Album Review: Riot 111 - 1981! (1981/2023)

Craig Stephen on a recent Leather Jacket Records compilation / retrospective …

Riot 111 were a band created by politics, discord and violence. Their origins lay in the protests and brutality of the anti-Springbok tour movement of 1981 which divided the country in two.

The quartet left the meagre sum of two singles, as well as an appearance on a compilation album of Wellington bands. All of these records have been virtually impossible to find over the past few years, and punters have had to stump up ludicrous sums to opportunistic sellers to get their hands on that vinyl.

And yet, they left a legacy as one of the very few politically dedicated bands that have come out of New Zealand – Herbs are probably the only other I can think of but in a very different style and method. Kiwi musicians notoriously avoid any whiff of confrontation.

(Blogger’s note: I strongly disagree with this. Herbs and Riot 111 were the mere tip of a rather large political iceberg, and I may feel triggered enough to write a detailed response to Craig’s assertion at some point) …   

Thankfully, right before Christmas a collection, simply titled 1981, was issued in a limited run. It rounded up Riot 111’s entire recorded output, using newly-discovered master tapes.

There was no end of inspiration when they formed – the Springbok rugby tour occurred at a time when South Africa was isolated in sporting circles due to the apartheid system. The tour exposed the ugly, racist, redneck upper belly of New Zealand. On one side were those who wanted the tour halted in solidarity with Nelson Mandela and the ANC; on the other side those who naively believed that politics and sport never should mix – or who just didn’t want to know.

 Two of the 16 games were cancelled due to crowd interventions, another was flour-bombed by a plane (but went ahead) and there were protests at all the others.

Into this heated environment came Riot 111 to stir the pot a bit more. Were they even a musical group? Not according to “singer” Void who declared: “We’re not a band, we’re a terrorist organisation.”

So, he penned ‘1981’, released as a single with an anarcho-punk collage cover that would have infuriated those the band wanted to infuriate: Hitler kicked a rugby ball as Prime Minister Robert Muldoon applauded and the All Blacks did an unchoreographed haka. This also forms the cover of the album without any obvious tweaks, while the back of that 7” - featuring police in riot gear - is replicated on the album’s rear.

The single is an (ahem) riotous agit-punk blend of aggressive lyrics, ruthless guitar playing and tribal drumming based around the famous ‘ka mate’ haka, and fused with the South African freedom chant Amandla. It is incendiary and provocative in the context of the winter of discontent that the sporting tour wrought on the country.

The 90-second B-side ‘Go Riot’ is hilarious. There’s no actual music, just a Germanic, hectoring voice ordering a cackling Muldoon to proceed with the contentious tour, and afterwards, distract the population with a royal tour. It then cuts into some mimicking of rugby-loving redneck boofheads.

1982 was an eventful year for Riot 111. They began by supporting The Fall, and at an anti-nuclear gig in Wellington they only managed to play one song as the “move move move” chant on ‘Move To Riot’, which replicates that of the police at protests, literally moved the crowd to riot with Void forced to dodge beer bottles launched at the stage.

The text accompanying the album tells of a stoush between the band and TVNZ which refused to air the video for ‘Writing On The Wall’ from the second single and reproduces the letter from the head of entertainment in full. In it, Tom Parkinson wrote that he thought the song was poor, the musicianship below standard and “the clip is very passe, poorly made and has little merit”. Not only that but he objected to the inference of police violence. So much for freedom of speech.  

Riot 111 comprised vocalist John Void (later just Void), drummer Roger Riot (formerly Roger Allen, a mild-mannered public servant from Wellington’s northern suburbs), guitarist Nick Swan and Mark Crawford on bass. Allen describes Void as having an immense stage presence in his plastic riot helmet, actual police baton and leather trousers or kilt.

‘Move To Riot’ is the most musical of all the tracks and returns to the theme of police repression with Void shouting through a tannoy imitating a police officer breaking up a demonstration. “I am the law, I am order, you have no rights, scum!” Other “officers” abuse and mock the protesters, ie “Did you fucking swear at me?”. As Void speeds up the “move move move” order the atmosphere becomes ugly. Void as “chief officer” says: “I have a gun in the car and I’d love to blow you away” and the song ends in women screaming, glass smashing and people being bashed.

Some tracks don’t have quite the same impact, eg, ‘Escape Or Prison’ is largely an over-played drone lasting an excessive seven-and-a-half minutes. Perhaps with studio time and an empathetic producer behind them Riot 111 could have unleashed a colossal debut album that would have left an indelible mark on the New Zealand music scene.

While all eight tracks released under the band’s name are included on 1981!, I feel an opportunity has been lost. Surely, those master tapes also included alternative takes and demos of songs that were played at gigs but not actually formally released?

By 1984 Riot 111 were no more. Right-wing skinheads were gatecrashing the gigs and causing violence driving many fans away. Void became an actor in Australia.  

Their existence was brief and output meagre but they left a legacy that has never been matched in this country.

Blog Update and some Linky Love

Contrary to outward appearances, this blog isn’t dead. It has merely been on extended sabbatical. A bit like Monty Python’s legendary parrot, I’ve been resting. Pining for the fjords. A sabbatical which began in early 2022, interrupted only by the odd gig review and the irregular – but thoroughly welcomed – contributions of my good friend Craig Stephen.

Thanks Craig. I appreciate your enthusiasm and those album reviews. As on-point and insightful as those reviews have been, I’ve been struggling with the idea of adding any of my own; in these days of free-music-for-all and a surplus of streaming services, does anyone really need to know my opinion on any specific album or artist when they can listen elsewhere and preview it themselves? And besides, Craig takes the blog places I wouldn’t have the nous to go … which can only be a good thing.

In terms of adding any other sort of post, beyond those gig reviews, I’ve also become quite lazy in my dotage, and truth be told, I probably need something resembling a rocket to get my own arse into gear.

I’ve actually been a little in awe of Craig’s capacity to keep finding words. As if having a day job in the media wasn’t enough, in addition to contributing to everythingsgonegreen and multiple other publications, he’s also found the time to write a book on New Zealand football (near completion, publication pending) called ‘Boots and Bombs’. The book’s central theme is the New Zealand national team’s hugely unlikely but scarcely documented trip to Vietnam in 1967. To take part in a football tournament. In the middle of a warzone. In Saigon, with the Vietnam war raging at something close to its horrific peak. Quite a thing.

I have had some involvement with that project – making connections, doing research, and doing some editing. It feels like I’ve read and re-read raw work-in-progress versions of the manuscript a dozen times. It is, admittedly, fairly niche subject matter, but football is a shared passion of ours, as is history, and it has (mostly) been a pleasure to help him out where I could.

Another reason for blog inactivity is that I simply lost momentum after a decade of relatively prolific blogging (700-plus posts). 2022 was a challenging year in so many ways – not least because I spent a large chunk of time in the middle of that year taking in the sights and sounds of Europe – visiting places like Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, and Rome. Plus, I caught the dreaded Covid thingy - whilst holed up in a sweltering Amsterdam apartment amid record breaking mid-summer temperatures, sans the chilled comforts of home. So yeah, blogging just became all too hard for a while and even the idea of it seemed a little bit frivolous.

2023 has conjured up a lot less drama so far, so there’s probably less excuse for the lack of more recent posts. I can only refer you to the “lazy arse” disclaimer offered earlier.

That’s not to say I can offer any certainty about where everythingsgonegreen goes from here. I may post more regularly, I may not. The last thing I want is to feel obligated or for it to become anything resembling a chore. We’ll see.  

So anyway, that’s the update, and here’s the linky love bit:

With New Zealand music history site AudioCulture (aka “the noisy library”) celebrating its tenth birthday during May, I found myself the subject of some scarcely anticipated attention. It turns out that some nine years after its initial publication, my history/scene article on Wellington nightlife in the 1980s (link here) remained the most visited or read article across that site’s ten-year lifespan. Out of some 2000-plus submissions. It proved so popular, AudioCulture had its technical staff investigate to ensure all those visits were legitimate. According to Russell Brown, referencing the article in the New Zealand Listener magazine, checking “there wasn’t some bot in Russia delivering all the hits”. In the end they determined “the traffic was real and organic” … (thanks comrade Botolovski, my wire transfer is in the post. Or something).

