feeeling so beerhemian like you

No, sadly this is not a research entry.

Just some light-hearted distraction from mundane uni work. I’ve had a blast researching pub rock, it’s so entertaining some of the things I’m finding, especially the locality aspect of it…I still get a thrill when I read something about Toowong’s Royal Exchange Hotel (I start giggling then loudly exclaim “I’VE BEEN KICKED OUT OF THERE! TEE HEE!”). So here are a few examples of just some of the awesome (albeit questionable) stuff I’ve come across in my research.

“It may seem somewhat insulting to begin our reading of Australia in the pub. But Australians are both proud and ashamed of their enthusiasm for alcohol.”
Fiske, A, Hodge, B, Turner, G. (1987) Myths of Oz

“Drinking…a determinedly egalitarian activity, the great social leveller – except for a Test Cricket crowd there is no more classless place in Australia than a hotel bar.”
Craig McGregor, 1966

“Instead of the fixed, oppressive hierarchical relations of the family lounge, the public bar eschews hierarchy and permanence. It does have on obligation: ‘the shout’, the obligation of every drinker to pay for his round in turn. Because it seems equal, it seems fair, though its equality is coercive: everyone is assumed to drink the same amount at the same speed. It is also immediate justice, not a nebulous system of deferred repayments…”
Fiske, A, Hodge, B, Turner, G. (1987) Myths of Oz

All three quotes I cannot argue with and offer such a beautiful explanation of Australian culture. The authors of the quotes somehow describe the lowest, dirtiest form of Australian art – the stinking, overcrowded, live pub gig – as an intellectual and theoretical example of the elegant learned internal structure, collectively understood across the nation. AMAZING.