Hard News by Russell Brown

"What was the first major news story you remember as a child?" read the meme a journalist friend posted on Facebook yesterday.

The responses were intriguing to watch, and tended to have the effect of reminding me that I've been around a while. People I regard as peers cited infant memories of news events (the Falklands war, even Live Aid) that I experienced as a young adult. Others named events (JFK's assasination, Sputnik 1, the Suez Crisis) that I was either too young to recall or hadn't been born for.

What was striking was how many of them were international events. There were exceptions – Erebus, the Crewe murders – but in general the responses underlined how much even then, when the news wasn't instant and unbounded by distance the way it is now, we were still citizens of the world.

This kind of exercise can be useful. We tend to think of today's global perils as uniquely urgent and unprecedented, yet within our lifetimes we've faced calamity and carried on, over and over. I'm also often struck by how close my birth year (1962) was to World War 2. I grew up reading comics in which the bad guys were (German) Nazis.

And I wonder what memories today's small children will still have in 20, 30, 40 years' time. Will they be shaped differently to mine, given the sheer intensity and ubiquity of news in 2017? Will Trump tower over it all? Will the entertainers who make headlines now linger into the future?

For the record, the earliest news event I could definitely recall was the assasination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. I'd not long started school and I recall the teacher holding up a newspaper page and explaining why the people were crying. And then, much bigger, the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 – it was the era of maps and globes and novelty moon products. Curiously, I remember those more clearly than the historic TV pictures. It was through them that I grew up in the Space Age.

In its survey of media coverage around the All Whites' World Cup qualifier in Peru this week, RNZ Mediawatch found something notable: a thinkpiece about the underdogs that focuses not on football but on Flying Nun.

Francisco Blaha has kindly translated the column from the original Spanish and observes that it's "very typical from Latin American music writers, with a lot of name droppings and referencing cool books, plus giving the feeling that they really know their shit. Obviously the author has done his  research ... yet when you read this sentence: 'The Dunedin sound seems as if it has emerged from the marshy and Crocodile infected waters of New Zealand,' you realise he does not know shite about NZ!"

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The birth of rock in New Zealand

A review of the birth and rise of New Zealand rock in the late seventies.

By Percy Chávez Alzamora 

1982 is a year that we all remember now: it was the last time Peru played in a World Cup.

I remember the goal of Panadero Díaz and I remember Lato's bald head. And also that New Zealand was one before last in that tournament. "At least we are not New Zealand," my brother and I consoled.

I was nine years old and after the elimination I began to listen to music on my own, which means that I left the ballads that my parents put. Peru did not return to a World Cup and I stopped listening to Raphael and Camilo Sesto. Triumph and defeat always go hand in hand.

At the same time that the country was preparing to play the qualifiers of Spain 82, New Zealand began to forge what would later be called the Dunedin sound. El Negro La Rosa closed his eyes to score a goal in El Campín de Bogotá and, on the other side of the world, a group of young people from the University of Otago, in Dunedin, gathered in half-empty bars and venues, crowded basements, and stormed old warehouses.

With a battered tape recorder, guitars, old mics and spent batteries, they started that little-known musical movement. Were these college students interested in soccer? I do not know, but it is clear that their stuff was pop songs.

Chris Knox, Alec Bathgate, the Kilgour brothers, Robert Scott, Martin Phillipps and Graeme Downes are not names of the New Zealand football team of '82, but the guys who formed bands like The Enemy, Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs, The Clean, The Chills, The Bats, The Verlaines. They were all young, they were all friends and they all liked punk.

The bands shared the studio, drank and played in the same bars (mainly at The Pitz), lent their instruments, recorded on the same label (Flying Nun), in a kind of community that was not guided by ideals of love and peace, always deceitful and stereotyped, but by something more fleeting and, perhaps for that reason, with more grip in the memory: music.

A music that mixed youth with audacity and self-confidence, with the desire to live at all costs, with the musical referents, with the clothes they wore, with sensations and elements that only exist when you are young and unconscious, ignorant and happy.

Well come on doctor, won't you gimme a shot

I'm feeling cold boy, feeling hot

Doctor said no boy you gotta learn

First don't shoot up and then it's your turn

 ('Anything Could Happen', The Clean).

There is a story that Greg Milner tells in The Sound and Perfection about Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album. In the basement of his house, on a radio cassette, Springsteen composed and recorded the model of what Nebraska would be. He put the tape in his pants pocket and forgot about it. A few days later, sitting in a canoe in the middle of a swamp, the tape fell into the water. He found it and saw that the tape had apparently not been damaged. When he arrived at the recording studio, Springsteen had one thing in mind: the sound that came from that radio cassette player, stuck in his pants pocket for several days and passed through water, was the sound he wanted to have in Nebraska.

