The Creative Groundswell After A Political Sh*tstorm (The Naked City)

The Creative Groundswell After A Political Sh*tstorm is the latest column (March 24, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – featured exclusively on City Hub.

News that Australia has slipped out of the top ten happiest countries in the world should not be taken lightly.

For the record, Finland, with those fun loving, financially secure, super contented party people, has once again scooped the number one position. Poor old Australia is now rated eleventh, but maybe the worst is yet to come. 

After all, Clive Palmer keeps telling us that we are living in a ‘catastrophe’. As well, the non-Labor forces at the coming Federal election all have a vested interest in informing us just how miserable we all are.

What we have yet to see is a cultural and artistic reaction, the type we encountered back in the 1980s when music styles such as post punk and grunge we are often viewed as a kind of social protest. 

Around the mid-80s there was much talk of an oncoming recession and a number of indie bands at the time were quick to embrace the paranoia.

Events such as ‘Doom and Gloom ‘86’ at Chippendale’s Graphic Arts Club brought together a number of local and interstate bands out to treat punters with ‘the downest good time you’ll ever have’.  The noted ‘depression poet’ Dr William McCoy made a guest appearance and one lucky punter took home a box full of generic groceries. 

I was particularly heartened to see that the crusty remains of The Sex Pistols will be touring Australia in April. No Sid or Johnny Rotten of course but a chance to relive the burgeoning punk movement of the mid to late 70s. It was an ideology that shunned wealth and money, mainly because nobody had any, and it certainly rattled the bones of the bourgeoisie.  

Cynics will say ‘The Sex Pistols 2025’ are just a bunch of silly old geezers desperately trying to relive their once rebellious youth – and their aging audience is not much better. Not me! I see their renaissance as a powerful indicator of a sizeable cutural change when it comes to music and the arts.

Sure there will still be time for happy, care free, hedonistic pop tunes like Kylie’s nauseating ‘Padam Padam’, but look out for a whole new wave of neo-punk and reconstructed grunge. 

‘The groundswell of discontent is bound to fuel a cultural upheaval’

With Trump in the White House, countless international wars, inflation running riot, and the possibility of Prime Minister Dutton, the groundswell of discontent is bound to fuel a cultural upheaval. Those with a good balance on their credit card will still demand top class entertainment and accompanying facilities, but what about the doom and gloom set? 

We now have a 24-Hour Economy Commissioner in Michael Rodrigues, recently quoted as saying: 

“We’re committed to reinvigorating NSW by removing the red tape and enhancing performance spaces, supporting cultural events and uplifting our thriving live music scene to help grow our creative communities.”

Let’s hope that includes a series of ultra low budget venues, where a lucky door prize of a bag of generic groceries is mandatory and the performing bands have names like ‘Dogs Die In Hot Cars’, ‘Half Man Half Biscuit’, ‘The Dead Milkmen’ and ‘Let’s Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop’ – all real band names from a few decades ago.

Two or three interlinked shipping containers dumped in Tom Uren Square in Woolloomooloo could provide an intimate rock venue and double as an overnight stay for the homeless when the grunge party finished. I don’t know how many of the old disused St James railway tunnels that run beneath the Sydney CBD still exist but what a location for ‘Grungefest 2026!’.

Perhaps the Palmer/Dutton prediction of economic Armageddon will have eventuated and an era of total doom and gloom will prevail. The annual Sydney Festival might go ahead, aimed entirely at that elite section of the population who can afford the exorbitant prices.

Yet beneath the snooty Opera House concerts and champagne picnics in the Domain, there lies a throbbing, pulsating celebration by neo-punks, grunge heads, anarchists, social outcasts and the homeless.  It’s a true societal underground and indeed ‘‘the downest good time you’ll ever have’.