State of Emergence: Local Venues 1975-1982

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Brisbane was home to a burgeoning underground music scene. Inspired by the global punk movement, numerous bands formed and played regularly at improvised venues around the city. The development of independent music in Brisbane was unique due to its geographic isolation and the political climate of oppression under conservative Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Frequent clashes between the activist youth culture and Queensland’s police force gave rise to some of the most antagonistic bands in the country.

These groups mixed art with politics to express their frustration at the stultifying nature of life in Brisbane. The lack of an established music scene in Brisbane contributed to the improvised nature of where the scene developed. Bands and promoters like 4ZZZ, an FM community radio station, adopted a ‘do it yourself’ attitude by booking community halls and hosting spontaneous concerts and parties in unorthodox venues. These venues provided a hub for music and youth culture. They contribute to an understanding of Brisbane’s long history of independent music which began in the 1970s.   

Brisbane during the early 1970s was anything but punk. Suburban streets and sunshine fostered an image of Brisbane as the lazy ‘big country town’ where life was easy-going, with little reason to complain. However, underneath this romantic image of Brisbane was a tendency towards conservatism and the election of increasingly repressive state governments.

Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens described it as “a very conservative town. It’s a very privileged lifestyle there, very easy-going, sunny, and you don’t have to think too much and you’re not encouraged to” (Hutson and Sawford 1988, 5).

Nowhere was this conservative mentality more evident than in Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. As a staunch Christian, Bjelke-Petersen believed that God had chosen him to save Australia from socialism (Lunn 1979, 349). His government was highly suspicious of youth culture and made a point of ruthlessly targeting protestors. Under these conditions, youth activism found a subversive outlet in independent music. 

For young people, Brisbane was also unbearably dull. There was practically no nightlife to speak of. As Andrew Stafford explains:

"The city simply shut down on weekends. The saying used to go that on Sundays you could have fired a cannon down Queen Street in the city centre and not hit anyone or anything. For young people, the prevailing atmosphere was a fetid, fermenting mixture of enervating heat, boredom and unrelieved tension" (Stafford 2014, 15).

The lack of social events to attend was not due to lack of demand, but rather the strict regulatory control over licensed venues. The Conservative government viewed the existence of a night-time economy as a “problem” that needed to be controlled and legislated against, instead of celebrated and supported. The result was that Brisbane came to be perceived as a “cultural desert” (Vuleta 2010, 6). With no music scene to draw upon, a group from Brisbane’s outer suburbs took matters into their own hands, creating their own spaces to play a new kind of fast-paced rock music. 

Bob Geldof once said that the face of rock music in the 1970s was altered by three bands: Sex Pistols, Ramones and The Saints (McFarlane 2017, 411). Formed in 1973 as a garage band called Kid Galahad and the Eternals, The Saints were undoubtedly the best known band to emerge from Brisbane during this period. The group formed after a chance encounter between singer Chris Bailey and guitarist Ed Kuepper during a detention at Oxley High School. With no chance of being booked at conventional venues, the band resorted to community halls which were cheaper to hire. However, the destructive tendencies of punk audiences ensured that all shows were one-off, with the band adopting a 'scorched-earth' policy from one hall to the next.

As Kuepper later explained, “usually Ivor, who was the nicest member of the band, would go in and speak to the old lady that did the bookings for the hall, say that we were doing a dance and pay a twenty-dollar security bond, do the show, without fail lose your security bond, move on to the next one. So, we had a string of them through the suburbs – and we never got one twice” (Meltzer 2011).

By 1976, The Saints had exhausted their supply of affordable venues. With nowhere else to play, the band started rehearsing and playing shows in the house where Bailey and drummer Ivor Hay lived. After neighbours indicated their displeasure at the noise by throwing a brick through the window, the band wrote ‘Club 76’ over the boarded-up facade. Thus began The Saints’ legendary tenure of Club 76. 

The modest Queenslander which hosted the band’s infamous concerts is located on the corner of Petrie Terrace and Milton Road, next to the railway yards. Coincidentally the local police headquarters was situated just across the intersection on Petrie Terrace.

With the addition of bassist Kym Bradshaw, The Saints hosted open invitation shows at Club 76 every weekend. At first the crowd was made up of mostly friends and loyal supporters of the band, however this quickly changed. With nothing else to do on a Saturday night, the concerts drew a diverse group of over a hundred people each night. The band would play up to three sets in the front room.

Fortunately, a few writers and journalists were in attendance and wrote about what they witnessed. Clinton Walker described The Saints in full flight at Club 76 as “a humbling, thundering thing to experience” (Walker 1996, 19). The band played covers along with their original songs which would eventually comprise their first album (I’m) Stranded, released the next year.

In his account of the parties, Andrew McMillan told of “[a] couple hundred kids packed into every room of the house, tugging on cigarettes and bottles of beer and wine and whisky” who were “dancing like maniacs as this wailing wall of sound crashes through” (McMillan 2006, 114). 

As the parties became more popular, people spilled onto the busy street between sets which attracted the attention of the police. Upon arrival, the cops “were met with resentment and insolence, if not outright abuse”, resulting in multiple arrests (Vuleta 2010, 12). 

Frequent raids of the house by police followed and the venue was shut down by the end of the year. The reasons given were that it had no liquor licence, fire exits or adequate toilet facilities. This short-lived venue left a lasting impression on the music scene that followed. The Saints demonstrated that you didn’t need a record company or even a concert hall to play the music you wanted. 

After The Saints left for the UK, a wave of punk bands emerged to fill their place in Brisbane. These groups were more influenced by the punk scene that was happening in Britain with bands like the Sex Pistols. Two of the most prominent bands were The Leftovers and Razar, who embodied the look of punks with their leather jackets, painted shirts and safety pins. These bands continued the practice of hiring community halls to put on gigs. However, the frequent destruction of toilets and washrooms in venues led to heavier police harassment of punk dances.

During this period, the police created a special Task Force of undercover police who attended gigs and started fights with the intention of arresting people and shutting down concerts. Members of the Special Branch were easily identified by their clothing – Hawaiian shirts and lumber-jackets for males and frocks and tracksuits for females.

The first notable incident involving the Task Force was a dance at Hamilton Hall in January 1978, featuring the Survivors and Leftovers.

At 9pm an estimated thirty police officers, acting on a noise complaint, arrived in paddy wagons to shut down the concert (Stafford 2014, 103). Four people were arrested and charged for offences including obscene language and disorderly conduct.

The arrests were included in the pages of the Courier Mail the next day. However, as Clinton Walker wrote in the fanzine Pulp, the newspaper article failed to mention “the kids bashed by the cops, the cops posing as punks in paint-splattered shirts and busting anyone for swearing in conversation, and the kids who were harassed by cops as they tried to go home as instructed” (Walker 1996, 39-40).

Frequent harassment by police created a strong sense of antagonism among punk bands. Inspired by the incident at Hamilton Hall, Razar wrote their most provocative song, Task Force (Undercover Cops), which included the lyrics:

We’re having fun, people are swearing

You and your haircuts, you’re arrested

You put our friends away overnight

But hey, Mr Task Force, that’s all right!

 (Stafford 2014, 104)

Despite the best efforts of the police and government, Brisbane’s independent music scene was gaining a foothold thanks to the work of Triple Zed promoters. However, even the seemingly established venues continued to be plagued by police raids and stringent regulations.   

Baroona Hall on Caxton Street was the site of numerous ‘one-off’ multiple band gigs during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Located just a three-minute walk up the road from Club 76, the colonial-era building housed the local branch of the Labor Party and Caxton Street Legal Service.

The venue also had a radical social history, including being used for gay liberation and nuclear disarmament campaigns. It was the site of the Cane Toad Club, which was the fundraising arm of the Cane Toad Times, a satirical anti-government newspaper.

Monthly concerts at the hall became an important fundraiser for the magazine, with Razar manager John Reid chosen to promote the gigs. It was hoped that the established political history of the venue would deter police harassment, which ultimately proved to be wrong.

The hall itself was basic, with an elevated stage on one end in front of an arched doorway and a bar down the other. The casualness of the venue contributed to its success in breaking down barriers between audience and performer, which was central to the ethos of punk.

