Ringo Barr — DIY BABES ZINE

What’s an Underground Band Without a Stage to Perform on?

Records, a "barr," and gigs! Rob, owner of Ringo Barr, stresses the importance of supporting local venues while showing up for the artists. His goal is to mix up the traditional bar setup with the addition of selling records. He has stocked local bands' new releases so you can get your hands on them at a gig.

By Billie Estrine

Weds. Jul 24 2024

Where did you grow up?

Ah, Sydney. [I] Moved around in Sydney, [to] lots of different places, until I was in my early 20s. [Then I] thought I wanted to live in England, tried it out for a couple of years, didn't want to live in England.

[I] came back to Melbourne. Because I'd already been to Melbourne lots and lots and lots and obviously it's much more of a music city than Sydney. So, it was a no-brainer. Every musician in Australia ends up moving to Melbourne for that reason, really.

Do you have a history of being involved in music scenes?

Yeah, definitely.

Can you tell me about it?

Starting out of school, sort of mid to late 90s, mostly in Sydney for the first few years, but played around [in] different states. Drove up and down mostly the East Coast, but occasionally, the West Coast. Did that until I was probably about 30, and then I had less time.

I was a teacher for 15 years, so [I] did that and didn't have a life for a while. And, like a lot of teachers in the last few years, I got burnt out. Over COVID, lockdown needed a change, embraced the change. Life's too short, all that, and I started this place.

What was your involvement in the music scene? Were you playing in bands?

Yeah, very much.

What'd you play?

Bit of everything. Jack of all trades, master of none, drums, guitar, keys. Sometimes, I tried to sing.

What'd you teach?

At high school, I was teaching English, politics, and history.

I used to teach music as a uni job, just to individuals.

Once I started high school, I didn't want to teach music. I don't think people should teach what they love because it kills it.

When was your introduction to the Melbourne music scene?

Early twenties, probably around [the year] 2000 ish. A couple of bands I was in Sydney came down here.

I got to know the city pretty quickly, especially the northern part. The inner north of Melbourne, as you probably know already, is generally where that stuff goes down, and that's still the case.

So yeah, played a lot in Melbourne before I moved here. Once I moved here, I was in other bands and played around here all the time.

When did you open Ringo Barr?

December 2022.

Can you share a few community-oriented goals behind opening the bar?

Brunswick is the center as far as I'm concerned in terms of people who embrace music and culture and generally my kind of politics.

In that sense, people who gravitate here tend to be pretty like-minded, so you form connections quickly with many of the locals. I knew lots of people who lived here before we opened, anyway.

Brunswick is very community-minded. Having said that, there's so much in Brunswick. As you said the other night, you went to The Retreat. On this strip here, there are, I think, seven bars on this block. There's a lot of competition while it's friendly and community-driven. You gotta be doing something that other people aren't doing. Otherwise, you're just going to blend in too much.

What does that mean for you?

It's not doing one thing only. I think there have been a few examples in Melbourne in the last five [to] ten years of bars making the mistake of thinking people are still committed to one thing [and] have that old school kind of allegiance to one genre.

A place like The Tote still does punk rock all the time. You would never see a different kind of genre at The Tote. They've had a crowdfunding campaign, and fortunately, for now, they're alive, but that's required a lot of people chipping in, and I think that's a mistake.

I don't think we exist in one allegiance to [the] music world anymore. Not everyone's in one bubble anymore; it's playlist culture, not album culture. People don't care what the genre is. They just put it on their playlists. So people are allowed now to listen to whatever.

That's really liberating. I hated being a teenager and thinking that I wasn't allowed to listen to something that my friends didn't listen to because we were like grunge kids or whatever the fuck.

So, there's good music in every genre. Finally, that's a thing now. The thing for this place is permitting that and acknowledging that's actually how people listen to music now.

I'm not saying other bars don't do that around here, but I don't think they do it as much. If you were to go to another bar here, you'd probably get more or less the same kind of, at least, adjacent stuff. [As] opposed to [us], we'll book this band because they're good. I don't care what the genre is; frankly, no one thinks in genre anymore.

How would you describe the community created by the Naarm/Melbourne music scene?

I don't know if you can talk about it in the singular. I don't think you can. There are so many pockets. There are so many bubbles, and I'm not across all of them. I don't think anyone can be across all of them.

It used to be pretty cliquey. I sense it's not as cliquey because the boundaries between them are a bit fuzzier. So, we could, for example, have a jazz band supporting a funk band one night and an indie band supporting a folk rock dude. It's not one culture.

I think it's generally supportive, and I think artists have to be savvy. They have to be savvy if they're going to get noticed because there are just so many of them. I think the way to be savvy is to engage with other people rather than go alone and play elitist or [say] I'm better than everyone else. That's never going to work in Melbourne.