The article also received a mention on Radio New Zealand no less, when Jesse Mulligan interviewed AudioCulture founder Simon Grigg about the site’s ten-year history. If that was an unexpected surprise, I was more than a little shocked when the local student radio station, Radio Active, asked to interview me for ‘The Vault’ segment of their breakfast show. That weekly segment of the show being dedicated to “the past”, where a life-weary greybeard comes on to reflect or to preach to “the kids” about life during wartime – or in my case, a life lived amid the seedy underbelly of Wellington’s nightlife in the 1980s. I took them up on that offer (link here).

The “follow-up” article referred to in that interview is this one (link here), where I choose and then dissect ten Wellington club bangers of the 1980s. Specifically New Zealand-produced tracks only, which, to be fair, probably accounted for less than five percent of tunes played in clubs during that era. That was a fun piece to write, and I make no apologies for its heavy synthpop bias.

Right, so that’s pretty much all I have for now. I may be back. I hope to be back. I may not be. Who ever really knows anything about anything?

 

AudioCulture: Atomic

Just published this week on AudioCulture, my fourth contribution to a site which documents the who, what, where, and why of all things New Zealand music. 

It’s a “scene” story about the popular Atomic club night in Wellington, which by my reckoning is the longest-running regular club night in the country - 22 years and counting. It’s also about DJ Bill E’s wider obsession with all things retro and post-punk, and the various archiving projects he’s involved with. 

Check out the story at the link below ...

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/atomic-club-nights

Porky Post … Lost, but never forgotten: Win

In the first post of what may or may not become a regular series – ‘Lost, but never forgotten’ – our good friend Porky reminisces about Scottish band Win, beer adverts, and an album that should have made them world champions …

The Scots have a knack of mixing grimness with humour in culture, and TV commercials are not immune. One such ad for McEwan’s Lager in the mid-80s (clip below) was bleak and dystopian, and photographed in sepia. It featured a litany of people clad in well-worn rags pushing large boulders up a maze-like building, before dropping the boulders onto an assembly line. In the background was a tune that initially appeared to be yet another a synth-led electro radio friendly sound, but soon mutated into a bewitching pop tune with a magnificent chorus.

This was ‘You’ve Got the Power’, by a newly-forming Edinburgh band called Win, a name that’s short and snappy and maps out their ambitions.

More than halfway through this two minute-ad, the lumpen proletariat spot, on the other side of the screen (how that appeared can’t possibly be explained in such a short piece), some revellers in a bar, and use the boulders to smash through the glass and get the goodies (the pint). Smash the state, or at least just smash something to get a drink.

At this time there was a Cuban-style limitation on the lager you could get in Scotland. It was either Tennant’s or McEwan’s, with the arrival of international brands still in the formative stage. But unlike Cuba, these two varieties were utter pish.

The remixed version of ‘You’ve Got the Power’ used in the ad was the first spotting of Win, but the resulting single (all three issues) made little impression on the UK charts, after all the ad was only shown in Scotland.

Why they were even doing this ad bemused the uber-indie fanatic, but the rationale was very simple: Win wanted to be fucking famous and fucking popular and super fucking rich. Alas, they were none of the above, but that was none of their fault.

Win was formed in 1984 by Davy Henderson, the former frontman for cult post-punk band The Fire Engines, with fellow fire fighter Russell Burn and Ian Stoddart. Mani Shoniwa, Simon Smeeton and Willie Perry would also be band members.

Like many Scottish bands, such as the Beta Band and The Associates, Win’s musical style largely defied categorisation. Sure, there were plenty of guitars, but these mingled merrily with drum machines and synthesisers.

Win were bright and shiny, but the people behind Top of the Pops, the charts, and the record outlets, were always suspicious of acts that might try to gate-crash their way into their money-making party, and Win’s religious and Hollywood iconography, plus a love of images of disposable consumer goods, set them apart.

‘You’ve Got the Power’ contained lines such as “You’ve got the power to generate fear …. You’ve got the power to censor what is real”, which fitted like a condom on the lager ad, but perhaps not on Radio Happy pumping out good-time guff to get the drones to work on time and to keep them from resisting the urge to slit their wrists as they served another coffee or stacked another pallet during the day.

Another earlier single, ‘Un-American Broadcasting’, came with a flashy, never-pausing video featuring clips from over half a century of US TV and films, including Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, and the ad scenes in Blade Runner.

