Prohibition of Music 

A Shared Dilemma: Musicians, Publicans and Australian Youth. 
 

A discussion paper 

Synopsis 

The term Liquor Industry is a generic reference that has no useful meaning other than for those who regulate and tax alcohol and its consumption; AND those powerful lobbies who have so easily manipulated governments to expand profits. 

Public servants and politicians who lack relevant knowledge or experience, yet claim to improve the operation of industry and commerce for the supposed benefit of consumers and the wider community, are easy to control and do not regard election campaign contributions as the bribes that they are.  

Moreover, those sectors of the community who are permitted to identify acceptable conditions of alcohol consumption are invariably theorising academics who themselves are fringe-dwellers of Australian culture, and who are manifestly out of touch with the realities of normative behaviour and the nature of the market place. 

A significant casualty of the liquor market wars has been music; more especially, the pub rock that became the genesis of globally famous rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s. The spurious identification of music as noise pollution, coupled with the political nonsense that slavish compliance with an intolerant minority constitutes democracy in action, closed down Australia’s iconic rock band pubs, one after another. Today, Australian music is in crisis, denied the critical nurturing that regular gigs provide. 

This discussion paper presents the case for regulation of music by the judgement of democratic absolute majorities of venue feeder area residents, and an end to dictatorial minority impositions. 

It is suggested that a campaign that is supported visibly by youth, and by the music and pub/tavern industries, will provide the kind of political pressure that the current line-up of politicians will be unable to resist. We have a window of opportunity that will be open for a limited time. 

Misguided regulation 

As with all governments that have bypassed once-traditional electoral consensus democracy, today’s arbitrary regulators are guided only by the most powerful lobbies: major breweries and distillers, importers and distributors; and retail blocs such a Coles and Woolworths, who enjoy the world’s largest duopoly of 80% market share. Hovering in the background are the pokie pushers, who stiff-arm their gambling machines into venues now denied the once-lucrative attraction of bands and music-loving crowds. 

The ruthless industrial monoliths have no interest in the issues confronting those on either side of the consumer interface.  

In formulating liquor policies, Government heeds only the resonating voices at campaign fund-raising events. Families and ordinary residents are heard only if they can organise large enough lobbies; but few have the knowledgebase, let alone time and necessary wealth. The individual publican also is not heard, yet is not permitted to adequately implement the product of his own market research and reshape his services to meet local consumer demand.  

Prohibition of Rock Bands 

The most bitterly resented and damaging of regulatory impositions targets music, which has successfully attracted patrons to pubs and taverns for some three thousand years. The part music plays in convivial and socially positive consumption of liquor is legendary, and is supported not only by millennia of fulfilling commercial experience, but by the mainstream community and by non-academic social science researchers who specialise in the outcome of interaction between alcohol and people. 

Yet no element in Australia’s social life today is more unreasonably repressed than rock music in pubs. Unbelievably, under regulations imposed by various state regimes since the 1990s, and to the total exclusion of the mainstream community, a single individual can force the termination of rock bands playing in his neighbourhood pub. Yet this music genre is the choice of the young people who politicians and police claim so piously to care about. 

Majority rule is ignored and, very significantly, publicans must install pokies to shore up otherwise declining patronage. While this paper does not intend to enter into the current debate on the damaging social implications of machine gambling, what is stated here is that if the wider community wants rock bands to play in their local pub, and the publican wishes to meet this consumer demand, this is entirely his or her enterprise prerogative. 

Prohibition of Music; the social impact 

There has been little or no public discussion about the social impact of closing down Australia’s once famous pub-rock scene, and such dialogue is well overdue: 

• Without live gigs, musicians cannot develop their art, and the quality of national music declines as a result. Australian music was cut down in its prime just as Australian bands were dominating the top 20s throughout the western world and beyond. It was primarily music, not sport, that took Australia to the world of 70s/80s era. The value of music as an ambassador and ambient herald of trade and culture cannot be overestimated.

