Christmas Time & Canberra in 2009

Christmas is here. And gosh, did it ever creep up and surprise me! I had no idea it was coming. No one warned me. I was completely unprepared. With the New Year also fast approaching the music scene has taken an oath of silence. Bands seem to be recruiting up primarily to figure out plans for the future.

Who knows what 2009 will bring? New music, new shows, new bands, new tours, new merchandise. While all this things have “new” tagged to their front, it’s really just more of the same. Every year we’d see new things like this, sometimes from bands we love, others from bands we couldn’t care less about. What will make 2009 more special than ’08 or ’07?

There seems to me a majority agreement that the Canberra music scene is subpar. There’s not enough venues, not enough talented bands, not enough willing audience, etc. Hopefully things will change in 2009. There was an interesting little article in the newspaper recently about this very topic. The Canberra Musicians Club was formed recently as a not-for-profit group who are starting to run gigs all over the place, from backyards and homes to hired venues. They’re trying to help promote and support the Canberra music industry, particularly to prevent the talent from cutting their teeth here at home and then moving on to greener pastures (Melbourne, Sydney, etc).

These promotion organisations are becoming more common around the capital. PostOp Productions provide a similar service; promoting shows, organising gigs, taking photos and just overall helping out. Hard ACT to Follow is another new project in the ACT, who are putting together a hard core rock/metal compilation of Canberra music to help showcase talent. MitACT were doing a similar project called 2620 where they planned to record 26 different songs by 26 different artists over 20 days, hoping to showcase the ability of Canberra musicians to create spontaneous quality works in a single day. FM 104.7 have a ‘home grown’ segment on their show, with the purpose of playing pure Australian made music (Monday nights at 10). There’s also countless other independent promotion companies all around Canberra that are easily found on MySpace and always willing to help. All these companies believe in Canberra and the music scene, they believe in the talent we have, and they want to help.

If you’re a Canberra musician having trouble getting gigs or finding places to perform, get out there and start asking! There’s help coming from all directions, but you still need to promote yourself. Others won’t do the hard work for you. Make sure your band is ready, make sure you rehearse, make sure you’re inviting everyone you know to come to yours gigs.

So, 2009 looks like it will be filled with tonnes of bands playing all around the city, as well as tonnes of promoters and helpers getting in there to support the music. With everyone working as hard as it seems they plan, ’09 should definitely be a step in the right direction for the Canberra music industry and the vast talent of musicians in the capital.

Now all we need is an audience.

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