A 1987 single, ‘Super Popoid Groove’, released to promote the album Uh! Tears Baby (A Trash Icon), takes the frantic electro-guitar funk to another level, and in a celebratory, tongue in both cheeks vid, the band adorn puffed-out puffa jackets. 

‘Shampoo Tears’ was a great single, but was, of course, unsuccessful. ‘Charms of Powerful Trouble’ has tinges of Prince in his seductive way, and ‘Hollywood Baby Too’ is magnificent in its orchestral majesty. Yep, this is a classic album.

Uh! Tears Baby was voted into the top 30 (albeit only just) of both the Melody Maker and the NME’s annual albums review, no mean feat at a time when the weekly music press could make or break an act.

Two years later Win gave it another crack, with Freaky Trigger, and this time they were on Virgin Records. It saw Win sound slicker and glossier at a time when music was moving away from such concepts. There was a song about Dusty Springfield – ‘Dusty Heartfelt’, which is built on a chorus that’s both pure pop and as irritating as an itch on the rear that you can’t get rid of or scratch in public.

This was intelligent pop for people who dig tunefulness but had a snooty attitude about “quality”. Freaky Trigger is a mixture of songs that just don’t work and songs that continued the trend from the first album, such as ‘What’s Love When You Can Kill for Chocolate’ and ‘Mind The Gravy’, food clearly bringing out the best in them.

A year later they would split, though a third album was mooted. Henderson’s mercurial talents would be found in Nectarine No.9 and the Sexual Objects, where success was not a consideration - they recorded an album but had just 500 copies pressed.

Here's the irony-embracing 'Super Popoid Groove' ...

 

Karyn Hay, RWP, Music Month, and all that …

Last Thursday I attended a fascinating New Zealand Music Month presentation hosted by Nga Taonga Sound and Vision in Wellington, which featured a Q & A session with iconic former Radio With Pictures presenter Karyn Hay. It was the culmination of several NZMM events I personally engaged with this year (throughout May), and I was happy to be able to share this experience with my close buddies Simon and Ron, both of whom who share my passion for 1980s nostalgia of a local “grassroots” flavour … and other things, like drinking, football, and fantasy bands.

Radio With Pictures was an institution on New Zealand television throughout the 1980s, well in advance of anything like the 90s excesses of 24/7 MTV, and while other presenters like Barry Jenkin (aka Dr Rock) and Dick Driver enjoyed tenures on the show, Hay’s presentation across the mid-80s period has always been the most memorable element of the show, for me.

It was something I looked forward to every week. Its late Sunday night timeslot – just prior to the regular Sunday Horror feature – provided temporary respite from the horrific sense of dread I’d usually experience when contemplating the start of another working week. Quite aside from introducing me to a wide range of new music, the show would regularly transport me into another world, one I would otherwise feel very isolated from down here at the bottom of the world. It also championed local music in a way we’d never really experienced before, beyond the realm of student radio.

As part of the sold-out theatre/cinema presentation we were privileged enough to view a full episode of Radio with Pictures from 1985 – introduced to us as episode 15, I believe, although that itself was the source of some confusion for me, as surely there were more than 15 episodes prior to 1985? … with Hay herself having been involved with the show since 1981.

Regardless, this particular episode was a special one in that it featured women artists entirely, including a priceless segment covering the 1984 Women’s Performance Festival in Auckland. We learned later that at least one artist who appeared in that segment was in the audience with us. Other clips highlighted the extraordinary talents of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Ricki Lee Jones, and the fabulous Patti Smith.

The post-viewing Q & A, or discussion, was both amusing and mind-numbing in equal measure.

The amusement came from Hay’s account of things like interviewing a brash (and drunk) Billy Idol, her frequent costume dilemmas, and stories around the wider DIY (and live) approach of Television New Zealand at the time. Plus, a mention of the show’s often bulging postbag, the correspondence viewers would send in, often just to voice criticism of her VERY Kiwi accent. One thing Hay emphasised, given today’s highly regulated environment within that medium, was the amount of genuine freedom both she and the show’s producers were given to do whatever they wanted. Radio With Pictures was all the better for that.

The mind-numbing aspect related to a couple of dodgy middle-aged blokes lamenting the state of “today’s modern music”, or asking moronic questions like “where can I source good music today?” … like Karyn Hay could help them with any of that? Clue: you can source good music everywhere, in abundance, on multiple platforms, in a way we couldn’t possibly have conceived back then.

