A guitar player, singer, a keen river dancer when I’ve had one too many reds, IT guy, father and husband.
I’m part of this podcast because Steve asked me for an opinion on doing the title song and I kind of wormed my way in from there.
Brett Monten on radio and podcasting
This is a whole new and exciting thing for me. I’ve always thought I’d love to do radio and considered trying to get into community broadcasting on several occasions, but the number of buttons they need to push scared me. It’s attractive to me because I see it as a medium to help people; to be an ear, to be a voice of reason and be a source of company for the lonely. So when Steve approached me with the podcasting idea I thought “yeah, why not. Let’s give it a burl and see how it goes”.
I like the idea that with a podcast it’s more of a buy-in from the audience than just passively having a radio on in the background. Listeners need to subscribe or download – a deliberate act – and so everyone who listens is there because they want to; that takes off a whole lot of pressure to behave a certain way to be more palatable for the masses. Add in someone else pushing the buttons and it’s winner, winner, chicken dinner.
An Adelaide boy
I was born in Adelaide and raised here until 1981 when Dad, Mum and I moved to Karratha in W.A. I finished school up there, attended a couple of years at Uni (‘studied’ might be overstating things a tad) and returned in 1986. My formative Adelaide years were spent in Magill and Belair in the days when you could take off on your bike after breakfast with no money,no water bottle, no sunscreen or hat, and certainly no mobile phone. For brakes on the bike, you stuck the heel of your shoe on the back tyre and if you were really cool you might have had a playing card held in the spokes with a peg. “Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. yeah, cool man!”. As long as you were home in time for dinner, you could do what you wanted and were considered completely safe.
I’ve been lucky enough to go overseas for work and with my band, PlanB, and every time I return it’s the same feeling. There’s nothing better than getting off the plane and stepping outside the Adelaide Airport terminal, opening your arms and taking a deep breath. It’s like a multi-vitamin for the soul. I love this place. I love the clean air. I love the amazing pot pourri of cultures and the lifestyle. And although I cringe at our inferiority complex over the bigger cities and the unwillingness of those we vote for to stop covering their arses and just do the damn job, I give thanks every night that I live in this town at this time.
The other lives of Brett Monten
In my day job, I’m an IT Business Analyst with Bupa. An IT Business Analyst is kind of like an interpreter between management and the developers; someone who is there to work out what the business really needs rather than what it asked for, and then to document it in such a way that the developers deliver it rather than what they think would be a really cool way to kind of do it.
My other life and my passion is a singer and guitarist. I perform solo, in an acoustic duo called Dangerfield! and as front guy for the International Rock’n’Soul specialists, PlanB.