Brisbane's pop culture scene went bang, smash, pow between 1978 and 1982 and only today is Queensland learning what really happened.
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It wasn't just The Saints and the Go Betweens. It was the hundreds of groups that didn't get famous.
It wasn't just the new Queensland Art Gallery at South Bank. It was black and white posters in phone booths.
It was the pre-South Bank, pre-Expo South Brisbane, it was Fortitude Valley before the malls, when band practice rooms lined Brunswick Street.
It was the Curry Shop in George Street – where Blondie's Deborah Harry once threw up - and the 279 Club at the Exchange Hotel.
It wasn't radio 4IP. it was Radio 4ZZZ – Brisbane's community radio - the most powerful and influential in Australia.
Well-known musician John Willsteed semi-jokingly says it is not Brisbane's heat – the sun of the Sunshine State - that sets it apart; it's the city's humidity.
It's the way it makes you feel. (Thanks Ed Kuepper.)
That's John delicately-pretty guitar solo you hear on the Go Between's Streets of Your Town in 1988.
Before that - in 1982 - John and Xero's co-writer Irene Luckus produced Xero's Lust in the Dust (1982) which documented a new crisp post-punk European-sound in Brisbane.
Today John rings the gorgeous country tunings for Brisbane band Halfway, who are soon off to the 'States and writes semi-regularly, sometimes for Fairfax.
It's Not the Heat, it's the Humidity is John Willsteed's anecdotal title to a "live" documentary about Brisbane's music, its street-art, its Super 8 film and art galleries – all that stuff - and its impact.
"It is one of those clichés we always used to come with you when you are young," Willsteed says of the title during an hour-long conversation in a cafe near his Stafford home.
"You'd hear some old guy on the bus say to his wife – 'It's so hot I can't believe it'," he tells.
"It's not the heat love, it's the humidity."
"I looked around and saw that no-one seems to have written a show called that, yet it's such a common phrase in Brisbane."
It's Not the Heat, it's the Humidity at the Brisbane Powerhouse – part of Willsteed's PhD work for Queensland University of Technology - is not only about Brisbane's music explosion, he said.
Its a walk-through of the cultural geography of the times; the smaller bands, the fanzines, the super 8 films, the friends and events - including protests and "do it yourself" gigs that defined the city.
Willsteed describes himself as an embellisher of other people's "things" – artworks, posters, fanzines, songs and films – something he will in October package into cultural travelogue of Brisbane as punk burned out.
"I've always really loved embellishment," he said.
"I loved working on other people's 'things', making them sound appropriate to the song; beautiful within the context of whatever that song might be."
It was JohnE's spiky artwork – promoting local band gigs at the Exchange Hotel, at early 4ZZZ Joint Efforts (local bands supporting an international touring band) – that generated real fans in the late 1970s.
John Willsteed said he was never dismissive of his musical past and never felt the need to leave Brisbane.
"I left Brisbane following my heart and returned for the same reason," he said.
"But I'm not an ambitious creative."
"And maybe that has something to do with it."
Over two nights – October 29 and 30 at the Brisbane Powerhouse – John Willsteed will chart the path of Brisbane's northside and then the path of Brisbane's southside – as post-punk culture grew from Brisbane's streets.
He will tell of the bands and parties that developed little sub-scenes - around Sandgate, around Mt Gravatt and Coorparoo around Ipswich and Brisbane's western suburbs - which later became an inner-city mood
He has stayed and now wants to tell his story.
John Willsteed's pick of songs that charted Brisbane's times of 1978-1982
None of these were heard on commercial radio, though perhaps they all should.
I added Razar's - Task Force (1978) – Because it's dynamic, brash – about Queensland Police's Special Branch and it still sounds great.
John Willsteed says this time in Brisbane's history has never been well explored or acknowledged.
Andrew Stafford wrote "Pig City" (2004) and helped put on the big "Pig City" concert at the University of Queensland, Willsteed said.
But John Willsteed wanted to take a different tack in trying to explain Brisbane in those melting pot times.
"I really like the stuff of those times; the mags, the cassettes and the things that people made; the shirts and the posters and things," he said.
"I found all those things really interesting then and now."
"So that when Pig City came out, you could read the book and it was a really interesting story about a scene from the point of view of the "successful aspects of the music scene."
"But I was more interested in the less successful things."
Willsteed's point is that the "successful" parts of that time have already been documented.
"Successful things have their own baggage because people write about them at the time, people write about them in retrospect," he said.
John Willsteed does not argue songs like The Saints I'm Stranded is not influential.
His point is the local Brisbane "scene" of that time was closer to these "less successful bands and artists" which stayed closer to local audiences, influenced each other and influenced the city.
"There is almost nothing of those bands beyond some memories, and for me it's like a much more clear route back into memory and the past."
"By using those less famous, less burdened pathways."
Today social media like Facebook allows people to recapture this less well-known history of Brisbane.
Fanzines like Ratsack, X-Change, Zip and Decay charted the politics, music, and club events of the day, with photographs.
Places like RedComb House in George Street and John Mills Himself Building in Charlotte Street had practice rooms, which became galleries, studio and creative spaces.
John Willsteed makes the point that while today everyone has a mobile phone - with a camera - back in 1979 walking around with a camera was a defining point.
Brisbane man Paul O'Brien took 900 photographs of band shows, protests. gatherings outside pubs, parties in this 1979-82 time.
His photos - which went up on Facebook and have been donated to Brisbane'sJohn Oxley Library - show how a Brisbane mood evolved, Willsteed argues.
"In those days to walk around with a camera was uncommon," he said.
"And not everyone could afford to get negatives processed and prints made."
John Willsteed's point is that this Brisbane social history had been kept to Paul O'Brien's friends until recently.
"One of the things that really struck me as he was putting them up on Facebook was that he wasn't just putting up photographs of bands - although sometimes they were," he said.
"He might go to events and six of the photos were of the band, but the rest were of the crowd.
"So really he was taking photographs of a scene - it was a music scene because the focus was the bands - but really it was a focus for the social activity."
"Which I found really fantastic because people would say I haven't seen a photograph of that person for years."
"So here are a bunch of photographs that really honour that social scene."
Its Not the Heat, its the Humidity - John Willsteed, Brisbane Powerhouse October 29-30 2015.