For my own part, in relation to the accent thing, I was able to offer the perspective of a regular viewer who could dig her accent, with all other mainstream television of the era – beyond comedy – being presented in very correct post-colonial BBC English. Hay’s point of difference, her casual languid chatty style, or her “lazy tongue” as she put it, was precisely the thing that transported her into our lounge(s) … and that colloquial accent had a certain girl-next-door appeal, long before that style became popular on our screens.

More generally, it was a pleasure to get Karyn Hay’s behind-the-scenes take on a show that proved formative for so many New Zealanders of my generation. These days, at age 59, as a mother, an award-winning author, and current Radio New Zealand presenter, Karyn Hay is an unheralded national treasure. I’ll certainly be making more of an effort to check out her radio show in the future.

***

I know New Zealand Music Month has its fair share of critics, for reasons many and varied, usually in context of it being unnecessary and a little self-indulgent, but I embrace it for the opportunity it presents to celebrate our pop culture history. If we don’t do that, nobody else will … so what’s not to like?

Throughout May, on the blog’s Facebook page, I shared a daily “sleeve of the day” post, a local album or single sleeve (record cover) I had some sort of personal connection with, or felt some sort of affinity for, posting a short blurb about the sleeve (or about the music/each release itself). As I worked my way through the month, while contemplating each day’s selection, I was continually reminded of the broad base of genre local artists have established, musically, and in a wider artistic sense. Indeed, how incredibly creative a lot of those record sleeves (or CD covers) were/are. Of course, some have stood the test of time better than others, but even the worst of them are still able to inform, or tell us something about where we’ve come from, or to offer a glimpse back into our collective past.

Just a quick word on May’s Wellington Museum exhibition, Burning Up The Years, which dealt with the Wellington music scene 1960 – 1978. It was only a small exhibition, and probably not music month’s most high-profile event, but it was well worth a good half hour of my time. There were old gig posters, rare vinyl displays, band profiles, and interactive stuff like listening posts etc. The best thing of all? … big screen flyover footage of the city and central Wellington landscape as it stood in the mid-1970s, and a startling reminder of just how much development inner city Wellington has seen over the past four decades.

Finally, a shout out to DJ Bill E and the San Fran crew for putting on another ‘See Me Go’ event a week or so ago in celebration of all things “us”. New Zealand music, all vinyl, all night. Fantastic. You can listen to the (pre-gig) promo clip on Radio New Zealand at the link below:

https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nat-music/audio/2018646332/five-nz-dancefloor-bangers-with-the-host-of-legendary-clubnight-atomic

Here’s Split Enz with ‘Give It A Whirl’, which just might be the greatest local thing ever committed to black magic plastic:

Magazines of my time Part 4: The 1980s … Trouser Press, Blues & Soul, and The Face

So far I’ve looked at a childhood obsession with football magazines, including a comic, a brief flirtation with a commercial pop music glossy, and an early love of newsprint-based music papers. But I’ve only got as far as the early to mid-1980s, and my desire to actually collect magazines, rather than to simply buy them for reading purposes only, is really just starting to take hold ...

And so to my discovery of The Face, Blues & Soul, and to a lesser extent, Trouser Press.

I’ll deal with the New York-based monthly, Trouser Press, first, because it was the most short-lived, and given that less than 100 issues were ever published (between 1974 and 1984), surely the most collectable in the sense that copies would now be relatively rare, and I presume, highly sought after. Regrettably, I have no idea where my own small Trouser Press collection may have ended up.

It’ll certainly be far more collectable than the monolith it was up against in its home market, Rolling Stone (yawn), which, despite being hugely popular, was never able to adequately represent the more alternative or post-punk genres I was most keen on. Which is something that Trouser Press specialised in – all of that left-of-centre stuff that existed outside the realm of FM radio and the Billboard charts. Not by any stretch was it exclusively American, but it was definitely far more sympathetic to home-based “alt-rock” and all things “new wave”, than any other US-based publication I ever came across.

