Posts by Mike O'Connell
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Hard News: Friday Music: Cilla!, in reply to Craig Thornton,
The concert at the Dux Live in Christchurch was unforgettable
It's a pity so meany good events clashed last night in Chch. Dark Matter was at the Darkroom but I checked out Mulholland at the Wunderbar. One of the best local gigs I've witnessed in a long time. Superb musicianship all round, the band just kept getting better - it was one of those 'short, sharp set, left you wanting more' nights. Jol Mulholland also picked up the bass with keys man Matthias Jordan as 2nd support act with Bowie's Golden Years getting a great makeover.
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AHoriBuzz take liberty with Jimi Hendrix's Hey Joe - not great quality but I think you get the picture!
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Field Theory: It has started, in reply to kiwicmc,
I dear say he may well be. Took a while before I realised what the boos were about. The Dutch fans know how party - and dress for a party! The Brazillians of Europe?! I loved their faux orange S American General/coup d'état outfits.
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Bird Nest Roys are one of the most intriguing fronts of Flying Nun fandom: a bunch of West Auckland oddballs who never played outside New Zealand, but who to this day have fans in far-flung places and among indie nobility like Pavement.
I remember arriving in Bristol 1987/8 and being confronted by all these excited Flying Nun fans who were well up with the play, eager to hear about the FN scene in New Zild - though somewhat disturbingly, these sames fans were also Neighbours fans!!
I should be so lucky ...the first question I fielded wasl 'did you ever see the Bird Nest Roys live?' to which I could happily say I saw them at least twice - in Chc as I recall it, mid-80s playing with the Chills at the short-lived (now totally gone) Zetland (which I believe was a fish and chip shop in its earlier days). BNR also played killer live cover versions of Shocking Blues' Venus and the Hollies' Bus Stop.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Original Beats, in reply to Gabor Toth,
And watch out too for the poppy cutter Lydia Ko. Forget about getting the All Blacks to Samoa - more importantly, a campaign is needed to get Lorde to play in the South Island for the first time - talk it up like yeah (yeah)!!
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And across town on the same night (I’m telling myself I can do both), The Chills play a rare Auckland gig at Juice Bar in Parnell (the old Windsor Castle).
As Ian pointed out, playing in Chch too. In one of my rare forays to the north in the 80s, I recall seeing the Chills at the 'old Windsor Castle' in May 1985. It must have been May 10 going by the amount of YouTube footage from that night. Here, they perform one of my all time live favs, Juicy Creaming Soda
Support was by the Alpaca Brothers, here with Hey Man
The YouTube credits show the recordings were by 'Bob Sutton on a Panasonic video camera'. I haven't heard of Bob but no doubt other readers have? It was a great night, all for the price of $6 or thereabouts.
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But top of the list is my favourite New Zealand album cover ever:
Some fascinating musical and cultural insights on Pininterest. For example, The Keils - which reminded me of the (brief) German heritage associated with Samoa; - and who remembers Tasman Empire Airways Limited, 'product placement' a la 60's style! I note Littlejohn were the precursor to Blerta.
On a related theme, and this may have been covered before, but there's some pretty cool band poster art out there - I stumbled upon this, the Christchurch Library 1980's Poster Collection. Includes the Clean and the obscure like the Cartilage Family (which I'm pretty sure was one of Shayne Carter's earliest bands).
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Hard News: Friday Music: True love works…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Great poster. And I remember being there for most of it. No silly countdown to midnight as there would have been in the Square. Bailter Space played last and just blasted on through into what I recall was a drizzly night. Might have been one of the last times Bailter Space played here; I recalled they bailed (!) last minute about a year back - 'didn't want to play Christchurch'. Anyway, they're still largely producing the goods.
IF you're in Lyttelton tonight (Tommy Chang's) - or the Darkroom tomorrow, be sure to catch Aldous aka Hannah Harding at the start of her nationwide tour - wonderful voice (in the vein of Nadia Reid or Tiny Lies' Hollie Fullbrook, yet distinctive) and if she's in the mood, a stirring version of Non, je ne regrette rien.
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Hard News: Unscripted Drama, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Aah, v good. Would that include Jeff and Russell too?! How about a Waddle of ducks (!) if NZ win the toss and bowl first today (thinking of RJ Hadlee's 7/23 vs. India @ Basin, 17.2.76). Trust the weather the will be kinder to both sides than that day.
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Thx for the update Richard. Looking forward to 2015. Bert Sutcliffe Oval's not a bad venue either but it unfortunately too far removed from its support base. It was great though to see one or two of the recent WC qualifiers there.
No one really mentioned radio commentary in regard to the Eden Park test. Nothing like listening to Bryan Waddle (though one has to put up at times with excruciating advertising). On that note, I couldn't resist putting up this Bill Bryson quote as an excerpt from his musings about cricket spent while living in Australia (Downunder, 2000).
But it must be said that there is something incomparably soothing about cricket on the radio. It has much the same virtues as baseball on the radio - an unhurried pace, a comforting devotion to abstruse
statistics and thoughtful historical rumination, exhilirating micromoments of real action - but stretched across many more hours and with a lushness of terminology and restful elegance of expression that even baseball cannot match. Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowing boat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without
losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction