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 Everett True

Songs about Brisbane – 10: Ed Kuepper

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Shortly after I arrived in Brisbane, I sat at a table in the government building on George St with several high-up types from Arts QLD and Trade QLD and Tourism QLD. I’d been expressly invited to discuss a potential new venture from myself, and funded by the state government: a high-quality, bi-annual music and arts publication broadly based in SEQ but set within a wider, international context. I’d done my research. I had the print costs, the distribution costs, contributor costs, office costs, postal costs, potential advertising revenue, ideas for publicity and marketing… I’d even gone so far as to speak to a couple of print companies, mocked up the entire first issue (in terms of paper quality and paper size) and written a 3,000 word document explaining same. I had form, you see. This wasn’t the first or even third time I’d invented an entire publication from scratch. The meeting was all going swimmingly. The dude who used to be Anna Bligh’s right-hand man had told his colleagues that he was extremely keen on the idea, that he thought it would be of major benefit to Brisbane, and Queensland. So they were all sitting there listening to me frankly freestyle various ideas. And then someone asked me just how much funding I was looking for?

“$750,000,” I blithely replied.

The proposed name for the magazine was Electrical Storm. It seemed way appropriate to me. Not only was it a magnificent song by one of Brisbane’s most feted (and rightly so) artists, Ed Kuepper – but it was also a great metaphor for the catalytic excitement and enthusiasm I was hoping to generate with the magazine. And it was a perfect Brisbane song that absolutely captured the stark-eyed wonder of many a spring evening spent on your deck in The Gap watching the sky burn up in mind-stretching displays of electrical voltage.  Man alive, it was.

So anyway. That was where the conversation ended, pretty much.

I haven’t entirely shelved the idea, but this website is what’s happening right now. (I have plans, trust me.) And it’s named after another Ed Kuepper song, this one the sheer standout at the Mount Buller ATP festival a while back, the one I danced to heroically on a crocked leg, as Warren Ellis and Jim White lent me moral support. This one by my all-time fucking favourite ever live group, The Laughing Clowns.

At ATP, mind.

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