The first song to be written, record and released in New Zealand by a New Zealand label was sung by a woman.
Pixie Williams, by her own account, saw music as a means to happiness and never coveted a career. Other women who followed may have had more ambitious goals, but for decades they had no real route to controlling their own destinies.
But in the 1970s, Shona Laing and Sharon O'Neill not only wrote their own songs, but were signed because they did. Punk rock arrived and began to invalidate ideas about proper gender roles. The Flying Nun community emerged with women who played instruments, sang songs and eventually managed the label. Smart, pioneering women ran Virgin Records' New Zealand arm. My partner Fiona managed Dead Famous People, my friend Suzanne managed Fatal Jellyspace. Things did change and continued to change.
But obstruction, exclusion and bullshit didn't go away and in recent years there have been conscious efforts at inclusion: Apra undertook to redress the gender imbalance, financial and otherwise, in its sector, and Julia Deans devised a tour for which all support acts were female or non-binary fronted bands or solo artists, and the booking agent, promoter, publicist, and most of the band and crew were women. Girls Rock Camp has done an amazing job of introducing young women to playing music.
Less formally, the DJ scene has begun to diversify away from being a boys' club and perhaps one day a leader like Aroha Harawira won't have to worry about being groped and vomited on by men while she's trying to do her job. But what Aroha has done really matters: it says to young women watching her that they can do more than just make up the numbers on the dancefloor.
All of these developments should be seen as the industry speaking to itself, keeping itself honest, doing better. And that's how Chelsea Jade's online comment about the all-male lineup on Six60's Western Springs bill should have been heard. Chelsea wasn't the only female artist to make that observation, just the one who said it out loud, and she had a damn point (for comparison, Ladi6, Jess B and Silva MC provided a fair bit of the energy at Fat Freddy's Drop's Springs show earlier in the summer). Similar criticisms were actually made of other summer festival bills, most notably Homegrown, Unfortunately, blowhards like Sean Plunket weighed in on the "madness" of balanced bills and some Six60 fans felt it was okay to outright abuse Chelsea online.
But sometimes a celebration is due, and that's what Milk & Honey festival is. Next Friday, March 8, International Women's Day, will see five venues across four cities host shows featuring lineups led by women, produced by women. It's the brainchild of 25-year industry management veteran Teresa Patterson and Elemenop bass player and erstwhile SAE Institute staffer Lani Purkis.
"We kind of came up with the idea independently," says Teresa. "I thought about it when we were putting together the ideas for Julia Deans's tour last year and Julia said to me, gosh, there's so much talent around the country.
"And I said, how come there's not a female festival, like Lilith? We should put together something for International Women's Day. We should put on a series of gigs. I booked the Powerstation and Lani got wind of the fact that I'd done that and she contacted me and said, I've been wanting to put on an all-female festival. So we decided we should do it together."
The idea took off and one gig became five. And they're really good gigs:
Powerstation, Auckland: Tami Neilson, Nadia Reid, Julia Deans, Ria Hall and DJ Sandy Mill.
Whammy/Wine Cellar, Auckland:carb on carb, CHAII, Cheshire Grimm, Dead Little Penny, HEX, LEXXA, Randa, October, Sami Sisters, Tooms, Wax Chattels, Valkyrie.
Club 121, Wellington: DJ Alexa Casino, Half Queen , Peach Milk , Amy Jean.
Blue Smoke, Christchurch:Bic Runga, French_concession.
Sherwood, Queenstown:Mel Parsons, Dana Sipos (Canada).
"We've really tried hard to have women working behind the scenes," says Teresa. "I'm looking after the Powerstation and all my crew but one are female. All of Lani's crew at Whammy are women. We just want to show young women that there are options out there – and that it can be a safe environment. That it's just normal."
It would be good to see Milk & Honey become an annual celebration – ideally one with the all-ages shows that this first year is missing.
