But Regurgitator founding member and vocalist Ben Ely is excited to bring a bit of alt-rock cool to the event and celebrate the anniversary of the iconic Brisbane band’s pivotal 1997 album Unit in this way.

“I would not have imagined that that record would be intellectualised in the slightest in any way, shape or form,” Ely said.

“The funny thing about that record is that we didn’t really have any songs going into the process. Everything else we just made up on the spot. It kind of just fell out.

“Whereas other times you try and do that and it just wouldn’t work. Other times you might try and plan everything for years ahead and it still doesn’t work. But that one particular instance was fun.”

It’s taken 60 years of the Brisbane Writers Festival to bring the literary crossover so many musos craved – with Ben Ely’s appearance one of the highlights of the festival from May 10-14.

He’s hosting the session at The Edge Auditorium on May 10 which the festival describes as “a dirty pop fantasy”, bringing together a manager, a band member, a producer and an author to look at the craft of songwriting, as well as reflect on the band’s legacy.

“In Brisbane at the time all of the artists and creative people seemed to live in New Farm and we all had the Valley to ourselves at the time and it was quite an amazing time in Brisbane,” Ely said.

“Not many people had cars and we all played in each other’s bands and everyone jammed and throughout that a lot of really amazing things came out of Brisbane and Regurgitator was born from that era in the Brisbane music scene.

“Also things like Triple J going national and people felt like they didn’t need to move down south to have a career. You could kind of do it here due to Triple J and the fact that you could drive interstate.”

Author Lauren Istvandity and recording engineer Lachlan Goold are also on the panel to speak about the book Unit which they co-wrote as part of the prestigious 33 1/3 series.

Ely still can’t believe that Regurgitation’s work is featured in the series. The short books on popular music have a worldwide following, focusing on individual albums by a range of international artists from James Brown to Celine Dion, breaking down what makes that moment in musical time so culturally significant.

“I mean I’ve always been a big fan of those 33 1/3 books and to actually have one out about our band, I dunno, it’s quite a trip,” he said.

“It’s really lovely to have that Lachlan Goold and Lauren Instvandity do that too, that was really good.

“I think I do have a lot of gratitude for the fact that as a band we’ve made a career out of music in Australia. Because I’m very conscious that it is a difficult thing to do and to have it as a way to support my family and everything. I wake up grateful every day and have these opportunities to I guess celebrate it a bit.”

Ely finds it interesting to look back now and see how Unit’s success was reflective of a particular point in time when the world was moving on from the impact of grunge and post-grunge bands.

He said it also involved a fair slab of luck.

“It was a pretty strange record because when we started as a band, we didn’t really commit a lot of money to our recordings and a lot of some bands were going up to record in LA and spending $300,000 on a record where we would just get a small budget and just buy our own gear and do it ourselves,” he said.

“We all lived in Brisbane at the time and just doing it at home was nice because we were travelling so much and the space we recorded in was just a derelict old building that was due for demolition. I think that also added to the sound of the record, the fact that we knew that we weren’t spending any money so there wasn’t a big commitment.

“There wasn’t the stress of being in a really expensive studio. And I think that kind of being in this old dive bomb warehouse in the Valley that was due for demolition the day after we finished recording added the playfulness of that record.”

Ely still likes to drive past the spot where the old abandoned building was, which is now a BMW dealership, to ponder how lucky they were to tap into the musical zeitgeist of the time.

“That record was made so long ago, but that record built our career you could say. But it’s quite weird when you actually play the album from start to finish on stage and when playing it, because some of the songs on that record are very poppy and commercial in a sense,” he said.

“We were going through a phase after our first Eps and our first record of getting a lot of mainly large men turning up to our show…and when you get a lot of guys and alcohol together there can be a bit of violence and it was a bit scary.

“We saw a few people get broken legs and arms and we also saw a bit of sexism in the crowd as well and so we tried to lose a bit of that crowd.

“So we kind of made a conscious decision to try and change our sound a bit to try and attract more diverse crowd.

“And I think it kind of worked. We did have a few people get upset at us like oh, you’re not like we used to be, but we were kind of happy to change in that way.

“Some of those songs sound quite crazy years later. I find it funny, that that record is so popular cause it is quite strange.”

Ely’s panel is one of more than 150 events at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival, including author talks, panel discussions, workshops and all new events called Literary Salons.

More than 60 Brisbane authors will feature alongside a line up of national and international guests such as Stan Grant, Grace Tame, and Tim Winton, while international highlights include Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh and US author Gabrielle Zevin.

It’s expected more than 20,000 people will attend the festival at venues throughout the State Library and Queensland Art Gallery.