For a quarter of a century, The Zoo has been a staple of the live music scene in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.
The Zoo is currently celebrating their silver anniversary with a concert featuring a bevy of old friends and familiar faces.
One of those faces will be Adele Pickvance, who served as bassist for the reincarnation of legendary Brisbane band The Go-Betweens from 2000 until Grant McLennan’s passing in 2006.
As part of the celebrations, Adele will be performing alongside former Powderfinger guitarist Ian Haug on a line-up that also features Ben Ely, Lucinda Shaw, Screamfeeder’s Tim Steward and Kellie Lloyd and a whole lot more.
Adele says she and Ian will be playing a set of songs that includes one each from Powderfinger and The Go-Betweens as well as one of the previous bands they were both in with Grant during the late-‘90s.
“Ian and I played together before in a band called The Far Out Corporation that was with Grant McLennan,” Adele says.
“It was actually Joc’s [Curran, The Zoo co-founder] idea because we’re all friends and she thought we could do a Powderfinger song, a Go-Betweens song and then we can do a Far Out Corporation song, because the common connection is Grant McLennan for Ian and I.
“We’d known him for a long time, so that’s what we thought we’d do. We haven’t done that before and it could also be a good chance to rethink about The Far Out Corporation album [‘FOC’ 1998] that we came out with as well, because it’ll be 20 years since then.”
The Zoo’s 25th anniversary celebration is a chance for anyone who’s ever worked, performed or even just seen a show at the venue to come together, relive the vibrant history of a Brisbane institution and drink a toast to its continued good health.
The Zoo is more than a place where bands play; opened by Joc and her partner C Smith in December 1992, for 25 years it’s been a cultural hub for aspiring local musicians to formulate new art and develop themselves as performers.
For someone like Adele, it was a home. “To have a venue that’s been going on so long… and to have that remain independent without sponsorship from beer or anything like that is really special,” she says.
“It was there before The Valley went crazy, when the city people went to the City and the Valley was more music oriented and not so many clubs in a sense. Joc and C were always welcoming, always asking if you were OK; it was always a nice, warm feeling.
“It was a really new thing to have two young women start a venue too; it was a like a 24 hours a day, seven day a week passion they had and they made it work.
"Everyone I know has worked there taking glasses, working behind the bar or on the door. It’s that network too, that family sense which I think has been part of it as well.”
