triple j vs the Brisbane Music Scene Part 2

As shown above, there have been 205 feature albums by Australian acts.  In terms of breakdown by city it looks like this:

Totally unexpected is that Melbourne leads the way, providing over a third of the Australian-featured albums over the eight years of featured albums that was looked at, some 75 albums worth. Mirroring the rankings seen in the previous analysis of songs played on triple j, Sydney were ranked second (63 albums, 30.73% of the Australian total) and Perth third (25 albums, 12.20% of the Australian total). Brisbane retained its fourth spot once again, with only 15 featured albums in eight years, only 7.32% of the total number of Australian featured albums over that time.

Of course the total number of featured albums from each city doesn’t tell the whole story and the population size of each city can be used to calculate the number of featured albums per million people (the population data came from the most current information published for each city on Wikipedia).

Obviously there is a drawback in using population size as when you rank the data, small towns and cities who’ve had a band with a Featured Album obviously get high rankings. Taking the most recent data from Wikipedia also doesn’t account for changes in population over the last eight years. The highest ranked town was Collie, WA (population 7,084) with more than 141 Feature Albums per million people thanks to the band Spencer Tracey receiving triple j’s feature album for their eponymously titled album back in 2003. Second place went to Freemantle, thanks to John Butler’s patronage, and third to Lismore on account of triple j-favourites, Grinspoon, coming from there.

Back to the question in hand, which Brisbane act produced the last triple j Featured Album? The answer is slightly complicated, and depends on that perennial question of whether Washington is a Brisbane act or not. If Washington is a Brisbane artist then Washington was the last Brisbane act to have a triple j Feature Album with her debut album, I Believe You Liar, being awarded the Feature Album during the week of 8 July 2010, only a few months before Hungry Kids Of Hungary.

However, what’s interesting/appalling/depressing/predictable is the fact that Washington being from Brisbane or Melbourne makes little difference since prior to her, the  last Brisbane act to be awarded a featured album on triple j  was … The Grates, all the way back in the week of 28 July 2008, almost two years earlier.

(continues overleaf)

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by ed

Justin Edwards is a regular contributor to Brisbane's weekly street press magazine, Rave and his photographs have also been published in Rolling Stone, Plan B magazine, Mess+Noise, the Herald-Sun and Blunt, as well as on numerous music and band websites.

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