You've Got To Fight The Powers That Be...

So said Chuck D in 1989 and never a truer sentence was said.

The so-called powers that be underestimated the music community by introducing their stupid laws which led to the closure of The Tote. We then heard that the Arthouse would be the next casuality. We all stood up and said 'this is fucked'.

 I want to go on TV and turn into Howard Beale and scream "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!!" (google 'Network-1976 if you don't get this reference).

S.L.A.M has organised a rally to be held on February 23. Here's a copy of the email that is being sent around at the moment. Hope y'all can make it.

ATTENTION ALL LIVE MUSIC LOVERSŠ NOW IS THE TIME TO
SAVE LIVE AUSTRALIA¹S MUSIC (S.L.A.M.)


S.L.A.M. (Save Live Australia¹s Music) is calling on Victoria¹s music
community to raise your voice and protest the plight of our local music
scene!
The recent closure of The Tote and the announcement of The Arthouse¹s
intention to do the same is causing increasing alarm amongst Victoria¹s
music scene and wider music community. These closures, a result of the
destructive impact caused by Liquor Licensing Victoria¹s decision to treat
live music venues as high-risk, penalizing them with higher fees and greater
costs for required security, is now posing a huge threat to more of the
state¹s venues and in turn the livelihood of the local music community.
In a reaction to the lack of response from the government to amend these
regulations, S.L.A.M. (Save Live Australia¹s Music) have announced a Public
Rally to be held on Tuesday 23rd February commencing at 4pm in the City.
(proposed assembly point, the State Library ­ check the website for
details).


S.L.A.M. is a collective of Victoria¹s broader musical community who have
joined forces to make their voice heard as local music becomes increasingly
under threat due to these ill-conceived Liquor Licensing Laws. S.L.A.M. are
calling on musicians and music lovers from all genres, creeds and
generations to unite to Protest to Save Live Australia¹s Music on the 34th
anniversary of AC/DC¹s iconic ŒLong Way To The Top¹ clip originally filmed
on Swanston Street.
Leading the procession will be the extraordinary RocKwiz Orchestra
performing on the back of a truck AC/DC-style with Lucky Luscombe, James
Black and Mark Ferrie and everyone¹s favourite host with the most, Brian
Nankervis plus the original troupe of bag pipe players. This will be filmed
by Paul Dane who shot the legendary clip back in 1976. This historic event
aims to make the Government to hear our cry to save live music from the
clutches of Victoria¹s draconian Liquor Licensing Laws. Our aim is to
de-link the high risk conditions and need for security on all liquor
licenses for venues that play live and amplified music and push for these to
be given fairer consideration. Live music venues are not high risk and we
have asked that Victorian community join in a peaceful protest to have their
voice heard!


So bring your band, your fans, your friends and family and join this protest
of a lifetime. To register your band or become a volunteer check out the
S.L.A.M. website: www.slamrally.org

50ft Queenie

Queenie is a woman who was born and bred in Collingwood. She is an ardent supporter of community and especially of the Tote.

When she heard of it's decision to close, she got on the radio and put her two cents in. Have a listen to what she had to say. Bless you Queenie. More fiesty women needed, I say!
                               ***************************************
MORE TOTE (yes I'm afraid so)...

NOT good enough. That is the live music industry's response to a decision by liquor licensing authorities to consider easing tough security conditions on venues only case by case.


Liquor Licensing director Sue Maclellan has called on music venue operators seeking relief from late-night licence conditions to contact Responsible Alcohol Victoria so their cases can be assessed individually.
But Jon Perring, from lobby group Fair Go 4 Live music, said the offer did not go far enough.

Mr Perring, joint owner of live music venues Bar Open and Pony, will urge Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson today to drop regulations linking live music to tougher security requirements.

''This issue of linking live music with the security conditions, that's what's knocking off the gigs around town and creating the cultural carnage,'' he said.

He said Ms Maclellan indicated in a meeting yesterday that the authorities were not prepared to remove the link.

There was no research linking live music to anti-social behaviour, Mr Perring said, calling for security conditions to be based on alcohol consumption patterns and history of violence.

Mr Perring is considering taking over former Collingwood live music venue The Tote.

The Tote's departing licensee, Bruce Milne, yesterday blamed licensing conditions for his predicament, saying security costs rose from $60,000 in 2008 to $100,000 last year.

''It was the difference between the business being profitable and unprofitable,'' he said, packing boxes as he prepared to leave.

Opposition consumer affairs spokesman Michael O'Brien said Victoria's liquor licensing law was ''broken and needs to be fixed''. ''You can't have piecemeal, case-by-case exemptions,'' he said.

Premier John Brumby said ''fine-tuning'' could achieve sensible liquor laws and a vibrant music scene.




