For those who asked, Arbitrary Lines is still going, I’m just attempting to work out how best to structure the next series of articles I want to do, which will be concerned with gender in pop and indie.
In the meantime, have a read of this review I wrote in 2008 for a ‘Music & Popular Culture’ elective at UTS. I didn’t pay any attention to Alps who also played on the night in question because I was already well over the word limit for the assignment. I regret this.
This review was also written before I really knew the residents of MGTVLE, and the bands that played there – so forgive the flippant, critical tone, I was really just trying to do my best Simon Reynolds impression for the tutor.
MGTVLE was shut down by Marrickville City Council in mid-2009. Consider this a farewell/retrospective thing.
Cities only reveal themselves to you achingly slowly – this is something I have learned. It wasn’t until my third year of living in Sydney that I discovered the vital, exclusive underground that I’d dreamed of when I was growing up in a boring, small NSW town. I started working in an Ultimo call centre with independent musicians and I played soccer with anarchists who organised DIY (do it yourself) punk shows in warehouses. Suddenly, I knew where and when things were going down, so to speak, particularly in the loose network of informal/illegal/independent venues and events (select the adjective you prefer) happening all over the inner suburbs of Sydney. At some point, a friend from the call centre took me to my first show at MGTVLE.
MGTVLE could be described as somewhat inaccessible. Short for Maggotville (a wordplay on the suburb in which it’s situated), MGTVLE is a venue, practice space, communal kitchen, bike workshop and, importantly, home to the bunch of punks and activists that are the lifeblood of the place. Because the venue is unlicensed and police presence very much unsought, gigs are never advertised with an address – to go to your first MGTVLE show, you generally just have to know someone who knows where it is. Wander down a back street of a labyrinthine industrial area. Walk through a doorway unmarked except by the black-clad people drinking outside. Climb the narrow flight of stairs lit by a single bulb, pay your six bucks and get your stamp – you’re there. The most immediately eye-catching interior feature used to be the massive poster behind the low stage of a man screaming at a line of riot cops with a water pistol held to one’s helmeted face. That seems to be gone tonight. Instead a simply-spray-painted cartoon bunny chews a carrot and sneers, ‘Magic happens, cunt.’
Of course, this all adds to the deliciously underground authenticity of the place, and there’s a sense in which most of those subculturally connected enough to participate wouldn’t have it any other way. MGTVLE is not shiny or new or well-designed – mostly by circumstance, partly by choice. Supposedly resistant ‘indie’ culture in Sydney trades on the authenticity of subversiveness to such a degree that the ultra-trendy Oxford Arts Factory in Darlinghurst went through a phase where longnecks in brown paper bags (traditionally used to disguise alcohol bottles and thus avoid police fines) were served over the bar even though the OAF is a fully licensed venue. The vague sense of naughtiness being chased in that slightly pathetic gesture is more authentically realised at this unlicensed, illegal (and therefore more authentically ‘independent’ and ‘underground’) venue. For these patterns of consumption, the idea of something being ‘independent’ or ‘underground’ is synonymous with it being exclusive. One can make comparisons with the symbolic economy of authenticity David Grazian describes being negotiated in the downtown Chicago blues scene.
It would, however, be reductive to the point of being offensive to talk about MGTVLE only in terms of its indie cool – being a non-profit space that people live in and pay rent for, MGTVLE does not have a matching drive to sell itself through its street cred. Quite the opposite – the idea is to create a venue that doesn’t have to sell massive amounts of alcohol or put in poker machines to stay alive, and is therefore more accessible (open to under-18s, for example) rather than less.
That MGTVLE is exclusive is a double-edged sword. Exclusive, in the literal sense that most people are kept out. People are kept out – and so is the dumb planned obsolescence of Sydney indie fashion and its concomitant commoditisation. People are kept out – and so many miss out on participating in what goes on.
Tonight Wollongong four-piece Ohana and Sydney three-piece The Thaw are recording a live split EP. The Thaw are on first, and they set up on the floor rather than the stage. A pillar of the Sydney DIY scene since 2004, The Thaw are three female musicians (‘not a chick band’, thanks very much) from the western suburbs with a keen political awareness that permeates a lot of what they do. All band members are vegetarians, and have anarchist leanings – various members volunteer for Food Not Bombs Sydney and Jura Anarchist Bookshop, and the band supports a food co-operative in the Philippines.
Sadly, with prevailing stereotypes about feminists and vegans, this description probably paints them as intense and humourless. Far from it. The band is relaxed and chatty onstage, cracking jokes and calling out amusing song names. Their sound is a dense but very listenable kind of art-rock created from droning bass chords and liberal use of feedback, effects pedals (particularly delay) and unusual guitar techniques. During th’echo, the insistently weird tick-tock beat that is the song’s backbone is created by her picking the strings above the nut at the guitar’s head and looping the result through an effect pedal. Cymbal rolls wash over the top of it all with soft mallets, and skittering hi-hat and tom beats bound through the upbeat parts. Drummer Katrina seems to take lead vocal duties as well as the drum kit, but all three Thaws chime unpredictable harmonies together on many of their songs, so it’s difficult to tell.
The noisiest moment comes during a song Kat says is written ‘about Palestine… and how complex and fucked up the whole thing is’. All three Thaws scream the song to a climax. I don’t catch the words, but the pain and sympathy felt is evident. Set-closer Getting pumped with your friends and doing mad shit is a slow-burning, righteous epic recalling post-rock masters Mogwai or the rich soundscapes of Japanese ‘artcore’ band Envy. Steph rubs a screwdriver along her fretboard to create an improvised e-bow, sliding from a haunting lament to a bristling, soaring wail. The tempo increases until Katrina’s machine-gun snare runs are simultaneously holding the song together and threatening to tear it apart. Suddenly the drums fade and Kath and Steph let the song paint itself out of existence the delicate way it came in.
