The American agency Fleming Artists claims to be the first US agency to open an office in Melbourne, which they are calling Australia’s ‘Music City’. Their goal is to break Australian acts into the international market.

As reported in Your Daily SPA, the new office – the agency’s third after New York City and Michigan’s Arbor – will be led by John Sinclair. Sinclair has worked with Premier/Harbour in Melbourne. They wrote:

Fleming itself is run by Jim Fleming, who over 30 years have represented the likes of Grant-Lee Buffalo, Jeff Daniels and Ani DiFranco.

A statement for the company championed Melbourne as the focal point for the Australian scene, which is sure to irk stakeholders in the Sydney scene.

“Melbourne is Music City in Australia. There are hundreds of bands playing here weekly so it made sense to open the Australian branch of Fleming Artists in Melbourne,” the statement read. “This city has long held the mantle of the best live music city in the country, and the level of talent that’s coming out of Melbourne now is staggering.”

It states that bands coming out of Fitzroy’s The Old Bar are “the most exciting group of musicians since the Civic Hotel in Sydney in 1978 nurtured bands like INXS, Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Mental as Anything, The Angels, Icehouse [and] Mi-Sex.”

Fleming already appear to be working with “Bands like Graveyard Train, Little John, The Brothers Grim, Toot Toot Toots and Cash Savage,” who “are really taking off.”

 

Now, given everything I hear about Melbourne’s lack of suitable mid-scale venues, and a general crabby attitude towards live music in general (maybe it’s merely my peers who grumble; if that’s the case, let me know!)… it seems odd to call it Music City. Then again, you’d hardly give the title to any other city in Australia. Right?