Fuck off Brumby and Co- fine tune my clacker you moron! Leave the little places alone that have been going along just fine and take your filthy money from Crown and other like minded establishment. They'll happily pay your retirement funds for you.

Life Line?

BIG WIN FOR LIVE MUSIC VENUES- BY JASON DOWLING


January 27, 2010

LIVE music venues are expected to be the big winners from an urgent meeting today between the Director of Liquor Licensing Sue Maclellan and representatives of the live music scene.

It is believed the licensing regulator will reverse blanket high-risk enforcement on all music venues, an approach that has been blamed for the closure of popular Collingwood live music venue The Tote.

A State Government source said the director was likely to tell the live music sector that a more case-by-case approach to the tough rules would now be taken.

''The Government, director and industry all want to determine what flexibility can be exercised to ensure the ongoing viability of live music venues,'' the Government insider said.

Inner-city Government MPs faced an electoral backlash at this year's state election against the tough licensing requirements that have seen The Tote close and other venues threatened.

Melanie Bodiam, manager of live music venue The Arthouse, on the corner of Elizabeth and Queensberry streets, said she was extremely pleased about the expected change in approach by the liquor licensing regulator.

''Common sense prevailed - you wouldn't believe the smile on my face now,'' she said. Four bands will perform at The Arthouse tonight.

Apart from higher fees, requirements on live music venues had not changed since 1999. But many of those conditions, such as minimum security levels, have only recently been strictly enforced.

Ms Bodiam said venues would like more information on what a ''case by case'' basis meant. She said the new criteria should be determined in consultation with the music industry. But she said the backdown was a big win for the live music industry.

''It is so exciting to know that people have stood up and said what they want,'' she said.

Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson said: ''The Government is very concerned about preserving a future for live music in Melbourne and we will work towards getting the balance right so we keep our streets safe and maintain the viability of live music venues.''

Under the current blanket approach, high-risk conditions are imposed on venues with live or amplified music and those trading past 1am. High-risk conditions on a licence require the licensee to employ a minimum level of security and install CCTV.

The State Government is also working on a longer-term strategy to help sustain Melbourne's live music culture.
The strategy is being developed by Mr Robinson and will include consultation with musicians, venue owners and managers, police and the Director of Liquor Licensing. The longer-term strategy will also consider issues such as when people move into areas serviced by live music and then complain about noise.

Four and Out

Okay, you all must think I've become obsessed with this Tote business and you be right. I plan to make this my last post on the subject- at least for this week.  I'm hoping my next Tote post will be entitled 'SAVED!!!'

Myf Warhurst had this to say in today's Age and it sums up very well -along with Marieke Hardy's article-the feeling of the Tote's closure.

It shows that the feeling of great venues closing are more than just losing a pub, it's losing much,much more.

The Tote-Part Three

I can't believe how depressed I am about the Tote. It's got me thinking about my life. Is it a transistion period that life and the universe is forcing me to live an old lady existence? Or just that life as I know (knew) it is being taken over by greedy,self serving bastards who gentrify the areas we love with rampant conservatism?

In case you may have missed it, the 7.30 Report on ABC aired a story on the Tote last night.  Good on you Channel 2.

To John Brumby and Co- go fuck yourselves. You go on about alcohol and violence.. your laws perpetuate it because it's profitable. To quote the late,great Bill Hicks -suckers of Satan's cock, each and every one of you...

More Tote

I've been google-ing stories about the Tote and found a beautifully written piece by Marieke Hardy entitled 'The Slow Death of Sticky Carpet'.

Comedian Jimeoin once joked that being in the delivery room and watching, agog, as his wife gave birth to their first child, was 'like seeing my favourite pub burned to the ground.' It's the funniest thing he's ever said and therefore quite possibly plagiarised but he's certainly captured the horror of one thing at least - how deeply one feels the loss of a treasured watering hole.


More often than not these days local pubs are limping to their deaths via a series of turgid back 'n' forths in windowless government meeting rooms as opposed to exploding into flames, though the sentiment remains. Our locals define a neighbourhood, steeped as they are in liquor and lingo. When they've also played an important role in our musical history it only makes the bereavement more devastating.


And yet another one has left us, another solid little perfect corner shop of splintered music and barmaids with spectacular bosoms and dangerous sneers.

The glorious Tote hotel in Collingwood, Victoria has closed its doors for the last time, with beleaguered nominee Bruce Milne bowing out with shrugs and sighs. This time it's not even some po-faced inner city resident shaking a fist from their well-manicured balcony and complaining about the noise (move out of the f*cking city then, you twit) that has crippled the place, but a government helpless to control that pulsating, seething morass of testosterone Australian capital cities fondly refer to as 'Saturday night'.

