Mathers’ background includes journalism
work at the NZ Herald, writing business stories and lifestyle columns, so she’s
no mere novice, and it therefore came as something of a surprise that Backstage
Passes proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. There’s some good, some average, and a
little bit of ugly.
The Good … for the most part, that untold
story gets told, and Mathers’ informal pub-chat writing style ensures that the
narrative is never boring. We move through the decades effortlessly,
chronologically, and all key locations - the four main centres: Auckland,
Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin - are covered off in detail. We’re only
occasionally transported out to the regions, which is fair enough. All of the most
relevant stuff tended to happen in the cities where the population is, or was,
large enough to sustain a vibrant live music scene. The book is crammed full of
first-hand accounts from those who were there at the time; venue owners,
promoters, musicians, and punters alike. And there’s plenty of photos on offer
to supplement those words. Mathers clearly dug deep to source anecdotes,
quotes, and photos (all black and white).
Of specific interest to me was coverage of
the late 1970s and 1980s, because that’s the era my own earliest gig-going
experiences align with. This was the good oil for me, and it was heartening and
nostalgic to see boxes ticked for important venues like Mainstreet, the Gluepot,
the Windsor, and Zwines in Auckland, the Hillsborough, the Gladstone, and the
Dux de Lux in Christchurch, plus the Captain Cook and the Empire Tavern in
Dunedin. Near the end, in a section titled
“Now”, which takes us beyond the timeframe outlined in the book’s title, Napier’s
Cabana is quite rightly acknowledged (if a little belatedly), and the recent
closure of popular Auckland venues like Golden Dawn and the King’s Arms is justifiably
lamented.
The Average … the book feels a little
front-loaded and we’re nearly halfway through its 190-odd pages before the
1970s come into view. I found the coverage of Wellington in the 1980s (in
particular) to be very lightweight and it almost felt like the author was paying
mere lip service to the capital. We learn a little bit about key venues like
the Last Resort and Bar Bodega, for example, but the iconic Terminus pub only gets
a very short paragraph, the Cricketers Arms gets even less than that, and
there’s no mention of places like the Electric Ballroom, the Clarendon, or the
Clyde Quay, all of which were important venues during the era.
And how hard would it have been to include an index for reference purposes?
And how hard would it have been to include an index for reference purposes?
The Ugly … there are several glaring errors
in the book. It really does - rather surprisingly - fall short on a few basics
in the area of proofing and editing. Simple things like getting spelling and
some names correct. Miramar becomes “Mirimar”, Lambton Quay becomes “Lampton
Quay”, Bodega owner Fraser McInnes becomes “Fraser McGuinness”, Dave McArtney
is twice referred to as “Dave McCartney”, and there’s a mix up between onetime
Wellington mayor Fran Wilde and pioneering punk turned film producer Fran Walsh.
Mathers gets Walsh’s name right in a later chapter but only after referring to her
band as the “Wallflowers”, when its actual name was the Wallsockets. Meanwhile,
a fan account or extract on page 50 is titled ‘Pretty Things in Palmerston
North’ yet the content within that account deals only with a Pretty Things gig
in New Plymouth, without any further reference to Palmerston North whatsoever.
These may only be minor flaws, but they
were enough to (OCD alert!) undermine my enjoyment of the book. Near the end, I
found myself questioning nearly everything. After all, if I could identify a
few basic errors regarding the (mostly Wellington-related) stuff I already knew about, then could I really trust the detail around the
other stuff I knew very little about?
A few years back, after my own poorly
written but nonetheless popular “scene” piece on Wellington nightclubs in the
1980s was published on AudioCulture, I was contacted privately by a fellow site
contributor who offered the sage observation that when you write an overview of
something small-town or regional that nobody else has previously written about,
your account needs to be as accurate as possible because it more or less becomes
the definitive account by default.
To be fair to Mathers and Backstage Passes,
much of this has been written about before, and she makes no claim to
have written a definitive account. In fact, in her Final Word, she states … “this book is a tiny snapshot of those days. The stories contained
in here do not claim to represent historical fact” … which may, or may not, be taken as
something of a disclaimer. And for me, the point about accuracy still stands,
and if this is supposedly the telling of an “untold story”, then why not ensure
all of the minor details are absolutely spot on?
Having said all of that, it would be
churlish not to acknowledge that the good here does indeed outweigh the average and the ugly. Thanks
mainly to the rich reserves of subject matter and the small fact that we all
love a bit of nostalgia.
So yeah, it’s probably just as well that I’m
usually quite easily pleased when it comes to books of this nature, and
Backstage Passes gets a pass mark … but only just.
Published by New Holland Publishing
ISBN: 9781869664879
You can buy a copy of Backstage Passes here
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