• Since the death of pub rock, young people have been forced to emulate the pub environment at home parties, but with the logistic impossibility of demand meeting supply, large crowds form and quickly exceed the capacity of domestic control. The inevitable arrival of police often leads to rock and bottle throwing and destruction of property and, distressingly often, stabbings and deaths. Experienced observation suggests that the trouble is generally initiated by older gatecrashers who would otherwise more likely have been attracted to pubs featuring music and, therein, attractive young women. In such a regulated environment frustrated behaviour can be readily contained.

• CDB Nightclubs have flourished, able to exploit their monopoly of the market. This has led to problems of overcrowding and inadequate internal control; perfect conditions for sellers of speed, ecstasy and ice. What has been largely ignored by police and others with oversight of traffic fatalities is that many patrons can walk to and from their local pub, whereas clubbing at the local CBD usually requires use of private car transport. Those who glibly recommend taxis have clearly not glanced at taxi fares lately or looked at the disposable incomes of most young people; nor have they taken their lives in their hands at late night taxi ranks or otherwise confronted gratuitous street violence. An essential feature of reducing both road fatalities and street violence must be restoration of popular Australian pub music.

• While no publican would admit this, even under torture, excessive consumption of alcohol by a patron playing the pokies is often tolerated, because his or her inebriation is not readily apparent, and because this is now the patronage that pays the staff’s wages. When all is said and done, publicans are running a business for profit and in the current economic climate they sail closer to the wind than any will admit. However, with music crowds, serious inebriation is immediately obvious and this is an incentive for bar staff and security to refuse service to so-affected individuals. From a cost-benefit point of view, the larger crowds generated by music more greatly enhance turnover, and hence, profit. It may be readily appreciated that, through more effective on-site regulating of alcohol consumption in individuals who are enjoying music, per capita abuse of alcohol is actually reduced, while profits expand. For society as a whole, this is a win/win situation.

• Because cynical politicians neither know nor care about issues of violence; to be seen as genuine, they appoint formulaic membership of inevitable  ‘community management’ committees, which include the mandatory sports heroes, clergy, psychologists, public servants and victims; thereby ensuring a contest of aspiring perennial committee appointees. The rather mindless product of such amateurish collectives has been a tendency to attribute increasing youth violence to alcohol consumption. In reality, destructive or aggressive behaviour under inebriation is the final product of a chain of negative influences and events, which is manifested only in certain affected individuals. This is also why most people are cheerful and pleasant when drunk. What primarily precipitates violence is intergenerational poverty; something government does not want to hear about. Yet as the ancient saying goes, when money goes out the door, love flies out the window. Parental conflict, and often subsequent violence, blights young lives and generally closes off visible options in life. Nurturing of children ceases. It is during those volatile teenage years that alcohol plays its part in removing the inhibitions that otherwise contain simmering anger and resentment. In Australia, the reality is that government policies of tariff removal created the grinding poverty that envelops a measured 54% of Australia*, by allowing cheap subsidised imports to disintegrate two thirds of Australia’s farms and almost half of our manufacturing. This resulted in the loss of three million full time jobs over a period of three decades. If Government is serious about youth violence it should address the real causes and not the drinks that precipitate the final reaction. But church and government’s simplistic response places pressure on police, EPAs and local governments, who then move to restrict music/alcohol venues to more easily patrolled central locations; which inhibits healthier decentralisation; from CBD clubs to suburban pubs.

Urgent Need of Reform 

Reformation of the pub industry may be more urgent that most of us might anticipate. We need glance only at one possibility in our immediate future to gauge this urgency: 

Brief perusal of reputable Internet financial and oil industry sites will confirm that if Israel or the US were to launch the long-threatened attack on Iran, the price of fuel in Australia would be in the vicinity of $4 per litre; and not incrementally but overnight. Some estimates go as high as $6. This is not an issue of oil supply, but of the commodities futures market, as ordained by NYMEX (New York) and IPE (London). 

The immediate impact on pubs can be speculated upon with reasonable accuracy. The inevitable collapse of most transport industries following a doubling of fuel prices will cause a steep rise in unemployment. Gambling revenues will fall dramatically. This can be easily understood if we accept that there are two basic types of gamblers. The rational patron gambles only with disposable income; whereas the second type, the compulsive gambler, survives on what remains after a session.  

