instrumental in the emergence of rock'n'roll in Perth. As such this essay delivers a social history of the style as it developed in that city, placing it at the beginning of a fundamental shift in popular music as a cultural phenomenon, and underlining the importance that a number of specific social and cultural factors including class and race played in the development of a locally specific rock'n'roll culture. In the 1950s, Perth was a small, isolated city with a population of just over 300,000. Almost 4000 km west of Australia's largest city of Sydney, Perth was without its own designated international airport until 1970. With domestic air transport still relatively rare in the late 1950s, Perth remained a three-day journey by road or rail from Australia's more densely populated east coast. The city had originally been established in the late 1820s as an administrative centre for the Swan River Colony, with its population bolstered as a result of the gold rush of the late nineteenth century, and again by postwar immigration from many parts of Europe. Because this postwar population growth took place at a time of economic growth and when urban development was focused on suburban growth, the city expanded outwards from its relatively small central urban centre (Maccallum and Hopkins, 2011). As a result, Perth's metropolitan area is spread across a comparatively large land mass of over 6000 km 2. Both Ballico (2012, 2013), and Stratton and Trainer (2016) discuss the ways in which the city's isolation and its suburban nature have impacted Perth's music culture in recent decades, but these factors-as well as others more closely connected to identity politics-have been prevalent since the postwar period, and have contributed to a distinctive set of circumstances through which this community has been shaped. Despite its status as the capital city of Western Australia, Perth was time defined by both political and cultural conservatism, the aura of postwar and Depression-era austerity, and the 'Cold-War

The Urbanisation of Australia: Representations of Australia in Popular Culture

Journal of the Association For the Study of Australian Literature, 2013

A merican popular culture defines and glamorises the urban. Furthermore, it is not just concerned with portraying a generic urban space, but con jures specific cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. These cities have a clearly articulated place within American popular culture. The specific con

Lots of Planets Have a North: Remodeling Second-Tier Cities and their Music

2008

Our paper asks an unspoken but fascinating question: why do particular cities become associated with their music at a specific time? Seattle, Manchester, Chicago and Liverpool are urban spaces that summon a type of rhythm, a mode of movement and a way of thinking about sound. This article probes the connection between urbanity and music, with attention placed on Perth in Western Australia. Often known as the most isolated capital city in the world, it is currently undergoing a musical boom, but with little cultural or creative industries policy support. This paper therefore initiates a study of how to connect second-tier-or non global-cities like Perth, so that lessons can be learnt from these other places of urban rhythm. We commence with an exploration of soundscapes, then move into the specificities of the second-tier city, and conclude with an affirmation of the value of sonic mobility-or intercessions-between these urban environments.

Songs in the Key of Melbourne; Melbourne in the Key of Song

Melbourne's live music scene has helped define a city; and yet the city's changing dynamics and unintended consequences of planning policy are among factors placing it under severe pressure. This essay argues Melbourne and its live music scene have a symbiotic relationship in that the city retains a cultural and economic dependence on live music, while the city remains a muse and source of inspiration for many musicians.

‘Rock the Boat’: song-writing as geographical practice

Cultural Geographies, 2019

Climate change science is unequivocal on the link between fossil fuels and climate change. Yet, some governments-including those in Australia-fail to meet agreed targets and continue to invest in the coal industry. Scientists and other scholars have expressed concern that the science is not prompting shifts in policy adequate to address current and future effects of climate change. Many have called for other tools-specifically, the arts and social sciences-to investigate and communicate about the environmental and social changes underway. In this context, this article explores the potential of interdisciplinary collaborative song-writing as research practice. Beginning on a boat on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the research team adopted singing and song-writing as a method for coming together to reflect upon our research aims and motivations, to explore and express the delight and grief we were experiencing in this climate-changing land and seascape and potentially to reach new audiences and create different affects. Our multidisciplinary expertise offered impetus to pursue a hybrid form: an original song written, professionally recorded and vinyl pressed; scholarly notes to expand on our song lyrics; visual presentation of our music as annotated score; and written reflections on the process and its contribution to knowledge. Here, we present and explore the possibilities of song-writing as creative geographical practice.