Melbourne has spent the past week drowning in stadium-sized moments. Oasis wrapped a run of sold-out shows, Metallica shook Marvel Stadium and Sydney on their Australian run, and AC/DC have taken over the MCG.
Amyl & the Sniffers stepped onto the biggest stage of their career. It has felt like the loudest week Australia has had in years. But underneath all that noise, the quietest voice in the room might be the most important one.
The days after their free all-ages show at Fed Square was shut down in front of thousands, the owners of the Last Chance Rock ’n’ Roll Bar dropped one of the rawest statements Melbourne’s music scene has heard in a long time. A truth bomb from the grassroots. A reminder of what is really happening beneath the surface while the city celebrates on top.
The venue’s owners wrote about going five years without a cent of funding, despite being one of the busiest rooms in the city. They wrote about government bodies chasing photo ops while small venues drown. They wrote about never being helped through COVID, never receiving the support they were promised, and being left to “work 100 hours a week and seethe” while trying to keep culture alive.
And at the heart of it, they wrote about why Amyl & the Sniffers’ much-talked-about gesture mattered so much.
People argued online that the gesture was a “waste of money” or that it “should’ve gone to charity.” But small-venue operators weren’t confused. It wasn’t about alcohol. It was about survival. It was a community bailout done the only way musicians can do it fast. Seven pubs: the Tote, the Old Bar, the Curtin, Labour in Vain, Hell’s Kitchen, Last Chance and Cherry Bar, all saw a burst of life in a week where the rest of the city was already heaving.
This is the part people forget when they only look at the big stages.
Melbourne is having one of its biggest rock weeks in recent memory. We broke that down in the feature on the Melbourne rock moment. Oasis, Metallica, AC/DC and Amyl all colliding in the same fortnight is something you couldn’t plan. But that big energy only works because the small rooms exist underneath it.
And those small rooms are have been living on the edge for years and now they’re breaking.
At the same time that Melbourne is celebrating the return of AC/DC at the MCG, we’re also hearing artists like Garbage explain how hard it is becoming to tour at all. In Las Vegas last month, All Time Low have said openly that younger acts won’t survive unless fans show up to small shows. The pressure isn’t abstract. It’s happening in different scenes around the globe but in Australia it’s happening everywhere, from Perth to Brisbane to Melbourne to the inner-north rooms where bands used to grind out their first 200 gigs.
Watch: All Time Low: ‘We don’t want to lose live music’
Look at the Metallica run this month. Each city got its own moment. Perth got the John Butler Trio nod, Brisbane went ballistic over The Chats’ Smoko. Melbourne got The Living End and Sydney got the AC/DC instrumental and Rose Tattoo moment.
All of those moments matter, but none of them exist without the grassroots that Last Chance is talking about. The small rooms. The tiny stages. The half-broken monitors. The staff who get paid last. The crowds that show up early. The bands who only survive because those rooms exist.
That’s why the letter is the truth bomb of the week. Because it says out loud what nobody in government or industry wants to admit: for all the noise in the stadiums, the foundation underneath is cracking.
AC/DC may be winding down their Australian touring years. Metallica are the last global heavyweights still touring at this scale. Oasis gave people a nostalgia hit they’ll talk about for years. Amyl are stepping onto the MCG stage tonight for the biggest moment of their life.
But this whole week is also a reminder that if the small venues fall, the big weeks stop happening.
The letter ends with a plea that’s impossible to ignore: “Support small live music venues just like Amyl & the Sniffers did. Don’t let us die.”
And that’s the real story underneath tonight’s celebration.
Melbourne can pack the MCG. It can sing AC/DC until its lungs give out. It can give Amyl their moment. But if we want a next generation, a next band, a next movement, then the venues that build them need to survive. Otherwise the only thing left will be the memory of the bands we used to produce.
Read: The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar’s Plea To The Nation
READ: Is Melbourne Having Its Next Great Rock Moment
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