Dappled Cities play Big Sound 2008.
Stephen Green, Program Director for Big Sound 2008, talks up this year's event.
Big Sound is Brisbane's signature music conference and showcasing event, bringing people from around the world to sample the best of what our industry has to offer. Now in its seventh year, Big Sound has continually gone from strength to strength. This year I've landed the job of programming and have spent the last twelve months of my life sourcing talent from around the world to join us.
So what goes in to programming Big Sound? Where do you start? The line up this year was finally unveiled last week. Our big catches are Jonathan Poneman, CEO and co-founder of Sub Pop, Seymour Stein, founder of Sire records and current Vice President of Warner Brothers and Michael Gudinski, CEO and founder of the Mushroom Group of Companies. In this line up we see three of the world’s most successful and passionate music industry entrepreneurs.
We also have Ward Hake, head of music for 20th Century Fox Television, Jeff Blue, A&R for Capitol Records and producer and co-writer of The Last Goodnights' massive #1 single of last year 'Pictures of You'. There's producer Mike Howlett, the brains behind '80s hits like Flock of Seagulls' 'I Ran' and Martha & the Muffins' 'Echo Beach'. There's music manager Peter Jenner, the man behind Pink Floyd and Billy Bragg. There is a half dozen A&R guys, plus journalists, sync specialists, radio programmers and pluggers.
The showcase program this year is also killer, with bands like Dappled Cities (pictured), The Resin Dogs, Abby Dobson, Jeff Lang, John Steel Singers, The Boat People, The Gin Club, Temper Trap and many more, making it a couple of nights of live music that I'm personally really looking forward to.
The key for Big Sound is the love that previous guests have for us. We've worked with partners that we now have around the world to source a list of people that not only have something to say, but really want to engage with the industry here. We don't want to just talk about the industry; we need to develop it and the beauty of having an organisation like Q Music behind the project is that we can focus in on that need rather than focusing on profit.
The team working on Big Sound is a small crew of volunteers and part time staff, most of whom are industry experts bringing passion, knowledge and an extreme tolerance for hard work to the table. It's about months of late nights, thousands of emails, visits to international conferences for research, booking dozens of flights and hotel rooms, selling hundreds of conference passes, organising meetings, securing funding and at the end of the day, hopefully watching as the event we create for the industry pays off both for us and for Queensland.
We're nearly there - the conference begins on September 10 and we're confident we can deliver the best Big Sound ever. Join us for the festivities and kick start your music career!
Big Sound hits Brisbane 10-12 September 2008.
