Episode 07: Chrissie Vincent
Music industry expert and PR specialist Chrissie Vincent has worked for companies such as Virgin Records, MTV and Festival Records; established her own PR firm; managed artists such as Pete Murray and Blackchords; served as a board director for The Push and Music Victoria; and currently heads up the Bachelor of Entertainment Management at Collarts. In this episode we take a deep dive into Chrissie’s Masters Degree thesis research which exposed commercial radio Australia’s breach of the national content quotas. We also chat about her time working in LA, her career highlights and industry advocacy.
CREDITS
Produced and presented by Chelsea Wilson.
Transcript by Laura Ingram
NOTES
Local Minimum Content Requirements on Commercial Radio: An Australian Case Study by Chrissie Vincent
Report on the inquiry into the Australian music industry
TRANSCRIPT
Hi and welcome to Control, the podcast where we speak to incredibly inspiring women in the music industry. I’m Chelsea Wilson your host, and in this episode, I’m speaking to Chrissie Vincent.
Across multiple continents and three decades Chrissie has built an impressive portfolio in the music industry. She’s worked for organisations such as MTV, Virgin Records, Habour Agency and Triple M and worked with artists such as Lenny Kravitz and the Sex Pistols. She established her own publicity firm working for festivals such as Falls; has served as a board Director for organisations including Music Victoria and The Push and recently moved into education, heading up the Entertainment Management faculty at Collarts in Melbourne. In 2018, she completed her Masters Degree, writing a thought provoking thesis that revealed Commercial Radio Australia’s breach of the Australian content quotas, leading to Chrissie speaking at a parliamentary enquiry into the Australian music inquiry. I’ve put a link to Chrissies paper and the inquiry in the show notes.
In this conversation, Chrissie and I dived into her research, talking about radio quotas, advocacy and more. I also asked Chrissie about her time working in LA and she reveals her career highlights, meeting David Bowie and what sparked her return to Melbourne.
This is Chrissie Vincent - in control.
Chelsea: Chrissie Vincent I've been so looking forward to having a conversation with you. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. How have you been going through this physical lockdown experience in Victoria?
Chrissie: Hi, Chelsea. Thank you so much for inviting me on this is I'm really excited to be chatting, talking to you too. Um, locked down in Victoria has been quite tough. Uh, I have been working full on. Uh, with classes per COLLArts since March and not looking back, looking at going on campus till next year. So it's been pretty tough actually. Um, yeah, not great. Um, I did was to say to you earlier that I'm getting tired of looking at myself on zoom every day. I'm looking forward to kind of getting out of the house, having a holiday over Christmas. I'm so proud of Victorian, so cause we've done it. We've done it, but it has been really tough.
Chelsea: It has been really tough. Well, hopefully we'll be back out at gigs before we know it. I'm really excited to talk to you about your career in the music industry, where you have spans so many different areas of the industry, but firstly, I'd really love to discuss your research work in the commercial radio space. And in particular, your case study on local minimum content requirements for commercial radio, which revealed that commercial radio are not complying with mandatory Australian content quotas, and only playing a small percentage of local artists. So your research examined the content, played on a range of stations over a set time period, for people who haven't read it yet. And explained that the former regulatory body and calm that monitored, the content quota is no longer operational, which leaves the Australian communication and media authority as the supervisor of the code. Can you talk us through what's going on there? Why was AMCOM disbanded?
Chrissie: That's a really good question, Chelsea and I actually don't know why it was disbanded. I think there was a lot of pressure from commercial radio Australia, CRA, uh, who were really not wanting to go through the process of reporting to any particular body. And because it was self-regulatory they didn't, they felt like they didn't need to report to anyone. So I think there was a lot of pressure from them. But AMCOM was made up of people from ARIA, a lot of those organizations, and record labels, et cetera. So there were a lot of people on this AMCOM board and then in 2016, they disbanded, but there's no real reason. I don't know what the reason was. I know that CRA was pushing to not have to report. So with them disbanding, they then didn't have to report. So they're not really reporting to you at the moment.
Chelsea: And so what's the Australian communication and media authority response been like to your report? Did you hear anything from them? Have they read it?
Chrissie: Uh, I don't know if they read it, but when I presented my research and I did a submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the Australian music business. The panel of the inquiry we're really, really interested in it. And I'm assuming that they gave the report to the ACMA but I've never heard anything back from them. In the federal government's key findings and from their inquiry, they say that there should be a body that's overseeing it and an independent body. Um, so they kind of push for it, but I don't know what the response has been from the ACMA at all, to be honest. And it's kind of really hard when you're an independent and you don't have any real body that's helping you get those answers from parliamentary, um, bodies.
Now I've tried to contact Paul Fletcher and it took me about a month to get a response from Paul Fletcher, the communications in the arts, and who's also roads and rail, which makes a lot of sense.
Chelsea: What a combo.
Chrissie: what a combo! It's really difficult when you're, you don't have a body behind you like an APRA or an ARIA or anything like that, when you're just trying to get these answers. They tend to just treat you like you're a member of the public and we'll get to you. And especially with Paul Fletcher, if you're not a constituent of his electorate, it took him over a month to respond to questions. So if you are in his electorate, they will get back to you a lot quicker.