In later years, across the last couple of dozen issues (roughly), Trouser Press offered a “free” flexi-disc to supplement issues of the magazine. Acts like Altered Images, Berlin, Buggles, Japan, Joan Jett, OMD, REM, and XTC, all had flexi-discs released via the magazine. And after it wound up its magazine format, the Trouser Press brand continued as a series of “record guide” books, five in total – three under the title of the ‘New Trouser Press Record Guide’ (1985, 1989, 1991), one as ‘The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records’ (1983), with its final publication being ‘The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock’ (1997).

In early 1986, I decided it was time to move to Wellington. I’d been feeling trapped in Palmerston North for far too long … I was unhappy in my job, and I’d been on the painful end of two relationship break-ups. The capital city offered a number of new challenges and attractions, not the least of which was a comparatively vibrant nightlife. The fact is, nightclubbing had become, if not an obsession, then pretty much my main hobby in life. In so far as it was something I spent almost as much time doing as my fulltime job – which was soon to become, conveniently enough (from a “body clock” perspective), a night duty manager at a large Wellington hotel.

Naturally, with that kind of lifestyle choice, I was being exposed to (and loving) a whole raft of new and exciting music – electro, hi energy, rare groove, hip hop, and before too long, new genres like house and techno. And as anyone who knows anything at all about that scene at that time will tell you, there were two “bibles” for the discerning nightclub patron (or DJ) of the era – Blues & Soul magazine, and The Face. I started to collect both.

(As an aside, although Mixmag was established in 1983, it remained underground for much of the decade before emerging, and um, peaking, during the acid house years. The other more high profile dance music publication of recent times, DJ magazine, didn’t emerge until 1991).

Blues & Soul is basically an institution, established as far back as 1966, and still active today, 1000-plus issues later. A few years back it had a brief spell as an online-only publication before reverting back to its original print format.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Blues & Soul was compulsory reading – what key contributors John Abbey (founder), David Nathan, and Roger St. Pierre, didn’t know about disco, funk, and soul, really wasn’t worth knowing. The magazine’s list of features and interviews through the latter decade in particular reads like a Who’s Who of every genre ever heard inside a club.

Prominent contributors during 1980s included the likes of Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, and Tim Westwood, before each man would eventually go on to establish a successful career as a DJ in his own right. Tong wrote an industry gossip column under the guise of ‘The Mouth’ – a “fortnightly foray into fads, fax, fallacy, and fun”. Oakenfold contributed a regular column called ‘Wotupski’, and Westwood is credited with establishing the first ever hip hop-specific column at the magazine.

The nature of club music is that it can be very fickle, very scene-centric, and at that time there seemed to be an unwritten “freshest is best” rule. To that end, I can recall religiously trawling the magazine’s various charts on a regular basis, obsessing over what I’d heard and what I hadn’t, what I “owned”, what I could potentially get my hands on, and what I’d clearly have to wait a long time for. For better or for worse, these things seemed important for a few years in the late 1980s. In fact, Blues & Soul had a chart for just about everything – singles and albums, for the UK and the US, the magazine’s own ‘City Slickers Hip List’, ‘Groove Control’ and other assorted club charts, and later in the decade, an RPM (raps per minute) chart.

The Face magazine was a slightly different beast in that it wasn’t really a music magazine. It was all about style – fashion, film, art, design, trends, identity, and politics. Naturally, a lot of music content aligned itself with that. From memory, its main rivals in that (relatively broad) market during the era were i-D, Blitz, and Arena magazines, but I think The Face was the quintessential 1980s style guide. Or at least it was for a certain demographic, one that I skirted around the periphery of due to my interest in clubbing, and the small fact that my partner between 1987 and 1990 was a committed fashionista studying textile design at Wellington Polytech.

Nick Logan, a former editor at the NME, who was also prominent in the establishment of Smash Hits, was the driving force behind setting up The Face in 1980. Logan was able to tap into the pool of outstanding journalists he’d worked alongside previously – most notably Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill (see part three), and the guru of them all, Jon Savage, who had worked for Sounds, Melody Maker, and the NME. Savage would later go on write ‘England’s Dreaming’ (1991), the seminal tome about the Sex Pistols and the punk era.

It wasn’t just about words though. As a glossy, published monthly, The Face was also renowned for its great photography and experimental/cutting edge design. Neville Brody was the magazine’s art director through the first half of the 1980s – he later moved to Arena – and much of the mag’s reputation was forged on the back of his ability to bring together all of the separate elements (fashion, film, music etc) into one cohesive whole. Brody is also noted for his album cover designs, and his CV includes work for Throbbing Gristle, Level 42, and Depeche Mode. In the case of the latter, the single sleeve for ‘I Just Can’t Get Enough’.