"We would love for it to be a regular thing. We would love for it to grow, to become a proper festival. But most importantly, we would love for there not to be a need for it. For all festival lineups to be 50-50, and all crew and so on. That there is 'balance for better', as per the theme of International Women's Day."
On a personal level, I'm stoked to see my DJ buddy Sandy Mill involved. Sandy's more than a DJ, of course: she's been the guest vocalist on any number of dance tracks over the years and and has sung with everyone from Neil Finn to Basement Jaxx and Boy George. But it's only in the past year that she's been able to finally do her own thing (it's no accident that her new label and production compay is called She's the Boss). In similar vein, Caroline Easther, drummer for The Chills, Let's Planet, The Verlaines and others, has just stepped out from behind the kit and released Lucky, an album of warm, winning alt-country and indie pop. For both, it's been a long road to singing their own songs.
So anyway, tickets to all the Milk & Honey shows can be purchased here. And, thanks to Teresa and Lani, I have a double pass to give away to each of the shows. Just click the email reply button below this post and put the venue name of the show you want in the subject of your message.
I'm on the road working from next Monday, so I'll draw winners on Sunday.
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New on Audioculture: Alan Perrott's great profile of one of the good guys of New Zealand music, Malcolm Black, my history of Splore and Chris Bourke's story of the infamous Neon Picnic.
And I'm back playing records at Cupid bar in Point Chevalier tonight, along with Ben McNicoll (Ijebu Pleasure Club). Next Friday, it's Mark Graham and Jackson Perry. Come on down!
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Tunes!
Peter McLennan, aka Dub Asylum, likes a bit of Carribean-style steel drums, and he's a longtime champion of local reggae. He brings the two together today with this remix of Herbs' 'French Letter'. It's really lovely, and it's available on Bandcamp at a price of your choosing.
"How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be? How many shops will there be?" Duncan Garner demanded of Chloe Swarbrick MP towards the end of his inept interview with her on the merits of cannabis legalisation.
It wasn't just that he chanted the question while Swarbrick was trying to answer his previous one. It's that it was a question she was in no position to answer. It was the wrong question. And only someone who had no idea what was actually going on would ask it. Sadly, this is where we're at with cannabis referendum "debate".
Swarbrick was eventually able to say that she wanted to a strict regime that would avoid the "Uberisation of cannabis" seen in some US states and prohibited commercial advertising. She subsequently explained that for her part she was communicating the Green Party position to the minister responsible for next year's referendum on cannabis legalisation, Andrew Little. Which was that there should be a law, debated and voted on by Parliament, which would contain a clause bringing it into force in the event of a positive vote in the referendum.
So the question – something else that Garner repeatedly demanded Swarbrick tell him – should be "Do you vote Yes or No to the Legalisation and Regulation of Cannabis Act?"
Some people have suggested a two-stage question, or even multiple choices. But this is the process recommended by constitutional lawyers. It has the virtues of simplicitly and clarity, and ensures that people know exactly what they're voting for if they vote "Yes". And it appears that this is the approach the government will take.
So the question to ask of any MP is not "How many shops will there be?" but "How many shops do you think there should be?"
Amid the banalities of some of the media coverage, this is the critical thing that is missed: we have choices here. Our elected representatives will draft a bill and they will hear what we have to say about it in a select committee process. What we have to say will influence the final bill that Parliament votes on. And then we vote on that.
There are relevant and important questions to ask about what the bill should look like. One of Garner's attempted zingers, for example, was to put it to Swarbrick that "this big tax revenue" everyone was expecting "didn't happen". This is, of course, nonsense. In Washington State, five years into legalisation, cannabis industry tax revenues are booming; running ahead of forecasts to the extent that they're debating what to do with the extra money.
But it is true that in legalisation's first year in California, legal sales (and thus tax revenues) have been lower than expected: $2.5bn versus an expected $3bn. That's $500m less than the year before, when California's fairly loose medicinal cannabis regime was the only way to legally buy weed. There is now a political bid to try and increase tax revenue by lowering the excise rate.