Chelsea: Throughout the process of doing this research piece, what was the most surprising discovery or did it really confirm for you things that you already knew?
Chrissie: I think we all already knew that commercial radio wasn't doing what they should be doing with regard to supporting Australian content. But what was surprising for me was that some of the bodies that you would have assumed were there to support Australian content and Australian artists, weren’t as helpful as they should have been I feel. So that was quite surprising for me.
Chelsea: What do you think needs to change culturally for Australian radio to want to support Australian artists? I mean, I think they think that they are supporting Australian artists. At least that's what they say.
Chrissie: Yeah, they do say that. And you know, the funny thing is that they're only probably supporting a small handful of about five or six artists and that's it, you know, and I think there's quite a few things that need to change. Culturally. That's a really, really good question. I talk about it a lot in class, we're doing cultural policy at the moment and we talk about “What would you say was the Australian culture?” And we talk about music and stuff. But I think what needs to change is that the commercial radio need to go back to that championing of artists and they don't seem to really love music. It's it seems to be a secondary thing for most commercial radio stations. And it's gap between the ads really, you know, music. They need to go back to championing Australian artists so they feel that kind of “Look at us. We've we've broken this artist and look at how we've done that.”
And I used to work at triple M back in like 89, 90. And that was what it was like. The announcers went to geeks and really loved music. There were a lot of comedians. Richard Stubbs was on triple M the degeneration generation. So I was there at that time where there was a lot of comedians on it, but they loved music and I went to geeks, you know. That's we championed artists back then, and I think that's what they need to get back to doing. Um, Maybe Australian culture maybe now with, with everything that's been going on with regard to COVID maybe now is when we really start looking at all of the amazing artists that we do have instead of looking at Australia, you know, international acts always as they're better. Um, you know, we need to look at the Australian acts . Half the people that I speak to as in my students, they don't even realize that a lot of Australian acts are Australian. Do you know what I mean? And you go, yeah. Latch onto that, uh, have that pride in our music. That's what we need to get back. Um, and it's also Chelsea that whole tall poppy thing as well. Um, you know, as soon as an act does really well and Australian act, we tend to cut them down. And so we need to, we need to, but that's an Australian cultural thing. That's been with us for decades for a hundred years. I think it came in from world war one or something. So it's that whole thing of way, the way Australians think needs to change a little bit. It could be that we are changing hopefully, but it's a really good question.
Chelsea: Yes, definitely. I think there's a lot of change that can happen. There just feels to be quite a disconnect between commercial radio and the music industry of Australia when such a core part of their business is playing music. It's a really interesting and strange disconnect. I wanted to ask you about the commercial radio licensing fees, because I understand that there is a 1% cap for commercial radio in terms of what they pay for royalties. So 1% of their profit is what is going to pay the songwriters and the copyright owners of the works that they play on air. However, I was just thinking about that and looking at other license rates and in the live performance sector. So for festivals and gigs, the APRA rate is around 2%. So am I right? That live music users are paying double the amount in terms of percentage royalties than commercial radio. Why do you think this isn't more of a dominant conversation? Why aren't the festival promoters getting up in arms about paying double the amount and percentage than commercial radio?
Chrissie: I think because they don't really know. And it's only when you start digging down deeper that you actually find that out. You know, it was only when I started doing all of the research that I went. Wow. Really? And you've also got to remember that the three major labels have a real say in this. On your comment before about commercial radio having that disconnect between the Australian music industry. There's a disconnect between the rest of us, but with the commercial radio, there's still very, very much a connection. And it's only the three major labels that commercial radio has as a connection with. And I think that has a lot to do with the percentage as well. You know, I think I don't, I don't really know on that case, but you would think that more people would know about it and more people would, especially, like you said, the festival side of things would be up in arms about that, paying double what commercial radio, who are making a lot more money, um, would be, would be paying. And that's another question for APRA, you know?
Chelsea: Yeah. I think, I think you're right in terms of the argument that CRA are using around the 1% cap is claimed to be this fight against the perceived oligopoly, which is my new favorite word that I have through your research, linking me to other things. So the oligopoly being almost a monopoly, sas you mentioned, the three major labels that control around 80% of all recorded content. And so the fight, the fight that CRA are claiming is a one, a 1% cap would be fair against this oligopoly. However, the contradiction seems to be that commercial radio in Australia is 80% of stations are only owned by about 30 owners.
So they as well are an oligopoly.
Chrissie: Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Southern cross Austereo, Southern cross, DNG, which is the Nova Nova ones, but there's three really big ones. Like your news Corp and your Fairfax, same thing, but in radio land and they own a lot of the radio stations around the country.
And then there's a couple that are a couple of regional groups, but yeah you're right. They, there is exactly that in commercial radio. And now what they've started doing is just doing this whole networking where they're just doing shows. They're not even doing specific shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, they're just networking and pushing it all out. So you don't even have a breakfast team in Melbourne for instance, or a drive team in Brisbane. You’ve got one, one team joining the whole country. How does that work? You know, that's what those big, radio networks are doing.
Chelsea: And the international syndicated programs as well. You know, you Ryan Seacrest or whoever, you know, broadcasting over here. It just kind of feels like some big arguments happening between major oligopoly corporations, the commercial radio companies versus commercial labels. And where do the musicians sit within that? Who is missing out here is the actual musicians and the creators of that content.
