Tonight the streets are ours
Our editor, Bobby Townsend, recalls his days writing for Sydney’s street press:
Almost exactly 20 years ago, I flew to Sydney with a year’s Working Holiday Visa in my pocket and a rucksack on my back. I slept on my friends’ living room floor for the first few weeks. Little did I know then that I would spend the best part of the next decade in Australia, during which time I would become a moderately integral part of Sydney’s live music scene.
As well as becoming a regular DJ around the city (which I talked about in a previous post), I also spent a lot of my time reviewing gigs and albums and interviewing bands. I have already delved into why you should disregard most of my (and anyone’s) reviews here, but I am certainly proud of the interviews I did.
But how did I get started? Well, I basically just blagged it. I met a Sony A&R person at a gig during my first week in town, who gave me the contact details for the editor of one of the city’s street presses, Drum Media (and no, I never really understood why it had that name). It was one of three weekly free newspapers that anyone who cared about music would devour from cover to cover (or at least look for themselves in the social photos at the back of the paper). To get an idea of what shape these newspapers took, think NME/Melody Maker from back in the day. Anyway, the Drum editor, a really nice human called Sarah Norris, took a chance on this weird English bloke with glasses and no writing portfolio and said I could interview OK Go, who had recently had that viral music video. The interview went well and I was added to Sarah’s team of writers.
Funnily enough, it was because of Drum Media’s rival publication, The Brag, that I made my core friendship group in Sydney. Within the first few weeks of being in the city, I took myself to a Brag party at the notorious World Bar in King’s Cross, where I met a group of people who invited me to another party the following night. On the way to said party, I walked down the road with one of my new pals, a photographer called Daniel Boud. It was a Saturday night and the streets were busy, yet Daniel knew pretty much everyone he saw. He would stop and chat with some and give a wave and a hello to others. He seemed like the coolest man about town. I couldn’t imagine being so popular. Within a couple of months, so welcoming was the Sydney scene and so omnipresent was I at gigs/parties/events (seriously, I would have gone to the opening of an envelope), that it would be me saying hello to everyone just like Daniel did that night. I honestly never, ever went anywhere – even just to the local shops – without seeing someone I knew. Imagine that happening in London!
During my years writing for Drum Media, I interviewed some amazing artists. Because I was foreign, I was often tasked with speaking to overseas acts. Most of the conversations were down the phoneline at some ungodly hour of the morning due to time differences, but I felt lucky to speak to the likes of Laura Marling (twice), Florence Welch, Adam Green, Perry Farrell, Regina Spektor (twice), Kimya Dawson, Albert Hammond Jr, Nick Zinner, Franz Ferdinand, Klaxons (twice), Kaiser Chiefs and loads of other interviews that I have zero recollection of. The Regina, Klaxons, Franz and Florence interviews were all cover stories, which is pretty cool.
I did a few face-to-face ones as well, including my chat with the late Dolores O’Riordan, my favourite ever interview, and I got to befriend loads of local artists. People like Angus & Julia Stone, Juanita Stein from Howling Bells, all of the Bridezilla gang, and Kirin J Callinan became good mates after I met them though writing for Drum Media.
Not only that, but I even ended up living with the editor of The Brag, Kirsty, and her partner, Christian. They needed a lodger and I was fed up with sleeping on floors, so we became housemates and firm friends. Kirsty loved prising Drum Media-related gossip out of me as we watched episodes of The Biggest Loser and Ladette to Lady.
Drum Media doesn’t exist as a newspaper anymore. It’s now called The Music and is online only, but I will always see it as a hugely important institution in my life. Without it, would I have met any of the people who would go on to become lifelong friends? Possibly, but maybe not. Would I have spent a decade in Sydney? Unlikely. And of course, were I not ensconced in the Sydney scene, I probably wouldn’t have ever met my wife, who was also part of the music industry within the city. As we celebrate 12 years together and four years of marriage, the idea of having never met her is unthinkable.
So, if I hadn’t met a Sony A&R person, if my interview with Ok Go hadn’t gone well, if I hadn’t have attended that Brag party and befriended some of the finest human’s known to man, I may not have married the love of my life. Sliding doors, innit?
Also, had I not established myself as a writer back in 2006, I very much doubt I’d still be writing now, and running this website, two decades on, meaning that my debut non-fiction book would not be coming out in September or, in fact, at all. But it is. It’s called Long Way Together and is ostensibly about football, but there is loads of music stuff in it too and plenty about my life in Sydney. I’m very proud of it and I’d love for you to read it. After all, in a parallel universe, it was never written!
Click here from the UK to pre-order from Waterstones
Click here from the UK to pre-order from Amazon here.
Or, get the details from one of the above links and ask your local independent bookstore to order it in for you. It will also be available as an eBook upon its release on September 14th, so stay tuned for that.
Subscribe to Bobby’s Substack here.