But it's complicated. On the face of it, Washington's cannabis sales tax is more than twice California's. So why are its revenues booming? Well, firstly because its tax is relatively simple, while California levies different amounts in different ways on different parts of the industry. Moreover, regulatory compliance costs in California are crippling suppliers who are trying to go legal.
That last part is really important. There are two key strategic reasons for legalising and regulating cannabis. One is to get a handle on public health issues. The other is to curb the black market. And the two goals may at times be in conflict. The standard public health response to a harmful substance is to tax it punitively and make it really hard to supply. We're going to need to ask ourselves whether that's the right thing to do with cannabis; to look for the sweet spot in tax and regulatory settings.
One other lesson might be available from Washington state: authorities strictly limited the number of licences available at the time of legalisation. California imposed no limit on either the number of producers and retailers or the size of farms, but made the regulatory burden incredibly high. The evidence is that we probably don't want to be like California.
There a lot of other things we could and should be talking about – from testing for cannabis in the workplace and on the road to permission for home-growing and what should be done about historic convictions – but we're not. Instead we're getting the kind of empty clickbait being dished up by Garner and the AM Show.
I'm also getting more than a bit tired of people declaring that "a referendum isn't the right way to do this" like they're dispensing some grand wisdom only they have thought of. No, it's not (although it does have the merit of offering a very clear mandate if change is chosen). But it's what was politically available at the time – there simply wasn't a Parliamentary majority for legalisation in its own right. And more to the point, it's what's actually underway.
There is also a responsibility among Parliamentarians from all parties – who will vote on the law that we vote on – to take this process seriously, to stop making it a partisan issue and to develop a considered position on the manifold choices to be made. The National Party – and hence its social media cheerleaders – have shown little sign of doing so. Last week, Paula Bennett posted this on Facebook.
It's a nice enough sentiment. But it's completely at odds with her party's endless tub-thumping on the limited and temporary statutory defence for people in palliative care in the government's medicinal cannabis bill, – the provision repeatedly attacked by Simon Bridges as "decriminalisation by stealth". The "most vulnerable" people Bennett is sorry about not getting their medicinal cannabis are the same people her party wanted to have no protection from criminal prosecution. It's just maddeningly incoherent and it's not fucking good enough.
It's also incumbent on the government to communicate what it's doing and to consider all the issues as it frames the proposed law. I don't think it's a complete disaster if Cabinet decides not go go with a fully-worked-through law, if there's still enough detail for people to know what they're voting for, but it would be disappointing. Also, they need to crack on with this. There needs to be provision for a process and communication of that process in May's Budget. We need to be serious here.
Finally, and returning to the AM Show, I'm appalled that the show's producers have refused to provide sources for most of the claims Garner hurled at Swarbrick from his list of 12 bullet points. It's the most basic element of having a discussion about evidence. I think I might have tracked down the source of Garner's claims about students in Los Angeles and their attitudes to cannabis. It may have come from the comments here by the lead author of a study of the different ways LA 16 year-olds who have tried cannabis have used it.
I think the study has some issues: the assumption that vaping is somehow automatically of more concern than smoking in particular seems hard to justify. But that's not the main problem with quoting it as an argument against legalisation. That would be that all the field research for the study was conducted before cannabis was legalised for adult use in California.
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Anyway, that'll do for now, but I'm interested in your thoughts and commentary on the issues raised here, links welcome.
Over the past week, the annual police cannabis recovery operation has been taking place in West Auckland. A helicopter – accounts differ on whether it is a police or NZDF aircraft – and a spotter plane have been flying low over the Waitakeres and the West Coast beaches, directing a ground crew towards small outdoor grows.
These operations take place around the country every summer and are partly funded via the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, which provides a contestable fund allocated by Cabinet for (mostly) anti-drug initiatives. And they take a fair chunk of the money, it appears: in one round in 2015, $721,000 went to "more police anti-cannabis surveillance flights", from a total allocation of $5.1 million. (The largest grant, $1 million, went to a programme to identify and prevent foetal alcohol syndrome disorders, which seems entirely laudable. FASD is a huge generational public health problem.)