As ruddy men in Ed Hardy t-shirts while away languid weekend evenings in the CBD merrily shattering pint glasses into each others' faces, those in charge are responding the only way they know how: by penalising live music venues whose crowds consist mostly of sticky-limbed music nerds and one local drooling barfly who knows all the words to Dylan's 'Hurricane'.

It's a quick fix, and an idiotic one, like trying to reign in Japanese whalers by marching down to St. Kilda wharf and punching a fisherman in the face. I do hope Victorian Premier John Brumby feels as though justice has been served at last with such a particularly butch and vacuous solution. Perhaps he could celebrate with a mince tart and a nice cold glass of Ribena, the chump.

The Tote hotel was never the prettiest of venues - in fact for the most part it was a stinking, sweaty bitch mistress, luring blinking punters in off Johnston Street with the promise of grubby sex in the toilets and twelve-minute guitar solos, and propelling them back out into the night with bleeding ear drums and the sort of blossoming liver problems once enjoyed by a young and wild-eyed Oliver Reed.

I loved it, helplessly, and was inextricably linked to the place through myriad channels - deep-set family connections, an abode I once resided in three doors down where late at night you could hear the speed metal bands rehearsing, and a long and involved music-obsessed adolescence spent variously staring up at the stage or dodging a lead singer's erratic strands of saliva.

I fell in love while the jukebox played Television's 'Marquee Moon', staggered around the speaker stack wearing a moth-eaten showgirl outfit, and watched the future husband of my best friend projectile vomit in front of an oddly impressed crowd.

Like anywhere that serves as a regular meeting place in one's early twenties it was the joint where we all got happily pissed and manhandled each other on the sticky carpet. And now it has been dragged to its death by tepid bureaucracy and a few rather dull scuffles over money. Nobody ever pulled out knives at the Tote, nobody pawed intrusively at passing women - AFL players weren't usually allowed in, anyway.

There will be recriminations on both sides of course, and finger pointing, and lengthy, smarmy form letters from local MP's who are 'deeply sorry' and 'aware of disappointment' and 'relaying my views, your concerns, and the concerns of the many others who have written to me today, to my colleague Tony Robinson MP, Minister for Consumer Affairs'.

In the end, does it do any good? Young men will continue to be knocked down to their deaths on cigarette-stained footpaths outside lairy nightclubs and one by one the damp, dark, unassuming live music venues where the most violent acts play out onstage between consenting adults will be quietly packed away and left behind. And eventually, state governments will no longer be able to swing their dicks around about which city has the most thriving arts scene, because there will no longer be any.

I'll miss the front bar of the Tote. The gaffa-taped barstools and the languid gazes across the pool table and that revolting, damp sensation of sodden elbows when ordering a round.

I'll miss sitting in my front window and watching the parade of beery rock 'n' roll types peacefully lurching down Wellington street on their way home.

But most of all I'll miss the chapter of time that the Tote hotel will forever possess within its walls - the piss, the pain, the boners, the lewd and bawdy celebration of a wild, musical youth.


And in years to come I suspect I will awaken from many a deep sleep with strands of those memories slipping through my fingers like the wind.

The End Of An Era

I guess you've all heard the sad news that The Tote in Collingwood is closing this weekend. It's dodged a few bullets of late but this time, nothing can save it. Bruce Milne,owner of the Tote simply can't afford the money it's going to take to pay for the license and going back and forth to VCAT is not an option for him.

Some can argue that it's a stinky,ramshakle,sticky carpet pub and they would be right. The fact is, we need that stinky,ramshakle sticky carpet pub because it's so much more to people than just bricks and mortar. To many of us, it was a musical sanctuary where like minded people joined together to hear the same bands and drink a few beers. For those in bands, many of them got their start there. It was more than a pub, it was part of the community there. I can honestly say in all my years of going there, I have never seen a fight or even a shouting match. People of all walks of life went there. Even children and babies went there with their parents for the famous Wu B Que and various other barbeques held in the truly authentic beer garden. There was the tiki element of The Cobra Bar upstairs, where bands squeezed into that tiny alcove and hammered out a set despite the atrocious acoustics.

When those doors close, a million memories will be stored there. For me, it was the early nineties supporting bands like The Underground Lovers,The Fauves,The Glory Box,Autohaze,Rob Clarkson,Tlot Tlot and their ilk. Loading up the jukebox with coins and programming all our favorites songs - it was truly the best jukebox in Melbourne. Walking into the place and crawling out after too much to drink. Sitting on the toilet upstairs to find yourself shaking because of a death metal band playing downstairs.  Being with friends and connecting with the music and the moonshine.

The Tote closing is not just closing a venue. It's so much more. The funeral is this weekend. I'll be heading down for a few drinks to bid the old girl farewell.

Vale Tote. You'll be missed.