Brendan Greenhill: I heard them saying things were getting rowdy, there was something going on, so I legged it back down there and as I got to the corner of the park, that was when the rain really came down . . . I had pulled out my tape recorder as soon as I got there and I was narrating what was going on, but unbeknownst to me at the time the water had inundated the tape recorder and snuffed it out. There was only about 20 seconds worth of material.
Alarmed by the rapid downturn of events, Triple Zed staff decided to close the bar. This caused a further complication. To circumvent public drinking laws, the station was selling tickets that were then exchanged for alcohol, and the beer tent was crammed with punters anxious to get what they’d paid for. Along with the doof tent – which throbbed to the constant pulse of techno away from the main stages – it was the only effective shelter in the park. When the storm hit, wet bodies piled in.
Others were happy to take advantage of the elements. As the rain hammered down, a few revellers began sliding gleefully through the mud. Perhaps less mindful of a festival tradition dating back to Woodstock, 1969, the police dived in after the culprits. In a later CJC report into the melee, police witnesses justified the arrests by saying the revellers’ behaviour caused ‘annoyance’ to others in the crowd and ‘frightened the horses’.6
Phil Parker: This torrential rain started coming in on a really sharp angle under the flaps of the tent. And the next thing all these people started coming over the canteen, which is a big no-no. I was trying to push these people back, and there were people screaming and panicking. I thought they were just getting out of the rain . . . I looked out and the first thing I saw was this mounted police horse pig-rooting.
Tam Patton: At that point the police just waded in. People who were rolling around in the mud were being held in strangleholds. And there was a lot of water gathering by then; there was enough water on the ground for people to drown in.
To the police, however, they were the ones under attack. If the mudlarks didn’t succeed in frightening the horses, the sudden hail of cans certainly did. According to Simpson, one of the steeds was deliberately gashed by torn aluminium as outnumbered police were set upon by enraged punters. With the bands having long since left the stages to avoid electrocution, the bar closed and reinforcements rushing from the city, Cybernana 1996 was all over bar the riot, regardless of who was actually doing the rioting.
And yet few were moving. In the confusion of darkness and teeming rain, most of the remaining crowd – probably no more than 1500 – failed to comprehend what was going on. Many were still waiting to redeem their beer tickets. The rain had made the public address system unsafe to use. Brendan Greenhill charged to the bar area, aware that more police in riot gear were on the way, intent on clearing the park.
Brendan Greenhill: The worst part about it, I must admit, was running around inside the tent and saying to people, it’s time to go, the bar is shut, thanks for coming, the police are on the way. People were arguing, saying, ‘How can they do this?’ . . . They were getting upset with us, and we were saying, ‘Look, come [to the station] later and Triple Zed will fix you up, we’ll redeem your tickets in cash.’ No one ever did present a beer ticket back to us, but that’s what we were saying – ‘The coppers are coming right behind you to get your skull cracked and you want to argue with me about 12 bucks? Get out and save your skin!’
It was now 8.20pm. Over voluminous rain, the thunder was echoed by the sound of batons drumming on riot shields. The reinforcements had arrived in all their fury. Pivoting from near the centre of the park, the police line swept through the beer tent first. Some – finally getting the full picture of what was going on – made their way hurriedly to the exits. Most of the younger members of the crowd had no experience of being caught in the middle of a major police action.
Tam Patton: I was at the Livid Festival in December 1989, and I remember the great cheer when [Peter Walsh] walked onto the stage and said Wayne Goss was the new premier of Queensland, you know, that was a pretty powerful moment. And I think people after that probably had become a little complacent – this wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.
Greenhill, savvy enough to stay behind the police line, was still attempting to document the action, barking the unfolding events into his useless tape recorder. As the police began a second sweep through the area, this time pushing through the doof tent with batons flying, he caught sight of something new.
