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FREE PIG CITY: FROM THE SAINTS TO SAVAGE GARDEN PDF

Andrew Stafford | 392 pages | 01 Oct 2014 | University of Queensland Press | 9780702253331 | English | St Lucia, Australia Pig city : from The Saints to Savage Garden | QUT ePrints

It ran from midday to 10 pm. The Pig City concert is regarded as one of the biggest concerts staged in the premises of the University of Queensland in recent years since O Week Orientation Week concerts, namely the first Livid Festival in He took the opportunity to address criticisms that suggested the book was written by an individual who was not present during the tumultuous period of Bjelke-Petersen's tyrannical reign, but wished he was. He explained he had no intentions to "romanticise the era", rather he wanted to pay tribute to 's bands of that period who were not given due recognition in Australia's music industry. Stafford also explained that major cultural movements were the result of a convergence of local, national, and international factors. He gave the example of the music scene in the s as drawing both positive and negative energy alike from the local enthusiasm for the right to march movement, the national reaction to the dismissal of the Whitlam governmentand the international anarchy inspired by the Sex Pistols in the UK. The song was written by Tony Kneipp, lead singer of the band. It critiques the political environment of Queensland's State coalition Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden in the s, referencing persecution of Aboriginal people, corruption within the government and police force, and banning of street marches. It is the first published book for Stafford. He was born in Melbourne inbefore moving to Brisbane in at the age of Growing up in Brisbane in the late s and early s played a vital role in sparking Stafford's interest in Brisbane's politics and music scene. Stafford borrowed the title for his book from the song Pig City by The Parameters. In a media release from The University of Queensland Press, Stafford is quoted as saying "although this song was barely heard outside of Brisbane, it became something of a rallying cry for those who stayed behind to fight the good fight at a time when everyone else was bailing out of the city. I decided to name the book after that song". Pig City offers readers an insight into the development of the Brisbane music scene from the s to The scope of Pig City not only documents those Brisbane bands that have gained worldwide recognition, such as The Saints, The Go-Betweensand Savage Gardenbut also explores the journey of lesser-known local Brisbane bands like Razar and The Parameters. Brisbane's political climate through this time is tightly interwoven with the development of the music scene. However, Stafford stresses the importance of recognising that "bad politics does not, in and of itself, result in a great and glorious music scene". Pig City bases its informative historical perspective on nearly interviews with musicians, journalists and authors. It is Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden valuable history, which captures the development of not just Brisbane's music scene, but also its political and cultural development. For Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden " Pig City is the story of how Brisbane grew up". While Pig City is currently Stafford's only published book, he has also worked as a freelance writer. Brisbane in the s and s was often viewed as a cultural backwater, referred to by many journalists as the Deep North. Bjelke-Petersen held the political office of Premier of Queensland from — He was a Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden politician, a devout Lutheran fundamentalist, and deeply involved in the corrupt government. In the late s, the New Left movement began in Queensland, activated largely in response to issues arising from the Vietnam Warcivil liberties, and conscription. The demonstrations in in Brisbane against the Springbok tourand the aftermath, illustrate the conservative regulation of Queensland under the Bjelke-Petersen premiership. From state to state, the Springbok team were faced with demonstrations in condemnation of South Africa's apartheid laws. Demonstrators greeted the Springboks when they arrived in Brisbane on 22 July Approximately demonstrators were present, and the same number of police. These mass arrests were one of the major catalysts that encouraged University of Queensland students, as well as left unionists, to explore better ways to communicate with the Brisbane public. From the mids to the late s, the premiership of Bjelke-Petersen remained largely unchanged. The premier was generally untouched politically by allegations of Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden against him and the Queensland government. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Courier-Mailp. Australian Community Broadcasting Series, 1 61— Queensland Review, 14 1p. The Australian Quarterly, 60 4— Censorship in Queensland — Brisbane: The University of Queensland Press. Brisbane: The University of Queensland Press, p. Queensland Review, 14 195— Australian Community Broadcasting Series, 1 6p. Categories : Political history of Australia Festivals in Queensland Music festivals in Australia in Australian music in music Music festivals established in Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Add links. Pig City: From The Saints to Savage Garden by Andrew Stafford