I was really interested in the comments in your article, that commercial radio argue that one of the reasons for the lack of Australian content is an insufficient supply of suitable content. Um, it's interesting to compare the commercial radio situation with our commercial television, where commercial television has a 55% Australian quota, but television produced their own content and they invest in making their own content. Commercial radio don't spend any money at all on creating any content. But also when I look at state and federal government rounds for contemporary music, that doesn't seem to be a lot of funding support either for projects, by artists who are aiming to get airplay on a commercial sphere. It really does feel that the music works package. It feels that they're going towards more grassroots, independent artists than people trying to break through. So do you think this isn't a real claim? There is a lack of commercial friendly content. And that that's part of the issue. Isn't genuine.
Chrissie: Look, I, I don't believe that at all, because I believe that there are acts out there that has that commercial sound, but because I haven't broken through, they're not going to take the opportunity. So the reason that I started the whole research in the first place was the band that I managed. A band called Black Cords. Uh, we had a Grammy award-winning producer come out from France and produce their album. Now that album is an amazing sounding album and it is commercially right up there, but we had a radio plugger take it to radio.
And the first single that he took to radio, it was the six most added radio that week, which was great. And, um, that kind of way, that, that, that singledidn't really takeoff. But the second single was a bit slower and, and my radio plug is said to me “Chrissy, if I went in and told them that this was the new Radiohead track from Radiohead, they'd play it, but they won't play it commercial radio. They won't play it because it's an unknown, like it's a Melbourne band that, you know, has it hasn't really done much”. And that got me thinking, why the hell will they not play it if it's good enough and it, you could actually go, I said, “just take it in there and tell them it's right here. And because it did have that, that kind of vibe about it. Just have it on a blank CD and tell them to tell them that it's the new Radiohead.” And he said, “I can't do that”. And that got me thinking that if, if I wanted him to, you know, I was like, “play it and see what they say”. And then go, “well, it's a band from Melbourne. Will you play it?”
Now this particular song has been synced for Oranges is the New Black, Suits, Shameless, new Hawaii Five-O, television show in the U.S. so we've had four placements for in US television shows for this one song that, that he said, “Commercial radio won't play,” but it's good enough to be played on all of these television shows in the US , it has millions of players on Spotify because every time it's played on Orange etc people got download it and it just goes crazy each time. That was what got me thinking. Why are they not supporting just unknown Australian artists that are good enough, that had good enough commercial sounding music to go on commercial radio. So I don't believe, I think that they're thinking about it. There are commercial sounding artists out there, but they don't want to take the risk of playing an unknown artists. And that's the thing that it's easy to say. “We don't get serviced enough or there isn't enough quality out there”. It's easy to say that because I think, I think that there is, and it's about firstly, people servicing commercial radio. Cause they, they just think there's no point. So that needs to change and people need to actually go, “you know what, let's do it”. And they should actually, um, accept it and take it on. But it's very, very, very rare that they're going to actually play something that is going to be from an unknown artist. You know that then that's what got me started on that whole thing. The radio plugger who has these weekly meetings with commercial radio stations said they just, they won't play it Chrissy, but you said that they would play it. If you told them it was right to play, it they'd play it.
Its just as good or even better, but they're not going to play it because then it's Australian bet. It's an unknown Australian band.
Chelsea: Hmm. I feel like maybe if you went to service now and said, “it's been linked with these television programs”, that's where that tall poppy syndrome comes back into it. And nobody wants to be, uh, It's like, they're all very hesitant to be the first to play it, but if somebody else plays it, then we'll take it on. And so it's kind of this chicken, egg back and forth of is anyone else going to take it on? And I've had that feedback before working with print media and having great feedback from glossy magazines about my record and saying, we'd love to do something, but we just want to wait and see who else takes the story on first. So, you know, there's kind of gamble. It's kind of gamble. A publicist recently said to me that she thought you would have more chance of winning the lottery than getting a song added to commercial rotation in Australia. Do you agree with that?
Chrissie: Totally. An Australian song, for sure. For sure. It's it's literally impossible. And if you look at the ones that are getting played, it's the major label salts.
Chelsea: Can you talk us through the process of how you would go about trying to get a song. How do they decide what they add?