Brendan Greenhill: There were these two gentlemen in camouflage gear, and I thought, jeez, where have these guys come from, they’ve been doing bush survival techniques! Then I had another look and I could see clearly on their arms the letters MP – military police.
The presence of five military police among the reinforcements was largely a product of circumstance. With their flock out for a night on the town, the MPs had been cruising the city with civilian police officers, then standard procedure so as to deal in-house with any army personnel who got out of hand. But when the call went out from Musgrave Park, the MPs found themselves along for the ride. According to Terry O’Gorman, President of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, it marked the first time since the 1976 raid on the hippie commune at Cedar Bay that the military had been employed in a civilian operation.7
Brendan Greenhill: There was this fellow, they had three uniformed blokes onto him and they couldn’t get him, he obviously had a bit of fight in him . . . Anyway, the brawl kept happening, it got worse and worse, and they finally pinned him down. But the person who was in the best position to apply the handcuffs was the military policeman, and I saw him do that.
In the final wash-up, 72 people were arrested. Within two hours radio bulletins around Australia were buzzing with the news of the riot in West End. Triple Zed, as ever, had been quick to mobilise its resources while under attack. Greenhill, Jon Baird and ex-Parameter Tony Kneipp inundated the media, pushing the line that, once again, Triple Zed and its audience had been victimised and harassed by the police. The press corps fell on the claims with relish, unable to resist a story that seemed cut from the cloth of Queensland’s past.
But times had changed. On 21 October, Queensland Police Service and Triple Zed representatives met with the former premier, Russell Cooper, back in his old job of police minister. Cooper – who not 12 months before had, as shadow minister, signed the aforementioned Memorandum of Understanding that was by then the subject of a protracted CJC inquiry – astounded everyone by pointing out at a press conference that he wanted to see Market Day happen again, asking his horrified force to work with Triple Zed to ensure the next event went smoothly.8
But Triple Zed received little joy when they made their own formal complaint to the CJC. The commission’s investigation exonerated the police, dismissing the station’s claims that they had been subjected to excessive force. Noting the police’s counter-claims that they, too, had been the victims of assaults, the report added that the crowd’s conduct fell under the legal definition of an ‘unlawful assembly’: a riotous one, in fact. Further, no substantial injuries had been documented by Triple Zed, the worst being a chipped tooth on the part of a station worker. Specific allegations of assault were dismissed on the grounds that complainants had been unable to identify their alleged attackers. The suggestion that some police officers had deliberately removed their name badges was a difficult one to substantiate, as the CJC report dryly acknowledged:
In relation to other complainants who alleged that police officers refused to give their names, as they were unable to identify the officers in question, this matter could not be pursued any further.9
The military conducted its own investigation into the presence of its officers. Its report to the CJC inquiry remains confidential. While the army denied any suggestion its officers arrested citizens over whom they had no legal jurisdiction, spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel John Weiland confirmed two weeks after the event that his men had no purpose being where they were.
On 18 October 1997 Triple Zed hosted the Zed Bubble Market Day, this time back at Musgrave Park. Tightly controlled, the day went off without a hitch, and here the event stayed for the next three years, moving back to Davies Park in West End in late 2000 before spiralling production costs finally forced a hiatus. The last Market Day – Bananageddon – was held in October 2002.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
the human jukebox
With the exception of Festival/Mushroom Records, the major record companies in Australia are Sydney-based branch offices of their overseas masters. Their Brisbane outposts are the suckers at the end of the tentacles. Charged mainly with looking after local promotions and distribution, the outposts can only recommend bands, not sign them. Consequently they had shown no interest in the city’s underground scene during the 1970s and ’80s. The serious groups all moved to Sydney anyway.
When the scene began to explode in the early ’90s, however, the industry’s antenna began to quiver. A&R men (and they were all men) began flying into Brisbane from Sydney. Warner Music’s Michael Parisi was one of them. With a brief to tap into the alternative music boom, Parisi understood the DIY ethos that underpinned the hitherto overlooked Brisbane scene. His pitch to Regurgitator was simple: complete creative control.
