Why we need Indie radio stations and music festivals

Rebecca Meston’s introduction to alternative music came via Helen Razer on triple j.

It was the 1990s, Meston was a teenager listening to the radio … and she’d never heard a woman talk about music the way Razer did. Quite simply, it was mind blowing.

Today, Meston is an accomplished writer and director, and Indie radio stations are at the heart of her new musical called Hits, which launches in Adelaide next week.

The show also celebrates the transformative power of music festivals.

In an interview with CityMag, Meston, looking back on her triple j-inspired awakening, says “I wouldn’t have known about any of this stuff … there was no internet, there weren’t so many channels.”

Set in 1992 pre-internet Australia, Hits is all about the punk-inspired awakening of fifteen year old Rhiannon.

Obsessed with music, Rhiannon ditches the ‘dad rock’ and discovers the world of music festivals via The Big Day Out.

“Music festivals like the Big Day Out were the site of a massive explosion of music, ideas, fashion, culture and 1993/1992 was the day and age where it was a really ripe time,” says Meston. “It was really bringing that idea that something is shifting culturally,” Rebecca says.

“INXS and that kind of style was on the outs and Nirvana and Hole were coming up through the ranks.”

Meston says discovering new artists and finding a community at music festivals looks different today. And yet the result is pretty much the same.

“Whether that’s Taylor Swift or you’re into some kind of really hardcore metal and you go and find your people at that gig, you may never see them again after that weekend, but for that moment, that was really important and that’s just the same as it was in the 90s,” she says.

Hits has been described as a love-letter from our teenage self to the song or the artist who saved us – and came to us at our most misunderstood time.

The show features an all-South Australian cast including Annabel Matheson, Eddie Morrison, Emma Beech and Ren Williams

Hits will be staged at the Space Theatre next week with tickets available via the Adelaide Festival Centre website.