Music-centric Britain and The Great Escape

One thing that has baffled me a little since I arrived in the fine isles of Britain is the amount of people I come across who are just not familiar with not only Australian alternative bands, but also their American counterparts. I guess one of the things about having your own rich musical history, its that you just never feel the need to look for something different somewhere else.

Here we are supposedly entering an age where people are supposed to become more globally aware and less eurocentric in their thinking, with the rise of the internet world making things only more accesible to everyone on a wider scale. Yet so many people seem caught up in old assumptions about other worlds, that are only a place ride away.

I guess in Australia we're lucky like that (no it's not just the ever present sunshine), we embrace big bands in different genre's from Britain, America and all over the world. This might be you could say, because we have such an underdeveloped and 'backward' music industry. But this is much much farther from the truth than most think. Has anyone ever considered the fact that maybe Kylie Minogue didn't do that well in Australia, so we shipped her over to Britain? I for one know that her sister Danni Minogue is 20 times more British than she was ever Australian. We have (just like our wine) kept the best varieties on home soil.

If I could set out to do anything by explaining this, it would be to prove that no - we are not all a bunch of acoustic guitar, country music playing bumpkins. That we have a thriving electro pop music scene ourselves (see http://www.myspace.com/cutcopy), as well as an alternative music station played nation wide which rivals Radio 6, in that it actually caters for everyone in the alternative sense, not just the one genre as well as celebrating young and upcoming artists (http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/).

The Great Escape is coming up this weekend in Brighton, which has partnered up this year with Australian music organisation Sounds Australia (http://www.escapegreat.com/festival/newsdetails/display.rails?id=182) and will be showcasing the best of upcoming Australian music at the festival. This will be a great opportunity to drag my friends along to witness the incredible talents of such artists as Paul Dempsey, Eskimo Joe and the Ruby Suns from our lovely neighbour New Zealand (well, they're practically Australian).

This festival is always an opportunity for bands to get some exposure in another country whether they are big back home or not, we wanna hear it!