You’re Only 21 Once
or twice, if we’re lucky…
Image by Samuel Graves
How lucky are we to have a front-row seat to the groundswell movement of our grassroots music scene? For 21 months, The Note has tried its damned best to capture the gold rush of talent emerging from our suburbs. It’s been a labour of love building this publication – a magazine often fuelled by knockoffs at the Cranker and office orders of Domino’s pizza if it’s past 11pm.
It’s been a wild ride. Thank you for letting us tag along.
NOVEMBER 2022
This magazine moves from being a mere idea into a tangible thing. We have some fierce chats about what to name our publication (can you believe Scally Mag was a top pick?) and Five Four Entertainment come in clutch by teeing up an interview with Ocean Alley for our first front cover. We stutter through the whole interview. Our signature blue and yellow colours are randomly picked from a cover mock-up of Haim, but they stick. The first edition has 156 gigs printed, a Bad//Dreems gig review and an interview with Jive founder, Tam Boakes.
SUMMER 2023
Temperatures soar. DIY labels P.A.K Records and Daybed Records unite the surf-stamped south and city punk scenes at Some Shine festival. Coldwave score the opening set at Laneway and release their runaway debut EP, Same Window, Different House. We spend our time becoming acquainted with the major festivals rolling through our state – including the inaugural Heaps Good. We dance at Daybed Records’ first Nice Day To Go To The Club. Adelaide Fringe comes and goes. WOMADelaide wows. We get used to the grind of a monthly publication.
Image by Jack Fenby
AUTUMN 2023
The beloved Robert ‘Bertie’ Dunstan joins The Note team and starts writing a monthly column from his perspective as a veteran of SA’s music and street press scene. Gang of Youths star on our cover. Zara’s computer crashes two days before our print deadline and the whole article is lost – our first (not last) race to the finish line. We celebrate the inaugural Vintage Vibes festival – it’s also our first-time backstage interviewing bands. Almost half the lineup is local, with West Thebarton, George Alice, Late Nite Tuff Guy, Druid Fluids and Wanderers some of the names billed.
We interview Ruel, Matt Corby, Mallrat and Regurgitator; Space Jams announces its return; Drugdealer pops past Summertown Studio; Ella Ion drops her debut album Waiting; and The Shadow Ministers release their first LP, Low Noise High Output. We wrap up autumn with Bad//Dreems on the cover following the arrival of their fourth album, HOO HA!, and host a six-month shindig at Memphis Slim’s. We’ll cheers to that!
WINTER 2023
SA’s second festival season kicks in thanks to Beer & BBQ Fest, Spin Off, Stonecutters and Illuminate Adelaide. No weekend is spent inside from June to July, but we’re not mad.
The local scene is also alive and pumping. The Empty Threats release their debut album, Monster Truck Mondays, and we lose our mind. The SA scene starts to swell, lifting every band, artist and punter. Carla Lippis releases Mondo Psycho; The 745 drop their punk-packed self-titled LP; West Thebarton sell out two Cranker gigs in celebration of their Victory EP; Slowmango’s Hypercolour Miscellaneous arrives; and DEM MOB play Primavera Sound in Barcelona! We blow out 30 birthday candles for The Gov. The Cranker turns 170 years old.
The Note learns what censorship is thanks to a profanity-littered interview with Eagles of Death Metal and we promise to blur any future f-bombs. We forget this rule a few months later. There are interviews with The Living End, Dune Rats, King Stingray, Thelma Plum,
G Flip and DMAs. The magazine grows from 32 to 40 pages, then to 44. We consider ourselves booze, food and arts enthusiasts and introduce our Culture Club and Tasting Notes pages. Our magazine blueprint finally forms.
Image by Nash Blight
SPRING 2023
Spring feels like a fever dream. We announce our inaugural music festival, Notestock, and interview Beddy Rays the day we go to print. The following month is just as loose; our conversation with Beck arrives the day after our publication deadline.
It’s the season of local releases: Druid Fluids with Then, Now, Again & Again; LOLA with Get Rich or Die Trying; King Jeff and the How Are Yous with Moon Landing; Oscar the Wild with She’ll Be Right; The Dainty Morsels with The Curse Of The Dainty Morsels; and The Genevieves with Nothing Happened/Words.
The beloved Bertie passes and leaves a hole in the industry that’ll never be filled.
