Aust, rock export boom

Press, 22 July 1988, Page 23

Aust, rock export boom

NICK BROWN,

By

of

NZPA Sydney Australian rock music is. enjoying an export boom and the nation’s bureaucrats are keen to help drum up the trade, even if they may blush a little when promoting groups with names like Deadly Hume and Hard Ons. Austrade, a quango which performs a similar function to New Zealand’s Tradecom, publicises Australian rock music in overseas markets and has set up a Music Industry Export Panel mainly comprising rock . music business leaders. The panel has organised workshops to educate bands and their managers on how to conduct business, with an eye to export, and avoid exploitation. It has also compiled an export marketing guide for the industry.

One of the panel’s members Mr Chris Gilbey, the owner of MCA

Music Australia, said Australian record sales in the United States this year should total about SAustlOO million ($1.17 million). “That is not really that big — if we got to $1 billion worth of record sales that would be impressive,” he said. Although Australian rock music has enjoyed isolated successes in the United States in the past, Mr Gilbey said it had never made as great an impact as at present. INXS, Midnight Oil, The Church and Icehouse all have singles in the American Top 30 chart. Mr Gilbey said New Zealand performers were also getting in on the act, with Shona Laing’s “Soviet Snow” single in the fop 20 of the CMJ “alternative music” chart in the United States. “There is a real interest in things from the Antipodes — it just happens that we are making music that is turning people on in northern hemisphere and that

translates into great big dollar signs,” he said. Now Australian groups had established a significant bridge in the North American market, the Australian industry had to develop an ongoing commitment to it, Mr Gilbey said. Austrade will be organising an Australian rock music stand — with videos, tapes and posters — at next month’s New Music Seminar in New York. It participated in the same event last year and the M.I.D.E.M. music event in Cannes earlier this year. Austrade, learning that the Australian groups, Deadly Hume and Hard Ons, would be touring the United States, encouraged both to perform in the music festival,

which forms part of the New Music Seminar. To those who question a semi-government organisation promoting outrageous groups and music, a trade development officer, Mr Ed Jonker, has a ready answer.

"If we were to apply censorship on that sort of basis when we are promoting the music industry then we could be open to criticism and that would worry me a lot more,” said Mr Jonker, who set up Austrade’s links with the Sydney rock music industry.

“If we say we’ll promote the music industry we can’t discriminate.” He said that Austrade would like to take some of the “credit where it is due” for the success of Australian rock music overseas.

“But we can’t point to any particular success for a band or record that we can claim responsibility for.

“We are not just helping with direct export

promotion. We are also trying to raise the level of professionalism within the industry.” Austrade offers rock musicians and their record companies export grants to help fund their development of overseas markets.