I think my own interest in The Face had started to fade by the start of the 1990s, but not until I had amassed a fairly decent collection (again, currently awol). I broke up with the aforementioned partner, who would go on to establish her own label and set up shop in Wellington’s bohemian Cuba Street before disappearing from my life completely.

Things were about to take another turn for me, and while music, nightlife, and er, magazines, remained right at the core of my being, I was about to indulge in that most Kiwi of 20-something pursuits, “the big OE”, and head back to the UK indefinitely. I didn’t really have any specific plans, but my passport was British, my ticket was one way, and my intent was to travel light …

Magazines of my time Part 3: The 1980s … NME, Smash Hits, & Rip It Up

By 1979, my life as a high school student was all but over. I was sitting School Certificate and putting in just enough effort to scrape a “pass” in all five of my subjects except History, which I passed with some aplomb, simply because I loved that subject way more than any of the others. The plan was that I’d do 6^th form, my University Entrance year, in 1980, but there were a couple of stumbling blocks in my path that I’d eventually fail to overcome.

The first was that, at 15, all of the things that had shaped my world up until that point, suddenly started to seem less important. I’d more or less lost interest in playing football, and while I was still involved with the school team, I was no longer being looked at for representative team selection. I was off the radar, and in truth, I lacked the physicality to play at any higher level. Shoot! magazine (see Part 2) had started to lose its appeal, and things like Paul McCartney’s Wings, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and this crazy thing called punk rock – an unfathomable mix, I’ll grant you – became far more important distractions to fill my head with.

It was probably around 1979 when I first bought my first music and pop culture magazine. I’m fairly certain it was an Australian publication called Popscore, which enjoyed a brief foray into the New Zealand market around that time. It was a glossy, and I can recall cutting out pictures – one of McCartney stands out – and plastering them all over my school books. I’m still doing something similar on Facebook, and on this blog, today.

I’d started doing after school jobs, and started buying music with my hard earned dosh. I had also started saving money for what would prove to be the second major stumbling block in a forlorn attempt to complete my education (by passing University Entrance) – a family trip to the UK and the USA for several months smack bang in the middle of 1980. The plan had changed, and I was supposed to study from a distance, but it never quite happened.

What that trip did however, was cement my burgeoning relationship with popular culture. Lifestyles, tribes, music, and fashion in London, Brighton, and Glasgow – the places we stayed or visited most while in the UK – were a huge eye-opener for the recently turned 16-year-old me. Punks, Mods, Skinheads, Rude Boys, tartan bondage pants, DMs, the music of The Specials, The Clash, The Jam, and The Police, blaring out from shop doorways and pub jukeboxes … this was all very different to the world I’d known in Palmerston North. And it was at this time I discovered a music newspaper called the New Musical Express, which I started buying as often as I could.

 

 The late '70s, through the 1980s, was a special time for the NME, which found itself at the vanguard of music criticism during the rise of punk and post-punk. Exceptional writers like Paul Morley, Tony Parsons, and Julie Burchill, were all plying their trade at the paper during this period, and the NME was streets ahead of Melody Maker and Sounds, which were its two main rivals in the market – at least in terms of non-glossy UK-based weekly newsprint publications. In the second half of the decade key writers included the equally entertaining likes of Adrian Thrills, Stuart Cosgrove, and Paolo Hewitt.

The quality of the writing – insightful analysis of ever-changing and quickly evolving scenes, and all of the context around that, plus witty album and gig reviews, etc – from staffers was one thing, but the letters-to-the-editor page (or ‘The Big Bad Read’) was something else entirely, and probably where I spent most of my time. It was clear NME readers also held firm opinions and weren't afraid to share them. Often at the cost of a scathing reply from said editor. I also loved browsing the classifieds, and the charts page, with a special shout out to the history-nut-centric ‘Lest We Forget’ charts of years/decades past. And of course there was always Fred Dollar’s ‘Fred Fact’, a tiny morsel of weekly musical eccentricity to ponder and/or marvel at.