Do you know the tall poppy thing in Australia?

No.

Australians love to cut down tall poppies, which is like a metaphor. The bigger flowers. You're not allowed to stand out. Anyone who stands out too much in Australia won't be had. You can't be too big for your boots.

You wouldn't get, I'm trying to think of classic American egos, Kanye West, and those personalities. They'd be cut down before they started because it wouldn't be permitted in Australian culture.

You can't talk yourself up too much because people are just going to think you're a dickhead.

Does that make the culture better?

I think so. It makes it more real. It keeps it more honest. Ego can be good for art in some cases. It's not necessarily bad, but it's neutral, at least in terms of the art. But, in terms of the artist, I think it's bad.

Everybody's down to earth. There's a community with one another.

Yeah, exactly. You can't have [a] community if one person's trying to stick out too much.

Can you tell me about the mural on the exterior of the bar?

I didn't do it. It's a guy, Lukas Kasper, who also did the mural on the back wall. I gave him a palette and said, "Do your thing with these colors." He, I guess, looked at the interior space and saw the vibe in the room. I said, "Make it a little bit 60s and psychedelic." He did that.

What are the day-to-day operations for running the bar?

A lot of admin. I'm on my laptop for about three hours every day, emailing, paying bills, and booking.

Then, I'm replenishing the fridges, setting up the stage for the night, and making phone calls.

There are so many odd jobs, and literally every day is a list. Every day is a bullet point list; you cross off the bullet points as you go. Sometimes you get it all done. Sometimes you go, you know what, I'm going to leave those three bullet points for tomorrow and just prioritize.

Especially in this business, we're two things in one. We're selling records, we're selling booze, and we're hosting gigs. There's a tremendous amount to do, and some things have to take a back seat some days.

You're only open at night and you sell records at night?

Yeah.

How is that?

Good. I think it works well.

Obviously, the economy at the moment is not as favorable to people buying loads of records, which is noticeable across the board. I think if people are going to buy records, it's good to give them a couple of drinks first. It helps them with their decision to purchase.

Do you book the gigs?

Mostly, no. I've got someone who's currently doing most of that for me, who's wonderful. Who I trust implicitly. She's much younger than I am. She's got her ear to the ground. She moves across a lot of different things. She knows a lot of people.

For me, that's just a no-brainer. I don't have time.

Great. Do you keep local bands' new releases stocked in your record collection?

Yeah, I'll show you afterward; just around the corner.

Do you push those pretty hard?

Try to. It's a tough one because I, as a matter of principle, want to stock local bands in a place like this. That's compulsory.

But, for better or worse, I think the majority of people who buy records commit the money because it's an expensive hobby; they opt for safer purchases. When I say safer, I mean more popular. While we have quite a lot, we might sell one or two local releases a month.

Particularly now where people are deliberately saying, "I'm not going to buy 10 records this month. I'm going to buy three." They're generally going to be more popular, predictable purchases.

Can you tell me about the people who buy records from you regularly?

We've got some regulars. I don't know how to generalize about them because everyone's into slightly different things. We do have a big cross-section of genres.

I don't know if there's one type of person who comes in to buy records. We sell as much online as we do in the shop. I don't know much about who those people are.

It's a hard one for us because we've have such limited space in the record room. Where, say, a designated record store would have like four, five, six times the volume that we have cause they got more space for it. They could probably deduce more specific patterns. Whereas [we've got a] different crowd every night. We're not quite sure who everyone is because they've come for a particular gig.

Can you tell me about the importance of keeping records alive for underground music?

I do think it's important, but it's hard to articulate why.

Physical media is important because it's firstly a way to support the artists much more so than obviously streaming and Spotify and the three cents or whatever the fuck they get per stream. At least you can financially give something to the artist who you listen to and love. So that's a no-brainer.

Also this might be my personal thing, I think if you go to the trouble of putting a record on, you're going to listen to it more actively. I reckon most people, if they do that, they're going to have a more satisfying listening experience. It's a little ritual, to put a record on in the background softly just seems counterintuitive. Nah, you put the fucking record on, crank it up; this is a special occasion.

So, I think it actually makes people better listeners and engage with the music more. In a culture which is increasingly, sort of attention span, like 10 second fucking reels. Listening to a whole album is a commitment. It's actually good for you, for your brain, your concentration, and your well-being.

On the financial and aesthetic level, it is much more satisfying for me.

Can you tell me about your history and records? Is there anything that makes them particularly special for you?

Well, just what I said, I suppose.

[Also] when I was a kid, coming out of the LP era in the 80s. My parents had a bit of a record collection.