It was in this spirit that Robert Forster and Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens made their first public appearance in-between sets of a show featuring the Survivors and Leftovers.

Walker, who seemed to be everywhere at once during this period, described how “During a break in the proceedings two fairly nondescript fellows took the stage – unannounced – and fumbled their way”, without a drummer, “through two songs that were obviously the product of their own inexperienced hands” (Walker 1979).

Soon the Go-Betweens were regulars at Baroona Hall, playing alongside bands like Zero, Repairs, X-Men and The End. With the music scene in full swing, the hall regularly attracted audiences exceeding three hundred (Vuleta 2010, 12).

Naturally, the success of the venue in creating a space for youth culture to thrive attracted the attention of the city’s Task Force.

Tensions escalated when in December 1979, police broke up what they described as a “full-scale riot” outside the hall. According to the police commissioner, the cops were “showered with bottles thrown from the building” (Vuleta, 23). Twelve people were arrested in total.

However, the following month a very different version of events was provided by Lindy Woodward, who took several first-hand accounts and published them in the student newspaper Semper. 

She wrote how after the show when a large group had gathered outside the venue, several police officers got out of an unmarked car and “made their way through the crowd to one particular man, and proceeded to assault him.” When the crowd objected, “they ran amok, pushing, and throwing punches” (Woodward 1980, 21).

While the victims were successful in getting their convictions quashed, the episode demonstrates that no venue was off limits for the Task Force, who weren't afraid to use force to break up concerts.

Baroona Hall is one of the only venues from this period that escaped demolition, and today continues to host live music as Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall. 

1979 was the peak of Brisbane’s first independent music scene. An exciting new venue opened on George Street in Brisbane’s inner city called the Curry Shop. On the opening night, Razar’s show was so successful that the owners decided to turn the restaurant into a music venue.

Gigs were limited to Sunday nights and took place in a basement room which had a tiny makeshift stage. The facilities were basic, including a dressing room which doubled as a urinal. The bands that performed there included the renamed Xero, The End, Razar, and The Hard-Ons.

According to Mark Halstead of the Disposable Fits, it was “a mixture of crazy left-wing uni types, sort of hippies, and heavy-duty lesbian feminists but who were tolerant of almost any behaviour.” In this lawless environment, concertgoers would race upstairs to shoot heroin in the toilets, “pulling their belts off on the way” (Walker 1996, 70).

Curry was still served to regular customers who were willing to take the risk, though not many did. The success of this venue represents the highly improvised nature of Brisbane’s independent music scene.

It was eventually demolished and is now the location of Brisbane’s law courts.     

The Queen’s Hotel on the corner of Charlotte and Creek Streets was the real success story from Brisbane’s early scene. It was one of the first official ‘venues’ in the sense that it wasn’t a rented hall or improvised venue, but a licensed bar with a capacity of eight hundred.

Its short-lived success was largely due to the efforts of Triple Zed promoters David Darling and Peter Williamson. In early 1978, the two approached hotel manager Andrew Maguire and successfully arranged a joint venture between the radio station and hotel.

Triple Zed was instrumental in transforming the beer garden into the “African Queen” room, complete with fake palm trees. The venue opened for live music in May 1978 with a Skyhooks and Survivors show and the queue of over a thousand stretched around the corner. According to a Semper article, the crowd were a mixed bunch:

"the hard core punkers were there, the aggro sneer and carefully ripped shirts…There were glazed businessmen in straight brown shirts who looked like they’d been wandering the streets of town and heard the music. There were oldies hoping for a rage. And rock promoters eager to gauge the public response" (Vuleta 2010, 32).

The first few shows were a resounding success. Triple Zed had created a successful ‘alternative’ live venue right in the centre of Brisbane.

The Queen’s Hotel was an example of the radio station’s crucial importance to the development of music in Brisbane from 1975 onwards.

The Queen’s success, however, was short lived. It fell victim to another aspect of Queensland conservatism – the rampant pressure for urban development, which involved pulling down some sixty historical buildings (Rollman 2024, 5).

