A Local’s Guide to BIGSOUND: Morning Harvey

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Morning Harvey

It’s BIGSOUND season again, and my humble home of Brisbane is ready to prove that we can do urban pretentiousness as well as the other east coast heavy hitters. We have a gluten-free brownie shop, those fucking donut milkshakes and even a cat cafe – because, shut up. More relevant to the swarm of music journos and broke-as artists about to descend on our fair city is that Fortitude Valley, home of the BIGSOUND conference, has a tobacco shop three doors down from Maccas – and at least two pubs where you won’t be the first person to order a drink at 9am.

Our relative smallness certainly hasn’t restricted our output when it comes to musical talent, it just makes the scene…well, a little incestuous. This has more of a talent incubating effect than birthing bands with mutant third limbs. Although there are plenty of great venues spread across the city and its suburbs, there’s no denying the few seedy blocks of the ‘Valley’ contain the city’s most well-loved live music institutions.

We gathered some Brisbane bands on this year’s BIGSOUND bill to share some stories. Here’s what Morning Harvey frontman Spencer White (far left) had to say:

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Spencer: I was actually thinking about this the other day, comparing Brisbane’s nightlife precinct to Sydney or Melbourne’s. We don’t venture out to ‘The Valley’ (where all the BIGSOUND magic happens) anymore unless one of our bands, a friend’s band or a touring act is playing.  Nonetheless, I personally feel more comfortable going out in Brisbane to Sydney. It’s pretty mental on a Saturday night but it’s fairly controlled chaos. All the bars are in one place so you have so many kinds of people in a four block radius. I don’t really know what the difference is between the cities, maybe I’m just a sook.

The fondest memories were usually around events like Bigsound or Valley Fiesta when a couple of our bands would be playing. The atmosphere is usually pretty happy and hectic so everyone’s usually on their ‘worst’ behaviour. Lewis and Jimmy (of The Belligerents) used to live right above McDonald’s in Brunswick street mall. So for a few years there it was host to many after parties and spur of the moment late night shenanigans.
Our favourite places to go were usually Woodland (now Woolly Mammoth) and Black Bear Lodge for late night boogies. They have vinyl DJs and you usually run into someone you know so it’s a great place to find some fun. I reckon The Foundry now has the potential to be the common choice for a Friday and Saturday night, it’s a great sounding mid-sized venue and has heaps of places to drink outside and smoke which seems to be the drawing card for the average Joe.
Mostly, ‘The Valley’ is a big maze of different people from different backgrounds (and on different levels of drunk) going from bar to bar. But we’re all in it together, and usually this ends up making a really great night out.
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Catch Morning Harvey’s BIGSOUND show at The Foundry on Thursday, September 10th at 8PM.
 

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