When people lament the death of Sydney’s live music scene, they talk about it in sweeping, nostalgic terms. It used to be thriving, progressive, supportive and pervasive; we’d bounce from gig to gig, from King’s Cross to Oxford Street, and wake up late the next afternoon to count the stamps on our arms.
But in the wake of Sydney’s lockout laws and venue closures, as an impenetrable property market pushes young people further out, that scene no longer exists – at least, not as we knew it.
“Once you’ve been around for a while, you realise that Sydney has always been in a weird state of flux,” says Alex Grigg, former frontman of Sydney indie champions Red Riders and now of the more garagey Straight Arrows and Palms. “You have these conversations with people like, ‘There’s nowhere to go anymore, no one goes out’ – and it’s like, ‘Well, is there nowhere to go, or are you just not going out anymore?’”
“People in their early 30s are almost, not giving up, but they don’t go out to shows, they’re not discovering new music ... that frustrates me a lot.”
Anyone who was around for the most recent heyday of music in Sydney was around for Red Riders. It was 2004 when the band launched their debut EP at the now-closed Hopetoun Hotel; FBi Radio had begun broadcasting the year before, committed to a quota of 25% Sydney songs – and Red Riders were on high rotation.
The next year, 2005, belonged to Modular Records, who released Van She’s Kelly, The Presets’ Are You The One, and sent Cut Copy off on their first global tour. Indie rock was danceable and often drenched in synths, we were wearing the clothes of the Strokes and the haircuts of the Smiths, and people were still spending money on CDs. I was paying a now-laughable $112 a week for a room in a sharehouse in Chippendale – and Purple Sneakers, an indie rock dance night, launched down the road, on the beer-soaked carpets of the Abercrombie Hotel.
Red Riders, RedSunBand, Dappled Cities Fly, Lost Valentinos and the Spark all appeared on Purple Sneakers’ posters within its first few months, playing live on the roof or DJ-ing downstairs from CDs filled with rock songs that we’d dance to until dawn. “That was a defining feature of that 2000s indie music,” Grigg says. “So much of it was super-energetic, and kind of geared towards the dancefloor.”
Soon, clubs like Home, The World Bar and Candy’s Apartment were launching their own gig nights – and by 2007 you could see six, seven or even eight bands play in a single, long evening.
Grigg, who now also hosts Arvos on FBi and books bands at venues around Sydney, has a unique insight into exactly how Sydney’s music scene has changed in the decade since. He is vehemently opposed to the lockout laws (“I’ve been to every protest, I do everything I can”), but says young creative people have done what they always do; they’ve risen to the challenge.
“I think that’s what makes Sydney’s cultural landscape kind of interesting: it is kind of against all odds, and people have to work really, really hard to make things happen. There’s no complacency,” he says. “[Musicians] have always been up against it in Sydney, but people always seem to find new ways. A venue gets shut down, but then a band night opens up at a Portuguese community club – there’s late-night dance parties until 5am in Marrickville now! It just keeps moving.”
On Friday night, Red Riders are reuniting for the first time since they split in 2011, bringing “the OG lineup” – Grigg, Adrian Deutsch, Brad Heald, Tom Wallace and Matt Chapman – to Red Rattler in Marrickville for one night only. A reunion show was not an easy decision for Grigg. “Nostalgia takes up so much cultural space that I think could be used in a more exciting way,” he says. The band had been asked to reform in the past – but 10 years on from their first EP, and with Chapman back in Sydney after five years in Seattle, the time was right.
The night is being curated by Johann Ponniah, founder of young taste-making record label I Oh You. “I felt more comfortable with it coming from outside of the band, rather than us being like, ‘Oh, hey guys! We’re back! Who wants to see Red Riders!’” Grigg laughs. “This way it’s more like, ‘Oh, there’s actually people that maybe missed the band the first time around, and want to see us play.’”
Grigg was recently elbow-to-elbow with some of those people, at an in-store gig at Black Wire Records in Annandale. It reminded him that, lockout laws and city pressures aside, there’s always a music scene bubbling somewhere – you just have to seek it out.
“[My friend and I] were the only people over 30, everyone in there looked intimidatingly cool, it was sold out long before the band [Den] went on – there were all these kids on the street who couldn’t get in. That’s a good feeling, for somebody that’s getting older. I don’t go out as much as I used to either, so it was like, ‘Oh cool, it’s in good hands’, you know? There is a generation of kids that are willing to be in Sydney, making cool shit happen, and supporting cool shit happening.”
Still, there are undeniably fewer venues for bands to play in these days – and it’s harder than ever to find somewhere to practise. The two spaces Red Riders once frequented have since shut down, and they’ve found themselves back practising at Stage Door – in the same room that held their very first rehearsals. “It feels like all these real institutions are closing. Where [in Sydney] can you go and make a whole bunch of noise these days?”
Perhaps the venue closures and real estate hikes have changed the sound of Sydney too – the tight polish of Red Riders and their ilk has been replaced by rough and ready garage punk, more like Grigg’s new band Palms: “You can’t really dance to it anymore – you mosh and push each other around.”
The night before we spoke, Red Riders practised, and it felt good. “We were back in it, we were just playing,” Grigg says. The band aren’t ruling out the idea of taking their reunion on the road. “I was getting a bit sentimental, just looking at everyone again, like, far out, I’ve spent such a big chunk of my life with these people ... the whole community I’m part of, it kind of comes back to being in this band in a way. And that’s really powerful.”
• Red Riders reform for one night only, joining Brightness & Shearin’ for Red Bull Sound Select at the Red Rattler on March 31. RSVP HERE for $3 tickets.
