I’m Angelica, and this is Andrew. This is a photo of us at Bondi beach, but more about that later. Thanks to the nice people at WAM, I won a trip to Perth in Western Australia, to attend the WAMi Music Conference, and I brought Andrew with me. Along with our visit to Perth, we also made stops in Sydney and Melbourne. What follows is a selection of photos and videos of some of the things we experienced.

Perth

The next stop was Perth, on the complete opposite side of the Australian continent. It bills itself as the world’s most remote capital city. We arrived in Perth a day before the WAMi conference was set to begin, and I knew exactly what we had to do, right after we checked in (at the Ibis Hotel, right in the heart of Perth, and in walking distance of everything) and dropped off our luggage… visit Bon Scott’s grave, in nearby Fremantle.

On Friday morning I took part in the College and Community Radio Panel at the WAMi Business Conference. It was an interesting experience. I’ve been involved with CJLO since early 2001, and in that time I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with lots of bands, and it felt good to share my experience of what is and isn’t successful in getting your stuff played on college radio. To quickly sum up my main points:

1. Play lots of shows. Get a name for yourself. Make friends. Then reach out, if we haven’t come looking for you already.
2. Listen to the station. Listen to the shows you think your music would fit best with. Listen to the DJs, get to know what they’re about, then reach out to them. Music directors get a lot of music. Sometimes, your best road in to a radio station is through individual DJs.
3. If you’re sending in your music physically, put in packaging that has a spine. Nothing gets lost on a CD library shelf quicker than a simple slipcase.
4. Whether you’re sending in your music physically or digitally, send along a one-sheet. If digitally, send a .pdf of your one sheet. Include relevant, interesting information. DJs are LAZY. Being interesting is hard. Anything you give us that makes us seem like we know things is appreciated, and will make us more likely to talk about you.
5. Work HARD, no matter how big or small your band is. Your genius will never be recognized if you don’t keep digging in.

Me, with CMJ’s Reverend Moose.

Later that day, Andrew took part in The Great Debate. This year’s topic? Live music causes violence. Andrew was on the negative team (rightly so), with the great Rev. Moose, and despite convincing arguments from the affirmative team (“tell your dad I said hi”), they won.

Contrary to what this photograph may have you believe, I did not need night vision to take this photo. Notice that both Andrew and I were repping our CJLO shirts that day.

Andrew and I had a great time at the WAMi Festival, and we learned a lot about the particular challenges that face musicians in Western Australia. In addition to the panels we were part of, we also attended:

• Building on the Basics of Music Marketing - This was a solid intro course on getting your band out there, with the basic message being to explore as many avenues for online exposure as possible, since self-promotion is key.
• Business Planning for Musicians - I found this particularly interesting… a business major teams up with musician friends to figure out an artist-friendly approach to creating a business plan.
• The Same Old Song: Music Copy Cats From The Beatles to Men At Work - This was the hilarious keynote speech given by Tony Joyner, the head of Intellectual Property and Information Technology at Freehills law firm. He included many audio examples, and discussed the legal ins and out of the fiascos that surrounded songs that sound like other songs, including Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” and others.
• National Touring Panel - Not gonna lie, I attended this in particular to get an inside scoop on touring Oz for all my musician friends. Despite their particular challenges, we definitely got the feeling that Australia is a much more friendly place to tour than North America.
• Song of the Year Live Judging - This was an interesting idea - a panel of judges listen to and deliberate between a group of songs. The final selection goes directly to the Grand Prize category of the 2010 Song of the Year competition.

As well as these panels, we also attended many other parties, lunches and networking opportunities. We met a lot of interesting, enthusiastic people, and we saw some great music! In fact, don’t take the lack of photos from events and shows to indicate a lack of interest… we were so busy partying and rocking out that we didn’t have time to take snapshots.

In fact, while in Perth we got to see a bunch of great bands, including my new favorite band, the Chainsaw Hookers. Miss Zeke? Wish Zeke and Nashville Pussy would tour again? Add a whiff of Scandinavian leather and you’ve got the Chainsaw Hookers.

We also loved seeing Tangled Thoughts of Leaving, Eleventh He Reaches London, Fear of Comedy, Arts Martial and Emperors.

Chainsaw Hookers - Ride The Venom from the record First Blood.

The lyric you’re hearing is indeed “sick of these motherfucking snakes / on this motherfucking PLAAAAAAAAAAAAANNE!”