With the approval of Brisbane's first formal town plan in 1965, the city was undergoing rapid urban development. The plan paved the way for major development in the city, including high-rise buildings and multi-lane highways. Ultimately, this destroyed many of Brisbane’s single and double story buildings, which were ideal for live music.

In the case of the Queen’s Hotel, the Licensing Commission cited noise complaints as the reason for revoking its entertainment licence (Vuelta 2010, 37). The loss of the Queen’s in early 1979 was acutely felt in the Brisbane music community. It contributed to the decision of renowned live band The Riptides to move to Sydney.

Starting with the Queen’s, a number of hotel venues were demolished, including the New York Hotel, the Arcadia Hotel and the National Hotel. While the destruction of these hotel venues was by no means the end of the independent music scene, they precipitated a steady exodus of bands to the safety of Australia’s other major cities.  

Another source of venues throughout this period was Brisbane’s three major universities: the University of Queensland, Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology.

Already a hub of radical student activism, university campuses were an ideal setting for punk concerts and other musical genres including post-punk, pop and goth.

The University of Queensland in particular was of fundamental importance to radical youth culture. Along with being the home of Semper and Triple Zed, prominent Brisbane bands were created out of the various faculties of the university, including The Go-Betweens and The Riptides. Triple Zed even hosted shows for The Saints at the university, including a gig in early 1976 which ended with the union complex being trashed (Vuleta 2010, 18). 

Campuses provided a safe place for ‘alternative’ music to thrive, away from the heavy hand of the law. As Dr Sébastien Darchen recently explained, “Universities operated under the jurisdiction of federal authorities, with Queensland police needing permission to enter” (Darchen and Willsteed 2023). 

The environment this created was one where live venue etiquette could be disregarded completely. As Rod Mcleod of Young Identities said of an event at Griffith University in 1978:

"I loved the way the whole thing worked, because there was no real organisation at all…There was a very poor hired PA, bands played, and the mess was just left for someone else to clean up. I thought ‘wow, that’s fantastic, this is how easy it is to put a gig together’" (Vuleta, 19).

The events were advertised by posters which were typically hand-made and represent important items of Brisbane’s cultural history. Local artists, inspired by the DIY ethos of the scene, employed techniques such as hand lettering, photo emulsion and hand-cut stencils to produce eye-catching promotional posters. These posters capture the vibrancy and roughness of the independent music scene. As former Go-Betweens member John Willsteed explained, "The posters represent a different world" (Garcia 2020).

After the closure of the Queen’s Hotel in March 1979, Cloudland presented the best alternative for large concerts. Designed by architect Adolphus Parry-Fielder and opened in 1939, Cloudland was originally a sophisticated dance hall venue during the Second World War. It was also the centre of teenage social life during the rock’n’roll dances of the 1950s. During Buddy Holly’s visit in February 1958, he played three of his six Australian shows at the ballroom.

The vast interior included a balcony spanning the main hall and a sprung dancefloor built by American GIs. The exterior of the building featured a pink half dome within a large archway, which at night lit up with fluorescent light. Sitting atop Bowen Hills overlooking the city, the venue was an iconic fixture of Brisbane’s skyline. As journalist Lindy Woodward recalled in an interview:

"I remember once…sitting there, having a joint on the stairs, and looking down on the police dog spectacular at the Exhibition grounds. So it was a fantastic place, this whimsical symbol of lightness and fun up on the hill, above what could be a fairly harsh and arid city for a lot of people" (Burrows 2009, 140).

By the time Triple Zed was hosting joint efforts at Cloudland, the place was in rickety shape. The floorboards bounced under the weight of a dancing crowd and the hanging lights swayed wildly.

Nevertheless, shows continued featuring a range of disparate acts. In one early show, Razar opened for pub rock favourites the Angels, who were visiting from out of town. The Angels crowd of a thousand were completely unprepared for the outrageous style of the local punks. However, singer Marty Burke won over the potentially hostile audience with a life-size cut-out of John Travolta. When he threw the Travolta effigy into the crowd, it was torn to shreds, to the amusement of everyone involved (Vuleta 2010, 46).