Between sets I look around a bit more. On the far side of the room two tables are set up. One is near the communal kitchen, where vegie-burgers or Lebanese bread with hummus are served for a gold coin donation (or an offer of helping out with the cooking or washing up). The other is the ‘distro table’ where Shaun from the Australasian DIY label Tenzenmen has boxes of CDs, vinyl and cassettes from punk, indie and DIY electronica acts from around Australia and Southeast Asia. On other nights touring bands might be selling t-shirts to recoup some of their losses to petrol costs, but tonight it seems to just be Shaun. On sale is a Punx Against The Gold Mine compilation raising money and awareness for the Irati Wanti (‘the poison leave it’) campaign to prevent cyanide gold mining in an Aboriginal community.
On the back of the MGTVLE toilet door, along with paste-up graffiti, flyers for other shows and protests, someone has written in black permanent marker: “All I want to do is enjoy the music, but I deal, have to deal, with the homophobia and sexism of this scene.” That homophobia and sexism is consciously thought about, discussed and dealt with in this space would seem to set it apart from most commercial music venues in Sydney, and indeed in Australia. MGTVLE has a “Safer Spaces” policy that is sometimes displayed on the door that asks participants to be mindful of how their behaviour affects others’ enjoyment of the event and relative comfort and safety in the space (particularly if drinking). This kind of policy is more usually seen at progressive activist meetings.
Someone has written in green marker underneath the first complaint that “All I want to do is enjoy the homophobia and sexism of this scene, but I deal, have to deal, with the music” – no doubt a provocation to the anarcho-punk bands (known colloquially as ‘crust punks’) that regularly play MGTVLE and speak up about gender issues in punk.
While waiting for Ohana to start playing, Katrina Thaw and I discuss the current plethora of independent venues in this particular area. Kat is enthusiastic, but says, “I worry about the ghetto-ness of it all. I’m playing shows that are 5 minutes away from the warehouse I played in the other day – and people will make the trek to one of these places in Marrickville, but they won’t come to this show that we organised next week in Bankstown right near the station.” She’s conscious of the inner-city elitism that has swallowed the Sydney indie scene and constantly threatens to do the same for activist and DIY scenes in the inner west.
Ohana are finally ready to start playing. Somehow between The Thaw’s set and the beginning of this one, there have appeared many more indie scenesters clad in fashionable keffiyeh and high-waisted skirts.
“Basic maintenance of assumptions keeps us glued to the fucking ground!” screams singer Will Farrier, one knee lowered as if to brace against a strong wind. Ohana’s opener When Things Come Alive is a jagged triptych of a song, sharply changing direction twice after the intro’s urgent but near-monotonal buzz and throb. Above it Farrier’s shouted lyrics and wordless falsetto float and leap eerily.
Lyrically, Ohana deal repeatedly with similar themes to those that the English post-punk luminaries Gang of Four dealt with thirty years ago – revealing a disgust for capitalism but recognising its power to corrupt everything around you and make you complicit, complacent. The music snarls and bristles, but with frustration and disillusionment rather than uncomplicatedly revolutionary urges. Farrier’s lyrics and indeed Ohana’s whole aesthetic are influenced by the writings of French post-structuralist Michel Foucault (track one on their first LP was named Foucault You Diabolical Genius). Another song which makes an appearance tonight, Bad Credit/Good Posture, sounds like a high-noon exchange between an ordinary citizen and an agent of state surveillance – “I am afraid of you my friend, but you are terrified of me… even though we seek to meet outside the gaze of the strongest lens…”
Ohana’s music is composed of angular, precise rhythms. Not a note is wasted. The sparseness and space in their post-hardcore compositions makes clear their debt to Melbourne minimalists My Disco. In fact, it’s only about a third of the time that all four musicians are playing at once. Individual parts are repetitive and simple, but together the songs are compulsively danceable, in no small part due to drummer Kino’s brilliantly inventive ostinatos. This is music that is more than the sum of its parts. Set highlight One On Four is an example. A syncopated, arpeggiated, almost-staccato guitar line runs throughout the song, sounding somehow distant. It’s joined at intervals by a complementary, mumbling bassline and a cascading second guitar melting over the first. Before you realise, the subtle climax of the song is upon you and Farrier is screaming that “some things are irreplaceable! Some things are better off not lost!”
Farrier wears a Miles Davis t-shirt and dances a strange, pivoting swing, as if hinged at the waist. In fact all four (male) members do cast poses, throwing their bodies around the stage and dancing jerkily to their own beat, taking up space in a way that The Thaw (now quite noticeably) didn’t.
Like The Thaw, Ohana close their set in spectacular fashion. The Birth of the Clinic, named after Foucault’s famous examination of examination, surveillance and the insistent structures of modernity, starts innocently enough with a relaxed drumbeat. Scratchy guitars pick out lonely, unresolved chords and then burst into rapid semiquavers. When the bass and drums join them the beat becomes stultifying, insistent, oppressively heavy. The volume climbs until suddenly it ceases coldly and all that is left are the guitarists robotically trading harsh harmonics and generating a profound sense of unease. Then silence but for a sparse, stop-start drum beat. Farrier is bent double, leaning on his amp in the corner of the room, metres away from his microphone. He barks out three lines that echo unamplified in the room: “What goes in my mouth? What comes out yours? The birth of the clinic.”
The kind of musicianship and sense of community evident in MGTVLE and places like it doggedly resists commoditisation through a sense of being an end in itself, rather than a means to access fame or money. And that sense – of the event, the space being an end in itself – is strong. It’s something that will never die, no matter how many DIY venues are forced into closure.