Chrissie: That's a really good question. Um, I would love to tell you that, but I have no idea! Well, when I worked at triple M it was, it was a completely different ball game because it was 1988 - 89. Well, I worked at triple M and we played because it was the late eighties. We played a hell of a lot of Australian music. But these days you would, I would have a radio plug it, take it in because they're really only going to listen to those radio pluggers or the promotions, people that take them from the record labels. And. Um, I don't know if you've ever, have you ever been to triple J for instance and service to triple J? Cause that's kind of horrific as well, where you go in and you've got a couple of seconds to pitch what you've got and they don't even actually listen to it. And then you're you're out. Which is what happened the last time I presented to a pitch to Richard Kingsmill that was pretty daunting. But at commercial radio they do research. Now the way we used to do research, when I worked at triple M back in the late eighties, we had a room full of people on telephones, ringing up people and playing songs down the phone. So that doesn't happen. I don't know what happens. I really would love to know what happens with how they decide on what they're playing, they’re looking a lot more at Streaming numbers. So they're looking at how many Spotify plays, if they've had all of those kinds of things, they're looking at, what kind of, what else is happening. So an artist has got to have a lot going on for them to really jump on board and play it. And like you said before, it's that chicken or the egg thing. They're waiting for something to happen where, and, and like I said, they need to champion. Those acts and go, “you know what? We're not going to wait and see, we really like this and we really believe this and we want to see this. We want to be the ones that actually champion it and push it through”, but they don't, they're like sheep and they're only following what's going on in the us or in the UK. And if that's doing well, they're adding that. And so any Australian acts that kind of come in in the mix. Well, it's the push from major labels really so times. So Tones & I got amazing response and everyone was saying “she's on an independent label”, but she's signed to Sony. You know that it was Sony, that was going in there and pushing. And also because that song just took off, it took off. So they, they are really looking at streaming numbers and things like that. So, yeah, I think they're looking at that YouTube all that data. They're very much data driven now, and they're not really, um, they used to where they used to survey and get, get people to listen. And do you like this track? I don't know if they do that anymore. Um, I really don't know. Very good question again, Chelsea you've got me unprepared.
Chelsea: Not my intention. It just feels so, uh, really opaque in terms of, for independent artists who are making up around that 20% of recorded content or whatever the percentage is, it just seems so impossible and also cost prohibitive because if you need to always be hiring a radio plugger to even try and pitch to commercial radio, artists are going to very quickly go into a huge amount of debt. And I'm really just interested in continuing to have, you know, a conversation around how can we bring down this invisible wall and be able to connect artists with commercial radio, because we do know that rotation on radio is what breeds the familiarity and the familiarity is what artists need to create fan bases. And if you don't have fan bases, you can't have a sustainable income. And so without that commercial radio support it's basically impossible to really progress up the food chain and the Australian, um, music landscape, community radio, do an incredible job at supporting local artists. But because of the lack of rotation, it's very hard for artists that do get support on community radio to really build that fan base. You know, you put out an album and community radio might play a couple of songs the week it's released and then not play it again, which is just really not, not helpful. But speaking about Spotify and the streaming. So Spotify and digital radio don't have any content quarters at all. Is that right? How can we advocate for commercial radio to be doing better when the other radio spaces don't have any content quota at all?
Chrissie: Well, that's, that's their argument as well. CRA argues that “Why should we have the quotas if the digital and streaming platforms don't?”. It's across the board, not just commercial radio, because we need to have that on digital radio and streaming platforms that have some sort of a quota that they need to be adhering to. Now, there's people that are really, really pushing for that to happen and it would be great. But then you've also got commercial radio Australia that don't want to have quotas. They really are pushing against the quotas. I doubt that Apple and Spotify, et cetera, would be happy to have quotas either.
It's something that needs to change in policy. And how do we make that happen? There should be quotas across the board for streaming services as well. And the parliamentary inquiry did suggest that as well. Um, because I suggested that in my recommendations and that was one of the recommendations that they came back with, they think that it should be across streaming services as well. They did this parliamentary inquiry. They have all of these recommendations and then nothing happens. Like, you know Chelsea, how we've just been trying we're on this round table, you know, trying to make things happen and then absolutely nothing happens. So it's kind of, it blows my mind. Why have a power parliamentary inquiry if nothing's going to happen from there?
Chelsea: Can you tell us about the FM/AM campaign?
Chrissie: So FM/AM just came out of my frustration for the parliamentary inquiry. It came out it in November of 2018. So two years ago. By March/April of 2019, the findings came out and the findings were 140 page report. Now in that report, they kind of did support my key recommendation for Quotas. But nothing was really being done. And I just got a bit by about October of last year I got a bit antsy. I just kind of having run my own business for 20 years. I just get like to get things done and I'm not good at waiting for things to just happen. I tried to just get things moving and wanted to start a public awareness campaign to let the public know that this is what's going on and this should be at 25%, but it's not for commercial radio, but we need to look at it across the board across and in my statement on FM/AM’s change petition, it's across all platforms, streaming platforms, digital radio, et cetera. So it was just really a public awareness campaign to bring some awareness of the fact that we're not getting the support or the Australian music industry and Australian musicians are not getting the support that they should be across the board.
But COVID hit and it all kind of changed. Everyone's focus really was on how were the musicians going to make money and all the venues have closed, et cetera. And it really just stopped.
Chelsea: Well, I'd like to say a big thank you to you on behalf of musicians, if I may, and music industry for doing this work and the campaign and getting that conversation going, it's really important. It does mean so much and have such a huge effect to the industry overall. I know that in other countries like Canada and Japan and other territories, the content quotas are so much higher. Can you tell us how you think that affects the music industry in those territories by comparison?
Chrissie: Well, I did a comparative study of Canada, and I’ll also talk about New Zealand as well. So Canada has a 35% Canadian content quota. They also have this thing called the MAPL test, which I think it's really cute for Canada with the maple leaf and it stands for Musician Artists, Performer, and Lyricist. So they need to have at least one or two of each of needs to be at the musician, the artist, vocalists, etc to make it actual Canadian content. So for instance, I'm not sure if you're aware, but commercial radio here in Australia were claiming a Justin Bieber song as an Australian content because it was recorded in Melbourne. And that to me just was mind blowing. And the fact that Joan Warner, the head of CRA commercial radio Australia actually sent an email to all of the commercial radio stations around the country, telling them how to determine what an Australian song is and explaining that Justin Bieber was not an Australian artists.
