HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (2012)
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“Clinton Walker's Platform Paper, History Is Made at Night, is a polemic essay that asks the question: why is an industry worth an estimated half-a-billion dollars a year not given greater protection? Why is it routinely treated with contempt?” - AGE History is Made At Night came out through Currency House in 2012 as a response to the inordinate amount of pressure the Australian live music scene has been buckling under for some number of years now. It takes as its starting-point the 2010 closure of my friend Bruce Milne’s venue in Melbourne, the Tote Hotel, which became a cause célèbre and inspired the establishment of SLAM (Save Live Australian Music). Yet while the war may have been won in Melbourne - Melbourne retaining its well-earned and long-standing reputation as one of the world's great (live) music cities - the book remains more relevant than ever in 2016 with the implementation of lock-out laws in Sydney and Brisbane, based on the same violence-furphy that failed to kill the circuit in Melbourne but which unless there is major change could be the last nail in Sydney's coffin. Keep Sydney Open I say! “One of the best Australian music books you could read this year. A sustained, thoughtful and entertaining argument for something most of us hold very dear: live music. As such, this book is all the ammunition a musician needs to clarify and defend what we do against a range of things: the real estate industry, bad policy, snobbish arts funding and an exploitative commercial industry” - Ian Rogers, OCCASIONAL MUSICIAN
“There's a tension inherent here, between those culture snobs reluctant to recognise rock's legitimacy, and punk ideologues who think the purity of rock music is automatically corrupted whenever The Man extends the dead hand of his imprimatur. History Is Made at Night aims to bring both sides to the negotiating table” - Andrew Stafford, AGE |
Sydney launch at Gleebooks
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Window display at University of NSW bookshop
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