There is also an effective subsidy from the New Zealand Defence Force, which provides helicopters and personnel, and it can be very difficult to assess the total cost of resources. In 2016, an OIA request by Kyle Sutherland seeking that information with respect to the Tasman District operation of that year was bounced around the office of the Minister of Police, the New Zealand Police, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the NZDF. The NZDF was able to confirm that the cost of the use of an RNZAF helicopter was $52,800 but declined to provide a breakdown of staff costs on the basis that it would be too much work. The Police, for their part, responded that information on police costs in the annual cannabis recovery operations "is not collated or held". It's not exactly a triumph of accountability.
Residents, whether they are growing cannabis or not, largely hate the annual operation in the Waitakeres. It's intrusive and the aircraft fly low – and where plants are detected, herbicide is sprayed from the air. On past form, there will also be criminal prosecutions resulting from the operations. Those cost money too, and the Proceeds of Crime disbursements don't nearly cover all the costs. But I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that the operations continue to happen because there is funding to be had.
What the operation in Auckland does not do is meaningfully reduce cannabis supply in the region, where the serious, commercial cannabis growing is done indoors as an organised criminal enterprise. Such cannabis cultivation was driven indoors by aerial surveillance years ago.
But this year's operation has claimed a further casualty. Below is an open letter written by Pearl Schomburg of Auckland Patients Group, who published it along with pictures of a small medicinal cannabis grow, before and after it was sprayed with herbicide. Pearl says the grow was composed of entirely medicinal strains used to make products destined for "very unwell patients including palliative patients."
Pearl believes, probably correctly, that it will be three to five years before whole-plant cannabis products are legally available under the new medicinal cannabis regime. In the meantime, the only way patients in palliative care – who are themselves protected from prosecution – can access such products is through small, illicit operations like this.
Rolling out the operations year after year just doesn't make sense in the current environment, at last in West Auckland. It doesn't meaningfully reduce supply, it diverts money that could otherwise go into treatment and education, and it hurts people. We urgently need to rethink what is happening here.
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Dear Jacinda,
Recently the NZ Police commenced with their annual air searches for cannabis plants in the north and indeed yesterday I had reports they were out at Piha, Karekare and Huia.
The grows they are finding are mostly small individual personal grows, and our compassionate providers organic outdoor annual grows.
I have attached heartbreaking photos of my provider's (Gandalf) crop that was poisoned by Police last week. These plants were all medicinal strains and destined for high quality products for very unwell patients including palliative patients. This will make it very difficult for Gandalf (my provider) to guarantee supply for all his patients including me.
Our ADHB specialists continue to refuse to write prescriptions for legal Cannabis medicine due to departmental policy and the products legally available are limited, expensive and ineffective for many patients.
Our compassionate providers are trying to manage the increased amount of patients they are receiving due to medical professionals refering patients to seek cannabis to ease their suffering where conventional treatments have not helped.
Although the Medicinal Cannabis Bill has passed I believe it will be 3 - 5 years before all patients will receive access to affordable, quality, whole plant cannabis products, with guarantee of supply from the companies currently setting up in NZ. Indeed it will be a year before we know what the regulations will allow.
Our compassionate and self providers have been achieving great results for themselves and others during the last 90 years of prohibition and indeed there is recorded safe usage of cannabis by communities for centuries beforehand across many cultures.
These folk deserve a voice at your regulation table and this cannot happen while they continue to be criminalised. I ask you to establish a pathway to 'grandparent' these folk into the future which must include an immediate amnesty on all medicinal cannabis patients and their supporters including providers, nurses and carers.
Patients continue to be traumatised by raids and the loss of their plants and medicine has a huge impact on their wellness and recovery.
Police discrimination is not working for our patients and their providers and I ask you to show your greatest kindness and compassion by resolving this issue immediately and allow our community to continue doing their very best work.