I still have that email it's gold. I did send that sneakily to the parliamentary inquiry panel so that they could see (laughs) before they spoke to Joan Warner. It was gold! Because they had read that when they spoke to Joan Warner, it was so great. Anyway. So Canada, it's 35%, they have the MAPL thing, so they can actually determine what is a Canadian artist. It's also between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, and they also have fines. So if a radio station is not making a quota, they are fined. Something to do with their licensing, et cetera, but there are ramifications. So the issue for us, and what the parliamentary inquiry found really interesting was that there's no ramifications for our radio stations.
So when I was talking to the parliamentary inquiry and they said, “So what happens if they don't make quotas?” And I said, “Well, absolutely nothing here. Nothing at all.” So they actually contacted me after I'd had my 45 minutes talking to the parliamentary inquiry. They actually contacted me and asked me to send more information on how Canada did it. Cause they were really interested in the way that they were doing it. Now I look at the IFPI (the international Federation of phonographic organizations global music report) and see that Canada are right up there and the Canadian music industry has just become stronger and stronger since they've ensured that they're getting airplay for their artists. So it's proven that it really does help the Canadian artists and the Canadian music industry. And because they're so close to America, they really did need to get that into play because otherwise it would just melt into one. With New Zealand though, they signed the free trade agreement that we (Australia) signed in 2004, which deregulated their quotas. So no more regulation, it was completely deregulated. The approach New Zealand took was to support for musicians to record “NZ on Air” it was called. They'd produce these CDs that they would send to commercial radio with commercial ready, commercial radio sounding music. That they were helping to produce. So there was those kinds of initiatives. There was a lot of funding, et cetera. So they were focusing on getting music recorded for commercial radio. But during my research, I spoke to a woman from New Zealand on Air, and she said that (and this was a couple of years ago now) she said that it had wound down and just wasn't in play anymore. So nothing was being done in New Zealand. So they have no quotas whatsoever and they've got no regulations and they've got very little support. So we're not in as bad a place as New Zealand, but they did try that whole content creation support thing.
Chelsea: Yeah. But I guess that it's easy to withdraw funding, you only need some other major policy to come through and money to the arts or music industry is withdrawn. And then you're left with a deregulated system with no content quotas. So fingers crossed just Jacinda Ardern can work that out for us. I could talk to you about radio ALL day, but I did want to ask you some other questions about so many other aspects of your career, and I'm wondering if we can dial way back a bit and go back to the eighties. So I believe you started working at festival records in Sydney, in the early eighties. What was that time like in your life?
Chrissie: That was crazy. I was just out of high school and, um, and I actually wasn't interested in working in the music industry. I actually wanted to be a veterinary nurse.
Chelsea: Wow, really!.
Chrissie: I know. And I just got this job in the accounts department at festival records.
It was in 1980 there was lots of filing and I talked a lot and so they transferred me up to publicity and PR into the promotions department. And then all of a sudden I was like, wow, this is heaps of fun! I'm still friends with some of the people I met and worked with back at Festival. We talk every Sunday, one of my girlfriends and we have known each other for 39 years, and she still works in music as well. Festival was awesome, I think about how we had all old switch boards, where you pulled the connections and put them into the hole, like when you were on the switchboard, everyone had to do a rotation of lunchtime, looking after the reception desk, those kind of things. There was the record plant where they made the vinyl downstairs. So getting the opportunity to go and tour the record plants and you'd go down and the warehouse was down there. The warehouse was right next to the record plant. So they were making the records, they were keeping them in the warehouse and I'd have to go down and get vinyl to send to particular radio stations, et cetera. And you'd go down with your list, and I used to know all of my catalog numbers off by heart! It was a lot of fun. It was just a different time. It's just a really different time. Everything took a lot longer. We had telex machines and when I try and explain what a telex machine is to my students, they just go, “what the hell?” So it was just a completely different time and it's bizarre for me that I started when we had telexes and stuff, and now things have changed so much, even in my career span I’ve seen technology change so much and how things are done. It was completely different and a lot of fun.
Chelsea: And a very different city too! I mean, eighties was such a glorious heyday of that Aussie pub rock coming out of the kind of disco nightclub era into that real Aussie pub rock. It was kind of a golden era. And then from there you moved to LA and worked for Virgin records in the nineties, which was also such an incredible time for music. What was it like working in LA? What were the kind of biggest learnings of your time at Virgin records?
Chrissie: Oh look that was so much fun. I had a really good time in LA. By the time I got to LA, I'd been in the industry for about 10 years. So I'd worked at Festival, I then worked at Harbor Agencies and then I worked at Midnight Oil's office, and then I worked for Triple M in Melbourne and then went to LA. So I'd had management, booking agency, radio station. I'd had this variety. So when I got to LA I really found it easy to get work. Now I wasn't allowed to work cause I didn't have a green card. So I got married. I paid a guy to marry me for my green card!
