Hey Cops! Leave Them Gigs Alone

Images: Adam Lewis

Try figuring this out. Run up on a friend’s shoulder to grab a footy and you’re taking a mark. But run up on a friend’s shoulder to see a band and you’re considered a violent threat.

Rush onto the MCG field with thousands of others after an AFL game and you’re just “having a kick”. But dance on the Sydney Opera House stage with a few dozen other people and you’re considered a violent threat.

The night following Royal Headache’s Vivid Live performance at the Sydney Opera House on Friday (which according to the Guardian, featured 60 people who invited themselves up on stage), the MCG field was flooded with football supporters after the Hawthorn and Sydney game. Both music fans and footy fans were celebrating their passion by getting involved. Only one group was dispersed by cops.

By all accounts, before cops cleared the Opera House stage on Friday night, the show was already memorable.

Featuring a striking and rare line-up presented by Sydney music pillar Repressed Records, the Opera House stage was blessed by the experimental soul-searching of Dick Diver’s Al Montfort and band as Snake & Friends, the elegant psych-pop of Blank Realm, the mesmerising noise of EXHAUSTION and Kris Wanders, hypnotic instrumentation from Superstar, and the mind-blowing pianist Monica Brooks.

All of this would lead to the latest of Royal Headache’s now-infrequent shows. The band doesn’t play live much anymore and tours even less. People were excited.

Royal Headache were five songs into their set in front of a packed audience at the Opera House when friends and fans invaded the stage to dance to "Down The Lane". When people remained onstage through "Girls", Opera House security and police cleared the stage. The band returned to play their version of Womack and Womack’s "Teardrops" but the mood had been soured by the police presence.

People stepping up on stage during a Royal Headache performance is not unprecedented. Vocalist Shogun has made a habit of jumping into their crowds and equally inviting crowds to join them. Royal Headache play fast and loud, they engender a type of dancing which from the outside might seem aggressive, and that is the way some of the crowd now on stage were dancing.

A mosh can look violent, but anyone with a passing familiarity with live music should know there are social codes that strive to make them inclusive and safe. The goal is never to damage the people around you. If someone falls, they are picked up. You keep your mind on your elbows so they aren’t jabbing anyone in the ribs, and you punch the air, not skulls. For the thousands of mosh pits that happen every year, only a couple make headlines for actual violence.

Outside casinos, nightclubs, and sporting matches, there is fighting every week.

It wasn’t until the cops came on stage that there was actually a problem. Royal Headache’s Shogun told the Guardian, “I didn’t want to see the police start breaking people’s arms and faces.” Like every other injury-free Royal Headache show before that one, Shogun wasn’t worried that people on the Opera House stage were going to hurt anyone. He was worried that the presence of the cops would.

When cops come into a situation the tension escalates. Some of it’s petulant, sure - in the “fuck you Dad, get outta my room” spirit - but nevertheless, if they aren’t there to dance, get the fuck off the stage. In that case, there’s only one conclusion for the punter to draw in the presence of police: they’re here to start grabbing people. And I suspect that if you ask anyone walking down the street how much they’d appreciate getting grabbed by police just because they were dancing without complaint, they probably wouldn’t like it.

There’s a fundamental difference in the way the establishment treats live music to other forms of entertainment. It pervades every level. Draconian laws treat small DIY venues with the same regulatory iron fist as massive stadiums, and although these are slowly changing thanks to music industry lobbyists and activists, they’ve claimed notable casualties in cities around the country. In the mainstream press, a punk show spectacle gets branded “a brawl.” Meanwhile the cops consider live music a high risk for violence, despite endorsing institutionalised macho aggression as intrinsic to Australian culture.

When a few dozen music fans get on a stage to dance with a band they like only to get grabbed by cops, but tens of thousands of people can flood a footy field and have a kick without getting hassled at all, you’ve got to ask: what do these cops have against live music?

Jake Cleland is a Melbourne music writer - @jakecleland