Most music festival organisers, anywhere in the world, have some idea of cultural victory in their heads. They want not only to make money, but to have their shows stand for something.
You've probably seen one or both Fyre festival documentaries, which are an excruciating look at what happens when you crave a victory – albeit, in this case, a victory within a celebrity culture that's toxic to the heart of music itself – but lack the honesty, decency and dedication to actually achieve it.
The truth is, music festivals are really hard. You're responsible for ultimately uncontrollable spaces, answerable to both the authorities and the people who pay you money. And to really succeed, you rely on those people to embrace your event as part of their culture.
The annual Laneway festival is, by tradition, the home of bands and singers you probably haven't heard of yet. The bands and singers who are going to be big next year, or the year after: that's the brand. As the sole big urban festival (it briefly crossed over with the Big Day Out) it has also become the place where city kids show up and show off, sometimes in ways that don't have a whole lot to do with music.
Of course, Monday's 10th anniversary Laneway Auckland was headlined by the very-well-known-indeed Florence and the Machine (who, you may recall, played the first one, at Britomart). But, as Sam Flynn Scott put it in his review:
I’m pretty sure I used to be the target market for Laneway, but this year I barely know anyone on the lineup.
As a joke, my good friend Lukasz sent our group chat what we thought was the lineup, but was actually a list of food stalls. None of us even noticed. I’d happily watch Judge Bao live or get a glass of Rex Orange County. It’s all new to me.
Yeah, I did a double-take at that food banner too. I mean, it's plausible.
Our crew arrived at Albert Park about 3pm (missing what sounded like a pretty good crop at the bottom of the bill, per Graham Reid's review). There were dozens of discarded Lime scooter around the gate.
We headed over to hear Skegss at the Dr Marten's stage. They seem like an okay sort of garage rock band and they drew a crowd. But then they played this one song and the kids in the crowd went nuts and sang all the words. It was 2017's 'I Got on My Skateboard' and it's the one, presumably, that cracked the Spotify algorithim and got on playlists. Well, I guess: I mused for the rest of the day that I don't really know how people 30-odd years younger than me discover and consume music.
From there, we went over to the first act I really wanted to see: Bene. She turned out to be something of a victim of her own success. Alfred Street, the narrow lane that is the site of the Thunderdome stage, was rammed nearly all the way up – which presumably had something to do with the diabolical sound. For most of her set the bass was a loud mess and her vocals flew away on the wind. At one point, her mic cut out completely. Many of the people packed in there seemed keener on talking than listening, which also didn't help.
But again, it was the hits. Things took off when she played her first single, 'Tough Guy', and when she did her current single, 'Soaked', it seemed like every girl in the crowd knew every word and sang along and it was brilliant. As evidenced by its current No.1 position in the NZ artists singles chart, that's clearly her Spotify hit.
We walked back over to the Dr Marten's stage for something completely different: The Dead C, this year's strange and solitary example of a heritage act. Let's face it, no one ever expected to see Florence and The Dead C on the same bill, until it happened. We waited in the shade of the tree by the stage until they started – and then just stayed there when they did. I found their squalling free noise not only enjoyable, but oddly relaxing. The Dead C, it turns out, are a great festival act. They even had a fancy video backdrop!
From there, we took in some of A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie over at the Rotunda stage, which was where the hip hop and soul acts were scheduled. It was bangin', felt like it had a bit of a sound system vibe and it was fun to be in a big crowd set on having it large. Possibly a little too large: about 20 minutes in, the packed crowd in front of the stage parted and a stream of wide-eyed, overheated kids gushed past us in pursuit of shade, water or whatever. Stay hydrated, young people. And wear a hat.
It was time for Parquet Courts back at the Dr Marten's stage and I enjoyed their ability to sound like a different band with every song. A little punk rock, a little psych, and in the case of their singalong Spotify playlist killer, 'Wide Awake', quite a lot disco. I'm very much in favour of rock bands playing those rhythms.