The Independent Venues Alliance forms. It raises awareness of the crucial part grassroots venues play in the creation of live music and celebrates how they develop the industries next generation of talent. Conversations focus on the cost-of- living crisis and how it intersects with an oversaturated gig market that pushes big-ticket events and festivals.
The ‘Adelaide sound’ becomes a major talking point interstate when Aleksiah, The Empty Threats, Coldwave and Oscar the Wild fly to Brisbane for BIGSOUND. Paul Kelly is inducted into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame. DEM MOB dominates at the SA Music Awards. We buy some microphones but can’t figure out how to turn them on. We interview every winner announced (all 30 of them!) that night. Jive turns 20! Good Music Month kicks off. We tick Punk Ass Kids’ 10th Birthday, Cry Baby Fest, No Hat No Play and Harvest Rock off our good gigs list.
We celebrate our first birthday! People actually turn up to Notestock! We play beer pong with Beddy Rays; do a Movember meat raffle with The Beefs; and watch stand-out
sets from Ricky Albeck, The Shadow Ministers and The Dainty Morsels. It’s chaotic but crazy fun. We start dreaming of our second rodeo...
SUMMER 2023/4
Summer starts with a special collaboration between us and Rip It Up – the magazine that started this all. We speak with its founder, Margie Budich, about how the weekly publication became Adelaide’s bible for good times and source articles documenting the rise of Sia, The Hilltop Hoods and TKAY Maidza.
Sugar returns. Venice Queens reunite. We cheers to 2023 at Cranker’s Christmas bash before welcoming 2024 with an extra-steamy session at Heaps Good. We dance at Housing Boom, then Swirl Fest and then at New Found Sound. Silly season moves into Mad March. Adelaide Fringe returns. It brings 1484 shows to the state (711 are SA-made) and achieves five million attendances.
We publish front covers with Groove Armada and Foals and interview Royal Blood, Teenage Dads, Cosmic Psychos, and The Amity Affliction. We dedicate pages to cover the heavy and EDM scene. We finally find our groove in what this magazine is.
AUTUMN 2024
The ongoing crisis in the music industry deepens. We’re still reeling from the summer closures of veteran venues like Enigma Bar and the postponement of Vintage Vibes. Groovin the Moo cancels. Splendour in the Grass follows suit. Live venues continue to raise the alarm on dwindling gig attendance – if our grassroots spaces continue to collapse, how will we develop the next generation of artists, producers and technicians? We try and do our bit by compiling gig tips and pen a love-filled op-ed about why live music matters.
The Crown and Anchor and its century-long culture comes under threat when Singaporean developers lodge a proposal to develop the site into student accommodation. More than 3000 people turn out for a peaceful protest in support of Saving the Cranker.
Music continues to matter the most. There are albums from Issue 17 cover stars West Thebarton and now Melbourne-based Ricky Albeck; EPs from Swapmeet and Aleksiah; and more local single releases than we can count. Electric Fields fly to Malmö, Sweden,
to represent Australia on the Eurovision stage with their original song ‘One Milkali (One Blood)’. They make the nation proud.
And The Note shrinks size! We become (somewhat) pocket friendly. A3 was a bloody big format for a magazine.
WINTER 2024
It’s Brat summer, but we live in the southern hemisphere. Wanderers release their debut album, Live in Tarndanya. Allday returns with his fifth studio LP, The Necklace. Sleep Talk go DIY and drop independent EP, Go Be Happy. DEM MOB and Electric Fields take their sound to the Big Apple. The Empty Threats crack Europe.
Adelaide Beer & BBQ Fest, Spin Off and Illuminate Adelaide occupy our winter weekends. We challenge bands like C.O.F.F.I.N to do their best answering trivia questions while eating nuggets covered in Da Bomb hot sauce (iykyk). Our microphones still don’t work. Two people throw up (oops). Tenacious D cancels their Australian tour following some ill-worded comments about Trump. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon plays the Dom Polski centre. Wheaty Brewing Corps turns 10! It’s been 60 years since The Beatles visited Adelaide. General Admission Entertainment launches a booking agency. Save The Cranker gets its own Coopers’ draught.
We turn 21 (months), ice a cake and throw confetti all over it. We write this article and reflect. We feel grateful that this is our job and people like what we do. We tally all the interviews (132), gigs (6200) and local releases (160) we’ve published and feel proud. We crave some sleep and refocus. What could the next 21 months hold?
You can read all 21 issues of The Note online here.