With surpluses of domestic budgets evaporating in the heat of rising prises, the locally-residing rational gambler market will largely dry up. With tighter margins for error and misfortune, the compulsive gambler will quickly become homeless, and his increasingly compulsive gambling will be limited to dice and cards in doorways and alleys. In other words, a significant source of contemporary pub revenue will be diminished. 

However, youth will always dance and sing, and pub music venues will actually experience expanded crowds, although revenues may well be limited by the reduced flow of money within the community. This, indeed, was the experience in the western world during the Great Depression (although the illegal nature of liquor venues during the US’s Prohibition era makes accurate international comparison difficult). In fact, historical research shows that the more impoverished patron venues will attract significant moneyed visitation by individuals whose motivating credo is that if you got it; flaunt it. What publicans lose on the merry-go-round, they will gain on the roundabout. 

The enterprising publican, who anticipates market change by investing in regular gig contracts for promising bands now, will undoubtedly lead the market in the future. Many of those who do not may be forced off the market altogether, because there are several other predictable events on the horizon that will drive fuel prices higher, and impacts will be cumulative. 
 

In summation, there are compelling social and financial reasons why publicans and musicians should lead the campaign to: 

1. Demand of government that the entirely inappropriate, anti-cultural, unreasonable and undemocratic appellation of noise pollution in reference to music, be terminated; unless a saturation survey of citizens within the venue feeder locality determines otherwise;

1. Seek support from young people, musicians, promoters, music retailers and other relevant beneficiaries;

1. Promote this revival on Internet, youth radio and commercial TV.

Copies of this discussion paper can be obtained for Internet transmission by requesting an e-mail attachment from Ryan Research on tonyryan43@gmail.com 
 

Note: Everything said in this discussion paper is open to challenge and nothing is set in stone. This is essentially a catalyst for discussion by the pub and tavern industry, associates and patrons; and by musicians, promoters, managers and supporters. Depending upon the balance of advertising lobby impacts on the media, it is hoped that radio and TV stations will join the campaign. 

Alterations, contributions, enhancements or changes to this discussion paper should be forwarded to the coordinator and these will be collated and incorporated in a revised version. If consensus is achieved, a final Position Paper will then be vigorously presented to Government, and on a variety of levels (concerts, advertisements, flyers, events); as the Consensus Position of the pub and tavern industry, the music industry, and their respective employees, patrons, promoters and supporters. 

As this incorporates around 60% of the Australian population, and in a political environment in which Government is becoming increasingly nervous about its lack of genuine voter-perceived achievement, our chances of success are excellent. 
 

*The referred-to survey was conducted by Ryan Research in July/August 2006, for the AIA organisation and published in the micro-tabloid Australian Independent. The interactive questionnaire sample survey targeted a previously validated demographic corridor (Maroochy Waters, Kaluin, South Maroochydore and Buderim) on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; selected for its aggregate representation of and from around Australia, and because of the positive margin of error created by its (proselytised) tourism-led prosperity. Published summations are available free, either in PDF form or hard copy. 
 
 
 
 

Ryan Research: Tony Ryan is a former seconded researcher for the Northern Territory Liquor Commission, with a record of successful research and containment of substance abuse and family violence while an officer of the Commonwealth and NT Governments. He also has experience in developing innovative techniques of market identification and penetration in music promotion, eco-adventure tourism, Aboriginal development, agriculture and real estate. As a musician and writer, he is an enthusiastic supporter in the cause of developing Australian music, and in the improvement of employment and social conditions for Australian youth.

When I was a youngster it was always a treat to be at the light rail station in Quincy Center to watch the hordes of Quincy Shipyard workers emerge from the trains, dressed in dungarees and hard hats, and carrying lunch pails and thermoses. They would then pile on to shuttle buses to take them out to the huge shipyard, with its enormous crane painted with the logo, General Dynamics, dominating the skyline.

Back in those halcyon days there were three shifts, so one was always certain to see a large contingent either leaving or arriving. Such was the natural order of things, or so I naively thought. Little did I know that I was seeing the last of a dying breed. Some twenty years ago the plant closed. Half-hearted efforts were made to revive it, but none of them were ever successful. It just sits rusting away, an all-too familiar symbol of what America has become.