In the course of all that, I missed Lontalius, which I regret now, but I'd been put off by my Thunderdome experience a couple of hours before.
We tried a bit of Jorja Smith, but, frankly, none of us could get into it. It just seemed pretty ordinary. So we went and sat down under another tree and relaxed. And this is where I really disagree with Graham Reid, who wrote:
And what became increasingly clear as the day wore on and people peeled off for shade and rehydration-by-beer was that in fact the music – for many there – was incidental to the event itself ...
Music festivals may have always been less about the music than the chance to hang out with friends, but I don't think so.
Sitting right at the back of a Sweetwaters on a hill, halfway down in front of a Big Day Out mainstage or even at previous Laneway festivals, it always seemed to me that people were there for the whole set.
This time I did not get that impression.
Music has become much less important in the lives of young people – we know that – but it seemed to me that this very well organised Laneway was an expensive way to catch up with friends.
I actually felt that this was the Laneway that delivered on what promoter Mark Kneebone said about the Albert Park site when the festival first moved there three years ago. It was a site where people could comfortably spend hours and, if necessary, get away from the music for a bit. Lie down, eat some good food, have a yarn.
It's not actually compulsory to shuttle from one stage to another like maniacs – it's just that Mt Smart Stadium and Silo Park, where there was no real escape, made it seem that way. I'd long made a habit of wheedling my way into the VIP bar at urban festivals, just to have some respite. I don't bother any more at Laneway. It's better out in the park.
Then it was time for Courtney Barnett, the only act we watched at the big Princes Street stage. She was all class. You know what you're getting – she never loses touch with her Oz rock roots – but she's authentically great at it. My friend's daughter joined us and she and I sang along loudly to 'Depreston'. We were happy.
That's when I really took account of something I've seen others mention: there were a lot of women at Laneway this year, and presumably the headliners had something to do with that. And not just young women, but groups of mums whose once-a-year MDMA was clearly coming on, old-school lesbian couples, all sorts. I think it made for a better festival.
In the first year at Albert Park, 2017, I was struck by how wasted a lot of kids were early in the day, to the extent of being stretchered out at 2pm. My guess at the time was that it was a combination of alcohol bingeing and some shitty cathinones masquerading as MDMA. I didn't see that this year.
There was bedlam at certain times and places, as you'd expect – that's part of the fun and you shouldn't go to a music festival if you don't want to be in a lively crowd. And while I saw a couple of young guys lose the plot – including one at Bene who inexplicably decided he wanted to fight the man next to him, and even, tragically, spat at the man before being guided away by his mate – the male dickishness seemed to be dialled down.
My friend Jean, who was subjected to really nasty harassment at the last Silo Park Laneway – thought so too. This is worth talking about: Laneway's promoters took what happened to Jean and others in 2016 very seriously. They didn't want that bad year to happen again. So Jean's shitty experience was a factor in the introduction of a women's safe area (the best toilets, Jean says) and an 0800 onsite emergency line. The promoters also granted her five years' free entry to the festival. This year, she chirped to me, men danced with her in the crowd and that was a lot better than being harassed.
(She also got quite a few kids coming up to tell her how great it was that old people come to festivals. You get that. Charlotte Ryan got that.)
It's a rule of festival production that the first year on a new site is always the hardest: after that, you can work out what your problems are and refine what you're doing. Laneway is getting pretty refined. I never had to queue too long at the bar or for a toilet and the wine bar area – to whence we repaired after Courtney – was just very pleasant. It had bean bags! None of us had any interest in seeing Florence, so we relaxed again, with a couple of glasses of rosé.
The only thing I really wanted to see – indeed, the artist I wanted to see more than anything else on the bill – was Jon Hopkins, so while we waited for him to come on at 9.30pm, my buddy and I sampled Denzel Curry (which just sounded like yet more 808 hip hop that I'm not into) and then found ourselves back at the Thunderdome for DJDS, who performed amusing and occasionally risible EDM to a small, frantic crowd.
