Posts by Simon Grigg
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I vaguely recall when the guy lay around in zwines for the night and very few I was with even noticed anything unusual about that.
There was a very dark side to the whole Auckland punk scene.
Yeah, I remember that night pretty well. It caused quite a fuss over the next few days. Poor bugger, but those was nasty a Terry Clark created shadow over those days and there were more than a few casualties. I was chatting to someone the other day about poor Sarah Findlay (Martin Findlays' daughter), smart, absolutely gorgeous, and quite lovely to be around before the smack took hold....and dead by 1981/2. Don't know if you knew her? There were lots more.
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it's definitely the work of Terry Hogan.
Oversight, esp since Terry sent me the JPG to replace my scan of my battered copy. Will fix now.
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My favourite Beatles book, hands down.
I love the book too but thoroughly disagree with large parts of what he says. He comes across as a McCartney apologist which I think is rather unnecessary at any time. And he's not at all good on Lennon, so much so I've slammed it down in some disgust more than a few times, with vocal rant to myself about how he's missed the bloody point. But for all that he says it very very well, and not many books on music can do that to me (trying to track down my copy of The Dark Stuff right now....)
It's a failing of McCartney's..he always needs to over-compensate for the criticism..witness the Barry Miles book and his "I was the arty one" nonsense. He should be satisfied with being Paul Fucking McCartney for heavens sake, with perhaps the greatest body of pop music in the last century under his belt.
But I guess that need to continually prove himself has been the driving force behind The Fireman and the Nigel Goodrich collabs.
My favourite Beatles books are an obscure fanboy thing from about 77 by Nicholas Schaffner, called The Beatles Forever, about growing up as a kid in Beatlemania, and a book he ghost wrote with Pete Shotton, Lennon's boyhood friend and PA in NYC, In My Life.
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Were you there for the balcony collapse?That was a bit of fun Ahh, the good ol' daze :)
I watched someone leap off the balcony into the pinball machine on the floor below on opening night.
It didn't work after that.
Don't recall the balcony collapse but was always dodgy. It was a bit of a weekend haunt for quite some eight months from Feb 78 onwards. I think our visits became more sporadic after that and not at all in 79.
Dunno if you've seen this?
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I'm pretty addicted to Wax Poetics these days, mostly dealing with all sorts of obscure rhythmic stuff in an obsessive way that makes me all hot and bothered.
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God, I used to be such a music magazine fiend. Had a compactum full of NME
I had a fairly hefty number of much loved NMEs from the 70s when living with Brendan and Johnny from The Scavengers in 77-78, until one day coming home to find most gone.
They'd been taken into Durham Lane West, and turned into the wallpaper in the about to open Zwines, where The Scavs were the resident act. Ta guys...
Whatever Paul's excesses and failings, they're absolved just by Lady Madonna.
I think, critically anyway, Macca's largely been rehabilitated in recent times. I think I've said this before here, but his last few albums have been rather good, and far more adventurous than most of his peers, with even the likes of the grumpy old Dylan expressing quite some admiration.
It's just hard to put bloody Ebony & Ivory or Mull Of Kinytre totally out of ones head I guess.
And Stella's styling him now so he's rather presentable too.
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And I'm at a loss to understand why we are fighting in Afghanistan when I read things like this over and over again
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Grant Smithies is the best music writer in the country I reckon.
His book of NZ albums was a beauty I thought. But NZ has been very lucky over the years and the legacy of Roger Jarrett's mighty Hot Licks and of course Mo's Rip It Up is still very large. To my mind all good music writing in NZ owes a massive debt to both of them, and both the current RIU and Real Groove can draw a direct line back to Murray.
Internationally, it's easy to forget that NME at it's most influential peak, circa 80-85, was only selling 100,000 worldwide on average, far less than the more mainstream Smash Hits and the metal-ish Sounds
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If so, then how can you really be sure that there isn't at least one nice coffee at Starbucks?
I've been to plenty of airports off the beaten track where S/Bs is the only real choice (unless you want grossly over-sugared teh es or teh panas) and I've tried pretty much everything that looks half decent on their boards.
I'm sure.
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RT:
And I'm sorry for sounding like a broken record here, but how about we try enforcing the laws we already have, and retire the wet bus ticket then actually bother prosecuting bar staff and licensees who blatantly flout it?