Concerts at Cloudland were infamous for the chaos that ensued after audiences poured out of the stifling heat onto the surrounding streets. After complaints were filed, Triple Zed’s liquor licence for the venue was revoked in December 1979.

The esteem and large capacity of Cloudland enabled the radio station to attract international acts to Brisbane, including the Sex Pistols in 1977 and The Clash in February 1982. The police presence at the latter gig was so great that Joe Strummer pronounced Brisbane “pig city” (Vuleta 2010, 48). He also invited Aboriginal activist Bob Weatherall onto the stage to speak about issues of Indigenous land rights.

By the time The Clash arrived, the venue had already been deemed unsafe and was no longer a regular venue for rock music. Despite this, the police and government had seen enough. In the early hours of 7 November 1982, the iconic venue was demolished under suspicious circumstances by the Deen Brothers, a Brisbane demolition company.  

While this list includes the major venues of Brisbane’s independent scene, there are many more that contributed to its development.

These include the 279 Club (Exchange Hotel), the Blind Hall in Woolloongabba, Paddington Hall, Lang Park and the National Hotel among many others.

Brisbane’s early ‘alternative’ scene demonstrates the importance of having venues for local music to develop along with youth culture. While today this may be taken for granted with places like The Triffid, The Tivoli and The Fortitude Music Hall, the recent closure of the iconic Brisbane venue The Zoo has raised concerns about the future of independent music in Brisbane.

Therefore, the underground music scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s serves as an example of the resilience of Brisbane's music culture in the face of constant police harassment and an aggressive state government.

The nihilistic tendencies of punk ensured the demise of its first scene in community halls and RSL clubs. However, it was the combined efforts of the government, regulators and the media that made sure later established venues were forced to close down.

By the end of 1979, the scene broke apart just as punk globally splintered into its offshoots. Despite only lasting a few years, Brisbane’s first independent music scene provided the inspiration for countless generations that followed.  

Reference List

Burrows, Tim. 2009. From CBGB to the Roundhouse: Music Venues through the Years. 1st edition. New York: Marion Boyars Publishers.

Darchen, Sébastien, and John Willsteed. 2023. “Subcultures in the subtropics: The evolution of Brisbane’s punks and goths.” Contact, 26 October, 2023, https://stories.uq.edu.au/contact-magazine/2023/tracing-the-evolution-of-brisbanes-punks-and-goths/index.html.

Garcia, Jocelyn. 2020. "Rare posters celebrate Brisbane's underground music scene of the '70s and '80s." Brisbane Times, 26 September 2020 11.28pm AEST, https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/rare-posters-celebrate-brisbane-s-underground-music-scene-of-the-70s-and-80s-20200922-p55xz2.html.

Hutson, Doug, and Gavin Sawford. 1988. Out of the Unknown: Brisbane Bands 1976-1998. Qld: Time Off.

Lunn, Hugh. 1979. Joh: The Life and Political Adventures of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

McFarlane, Ian. 2017. The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop. 2nd edition. Gisborne, Vic: Third Stone Press.

McMillan, Andrew. 2006. “Club 76 and All That.” Meanjin, 2006.

Meltzer, Larry, dir. 2011. Great Australian Albums: I’m Stranded – The Saints – Series 1, Ep 4 Of 4, SBS HD, 52 min.

Rollman, Louise. 2024. “Creative City: Interrogating the Influence of Property Developers on Brisbane’s Arts and Culture.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2393831.

Stafford, Andrew. 2014. Pig City: from the Saints to Savage Garden. 10th Anniversary Edition. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press.

Vuleta, Thomas. 2010. “Ups and Downs: Music Venues and Popular Music in Brisbane 1959-1989.” Honours thesis., University of Queensland. https://docplayer.net/11475676-Ups-and-downs-music-venues-and-popular-music-in-brisbane-1959-1989-thomas-vuleta.html.

Walker, Clinton. 1979. “Go-Betweens.” Roadrunner.

Walker, Clinton. 1996. Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977–1991.Sydney: Pan Macmillan.

Woodward, Lindy. 1980. “Rock Against Intimidation.” Semper, 19 May, 1980.