We walked back past the Princes Street stage, where Florence was howling and groaning to a huge crowd. I mean, I'm glad she makes people happy – even Simon Sweetman – but I just want no part of it.
After another rest at the wine bar, we went over for Jon Hopkins and he did not disappoint. I had the dance I'd been craving all day and while my body moved, my head was working through what he was doing with those tones and those rhythms. It was wonderful, as good as techno gets in this kind of setting. I was elated by it. Jonah Merchant got some video of the title track from Singularity:
Yeah, the lights were really that bright.
After that, we waited for my friend's daughter and her boyfriend to finish up with Florence and then walked down the hill, expecting to catch an Outer Link bus back to my place, as I'd done in previous years. No dice. First, the usual (and in past years) bus stop was closed, with not really enough signage saying so. Fortunately, I noticed and we decamped to the temporary stop on the other side of Queen Street. There were no buses. It felt like the day's big production fail was not at the festival, but at the damn bus stop. Auckland Transport, do better.
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I've been to a couple of other festivals this summer. Wondergarden on New Year's Eve was the first. The promoters got caned last time over the crazy bar queues, but they fixed that this time – partly by adding another bar, but mostly, I suspect, by managing to get people to not all arrive at once at 9pm. The stretched-out day also earned them quite a few family groups, which was cool.
But I found myself internally shouting at people to put some damned muffs over their small children's ears. The stages got a significant production upgrade this year and it was loud. Too loud, perhaps, for the Silo Park site. There were a few older punters cowering down by the kids' playground at times.
The big innovation was the setting up of a nightclub in the silos. It was a brilliant idea not so brilliantly executed. Fiona and I went in and had a nice dance for a while in one of the outer spaces – they each had their own PA stack – but it was kind of unpleasant eventually. Getting the sound right in a series of round concrete spaces was always going to be a challenge, and so it proved.
But the big problem was that at the same time as the festival sorted its event production, something went badly wrong with the stage production. We caught Avantdale Bowling Club, who were brilliant in front of a smallish crowd, and showed another side of themselves in a festival setting. ("It's kinda nice to be in Auckland on New Year's Eve," Tom Scott observed from the stage. "Usually at this time of year we're in some zombie campground.") 'Home', which they play live with the long rap performed entirely a capella, just gets better every time I hear it.
From there, it seemed a long wait for local Instagram-R&B star Matthew Young. Who was fucking dreadful. I get that he has an audience, but a festival stage is not the place for his music – not until he can do something that's not as dreary and formulaic as what he dished up. I understand why he was booked – compiling festival bills is a matter of reaching different ticket-buying audiences – but it sucked. And did I mention it was really loud?
Katchafire were up next, after what seemed like another longish wait. They were, well, Katchafire. And that's where things seemed to go off the rails. Fiona and found bean bags to sit on and waited for Cut Off Your Hands. Forty five minutes after their scheduled set time, they came on. They were pretty cool and had a new thing going on – I loved their version of 'Pull Up to the Bumper'. But because of the delay, their scheduled 50-minute set wasn't even 30 minutes long. Ladi6's set – again, 45 minutes late – was also great and similarly truncated.
By then, Fiona was exhausted and I had a party to DJ at, so we headed home, missing the internationals Dam Funk and Nightmares on Wax. We'd had an decent enough time, heard some good music, but I feel like Wondergarden still hasn't found its sweet spot.
The other day out was Fat Freddy's Drop's festival lineup at Western Springs outer field – on a scorching day with little in the way of shade. This was the kind of show where families bring their folding chairs and relax. At times, it even felt a little too relaxed. If Wondergarden was a little too loud for its site, the Freddies show was a little the opposite. It was certainly quite different to the last time I saw them – their thunderous, intense Bays album launch show at Auckland Town Hall.
But what it was, was a lovely day out with dancing. And, as my friend Madeleine pointed out, one apparently devoid of dudes being jerks. ("It's like they've put something in the water!" she marvelled.) The consensus of a subsequent Twitter discussion was that that's a Freddies thing. They foster niceness. Long may they do so.