Chelsea: Really, wow! How fabulous!
Chrissie: Yeh I paid him. He was a sound guy for Bad Religion, a band in LA and I paid him to marry me and we got married in Las Vegas in on Valentine's Day. So Valentine's Day has never been the same for me. I dressed as Marilyn Monroe. He was Elvis, and we had an Elvis impersonator do the wedding. It was awesome. It was Vegas! So I found it really once I got my green card, I found it really easy to get work because I had a variety of experience, and I found that in the States, they were very “you only did PR” or “you only did marketing” or “you only did sales” or whatever. I found it really quite easy to get work. And I actually was temping at Virgin in the A&R department and they offered me a job in the A&R department and they also offered me a job in this department called “special projects”. And they were just starting special projects up. So it wasn't actually a department. Head of the Virgin records Worldwide was a woman called Nancy Berry who was married to Ken Berry, who was one of the owners of Virgin EMI. And he started Virgin with Richard Branson. So Nancy wanted her own little department and she wanted to start this thing called “special projects”. So they offered me a job as well. I was temping in there and I got offered two jobs. I remember meeting with the head of the HR department and she went through the wage et cetera. And I figured “I'm going to just play hardball because this is a temp job and I can just walk out”, and I said, “I don't get out of bed for that amount of money.” And I got up out of the room and I walked out and down the corridor and she came running after me and she was like, “come back, come back, and I ended up getting another like $20-25,000 more than what they'd offered me just by throwing a fit, which was quite funny. And I ended up taking the special projects job because it was a new department and it was working with the five top acts on the label. So what our department was set up to do was: say a manager of one of the artists would (during the course of an album campaign), talk to the art department, the PR department, the sales department, etc and they'd be farmed off to different departments. So for the top acts, we looked after all of those things. So they just talked to us and we then talked to the art department, the sales department, the marketing department and the PR department and everything. So they only needed to deal with one person at the label. So that was how we worked. At the time and 1994, 95, 96, we had David Bowie releasing his ‘Outside’ album. We had the Rolling Stones doing ‘Voodoo Lounge’. Lenny Kravitz album ‘Circus’, Smashing Pumpkins and the Sex Pistols. So the Sex Pistols did their Filthy Lucre re-release of an album and tour.
And so I had to work specifically on the Sex Pistols and Lenny Kravitz. So all things regarding those two acts, I was the point of contact at the record company. So if something happened, it came to us. If they wanted to know what the sales were for that particular week, I'd have to get that information for them. If I needed to organize a photo shoot for Lenny, I would go to the art department, organize it all, that type of thing.
Chelsea: What I massive massive job!
Chrissie: Yeah, that's a lot of fun. I only did Lenny and the Sex Pistols, which was a lot of hard work, The Sex Pistols. Lenny was a pleasure to work with, I loved working with him. I did get to meet David Bowie when he came into the office. And we went to dinner with David Bowie and his wife. Got to meet the Rolling Stones and that was just mind-blowing for me, cause I sang in a Rolling Stones cover band in the eighties, so I was like, “Oh my God!”. But you know, you had to keep your cool all the time. I had to go to Smashing Pumpkins video filming of ‘Tonight, Tonight’, because we had some winners had to go do a meet and greet. And so there were times where I got to work with the other artists, but I was specifically looking after Lenny and The Sex Pistols.
Chelsea: Did you have any star struck kind of moments?
Chrissie: I will tell you. Charlie Watts, the drummer with the rolling stones was playing a jazz gig in a theater in Los Angeles. And one of the girls that I worked with had been on the road with The Stones for like four or five years and was tired of being on the road so we actually got her in on “special projects”. And so she worked specifically with The Rolling Stones. So I was with her and her husband and after the gig, she said, I'm going to go back and see Charlie. And I said, “Oh look I'll just stay here”. And I was just kind of waiting around and (it got to the point where) you're either kicked out of the venue or you go backstage. So I went backstage and there was this big, long line of people waiting to get back. I said “I'm not standing in a line”, so I went back to find Lil (my friend that I'd gone with) and she was standing talking to Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, Charlie, Ron Wood and this American act, which I can't remember the name. She introduced me “This is Chrissie, she works at Virgin with us.” And I just thought, “I'm going to remember this day for the rest of my life, but they made so many different people that I'm nothing to them”. At the time Voodoo Lounge, there was 300 people on the road in the touring party. So to me meeting them that was like, “Oh my God”. But that was an epiphany for me. And I decided at that point that I wanted to come home because I was standing there with these people and I just thought, “Wow I'm going to remember this day and this whole time, but I would rather work with an artist that remembered me, and then they knew that I was instrumental or that I was a part of their career. I would rather do that, than work with these artists where you're just one of how many people that they deal with on a daily basis that works at a record label or something”.
Do you know what I mean? So I remember going home that night and having a good cry and going, “I think I want to get out of here”. That was the point for me, where I just decided that I wanted to, I wanted to come home because it. It was that moment of meeting The Rolling Stone and it meant nothing.