The Dunedin sound seems as if it has emerged from the marshy and Cocodrile [sic!] infected waters of New Zealand. A clearly dirty sound, recorded with an old six-track recorder, in which the margin of error is perhaps the definition of the sound itself. This lack of neatness in the recording was contrasted by the ferocity in the interpretation; for songs full of vertigo, in which the technique gave way to impetus, to dementia, to emotion, to passion, to freedom. The strength of the interpretation, before the tonality. They played in half-empty venues without knowing that years later their music would be an important influence for groups such as Yo la Tengo or Pavement.

Children of the Velvet and the punk

It was 1977 and punk was expanding strongly. It had been eight years since the first record of the Stooges, and the Velvet Underground was in the process of consolidating itself as a referential band among the musicians, making Brian Eno's statement about its first record come true: "it barely sold 30,000 copies, but each of those who bought it, formed a band. " In this context, Chris Knox, a guy with shaved hair, eyes of crazy and dishevelled, appears in the New Zealand music scene with The Enemy, a band that did not record any official record, but whose concerts in university bars were the trigger for the Dunedin sound. 

what the fuck can ya do when no one in your town can stand you?

how d'ya feel like a slug or a rock or a king?

 ("Crush", Tall Dwarfs)

The chaos and fury of The Enemy moved to Toy Love, where the contestatory attitude was mutating little by little towards melodic experimentation. The concerts were still chaotic like street fights, but the songs began to acquire an echo of the Byrds and the guitars of Television.

A year later, they would form Tall Dwarfs, a band that overturned all that irreverence in the musical exploration, setting aside the drums, and using any object they had at hand for percussion. The music of Chris Knox, which starts with a clear punk tendency in The Enemy, mutates four years later towards sound exploration in Tall Dwarfs. What started as chaos and noise and fury ends up appeased in frugality.

If some say that the punk was born in Peru with the Saicos, the indie was born with the Clean (1978). Formed by the brothers Hamish and David Kilgour, and Robert Scott, in 1981, the band released their first single, 'Tally Oh', a song that begins with an irrefutable keyboard sound, an invitation to dance and oblivion. Its first album contains five infallible tracks, influenced by the freedom and chaos of punk and psychedelia. Short songs, between two and three minutes mostly, songs to get courage, for sunny days and beers, addictive, fleeting, that make you want more and more ... What? I do not know, but it does not matter either. Songs that leave you feeling that everything will be fine, whatever happens, everything will be fine.

The first bands of Chris Knox (The Enemy, Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs) and The Clean marked the line of sound Dunedin. There were others that emerged from the path started by them, groups such as The Chills (perhaps the most recognized in the American and British scene), The Verlaines (with the shadow of Joy Division among their songs) or The Bats, heeled to simplicity and the melody, creating perfect pop songs.                                                         

What does it take to create high quality pop?  Bob Stanley wondered in Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, his monumental book on pop.

Maybe we need to go back to football to answer that question. Because is not a perfect pop song the closest thing to the goal? It is precise, ephemeral and fleeting at the same time; It is idyllic; it is expressed in the outlandish scream; it needs an audience that identifies itself; invites to dance and euphoria; It is addictive and you always want more. And not having it generates frustration. Same as a football goal. 

Playlist intencionada para aproximarse al sonido Dunedin

“Tally Ho”, The Clean
“Nothing is gonna happen”, Tall Dwarfs
“For the love of Ash Grey”, The Verlaines
“My way”, The Bats
“Sheep”, Toy Love
“Stars”, The Clean
“I go wild”, The Bats
“Kaleidoskope world”, The Chills
“Beatknik”, The Clean
“Crush”, Tall Dwarfs
“Anything could happen”, The Clean
“Ache”, Chris Knox

 

Kia ora koutou! Today is the final Orcon IRL event for the year and we'll be looking at 2017 – and forward at what's to come – from 4pm at Golden Dawn.

RSVPs are all full up, but drop me a line via the email link below and I'll see if  we can squeeze you in. If you can't be there, do watch us on the live stream. The focus this time is on short, snappy interviews, so as to include as many voices as possible. And don't forget the perfrmance from Julia Deans at 6pm!

Here's the stream:

4.30: WELCOME From RUSSELL BROWN and JOGAI BHATT, then MATTHEW DENTITH and TZE MING MOK on the year in Europe.

4.45: TINA PLUNKETT joins us to talk local issues.

4.55: BREAK

5.05: CHRIS FOWLIE on the year in cannabis and prospects for reform.

5.15: HARKANWAL SINGH on data, journalism and diversity.

5.25: BREAK

5.35: CHRIS BISHOP MP on winning Hutt South and facing up to life in Opposition.

5.45: WALLACE CHAPMAN reflects on Back Benches, life on Sunday mornings and living in Waterview.

6.00: JULIA DEANS plays songs from her forthcoming album.

6.20: Everybody's back for the PANEL, until we close at 7pm.

