Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. “I have escaped Pig City. Officially.
” Former St Lucia resident Andrew Stafford is speaking at his new home in Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It’s a sunny Friday morning, 20 years since he penned the definitive book about Brisbane’s music scene from the ’70s to the ’90s. Pig City has been continuously in print since it first appeared, and UQP has just published a 20th-anniversary edition.
Andrew Stafford’s music-based chronicle of Brisbane from the ’70s to the ’90s, Pig City, has remained in print since 2004. “What gets overlooked is that it is fundamentally a book about Brisbane,” Stafford says. “It’s certainly not an encyclopedia of music to have emerged from Brisbane.
It is a story about the city and its evolution over a particular period of time. “There were many reasons why I wrote the book, but one of them was that I did want younger people to have a sense of what it was like to grow up in Brisbane in the ’70s and ’80s. And I wanted there to be a lesson about how quickly a liberal democracy can crumble, even in a place like Australia.
” Of course, in 2024, both democracy and music face clear and present dangers. Byron Bay Bluesfest has just announced that its 2025 event will be its last, and July saw the closure of The Zoo, the music venue where many of the bands chronicled in Pig City, such as Custard, Regurgitator and Powderfinger, played regularly. “It’s ver.