I think one of my first memories is the smell, digging in and having a sniff and going, "This looks cool. What is it?" looking at the liner notes and these mysterious people on the cover. The internet didn't exist; they just looked like people from another planet. Everything [had] this mystery about it, which doesn't exist anymore. 'Cause if I can see what everyone has for breakfast. What did Ariana Grande have for breakfast this morning? Oh, there it is. There's no mystery anymore. That's made music lose something, I reckon. There's no imagination left.

Yeah, we just all know everything.

Yeah. I think the best thing an artist can do is to have a little bit of distance from that sort of shit. No one gives a shit what you're doing at the gym. I don't want to know. Actually, it makes it lose something for me.

There's no sparkle there. Where do you see venues placed in the web of the underground music scene?

I think they're vital. Obviously, they're vital.

I've been talking about this a lot recently, about that conversation we were having before about the odd band who rocks up and hasn't promoted their gig.

The model of venues making their money through drinks is problematic. [But it's] still what exists, and no one's quite prepared to come up with an alternative yet because possibly the alternative is hard to imagine. I don't know what it's going to be.

But we're in a situation now where younger people aren't drinking much booze, if any. The appetite for alcohol has gone right down very quickly. I would draw a line about the age of 25 and [say that] anyone under 25 these days [has] far less chance of having a good night at the bar. Occasionally [we] have to make really harsh decisions, and we're going to have one under 25 band a fortnight.

Otherwise, it's too fucking hard. We can have a full room and serve five beers all night. That doesn't pay the rent. We'll fucking close in a month if we keep doing that.

What's the alternative? No one wants to be the first bar to take a cut of the artist's door entry. Artists will whinge and whinge and make the bar go viral for all the wrong reasons. No one wants to be that bar.

A lot of bars are closing because we've got this absurd situation now where a lot of people are filling rooms a lot of nights. But we're serving a lot of water and a couple of lemonades. It's like, guys, I know you want to support the artist, but do you want to support the bar hosting the artist?

Do you think it's the economy? A change in culture?

It's both. Obviously, young people these days have less money than what was once the case. They're earning less relative.

I also think it's the culture. I think younger people just aren't drinking as much. Sometimes, they're pre-loading before they come out, often obviously. Sometimes they'll fucking smuggle the six-pack in the bar, sneak it out the back and think we don't notice. It's like, guys, you're supporting your mates, but thanks a lot. All we literally want to do is pay the rent and stay open.

So I think it's both. It's the economy and the culture that make it really hard. I think venues are vital, unless you just want to have every single gig occur in a house where only friends will see you. You're not going to get out into the world that way. Unless you want everyone to crash your house party and advertise it online, that's not going to work.

It's hard to see what it [will] be like in 10 years, but I think we need to sell something that we're not selling. I'm trying to sell records, which is at least an alternative. Not everyone has a record player still. We've got a lot of mocktails [and] a lot of soft drinks. Some people spend four hours in a bar and never come to the bar once, and that's fucked.

I don't understand. I don't think I've ever done that. The first thing I do before I say hi to my friends is go to the bar. I need a drink to face my friends.

In that vein, can you tell me about the "Save Live Music in Victoria" Petition?

That's a Greens initiative. The Greens, political party.

That was a specific thing about the massive public liability insurance hikes of the last 12 to 24 months. [They were] exponentially more than [they have] been ever before. In some bars' cases, it was like 600 percent more than the previous year. Bars have closed like literally bars have closed, cause it's just too ridiculous.

So that was a response to that. The Greens are pushing the Victorian Government to undersign a publicly funded, equitable insurance.

I don't know if it'll work, and I'm not sure if the issue has mass appeal. For a petition to succeed these days, it's going to take tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. I think the last time I checked, it was about eight or nine thousand. It's very disappointing, but it's such a niche issue. Even people who go to bars often wouldn't be aware of it.

We try [to] push it, and other bars have tried to push it. Again, if you're not posting a 10-second cutesy cat video or something, people don't read this shit.

Yeah, people's attention spans are very specific. Is it the local government that caused the insurance hike?

Nah, it's just the insurance companies. The sort of post-COVID, I don't know.

I believe only two insurance companies will deal with bars now in terms of public liability. Both of whom you have to get in touch with through a broker. So you've got to pay the broker as well. The brokers just say, "Here's your two options: you can do this or that." Both are basically the same; it's like Woolworths and Coles just going, "I'll put our prices up this much, and we'll do the same." It's a duopoly, and there's no alternative.

Do you make the drinks here?

Often, [but] not always. Depends on the night. At the moment, it's the mulled [stuff]. When it's like three degrees outside, nothing is better than a mulled wine [or] cider.

Sounds yummy.

Yeah, it's good.

Check out Ringo Barr on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ringo_barr/#

Billie Estrine

Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

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