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Seeing as this is a music post and not just a festival post, allow me to recommend the most delicious new dub album I've heard in years. Last week, Christoph El' Truento, the adventurous Auckland producer and DJ, released Peace Maker Dub to mark his own 30th birthday. It's finely-tooled, warm and basically the musical equivalent of a welcoming hug from a friend . Get your name on it while there's still plenty of summer to come.
You might also want to get onto this free download of a previously-unreleased John Morales remix of Candi Staton's 'Victim', while it's there.
And, finally, Massive Attack playing 'Teardrop' in Glasgow a few days ago. Oh my goodness ...
As I've done for the past five years at the Splore festival, I've put together The Listening Lounge, a Saturday morning talk programme for conscious (in both senses of the word) Splorers.
Again this year, we'll be talking about drug policy. Feedback in past years has been that people particularly appreciate these discussions – because they generally don't get to hear them anywhere else. But Splore principals John Minty and Fred Kublikowski were also keen to reach into something that happens when Splorers get home from their weekend: we all think about how we can bring some of what's special about Splore back to where we live.
So, Saturday morning at the Living Lounge ...
10.30am FLASHBACK: The surprising promise of psychedelic therapy
This discussion has its roots in a feature story I wrote late last year for Canvas. It looked at the way that Michael Pollan's book How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics has vaulted years of serious research on the therapeutic potential of LSD, psilocybin and other drugs into the headlines. I'll be joined by two of the people I interviewed for the story, University of Otago medical anthropologist Geoff Noller and Amadeus, the founder of the Psychedelics New Zealand Facebook group, and ADHB registrar Will Evans, who has worked on studies with Dr Suresh Muthukumaraswamy of the Auckland School of Medicine and has a strong interest in this fascinating new therapeutic field.
If you want to know what's up with this stuff, this is where you'll find out.
11.15am PLEASE DON'T F*CK THIS UP: The next two years' drug law reforms
New, health-oriented directions for police discretion, a new medicinal cannabis regime, the Minister of Police praising festival drug-checking, new budgets for treatment and, of course, the 2020 cannabis referendum. We're entering an unprecented couple of years for drug policy in New Zealand – can the government get this right? And what does "getting it right" look like?
I'll be delighted to welcome Chlöe Swarbrick MP, a backbencher who has become a key figure in the Parliamentary drug policy landscape. Wendy Allison of independent harm reduction champs Know Your Stuff joins us again and Geoff Noller (who is also a former boad member of Norml) stays on the stage. I'm particularly pleased to also have someone from the addiction treatment frontlines: David Hornblow, who works independently and with the Waiparera Trust.
12.05pm KEEP AUCKLAND WEIRD: Visions of urban placemaking
I'm stoked to welcome Juval Dieziger, co-founder and Chief Emotional Officer of Berlin's Holzmarkt, an urban development project designed to capture and not simply roll over the spirit of what went before it. Or, as this Guardian story puts it: "what if a city allowed a new quarter to be built not by the highest bidding property developers or the urban planners with the highest accolades, but the nightclub owners who put on the best parties in town?"
We'll be joined by Frith Walker, placemaking specialist at the Auckland Council CCO Panuku Development and Chlöe Swarbrick – who, before she was an MP was a mayoral candidate with some perceptive ideas about Auckland nightlife. Auckland is changing – can we guide some of that change so that it includes the diversity and strangeness that make urban life what it is. And if you think I'll be talking about Karangahape Road, damn right I will be.
It's a content-packed two and a half hours that will be all wrapped up by 1pm, at which point I personally will be vigorously shaking off my respnsibilities. I would also note that if you're onsite at Splore on Friday, do get along to to all-new DJ Stage, where Sandy Mill and I will be opening proceedings from noon til 2pm as Mum 'n' Dad Disco, delivering happy tunes for proper people. Bring the kids!
