Organs, Undies & Library Dance Parties: U-Bahn's Picks From Melb Music Weeks Past

It's go-time! Melbourne Music Week starts tonight, kicking off with 20 shows spread across the city (again, that's just tonight). If you're a Melbourne music lover, it's one of the best times of the year - ten days of peerless line-ups making use of the city in a way that changes how you see it forever.

So to celebrate the ribbon being cut on the tenth MMW, we asked U-Bahn, one of the bands holding the scissors, to share some best-of moments from previous years.

MMW 2017: HTRK and Underground Lovers, Melbourne Town Hall.

Undies played a beautiful, stripped-back rendition of their hit Losin' It. Both them and HTRK sounded immensely huge in the main hall and the addition of the organ made it a really special gig overall. It's great seeing HTRK in small smoky rooms but there was just such an epic quality to their sound on this night; the main hall's natural resonances complemented their own reverb so well.

MMW 2017: Chapter Music showcase in the Town Hall Council Chambers.

Laura Jean, Gregor, David Chesworth, Guy Blackman and more - what a beautiful line-up! This was part of the mammoth 'Miscellanea' event, which included HTRK and Underground Lovers. Again, the music seemed to suit the space very well here. With Laura Jean and Gregor now having released wonderful albums since 2017, I'd love to see this line-up again.

MMW 2016: Severed Heads and Harvey Sutherland in the Queen's Hall (State Library).

This was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. Trust MMW to turn a library hall into a huge dance party. The event organisers always do such a good job at putting live music into unconventional spaces in a way that seems so fitting. "How are we going to get '80s industrial electro-pop to sound good in this big room with tall old pillars?" "We'll find a way". And they did! This was also a classic example of MMW's ability to combine older legendary Australian artists with newer trailblazers such as Harvey Sutherland.

MMW 2016: NUN in the State Library reading room.

A number of artists played from the middle of the dome. Genius. Those who didn't have the energy to dance around the middle could sit along the desks among dimly lit green lamps and others sifted through books on the outer shelves. Since this show, I've never looked at that room in the same way.

MMW 2015: Live Music Safari at The Mercat featuring Sleep D, Moopie, Elizabeth Dixon + others.

There were some legendary underground electronic artists on this line-up. The first 200 people in got a free Butter Sessions 7"! RIP The Mercat.

Live Music Safari: The Curtin ft U-Bahn plays tonight from 6pm.