''"Queensland was a horrible place to live in. It was incredibly conservative, and if you were gonna live there and be part of an artistic subculture, you were inevitably going to be radical. Generally, there was just a fundamentalist Christian attitude from the police and from everyone around us, and they were trying to oppress anybody, and I think that's why Queensland was the most exciting place to be in the 70s and into the late 70s, and I think it's why punk music took such a hold there."
— Lindy Morrison of The Go-Betweens, Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll
As punk diversified, it split into many tribes. The corporate culture of "cock rock" was challenged by do-it-yourself bands with tone-deaf singers, wimps playing synthesisers, and, most shocking of all, girls on bass and drums.
— Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll
It wasn't the drugs that killed off punk. It was constant touring, bad record deals, mad management, and musical differences.
— Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll
Narrator: Punk had changed everything and nothing. The 80s goes down as an era when we had our biggest successes, but some of our most exciting and original music was left behind, pissed up against the back wall of the pub.
Nick Cave It was a great thing that the Australian music industry did for us, in that they just ignore us, and didn't fuck us up. The ones that they did focus their attention on, of course, were doomed.
Narrator: Audiences would become more receptive to change in the 90s, and music would become more diverse. While Nick Cave was still ignored by mainstream Australia, anger would be the energy for the next generation.
— Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll
Punk rock was required again. It was an eclectic band of misfits that took up where punk had left off in the early 80s. Their challenge was to make that sound relevant and exciting in the 1990s. There was nothing left but to get downright offensive.
— Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll