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Pig City by Andrew Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden. From cult heroes the Saints and the Go-Betweens to national icons and international stars Savage Garden, Brisbane has produced more than its share of great bands. But behind the music lay a ghost city of malice and corruption. Pressed under the thumb of the Bjelke-Petersen government and its toughest enforcers - the police - Brisbane's musicians, radio announce From cult heroes the Saints and the Go-Betweens to national icons Powderfinger and international stars Savage Garden, Brisbane has produced more than its share of great bands. Pressed under the thumb of the Bjelke-Petersen government and its toughest enforcers - the police - Brisbane's musicians, radio announcers and political activists braved ignorance, harassment and often violence to be heard. This is Brisbane's story - the story of how a city finally grew up. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 8. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Pig Cityplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Nov 05, fourtriplezed rated it it was amazing Shelves: musicaustralia. Being there helps to enjoy books like this. A top read for those that like a good local music read. The sign on the album cover had been there, as far as I can recall, from at least the middle of the 's. Ed used this iconic pic for the album cover. Sadly the building burnt down just after Christmas and with it the sign! Even a Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden politician understo Being there helps to enjoy books like this. Even a local politician understood the significance of the signs loss via comment on social media. Pig Cities loss!! View all 6 comments. History may repeat itself, but music can always be relied upon to reinvent itself in entirely new and wonderful ways. Stafford easily blends politics, history, music and culture in a compelling and totally readable narrative of a city, it's corrupt politicians, talented musicians and social justice advocates. View 1 comment. Jun 14, Hinge Head rated it really liked it. I grew up around the Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden time as the author - but not in Queensland - I read this 5 years after I moved to the tropics and as much as I loved reading about the music I really appreciated the socio-political history interwoven through this book. Bjelke-Petersen was just a joke to Double Jay loving Sydney-siders - he was far from it if you lived under his rule. Jan 06, The Hanged Man rated it it was amazing. Oct 24, Stuart Robinson rated it it was amazing. I wish I could give it more stars! I bought this for the good lady some two years back, she being a music lover and also someone through whom I've come to know and get to love a different Brisbane to that I'd previously known. Just brilliant. Nov 23, Ross Carmichael rated it it was amazing. An exciting glimpse in to a somewhat different era of Brisbane's local history. I first read 'Pig City' seven or eight years ago, before Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden career in journalism had revealed itself as a path of interest. In hindsight, perhaps reading this book was one of the beacons that pointed me in that direction, as Andrew Stafford's command of language and storytelling abilities are both enviable and inspiring. His task here is an ambitious one: to chart three decades of Brisbane's musical and cultural history in the context of its political machinations. Stylistically, it's written as I first read 'Pig City' seven or eight years ago, before a career in journalism had revealed itself as a path of interest. Stylistically, it's written as a narrative with occasional passages of oral history, where Stafford blocks out key quotes from artists and individuals. This is an intelligent editorial decision and it helps to drive the reader's interest and engagement: rather than relying on the narrator's reconstruction of events, we're instead shown history through the eyes of those who were there. This is the tenth anniversary edition of the book, published earlier this year, and Stafford's new author note in the opening pages makes for eerie reading in light of Queensland's recent political history. Certainly, reading accounts of the state's quasi-fascist regime under Joh Bjelke-Petersen's conservative government decades ago draws modern political decisions into sharp focus. History is not kind to Joh, and I don't think that Queenslanders will look back fondly on the current conservative reign, either. The genius of 'Pig City', however, is that by giving equal airtime to music and politics, Stafford is able to educate readers in two fields that don't often overlap. The book is a true classic; a must-read for anyone who calls Queensland home, or has designs on doing so. Jan 12, Matt Dawson rated it really liked it. This was an absolutely fantastic read and an interesting way to look at the modern history of Brisbane, a city that has always seemed a little left behind, while being home to some of the most radical and original Australian bands. I thought I would be mostly interested in the Saints, Go-Betweens, and Custard stories, but I was also fascinated by the lesser known bands and even the Savage Garden and Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden stories. The way the bands were tied in with the evolution o 4. The way the bands were tied in with the evolution of Brisbane, with the corrupt police, the backwards Premier and the state's relationship with its indigenous people was fascinating and engaging. Highly recommend. May 27, K. Pig City charts the weird, the wonderful and the downright shonky political dealings in Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen years via the music scene. It certainly is a walk down memory lane for anyone who was in Queensland before and during the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and it reminds Australians about the wealth of talent lost to the country due to heavy-handed government control. A fascinating read with plenty of little-known factual gems. Well worth reading. Aug 04, Joshua Donellan rated it it was amazing. Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in Australian musical history. Particularly relevant in regards to its analysis of the Bjelke-Peterson era now that we have Canbull Newman on the iron throne Feb 24, Celeste Goh rated it it was ok. Everyone was talking about it, being one of the few good books out there about the music scene in Australia, especially the music scene in Brisbane. Maybe it was the sudden muse I had awhile back on writing a chronicle of sorts of the Malaysian music scene, and Pig City would be a great, and possibly the only, reference I can get inspired with. How in the 80s, inspired by the first generation of Brisbane punk, many bands were formed but then quickly fell apart, and rookie bands were faced with the choice of going to Sydney for more Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden, which for some, did not work out, as the ever indie 4ZZZ reeked of trouble when their finances ran low against the rising acid trend. To be honest, I have never given Brisbane too much credit, compared to the more likeable Melbourne, for me anyway. I thought the city to be rather — dirtily sterile, if that oxymoron even makes sense. You should have seen my surprise when I sauntered into the city district on a weekend to find it empty. Perhaps that would explain why I never felt the urge to stay back after I Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden. But people who know me better know that is not really the main reason. Hence, I never really took time to Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden which are the Brisbane bands, and how they have shaped this pig city. No one was about to stop you trying. Stafford pieced together the novel with such meticulous research, aligning everything that happened in the music world and the political world with Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden precision you would think it just happened yesterday. To give an example, I suppose, I would not have known what Savage Garden have gone through Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden they dwindled off the radar to oblivion. That would explain why he was always at the back of music videos, or just not there at all. , eh? Unless Brisbane somehow has a place in your life, or a fan of music history. I mean, it did take me seven years to read Pig City! Whilst their federal elections were more transparent, compared to our latest general election. This is it? Pig City (song) - Wikipedia

There is much about Queensland's Bjelke-Petersen era that defies belief, even by those who actually lived through it at the time. Those who are shocked at George Bush's questionable intellect, his mangling of the language, his blind Christian certainty, the use of righteous force against opponents and the strong suggestion of business cronyism, if not outright corruption of the body politic, need to get out more. Johannes Bjelke- Petersen's reign - and it was a reign, for power rested in him in a virtually feudal manner - offered all those horrors. And while it was on a modest scale by international standards, and led to no invasions or wars, it was nonetheless an astonishing, giddy madness so close to home. But what of the lives within that madness? What, for example, of the arts, the music and the Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden, those who lived on the fringes, metaphorically, of mainstream culture and, literally, in many cases, of the city of Brisbane? Was the music they made a response to the stifling social atmosphere? Indeed, was it in any real way intrinsically Brisbane or Queensland? After all, the Thatcher years, roughly in parallel, saw a marked surge in pop music political action - and a similar failure to change the offending system. Andrew Stafford's book of narrow-band social history uses the arts, in particular the music scene in Brisbane, to attempt an answer to those questions, though he warns us in his introduction that this is not Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden argument that oppression Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden great art or that prevailing inertia can act like some grit in the oyster shell. As Stafford shows, the forces shaping the music of Brisbane bands, from the snarky Saints in the mid '70s to the culturally smooth Savage Garden and the, at first glance, withdrawn Powderfinger in the late '90s, were more complex than that. There was, for example, the growth, near-death and regrowth of community radio station 4ZZZ; the fluctuating nature of a live music scene at the mercy of a corrupt and brutal police force; a prevailing anti-intellectualism; the relative isolation. And, beneath it all, boredom, whether it was in the inner-city squats or the outer suburbs where Savage Garden's and dreamed of being popstars. Although I'm not convinced that there was or is a peculiar Brisbane essence to the acts covered here, what marks Stafford's book is its earthiness. He recreates the sweaty, urgent nature of the underground and alternative scenes. If he's less sure when the canvas expands nationally and then internationally, with Powderfinger and Savage Garden in particular, it's understandable. Like any Brisbane story, it's best told close to home. The Sydney Morning Herald. Save Log inregister or subscribe to save articles for later. License this article.