America has come a long way since the glory days of Word War II, when assembly lines blossomed and shipyards turned out battleships like a hen turns out eggs. American industrial might defeated Germany and Japan. Back in those days we produced everything we needed ourselves and exported the rest. We didn't have, or want, NAFTA or CAFTA or "globalization". Three or four generations of the same family would work in high-paying manufacturing jobs at the same plant. As long as you were willing to work, you could support yourself and your family.

Those days are dead.

Manufacturing as a share of the economy has been plummeting. In 1965, manufacturing amounted to 53% of the economy. In 1988 it had dropped to 39% and in 2004 manufacturing amounted to a insignificant 5% of the economy. This year alone tens of thousands of more jobs have been shed. American manufacturing is dead, gone forever.

Do you remember voting for this? No? I don't either.

Manufacturing loss is occurring because of globalization, which leads to outsourcing, which leads to loss of jobs. Today, the trend is so severe, analysts in some industries predict that a quarter to a half of all American jobs are likely to migrate.

Of course, when this free-trade nonsense began, we were all told that globalization would free the American worker from those awful factory jobs. The Americans would be in the white collar jobs, doing research & development. Let some Chinese in Shanghai screw widgets together. Well, it hasn't worked out that way. Here are some statistics on what happens to people who lose their manufacturing jobs. The average wage of a manufacturing worker is $51,000. Almost invariably, they switch into the service sector, where they can expect to make $16,000 in hospitality, $33,000 in health care, or $39,000 in construction. Research & development? It's moved to China and India along with widget-screwing.

How much longer will we Americans tolerate this stupidity? I notice the two candidates, Tweedledee and Tweedledum never mention this. Different mantras are trotted out by various members of the chattering classes, like "education". You can have all the education in the world, but as Paul Craig Roberts so deftly points out in his invariably brilliant columns, what good will it do you if the only new jobs this economy has created in the past eight years are in the fields of waitress, janitor and home health aide?

I often wonder what will happen on the day when the slow strangulation of the once-great American working class is complete. Will we all make $7.00 an hour and live in trailers? Will whole cities become abandoned, filled with packs of wild dogs and feral human beings? I read a terrifying story about Detroit this week. A lot with an abandoned house in Detroit goes for $100.00. If the house has been torn down then the price is $300.00. I guess a house in Detroit has negative value. Things are so bad that people are exhuming the bodies of their loved ones from local cemeteries and taking them with them when they leave Detroit- or is the word flee?

There was yet another tragedy at the shipyard in Quincy last week. The huge crane which sat proudly over the shipyard was sold- sold to Romania. While it was being dismantled, one of its giant legs crashed to the ground, killing Robert Harvey, 28 and a recent bridegroom, and injuring four other workers. One bad thing, in this life, invariably leads to another, and if the American people continue to sit idly by as their country is destroyed, who knows what the end will be?

          Each man's death diminishes me

          For I am involved in mankind

         Therefore send not to know 

         For whom the bell tolls

         It tolls for thee

Some time ago I asked the question, " 72% of the US population no longer supports President Bush. What are the 28% that still support him like? Are they mongoloids? Hydrocephalic idiots?"

I would like to apologize here to both mongoloids and hydrocephalic idiots. I was being unfair. A supporter of George W. Bush has stepped forward to share his views, such as they are, with us. It was a bit hard to decipher his message to me, as it was covered with HTML tags (Why do I feel he just downloaded it from somewhere on the web and the HTML tags came up, as they sometimes do when you use the wrong program to download?)

"I bet you had everything handed to you on a silver platter. I can only assume, you are a product of the 1960's and the hippy dippy movement"

Geez, "John", do I look like some aging hippie? I better have new pictures taken, and quick. I love the "silver platter" part, too. No, "John", I did not have anything handed to me on a silver platter. You must be thinking of your hero, George W. Bush. I came from a background so deprived that we did not even go to thrift stores to buy our clothes- my mother and I stole the clothes from the thrift store donation boxes. When Ronald Reagan handed out the free butter and cheese in the early '80s, my mother and I both stood in line at the local firehouse to get 2 boxes apiece of butter and cheese. My mother noticed they put on a new shift of firemen, so we went to the end of the line and got more boxes. Real butter! We hadn't eaten real butter in years. "John", in case you didn't know, this is called "poverty".