Chelsea: What an incredible story, but I'm sure they do remember you. You're pretty memorable Chrissy. I don't know. I know Lenny does, which was really cool. I ended up going to a gig of a gig in Barcelona in 2004. So I left Virgin into 1998 and knew Stereophonics were playing with Lenny Kravitz. And I knew those guys from my time at MTV. So I text message to them and they're like, “We'll put you on the door”. And so I thought, great. And I went backstage to see Lenny. Really ballsy. Cause like I hate doing that kind of stuff. And there was a meet and greet and there were all these people doing this meet and greet. And I stood at the very end of the line, you know, and when he saw me, he went “Chrissie from Virgin!?” And her hugged me and I was like “Aw he remembered”.
Chelsea: Can you tell us a little bit about starting your own firm when you moved back to Australia, what was that like?
Chrissie: Well I came back to Australia and worked at MTV and in my dealings atVirgin, I dealt with MTV international a lot because of the artists that I was working with. The head of MTV international was a woman called Rebecca Batties. And Rebecca was an Australian woman and she was working in New York and I started talking to her about, how I wanted to come home and she said,” we're starting up MTV in Australia. So I was really lucky to then just walk into the job at MTV in Australia as publicist. And so I started doing publicity and really great opportunity to start doing publicity after not being in Australia for so many years for MTV, because everyone wanted to know what was going on at MTV. It was so as easy to pick up the phone and say it's “Chrissy from MTV” and they'd go, Oh, Hi Chrissy, what's going on? So when it all kind of changed it MTV and Optus took over MTV I decided to leave and start my own publicity company. I think by this stage, I'd been in the industry for about 15 - 18 years so I thought “if I can't do this on my own, then there's something wrong.” I was lucky enough that I'd worked on Falls Festival. We went down and filmed interviews and recorded live sets at Falls Festival in 1998 as part of MTV. So I met up with the two guys that were running Falls. And so when I left MTV, they just said to me, “do you want to do PR for Falls?” Hell yeah. Great. And at the time Falls was still really growing. So it wasn't like it is now. At Falls Festival in 1998 was a little band called The Living End and they were playing at like four o'clock in the afternoon. Their manager said to me, do you want to do publicity for the Living End. And I said, hell yeah. So I had two really good clients straight off the bat. I was really, really lucky again. And it was the cause of where I'd come from MTV. And they knew me from MTV and I just thought that I'd have to take that leap of faith and do it. Cause I figured if I couldn't do it after all those years of being in the industry, I should be able to do my own thing. And I did that for another 18 years!
Chelsea: And you're still doing it, right! But you've also transitioned into the education sector. What's that been like for you? Because you've been within the industry for decades, education is such a different offering.
Chrissie: Oh, it is so different. I'm not doing publicity anymore, there's just too much work. I’m head of the Entertainment Management Degree at COLLArts. And so there's a lot of work with the teaching and also just the admin, et cetera. I got to a point in my career where I thought, “what else can I do? I want to move on from doing publicity. What else can I do?” I did my masters in order to be able to teach. Got the position at COLLArts. I've been there five years. It is very different. It's it was hard for me at first because I'd run my own business and was able to do pick and choose the campaigns that I worked on. If I didn't like a client then when that campaign finished, I just wouldn't work with them again. It's a completely different ball game when you're actually working in a business and you have to stick to the rules. That took me a couple of years to kind of get into the groove. I also wanted that regularity of a paycheck because even after all of those years of running my own business still as an independent contractor, and freelance publicist. When I look at what's happened in with COVID, “I think, wow. If I was a publicist, I'd be really struggling for work”. Especially publicity on tours, which was a lot of my work. I was very, very aware of other friends that were publicists that were really, really struggling at the very beginning and I just did not miss a beat with regard to teaching. We've been going nonstop since lockdown. We haven't stopped at all. So that was for me a real kind of awareness of I’m glad I'm, I've taken that path just for the stability. I still like to keep my hand on all what's going on in the music industry. Of course, I'm listening to music, and I get introduced to a lot of new music from the students.
I like to educate them on how it was before, because a lot of them only listened to what's happened in the last 5 or 10 years, but there's so much more to the industry. So I like to educate them on that. I teach cultural policy, so, and that a real passion for me. So I like to get them passionate about knowing what's going on in politics. I also teach them Publicity, which is something that I've known for a long time, but also it's changed so much that I really need to keep on top of how it's changing and how things are completely turned around since I started. It's a challenge. I feel over this last six to eight months, I've felt I've had, I felt like I had 130 odd students, the weight of 130 students on my shoulders because they were all struggling with lockdown and everything that was going on. And there was so many students that were having anxiety and depression. And I honestly felt like there was a lot of handholding over the last probably six months. We've set time every week to do one-on-one catch-ups with them all to make sure that they were all okay, because you can't see them in the corridor or you can't see the classrooms so you've really, really worked at making sure that they were all okay.
And to make sure that, um, they were aware that, okay, this is just a little hiccup in, in the industry and don't be too freaked out because it just, you know, it may, it'll come back. It may be a little different, but. It's it'll pivot - that that word that everybody's using at the moment is it'll pivot and change.
And there may be, there'll be, you know, jobs that we don't even know about in the next couple of years. So don't, they were really freaking out of what am I doing? Why am I doing this course? That type of thing. There was a lot of anxiety. Um, but they've all come through. They seem to be coming through the other side
Chelsea: it's such important work that you're doing in shaping that next generation of people working in our industry. It's really important. What advice do you have for younger people that want to break into the music industry? Who might be thinking, you know, it's doomsday given the COVID situation?
