Expat Observation: Music

Australian music has always been a part of my life, with those late 1970s and early 1980s hits by the Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John, Men At Work and Air Supply peaking a curiosity in the USA about Australian bands. The next wave came in the mid-late 1980s with bands such as INXS, Midnight Oil, Crowded House, The Church and Hunters & Collectors scoring airplay on college and alternative radio stations and getting their videos played on MTV. It was then that my lifelong love of Crowded House started as "Don't Dream It's Over" went to number 2 on the charts.

I continued to monitor the Australian music scene and when I did a year abroad at the University of Melbourne in the mid-1990s I got to discover some new artists playing around town at the time, including Things of Stone and Wood, My Friend the Chocolate Cake, Deadstar, Dave Graney 'n' The Coral Snakes and You Am I.

When I moved back to Melbourne in 2005 I really started to plug into the music scene once again, which wasn't hard to do because there were so many venues around town. If you wanted to you could go out to see a band every night of the week here. My love of indie music remains strong, with 2007-2008 probably the strongest period for bands from Melbourne with the likes of Little Red, Oh Mercy, The Basics, Gotye, The Harpoons, The Good China, CW Stoneking and Eddy Current Suppression Ring playing gigs and/or releasing EPs and albums. Some of those bands have since disbanded, but the scene remains vibrant, even in spite of gentrification in the northern suburbs and closing down of some music venues. I am constantly discovering new bands and artists (it pays to catch the warm-up acts at gigs), and there have been a number of fantastic releases this year. Melbourne is the musical heart of Australia, and Friday will see the start of the annual Face the Music conference and Melbourne Music Week.