Unconvention Brisbane 2010

I like this description of our Unconvention panel from our moderator Ian Rogers, on the Mess And Noise message boards.

The history of German sociology in 3 minutes. Where Dee Dee Ramone got his hair cut. Getting your hair cut by Urge Overkill. House shows. What to do in a home studio if the drummer quits mid-song. How Brisbane isn't a global hotspot for music business. The speed of illegal bill postering. The institutionalisation of rock music. Small town vibes. Music as a way of making it through the day. It was a mess. I didn't see a lot of the other panels because I was working. Lawrence English told some good stories and his advice was pretty good bang on.

Ian omits to mention (but did so on his blog) that the panel had decided in advance we would burst into song when confronted by any question we didn't want to answer, and the customary cussing, and my minor diatribe against late licensing hours for venues but... well, I didn't attend any of the other panels either so I can't speak for whether Unconvention was indeed unconventional in its otherwise pristine imitation of a Music Business Convention.

Somehow I suspect not.

But, um, good on them for bringing attendance prices down or something. It'd be nice to see this replace the rather complacent exercise in (completely unmerited) backslapping that Big Sound (Brisbane's "major" league music biz convention)  has become, if only cos it's nice to change the guard every few years.



Two minor observations.

1. Titling an article around your convention "Brisbane's Music Convention With A Difference" is simply asking for trouble.

2. What's with all this "hi-tech" footage for the event on the website? Does commentary count for nothing any more? Odd, when you consider that commentary was presumably one of the major selling-points of the convention. And I would hope that - in the interests of transparency - the criteria for choosing the bands who played on the Saturday night has been included somewhere on the site.