Chrissie: Oh, well, like I said, you know, I think that there is it's going to comeback. it may be different. There will be lots of different things to deal with, but I think that everyone needs to have resilience, passion and determination. You know, those things are really important. It's not going to happen. It's not going to just come and drop in your lap. You need to really want it. Now the thing that I always say to them is how much do you want this? Because you really gotta want it. You know? And I think about the fact that I sold everything that I owned in Australia and moved to LA with two suitcases. And I made it work and I wanted to stay there and I made it work. I was 27. I I was old enough to just go right on outta here. I wanted it to happen. And I, and I made it work. There was determination, passion and resilience. Um, anyone can do that. Anyone can have that by just, you know, you need to want it. How much do you want this? So, and I say that to the students, it's the students that really, that I see putting their hands up and wanting to volunteer at somewhere or they are on the zoom call first up, or they're not late with their assessments or they don't need an extension and all those things that is just, they're just getting to it and doing it. That's what you need in this industry. The industry will not cater to, uh, you know, people that just expect it to be handed to them.
What do you think Chelsea, did you agree?
Chelsea: I love that resilience, passion. absolutely. Chrissy, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me on the podcast. It's so appreciated.
Chelsea: So that was the conclusion of my formal set of questions for Chrissie. After that last response I hit stop on the recording and we were just having a little bit of general catch up and then Chrissie launched into this incredible story sharing one of her career highlights with me and I said stop can you start that again, we’ve got to get this on the podcast. So here is a little outtake, but I had to include it, one of so Chrissie’s highlights.
Chrissie: The highlight of my career, I would say, is into, in the year 2000, I had the pleasure of doing publicity for a legendary punk rock icon, Sioxie Sioux, from Sioxie and the Banshees now, Susie and her husband, um, Budgie who, uh, was also in the band um, had a band called the creatures and they came out, it was around the Olympics and they came out and did three shows, Sydney, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.
And. I was, I met her at the airport and we, I took her out for dinner to Di Stasio on Fitzroy Street St Kilda. And we got on so well, and I, and we started talking, it's like, how do you, how do you have a conversation with these people? You know? And I ended up telling her that I'd worked with.
John Lydon and the sex pistols. And I told her about spitting in John Lydon sushi, and she leaned over the, over the table and handed me and just said, I love you. And that was it. And we ended up at mink bar and we ended up drinking lots of vodka and oh, it just got crazy. And we just got on like, we had been, we'd known each other for years and she wanted me to fly to Sydney with her. I want you to come and hang out with me and Sydney. And I said, okay, no problem. I'll come up. I'll come up to Sydney. And, uh, after the gig in Sydney, I said to her, ‘Oh, I forgot to ask you to do my favorite song, Christina strawberry Girl’. And she said, Oh Chrissy, why didn't you? I said, Oh, don't worry about it. I forgot. A
And we ended up going out afterwards. And the next day I flew back to Melbourne and she went to Brisbane. She had a show in Brisbane. I was pretty exhausted, I went to bed pretty early and was woken up by my mobile phone.
Now in the two thousands, they were Nokia’s and they didn't, they flipped all that, they didn't have record. And my phone rang and I hear ‘Chrissie it's Sioxie’. And she said, um, don’t hang up, I'm promised I'm going to play you this songs, I'm playing the song for you. And then I hear a go starting to Christine strawberry girl, and she stopped seeing Christine's story go, which is my favorite song, cause it's my name. And then she said, um, then I could hear it going up. And then, then I'm sitting there and I started crying because. I'm in bed, I'm on my own. And she's singing a song to me down the phone and she's live on stage in Brisbane and I'm like, oh my God. And then somebody carries the mobile into the dressing room. So the encore, and then she's going, let's do Hong Kong gardens and we'll do that., and so she's doing all these, like going through, what song are they going to do? So I'm on the phone for about 15 minutes now, back in 2000 and I was 15 minute phone calls, cost a lot of money. (laughs)
So the tour promoter was paying for that obviously. And, um, I got to hear all these different songs, these songs that she hadn't done in Sydney and Melbourne. And then she just, she hung up by saying, ‘I promised I'd play you that song. I love you. Thanks very much for everything’. And that was it. And I was like sitting in bed on my own, just like blown out of blow my mind blown.
And the next morning, um, the Music editor from the Courier Mail rang me. I called Noel Mandle and I'd put his name on the door. And he rang me to say, thank you so much, Chrissy. That was such a great gig. And I said, no worries, not a problem. And he said, well, I said, you got some songs we didn't get, um, in Sydney and Melbourne. And he said, was that you on the phone? And I said, yeah. And he goes, Oh, she stopped the crowd. She stopped the gig. And demanded the mobile phone from the tour manager and called you on stage in front of the whole packed Brisbane gigs and sang me the song. So I had at least one person knew that she'd sung that, but wasn't able to record it, there was no one there with me to share it with me. So, but that was like the, the best thing of my career that actually somebody did that for me.
Chelsea: Aw, that's so cute. I love that story. I hope you get many more song dedications.
