John Willsteed, former member of seminal Brisbane band The Go-Betweens, will share colourful stories of the local music scene in the 1970s in a special performance at the CreateX festival to celebrate the $88 million expansion of QUT’s Creative Industries Precinct on Sunday 28 August.
It's Not The Heat, It's The Humidity takes us back to the years after the 1976 release of (I’m) Stranded by Brisbane’s The Saints; at the very front edge of the punk explosion. In his one-hour show Mr Willsteed will take his audience on a journey into Brisbane’s dark punk past.
“There will be swearing – it’s not a show for the faint-hearted,” said Mr Willsteed who is now Head of Music in QUT Creative Industries and a guitarist with internationally-acclaimed band Halfway.
“Through music and stories I will be re-living an extraordinarily exciting and important time in the evolution of music in Brisbane. Faces, places and sounds will come alive again, after being long buried.”
“I use stories about my own early life, my family and my friends as a bridge into the past and the peculiar subculture of the Brisbane post-punk scene.”
As well as The Go-Betweens, Mr Willsteed played with other legendary Australian acts including The Apartments, The Riptides and Ed Kuepper. As a sound editor and composer he has received national and international awards including three AFI Awards for his work in both documentary and fictional storytelling.
Most recently Mr Willsteed won the Letty Katts Award at the State Library of Queensland, Queensland Memory Awards 2016 for his project ‘Street Life: Posters and their role in the Brisbane music scene 1975-1995.’
As a lecturer he is the ultimate example of bringing his music students at QUT real world experience. For CreateX he will also be involved in Flow – the world’s first multi-room music recording experience where the public can mix a version of the performance.
The expansion of the Creative Industries Precinct makes it the most sophisticated, technically advanced creative space in Australia and one of the best in the world.
The centrepiece of the new development is a six-storey building, Z9, accommodating dance, drama, music, visual art, creative writing, animation and creative research programs. It pulses with a state-of-the-art digital backbone and its design principles celebrate transparency, connectivity and a transdisciplinary approach.
Flow showcases the new world-class recording studios which are all are "box in box” construction, completely isolated and sound proof. This has resulted in industry best standard levels of sound separation so all spaces can be used simultaneously without acoustic interference. The control rooms have cutting edge recording technology and can be connected to any other space in the building, turning the entire venue into an enormous recording studio.
Families, students, industry professionals and anyone interested in creativity and technology are invited to CreateX at QUT’s Kelvin Grove campus. The day starts at 10am and culminates in a concert featuring the DeepBlue Orchestra, singers Kate Miller-Heidke, Naomi Price and Carita Farrer Spencer and dancer Michelle Ryan.
For more information and to book into a workshop or performance visit the website, telephone 07 3138 3922 or email createx@qut.edu.au.
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Media contact:
Amanda Weaver, QUT Media, 07 3138 1841, amanda.weaver@qut.edu.au
After hours: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901, media@qut.edu.au
