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Melbourne's The Tote Re-opens

While this doesn’t affect bands plaing directly this year, it’s worth noting that Melbourne music institution the Tote is reopening tonight after a long battle.

For the last 30 years, the Tote hotel has provided a venue for the craziest of touring and local bands. It was, along with the Corner and the Espy, one of the cornerstones of the music industry in a city that became, through these and a slew of other great venues (as well as no small amount of help from the two excellent independent radio stations RRR and PBS), the centre of Australia’s live music scene, and the incubator for many of the best bands Australia has produced. It all threatened to come crashing down in the mid 90s when Victoria allowed hotels to hold gaming licences, and we lost many venues to the insidious pokies. Only the strongest willed of operators managed to resist the temptation to sell their souls to this cash cow and keep doing what they knew was right. Bruce Milne of the Tote was one who will be going up, rather than down, when his time comes.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, and we saw a very public end to a long and hidden battle, between the lawmakers and the operators of law abiding venues. As drunken louts in very localised city areas created growing problems for police over the last 10 odd years, legislation was slowly introduced affecting all licensed venues deemed “high risk,” effectively making it unprofitable for smaller places to operate in the later, most profitable, hours. The stupid thing was that in its 30 year history, the Tote had never had any serious problems with patrons requiring the police attending. But the damage was done, Milne had been forced to the wall financially, and had no choice but to sell out, the most likely buyers property redevelopers.

Enter Melbourne’s music loving press and public, raising the issue’s profile, organising rallies and petitions, and getting sympathetic and music loving pollies on side. Promises to view applications for clemancy on a case by case basis attracted interest in the right areas, and have led to new operators, no strangers to owning live venues, reopening tonight and announcing a lineup that will over the coming weeks include Japanese surf rockers Jackie & the Cedrics. The Tote has hosted more than a few Japanese bands over the years including recurring FRF stalwarts Guitar Wolf as well as the 5,6,7,8s, King Brothers and many more, not to mention every band from Melboourne, most from Australia, and half a godzillion internationals to boot.

I always loved living local to a live venue… There was always a ready made crowd willing to go no matter who was playing, and a load of ringins who came to see the band playing on that particular night. So there was always a mix of old friends, and interesting new people to meet. Different people every night of the week. The Tote was one of those places. Many a night of my time in Melbourne was spent there, and with some luck, many more will be when I eventually wear out my welcome in Japan. Let’s hope it’s still one of those places when I get back!


This documentary about the Tote has been three years in the making, predating all the above garbage. The Tote certainly holds a legendary place in Melbourne’s music history.

*Photo by Nick Carson and taken from Wikipedia.