Live Music Forum And Corrections


Tomorrow night Thursday May 6, Yarra Council are hosting a public forum The Future of Live Music at Fitzroy Town Hall, 6 - 8pm. You might like to go!

Here's what they say…

In response to the challenges facing live music venues, the City Of Yarra is hosting an open forum to discuss the issues facing Yarra’s vibrant live music community. The panel will feature a cross section of the music community including community radio, Fair Go 4 Live Music and Contemporary Music Victoria. Discussion will be moderated by Victoria Marles. Make your voice heard and help find a way forward to keep live music in Yarra rocking into the future.

Details
WHEN: Thursday 6 May 2010, 6.00pm – 8.00pm
WHERE: Reading Room, Fitzroy Town Hall, 201 Napier Street, Fitzroy
ENTRY: Free
CHAIR: Victoria Marles – CEO, Trust for Nature (former Legal Services Commissioner and former Chair of Circus Oz)

PANEL
Adrian Basso – Community Radio (PBS)
Zvi Belling – Public Opinion Afro Orchestra
Cr Jane Garrett – Mayor, Yarra City Council
Liam Matthew – The Old Bar
Tim Northeast – Corner Hotel
Jon Perring – Fair Go 4 Live Music
Bruce Phillips – Director City Development, Yarra City Council
Kirsty Rivers – Music Victoria

Link
Calendar event, May 6

Page corrections
I want to let you know about some corrections to information on this website. I've corrected two pages: Cafes and restaurants in the Licences section, and the Liquor licence fees page.

I make small corrections quite often, but these changes are fairly major, so if you have looked at these pages recently, you might want to check them out again.

If I have difficulty getting it right, I do wonder how owners of small hospitality businesses, who come from a broad range of backgrounds, are supposed to make sense of the maze of confusing information provided by the Government.

Sue MacLellan
Just letting you know there has been no public mention of any change to Liquor Licensing personnel… yet.

Cheers ~ Robin

Government Caving In?


There have been quite a few signs the government is changing its tune. I hope they are, and that it goes further than a cosmetic "we saved the Tote".

I've updated the following pages, with information and links from the past few days.: Government attitude, Sue MacLellan’s attitude and the Links page. You’ll find Jon Faine’s radio interview of Sue MacLellan about fees in there.

Cheers - Robin

License Fee Hikes


I've aded a new page today about changes to liquor licence fees. Information is starting to come out, now that the fees have been in place for about 3 weeks.

This is a much wider issue than music venues, but I do think the new structure shows the utter incompetence of the State Government and Liquor Licensing, and THAT is relevant to music venues, at the moment.

Here's the new page: Fees. I've also added more fallout to the Fallout page, and links to the Links page.

By now you probably know that Chris Morris the owner of the Tote building is in talks to keep it running—there's a Chris Morris Rocks Facebook fan page!

Chris on the Tote:
"It has a huge reputation in Melbourne and it's just been fascinating seeing all the commentary and the reaction of people and the Facebook sites and everything else.
"Therefore we have no desire for it to close down and we just hope it can continue in its current form and we're pretty confident that will happen."

Well good!

Hope this flows on to all the other music venues affected.

Cheers - Robin