How music TV show The Sound was born in a bleak year for arts
A new show marked a glorious return to Australian music television during an otherwise bleak year for the industry.
As the sun set at Geelong’s Avalon Airport on a Wednesday evening in December, the runway was occupied not by planes taxiing or touching down but a musician surrounded by instruments and a battery of powerful lights.
After starting on electric guitar, Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tash Sultana in turn played synthesiser, electronic drums and bass guitar while using loop pedals to build a densely layered arrangement named Mystik.
The song broke down halfway through to introduce a busy new bassline, to which Sultana added drums and guitar before ending the piece with a soulful saxophone solo, while the runway lights tracked back toward the horizon.
All of this remarkable activity was captured by several handheld cameras, filmed both up-close and from a distance, and within the space of a few days the entire piece was edited, mixed and broadcast in its full six-minute glory shortly before the 7pm ABC News bulletin began on Sunday, December 6.
If this were a music festival – if COVID-19 hadn’t put that notion to bed for much of 2020 – Sultana’s performance would have been the headliner on The Sound, an hour-long weekly music TV program which began in July with a six-episode series before returning for a second run comprising eight episodes from November.
Created by Melbourne outfit Mushroom Vision and licensed to the ABC, The Sound has quickly become the premiere platform for Australia’s best musicians to perform for a television audience, as well as online viewers once each performance is later uploaded to the artists’ YouTube channels.
Tash Sultana’s extraordinary version of Mystik on an empty runway was perhaps the most adventurous filming location to date, but Mushroom’s self-directed mandate is to push the music television medium to its limits. Season one featured 85 artists filmed at 58 locations nationwide, a number which had increased to a total of 114 performances toward the end of season two.
As well, The Sound has become the No 1 spot for Australian music TV by default, as there’s simply no competition. In the era of YouTube and other on-demand media platforms, producers have largely abandoned music-based programming except for special events such as Fire Fight Australia, the bushfire fundraiser which screened on the Seven Network and Foxtel in February and featured artists such as Queen + Adam Lambert, John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John and Hilltop Hoods.
It was another prime-time one-off earlier this year that spurred The Sound’s creation: Music From the Home Front, which screened on the Nine Network on Anzac Day, and was also produced by Mushroom Vision.
Its broadcast – featuring the likes of Jimmy Barnes, Delta Goodrem, Missy Higgins and Guy Sebastian – attracted 1.4 million viewers nationally, while the accompanying album release reached No 1 on the ARIA chart in June, and returned to the top spot again in September with its vinyl release.
After seeing the success of Music From the Home Front, the Mushroom team saw an opportunity for a weekly show in a Sunday evening timeslot similar to the one occupied by Countdown decades ago.
Hosted by journalist and broadcaster Jane Gazzo, The Sound is aimed at general interest viewers seeking to learn about the latest and greatest sounds in Australian music, both established and emerging.
While many of the artistic performances are filmed exclusively for The Sound by Mushroom Vision, which taps freelance film crews both nationally and internationally as needed, the program does occasionally air exclusive videos from artists such as Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue; these two major names appeared beside newer acts such as Lime Cordiale and Hockey Dad, respectively.
According to producer Saul Shtein, these placements – well-known names rubbing up against lesser-known figures – are by design, and they draw on his prior experiences from a much narrower broadcasting era where the average viewer was hardly spoiled for choice.
“The nature of the program is kind of working off my roots back on [Channel 9’s] Wide World of Sports, where it’s a very eclectic program,” said Shtein, who also helped establish MTV in Australia in 1987. “The philosophy behind it is: if you don’t like what you’re watching now, you know that in four minutes’ time, you’re going to see something that is somewhat different.”
“But along the way, even if you don’t know what you’re watching right now, and you’re waiting for what’s coming up next, you’re going to be exposed to something and go, ‘Holy moley – who’s that person? I like that, that’s great’,” he said. “I guess to some extent, that is an education, and that’s the idea of having as much variety in the program as possible, to show the breadth of the music industry here in Australia.”
Each week, The Sound features a newly filmed tribute to former greats of the Australian music scene such as Mental as Anything, The Go-Betweens and Billy Thorpe, as well as an archival “from the vault” performance which resurrects classic live clips by Goanna, Crowded House and Do Re Mi, among others.
The point of both of these segments is to offer historical context to viewers, particularly a younger audience whose chief engagement with music in 2020 might only extend to scrolling through new releases on Spotify or Apple Music.
In a “from the vault” appearance in season two, for instance, Newcastle rock trio Silverchair was shown performing its 1997 hit Freak at Brazilian festival Rock in Rio in 2001 before a bouncing sea of sweaty South Americans stretching as far as the eye could see.
Although it’s the sort of clip that can easily be pulled up on YouTube at a moment’s notice, it’s also a valuable reminder that for a time, Silverchair was the biggest Australian band in the world, and while the group might not be heard much these days beyond airings on commercial radio, its place in music history is both well-earned and worth knowing.
While many Australian musicians will look back at 2020 as perhaps the most challenging year of their careers, given the extended break in live performance and its associated income, one of the few universally acknowledged positives of the year is that The Sound was born.
The only reason the program – and its predecessor, Music From the Home Front – emerged is because of the dearth of live music. Both programs were executive produced by Mushroom Group chairman Michael Gudinski, whose company Frontier Touring is ordinarily focused on booking and delivering concerts for the biggest names here and abroad.
“This is Michael Gudinski’s vision and concept,” said Shtein, who produced both programs. “It was actually born out of COVID, so there are some positives to it.”
“For him to be able to give artists and bands an opportunity to not only ply their trade and expose them, but to take it to the next level and get it onto a national broadcaster — I think that just from an industry point of view, what Michael has done is absolutely extraordinary,” said Shtein.
Given the environment from which it emerged, some of the most striking and poignant locations featured on The Sound are those spaces usually teeming with crowds, such as the entrance to Flinders Street Station, where Missy Higgins and her band played a song that wonders about what happens after lockdown.
Vacant music venues featured prominently, too, with Melbourne pop singer-songwriter Tones and I accompanied by the 40-piece Melbourne Gospel Choir inside an empty Rod Laver Arena. Paul Kelly and pianist Paul Grabowsky were filmed alone on stage before a sea of red seats in Hamer Hall, while Jimmy Barnes and the Australian Chamber Orchestra occupied the foyer of Sydney’s State Theatre.
Necessity was the mother of invention in the case of The Sound, which found a way to keep great Australian music in front of our eyes and ears at a time when crowds were unable to safely gather in person.
With the sector now resuming nationwide and audiences packing back into live rooms, here’s hoping the show continues into 2021, a year where its producers will also hopefully encounter the happy problem of jostling for filming dates with a bulging concert calendar inside formerly unoccupied music venues.
Catch up on The Sound on iview.
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