"John" continues:" I honor George W. Bush for having the moral back bone (sic) to not only stand up to islamo fascists, but take the war to them"

This is a very interesting statement. I have read various stories about people who were so brainwashed that they actually thought Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people were responsible for 9-11, instead of 20 wackos in a cave in Afghanistan, but I have never actually met one. I also am very happy to learn that Bush's" back bone" (spine?) is moral. It's a crying shame that this morality could not have traveled a few feet upwards so that he was also possessed of a moral heart and soul.

" I, unlike you haven't= forgotten, islamo fascists attacked and murdered close to 3000 innocent Americans. Attacked American Embassys, etc."

"John", I haven't forgotten. Why George W. Bush felt that murdering 100,000 innocent Iraqis... and that is the lowest of the figures I have read from that hot bed of "islamo facism" The Lancet, the journal of the British medical establishment- was any type of morally correct response to 9-11 is beyond me. Have you ever heard the parable of Alexander the Great and the Pirate, "John"? Alexander The Great was about to execute a well-known pirate. The pirate shouted from the gallows, "How dare you execute me!" Alexander responded, "Why, you despoil the seas; you rape and plunder." "So do you" the pirate jeered, "But because you do it with a mighty army and I with a little boat, you're a great man and I'm a criminal."

I guess killing innocent people with bombs is perfectly OK to the "Johns" of this world if the bombs are coming out of a plane with "USA" painted on its side. Who cares- they're just "islamo fascists" anyway.

"John" finishes his diatribe with"I am always amazed by folks who screach (sic) peace, peace and have no idea what the cost of peace is. So, who or what are you willing to part with for what you call peace (in reality, no conflict)."

Well, I guess a good definition of peace is "no conflict" although that state is obviously anathema to people like "John" as he seems to feel it's an insult. What am I willing to "part with" for peace? Let's turn the discussion over to an individual who knew a lot about war, or as "John" would probably put it, "no no conflict", Dwight D. Eisenhower. "I hate war as only a soldier can hate it. I hate its stupidity, its brutality, its ignorance".

"John" , I know the cost of peace. Do you know the cost of war?

To turn from war to love, from Mars to Venus, the John Edwards- Rielle Hunter bimbo eruption had America riveted this week. I supported John Edwards as he was the only candidate talking about the growing divide between rich and poor and the abomination which is the American health care system.

I don't want to say that I made a mistake- I didn't worship the man or anything. I just felt that he was the best of a bad lot. Last summer I went to see John Edwards in person. Hundreds of people were packed into a seedy Irish bar with a distinct lack of air-conditioning to see the candidate. I sat with a girl I had just met there, discussing the candidates and looking anxiously about for my husband, who had disapeared into the mob at the bar in an attempt to get us drinks.

Someone; one of Edwards' bodyguards I assume, boomed out, "You girls can't sit there! You'll be crushed !" and swung us both on top of the banquettes that lined the room. As I am six feet tall and an amateur bodybuilder, I was rather impressed. I don't think I've been swung since I was eight. Another man following him shoved Edwards '08 signs in our hands, and another man followed, filming us. I guess this scene was meant to be preserved for future use as a spontaneous and genuine show of support for the candidate. I stood there nervously picking at my Liz Claiborne suit, which was beginning to stick to me in the terrific heat.

Suddenly John Edwards appeared from the back of the bar. He was beyond perfect. Not a hair on his head was out of place, and his crisp blue shirt had its sleeves folded up with the geometric precision of origami. Maybe they had been keeping him in the icebox. As he advanced forward to speak, he stopped and looked me over quite intently. At the time I just thought he was staring at a six-foot tall woman standing on top of a banquette and stared back unconcernedly. Now I am not so sure. If the Bill Clinton era taught us anything, it's that if there's one bimbo, there's more.

Susan Menchey can be reached at velvet500@gmail.com, although why anyone would want to contact such a hippy dippy, brie- cheese- eating peacenik is beyond us.