Witness history repeating when veterans of the Brisbane music scene get together for a night of glorious noise dubbed 'Old Is New'.
Guitarist Dennis Anderson has played in local bands for the better part of 30 years, including stints in Curiosity Shop, The Blue Meanies, The Horny Toads and Strutter.
At 'Old Is New', Dennis will be rocking out with his new band Great Divide. “It's probably the third-loudest band I've been in, after Horny Toads and Strutter,” Dennis laughs.
“It's power pop, so it needs to be loud and pretty energetic. John, the singer, writes all the material at the moment, he's quite prolific as a songwriter.”
Drawing heavily on their shared love of power pop, the members of Great Divide pool their varied influences to create classic sounds with a contemporary twist.
“My influence in power pop would be bands going right back to The Jam, The Teenage Band, even Dinosaur Jr to an extent,” Dennis says.
At 'Old Is New', Great Divide perform alongside bands made up of other alumni of the Brisbane music scene, such as Rob Parsons in Nobody's Heroes, and The Highsides that features ex-members of The Girlies, The Hitmen, Chrysalidss and Bambalams.
An all-originals band, Great Divide are also working on their debut album at the moment. “I'm hoping to write some songs myself, but we've earmarked twelve tracks we're going to put on an album this year, and we'll be doing those ten to twelve tracks at the show coming up,” Dennis says.
“The album's a little bit behind schedule; this gig actually has probably slowed us down a little bit because we've diverted our attention to having a couple of rehearsals so we can get these songs ready to do live, but I would say we would hope to have it all wrapped up and out by October.”
As a longtime contributor to live music in Brisbane, Dennis also takes a moment to pay tribute to local legend Rollo, who passed away in April.
“A massive loss,” he says of the late punk rocker and label owner. “He was definitely a very energetic, very dedicated muso who was always helping other musicians, and a good organiser of gigs and shows. He will be definitely missed.”
At this point of his musical career, Dennis says it's encouraging to see such strong support among the Brisbane music community.
“We've had some compliments from other musicians as to the quality of our songs, which is nice when musicians come up to you after the show unprompted and say how much they enjoyed the songs themselves.”