Regurgitator were in the right place at the right time. Record companies are far more comfortable following trends than instigating them. When Nirvana’s Nevermind ushered underground music into the mainstream, the music industry was caught further behind than usual. While most of the acts signed in the wake of the band’s gargantuan success were pallid imitations, the majors also seemed happy to throw a few more adventurous artists against the wall, just to see what stuck.
Paul Curtis: When we decided to sign to a major, the thing that was uppermost in our minds was that it had to stay somehow real; i.e., we wanted lots of room to do our own thing. What worked in the band’s favour was, at the time, Warner didn’t have an Australian roster, and [A&R head] Mark Pope and Michael Parisi had been brought in to get it working. So we were their first signing, and it was approached somewhat naively even on their part.
Parisi’s bosses were certainly queasy. When he played the homemade video for I Like It Like That to Warner’s annual conference, the initial response was horrified silence. The song was, on the surface, an ugly wall of noise. Parisi heard the noise all right, but also the killer hook that set Regurgitator apart from his earlier interest, Pangaea. Regurgitator matched Pangaea’s stylistic and visual appeal with the added bonus of songs that, he hoped, could be translated onto radio.
It was the hook that Pangaea, for all the excitement they generated on stage, had lacked. When both Parisi and Ben Ely shifted their priorities to Regurgitator, Ely’s old bandmates were gutted.
Dave Atkins: It really hit Jim [Sinclair] hardest. He thought his only train was Pangaea, and when Ben said that’s enough, Jim thought he’d taken his whole thing away from him. I felt that as well. I’d put seven years into the band – I’d left the [conservatorium] for it, left a whole lot of things that I wanted to do because I could see Pangaea going somewhere. But obviously Ben thought he could do better with Regurgitator. We didn’t have that commercial edge.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and fifth-generation Australian father in Sydney, 1973, Quan Yeomans’ family relocated to Brisbane in 1986. Picking up the guitar, his early musical influences were traditional ones: Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Cream. (One high school band was named the Crunge, after the heavy funk number on Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy.) Around the house, though, it was straight pop: ‘The only records I remember listening to are Fleetwood Mac and Abba.’
Politically indifferent in his teenage years, Yeomans’ awakening came in 1992, when he travelled overseas for the first time, accompanying his academic father to the World Economic Forum in Rio de Janeiro. The experience was profoundly influential, shaping Yeomans’ attitude towards the music industry as the mouthpiece of global capitalism.
Quan Yeomans: I was quite negative towards signing with Warner, because it was so fast, and I was always a bit sceptical about that sort of thing. The Rio experience was what made it all click . . . I’d heard all this information about how the world works on a global economic level, stuff that no one told me about when I was living in Australia . . . I felt like a hypocrite.
Yeomans’ concerns were not shared by his band-mates. Drummer Martin Lee, who had been playing in Brisbane bands for a decade, was an advocate of the great rock & roll swindle, happy to take whatever a record company was gullible enough to offer. And while Ely seemed content just to be playing music, he was certainly aware of Regurgitator’s commercial potential. As manager, Paul Curtis found himself walking a tightrope between his band and Warner, all the while wrestling with his own conscience.
Paul Curtis: I remember at one of the first meetings with Warner, I was sitting there quietly, taking it all in, and suddenly Mark Pope turns around and says, ‘Hang on, what does Paul Curtis have to say about this? If he’s so anti-corporate and hates record labels so much, we’d like to know if he’s going to stay involved.’ Which put me right on the spot.
Regurgitator’s signing to Warner was a logical extension of the contradictions inherent within the group. Working from within the belly of the corporate beast deepened the irony at the heart of a band that, from the name down, was designed as a reflection of popular culture devouring itself from the inside out. In Curtis’ words, ‘The band calling itself Regurgitator should have clearly stated that this was not going to be a normal kind of approach.’
Quan Yeomans: I always think of the band as a tool for understanding pop music and understanding music in general. In that regard I think of it as more of an interpretive form of art than actually real art. It’s like a dead form of art.
With the deal inked, Regurgitator decided to broadcast its affiliations to the world. Egged on by Lee, the band’s debut self-titled EP featured the famous Warner Brothers’ logo emblazoned on the back. ‘They didn’t let us use Bugs Bunny,’ Ely says wryly. When the suits at the parent label in America saw the EP, they were not amused. The logo was removed from future pressings of the CD. The front cover illustration – a hamburger – made explicit the comparison between record company ‘product’ and fast food. But Warner drew the line at Paul Curtis’ video concept for the EP’s second track, Couldn’t Do It.
Paul Curtis: My idea for the video was to get this pristine-looking McDonald’s hamburger and then time-lapse it rotting away, and that’s the video. I was far more art-orientated than anything else at that stage!
The music itself was impossible to pin down. Essentially a power trio, Regurgitator played at industrial strength and volume. Live, the band was an awesome, intimidating force, with Yeomans’ guitar and muttered vocals driving the scratchy, funk-based rhythms forward. But while the music was perfect for the macho heaven of the mosh pit, the lyrics mocked power and gender relations: Yeomans would occasionally take the stage in nothing but a baby-pink teddy; another choice item was a standard black T-shirt bearing the slogan MASTURBATE.
The band was helped immeasurably by tousle-haired producer Lachlan Goold, better known as Magoo. After completing an audio engineering course at Broken Toys Studio in the old Target building (where Powderfinger had recorded their first CD), Goold landed a role assisting Jeff Lovejoy at Red Zeds in Albion, earning his stripes working with Pangaea and the Dreamkillers. Goold’s signature clattering, percussive sound also captured every instrument with brutal clarity.
Lachlan Goold: I do like things to be loud. I started out as a live mixer, and I always knew it was good when the bass drum was moving your shirt. You could feel the music as much as you could hear it.
The EP was a success from the moment of its release in January 1995. Couldn’t Do It and I Like It Like That both made the jump to high rotation on Triple J with ease, and the band proved an instant hit with festival crowds when
it was invited to play the Big Day Out at the Gold Coast Parklands the same month. Of all the bands to emerge from Brisbane in the early ’90s, Regurgitator would experience the sharpest rise and, arguably, swiftest fall.
For the band’s next EP, New, Yeomans began matching a winsome, singsong melody to lyrics adapted from an old Eskimo legend. An Inuit woman, distraught at her lover’s drowning, carves his likeness in whale blubber, rubbing him over her genitals to keep his memory alive. As repetitive as a mantra, the lyrics were reinforced by a soft/loud musical dynamic that had become almost musically verboten after Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Blubber Boy was unabashed pop, instantly memorable, with a lyric as ribald as it was eccentric. If Ely and Lee were hesitant about this new direction, Yeoman’s cheeky wordplay was enough to mollify their concerns. Amazingly, the naughtiness slipped by unnoticed when the song followed Couldn’t Do It and I Like It Like That straight onto Triple J’s playlist.
Ben Ely: I remember Quan brought the song into practice and Martin and I were going, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ To us it was so uncool, you know, because it wasn’t in 7/8 [time]! But it felt good. And he said the word ‘cunt’ in it quite a lot. So then we were like, he’s swearing, it must be OK!
Yeomans had picked up the story from singer and performance artist Kiley Gaffney, who had given him a book of feminist fairytales: ‘I used to tell Quan he looked more Inuit than Vietnamese.’ After innocuous beginnings singing jingles in her teenage years, the striking, assertive Gaffney quickly cornered the non-existent Brisbane market for confrontational female performers.
Kiley Gaffney: I was always compared to Nina Hagen by my friends, and she really appealed to me because I liked aggressive, opinionated women . . . I love Diamanda Galas still. I still like Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex, that sort of stuff.
Pig City Page 26