If you like a bit of funk and disco – and more especially, if you're a DJ  – the reality is that you won't find many local classics to fill your crates. That's not to say there's no gold to be had, but you'd be searching pretty hard for a copy of, say, the self-titled debut album by Tokoroa funk kings Collision. There are currently 56 names on the Discogs "want" list for that baby.

Some of the most sought-after tracks are disco takes from people remembered chiefly as pop artists, or funk excursions by rock bands. Record nerds speak in hushed tones of this or that break on an album track. But no one has ever pulled it all together – until now.

John Baker and Alan Perrott have done the job with Heed the Call: Soul, Funk, and Disco From Aotearoa 1973-1983, a wonderful 2LP set out on December 1.

The record opens with something suitably and spectacularly scarce: the 12" mix of Dalvanius and the Fascinations' slinky 'Voodoo Lady', hitherto available only on a promo 12" pressed up by Dalvanius's Australian label, Infinity.

That's followed by the righteous Commodores-style funk of Collision's 'You Can Dance' and probably my favourite track of the lot, Mark Williams' 'Disco Queen', where Collision are the backing band. 

Williams' other 70s dancefloor classic, 'House for Sale' – possibly the only soul-disco tune that namechecks home appliances – is here too, and it's hard not to wonder what such a gifted artist might have achieved in a different environment.

Before he departed for Australia, Williams' two NZ number one singles, ‘Yesterday Was Just The Beginning of My Life’ and ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ were just good pop covers, crafted with EMI's in-house producer Alan Galbraith. Other artists here (Tina Cross, the Yandall Sisters) worked in a light-entertainment-oriented industry, Ticket and Larry Morris (whose grooving 'Who Do We Think We're Fooling?' is a highlight) were rock artists, Prince Tui Teka (here with 'Heed the Call', an unusual ballad with a remarkably loud and upfront breakbeat from the drummer) was from the showband tradition. For nearly everyone here, their funky stuff wasn't what they were best-known for, or was tucked away as album tracks.

Although foreign disco hits frequently made (and even topped) the New Zealand charts, there wasn't really a sense that such music could be made locally, nor many of the kind of clubs that would play it. I sometimes wonder if the presence of Heatwave's Eric Johns – the in-house engineer at Tandem Studios in Christchurch for several years in the late 70s and early 80s and a very sweet man – was something of a missed opportunity.

One track here was a bona fide hit: Golden Harvest's brilliant 'I Need Your Love':

But even they were a group of multiple musical identities and this disco-pop tune was quite a different business from their wilder, more intense club shows.

One other thing bears noting: this is largely Māori and Pasifika music, made even though it may not have suited the music business as it was then.  That makes this compilation even more of a cultural achievement. I'll certainly be buying a copy myself.

You can pre-order Heed the Call on either double vinyl or CD from Flying Out or Southbound. Best not muck about if it's the vinyl you're after: there are only 1000 copies worldwide and only 300 allocated for New Zealand.

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I dont know how it came over on TV, but last night's Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards were memorable and impressive in the room. Nearly every show since the awards moved to to Spark (formerly Vector) Arena has basically lost the back of the room by halfway through the evening, but that didn't happen last night. The show was tight, the performances were well-curated and even the jokes weren't bad. Well done, everyone.

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Neil Finn has generously donated a guitar to the New Zealand Music Foundation and proceeds from its auction on Trade Me will be used to help the charity’s work with projects that use music in healthcare and with at-risk and vulnerable people and support its work providing emergency assistance and counselling to music people experiencing illness, distress and hardship.

It's quite a notable instrument: a Maton EBG 808 acoustic electric custom-made for Neil in 2004. It's the guitar he played in his tribute to Paul Hester at the 2005 Aria Awards and has also been used by Tim, Elroy and Liam Finn in the studio and in concert. It was built by Andy Allen, who now runs Maton's "custom shop", but predates the shop itself. Basically, this is a really interesting guitar with a nice story attached to it.

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Here's an unexpected archive gem: Living Up to Their Name, a live Sneaky Feelings album recorded in 1987 at the Gluepot and pressed up on vinyl. It was sold at the band's recent tour shows and gets a wider release on Monday – unusually, only via this Discogs page.

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Oscar Davies-Kay of Rackets has a new project, Water, that's less intense and more melodic than his old band's work. It's pretty cool and the new album, Enjoy, is a free download on Bandcamp. They also have this nice video of K Road scenes for the track 'Country Calls':

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Tunes!

Something wild from Muzai Records: a cover of Technotronic's 'Pump Up the jam'. It's on Artery, the new album by Embedded Figures, aka Dunedinite Amber Skye:

I thought the official remix of Lorde's 'Homemade Dynamite' turned the original into the song it really wanted to be. And here's another cool take by the Dutch DJ Sem:

And an extended dancefloor edit of an old fave: Petko Turner takes on Beats International's 'Dub Be Good To Me' (free download):

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