Pig City
From The Saints to Savage Garden
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
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. But behind the music lay a ghost city of malice and corruption. Persecuted by 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. Since its first publication in 2004, Pig City has become a much-loved cult classic, providing an enduring soundtrack and history lesson for a new generation of fans and musicians alike. This edition includes a special Pig City playlist.
Customer Reviews
I come from Brisbane and I’m quite plain
The author is an Australian freelance journalist.
The book provides potted biographies of a number of Brisbane bands over 30+ years starting in the late 1960s’-early 1970s, on a background of local political and social history of the period. The Saints and The Go-Betweens feature prominently early, Powderfinger and Savage Garden towards the end. There’s lots about the trials and tribulations of 4ZZZ too, although precious little mention of other radio stations.
This book felt personal to me when first read it almost 20 years ago. For instance, I saw Graham Parker and the Rumour play at Cloudland Ballroom shortly before Deen Brothers demolished it overnight one night, and I was at the Queens Hotel the night the guy spat at Jean-Jacques Burnel, the bass guitarist for The Stranglers, who jumped off stage and brained him with a folding chair. I lived through the whole Joh Bjelke-Petersen era too. Joh and Police Commissioner Terry Lewis come in for plenty of criticism from the author, rightly so in most cases. However, the political narrative lacked balance and left little doubt about where Stafford’s sympathies lie.
Bottom line
You had to be there