From politics to music, or vice versa
By Karen Fredericks
Luke Shaw, engineering student, Young National and "Friend of Sir Joh" is in for a rough time this week, when his activities as foreman of "Joh's Jury" are depicted on the ABC.
One "Enemy of Sir Joh" who'll be enjoying Shaw's discomfort is Philip Monsour, a Brisbane left activist and musician currently touring Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide for radical arts network Cultural Dissent, to promote his latest CD, Spirit.
In Brisbane during the '70s and '80s, radical politics and alternative music were joined by the umbilical cord of community radio station 4ZZZ. It was never clear whether the politics led to the music, or the music to the politics, but by one route or another many artists, including Philip Monsour, found themselves both on the airwaves and on the picket lines.
Philip was a student at the University of Queensland during the struggle between SEQEB workers and the National Party government in the mid-'80s. He was among hundreds of students and youth who supported the striking workers. When the fight broadened out into a democratic rights campaign, as all dissent from Joh's police state inevitably had to, Philip and other students established the Democratic Rights Action Coalition (DRAC) on campus at UQ, an organisation which remained active for several years.
While everyone from "Concerned Christians" to anarchist punks were being dragged off SEQEB picket lines by Joh's private army, the Brisbane alternative music scene was thriving underground, in venues such as "Amyl's Nightspace", "Hades", and "The Outpost". Philip's first band, Cry Conflict, was one of the most popular and respected Brisbands of this period, along with Ups and Downs, Lovs e Blur and others who have since faded from view.
Perhaps most distinctive of Cry Conflict was its tight, melodic fast reggae-pop sound, with Philip's vocals and political lyrics up front. "Angels of Death", an anthem of protest at the terrorism of US-backed Israel in the Middle East, became a regular on the ZZZ playlist, and remains one of the best songs ever to come out of the Brisbane alternative music scene.
In 1987 the left gained control of the student union at UQ, and Philip and other DRAC members joined with Resistance activists and assorted independent radicals to lead a boycott campaign against the $250 tertiary fee.
By day Philip slaved over Free Education propaganda, but by night he was active in the music scene once again, with a new line-up, the Cutters. This second outfit built on the work of Cry Conflict and by 1988 had secured a recording contract with Mighty Boy Records. Two singles and a mini-album later the Cutters seemed to be disproving the to leave Brisbane to be successful.
But times changed in Brisbane, and in 1989 the UQ student union was taken over by Young Nationals, led by the now infamous Victoria Brazil. Early one morning the ZZZ graveyard shift was interrupted, midway through REM's "Orange Crush", by a brigade of Young National stormtroopers known as "Victoria's Football Team". They pulled the plug on the station (located in a student union building), forcibly removed the volunteer announcer and nailed shut all windows and doors.
Fortunately, years of resource scarcity for ZZZ had bred a hard core of guerilla radio technicians who managed to tap directly into the station's transmitter on Brisbane's Mt Coot-tha and broadcast a tapeloop which said "Save ZZZ: Come to the studio now" for several hours. Among the hundreds of supporters who gathered at the campus station that day were most of Brisbane's alternative musicians, including Philip Monsour and the Cutters.
The closure of ZZZ prompted the Cutters' second Mighty Boy single "Times Like These", another example of Philip's capacity for anthemic political songwriting and a song which marked the end of an era for Brisbane's alternative music "scene".
Sustained protest managed to save ZZZ in 1989, but in 1990, exasperated by constant harassment from a then ALP-dominated student union, the station moved off campus and cut its links with the student movement. Today it struggles on as an even more under-resourced outfit, bereft of its former organic link with radical youth culture.
In the '80s it was not unusual for ZZZ breakfast announcers to phone Joh Bjelke-Petersen, direct, at his peanut farm in Kingaroy, to question him about his most recent attacks on democratic rights. "Yu yu yu yu you people," he would splutter, "Yu you people come here with the wrong end of the stick talking about this and that and everything else. Y-y-y-you just stop it." Not only were these exchanges endlessly entertaining, they also gave ZZZ listeners a real insight into the nature of the beast. These days there's not much point ringing Wayne Goss for comment — it would just bore the listeners.
In days like these Philip Monsour has felt the need to get away from Brisbane to seek inspiration. He spent most of 1991 and the early part of 1992 in Europe, the US and the Middle East, and came back with a bundle of new material.
On his return he put together Carousel, a band which includes some ex-Cutters, and recorded Spirit, a 12-song CD which ranges, in lyric content, from a tribute to the courage of the people of Beirut in managing to continue their lives in a city racked by war ("My Spirit" — Philip's family immigrated from Lebanon over 20 years ago), to observations of life in eastern Europe since the collapse of Stalinism ("Turned Upside Down") and memories of the treatment of the Murri people in Brisbane at the hands of the police ("Shame"). The independent recording has already received critical acclaim in Brisbane's music press. Philip will be giving solo acoustic performances of the songs from Spirit, plus a selection from his nearly 300 original songs, at Cultural Dissent concerts in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in late February and March. He will be supported at these shows by local political singer-songwriters, including Alistair Hulett in Sydney on February 21. (See pages 22-23 for details).