For whatever reason, or reasons, the NME has fallen away badly over the past couple of decades and it no longer commands the same level of reach or influence. If anything, for readers of my generation say, the (now) magazine is something of a joke and a sad pale shadow of what it once represented.

While the NME was the champion of all things indie, political, and cutting edge, fans of straight up unadulterated pop music could get their fix from Smash Hits, a magazine that catered for the pop charts. And that meant for much of the first half of the 1980s, it was very much a synthpop-centric type of publication, which is where I came in.

 

Published fortnightly, Smash Hits was a colourful glossy crammed full of posters, lyric sheets, and digestible tidbits. It was almost tabloid-esque at times. Something to be consumed and tossed away, rather than studiously pored over and/or collected. It had its own little niche corner of the market. For a while it did have a specialist indie page, and one dedicated to disco, but mostly it was a rock snob’s nightmare and it concerned itself only with whatever was happening on top 40 radio at any given time. To its credit, the magazine survived for nearly three decades before market forces and falling advertising revenues saw it close in 2006.

My relationship with Smash Hits was only ever intermittent, that whole early 80s synthpop thing being its main draw, but I was still buying it as late as 1983, because I recall having a Tears For Fears poster/lyric page for ‘Pale Shelter’ (removed from the mag) pinned to a bedroom wall in one of my first flats. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it all seemed so deadly serious.

Trivia Fact: Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant was once an assistant editor at Smash Hits. Then he released ‘West End Girls’ and the rest is history …

By the time I’d left school, found a job, left home, and established a set of like-minded gig-going companions (let’s say by 1983, for argument’s sake), I had become aware of Rip It Up, a local music paper, a monthly, that was free to pick up at “record shops” (quaint term) across the country.

Rip It Up started life in 1977, the brainchild of local music identity Murray Cammick, and while it wasn’t New Zealand’s first rock/pop culture periodical, it was the first of any real significance for my generation. It wasn’t exclusively about local music – interviews, album reviews, gig reviews – but it was the only place, beyond token coverage in mainstream newspapers, we could read about local bands, local gigs, and everything else to do with “us”. That said, it had a balanced mix of the local and the international, and was fairly widescreen in scope and genre.

 

Initially, it was quite rudimentary in its design and layout – it was advert-dependent and free, after all – with one-word section headers – “records” (reviews), “live” (gig reviews), “briefs” (short news snippets), and “letters” (self-explanatory, and only occasionally NME-standard for hilarity). It had a genuine fanzine quality about it.

I’d usually start at the “rumours” section, which took the reader on a tour around the country, covering odds and ends, news and gossip, with focus placed on each of the four main centres. It offered a summary of what had been happening in each location, and what we could expect in the way of releases, tours, and events during the month ahead.

From 1977, through the decade that followed, Rip It Up was a newsprint publication, mostly black and white, with a splash of colour reserved for the front cover and the occasional advert. But in 1991, the title underwent a facelift and a change in format, morphing into a glossy magazine, with a sale price attached. And while that’s all fair enough, and perfectly logical, something that ensured its longer term survival, it’s fair to say my own interest in the paper/magazine had fallen away by this time. Not because there was a cost associated with it, but because it had become less concerned with the grassroots, and far more mainstream in its approach.

You can find a fascinating archive of classic early Rip It Up content online here.  

So far, all of the titles I’ve covered off in this series – with the exception of Rip It Up – have been UK-based publications, but in the next post I’ll expand those horizons just a little. Still looking at the 1980s, but taking a short detour into rather more exotic climes …

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

 

Magazines of my time Part 1: Introduction

My name’s Michael, and I’m a recovering collect-aholic. For much of my life, I’ve been obsessed with collecting music, books, and magazines.

In recent years, while music and books still remain very much at the forefront of this personal form of OCD, I’ve been relieved of the need to collect magazines. But for a while, peaking perhaps in the late 1980s, magazines were the most important thing of all. Mostly magazines of the music and pop culture variety, but also magazines relating to sport – football, cricket, boxing (specifically The Ring) … even the odd bloodstock glossy relating to the thoroughbred industry (Blood Horse rules ok!).

The recent demise of NZ Musician magazine – in its printed/magazine format – was at least understandable, but also a little disturbing for someone with my affliction, and it got me thinking about all of the great magazines that have come and gone throughout my lifetime. There’s been a few.

 

So I’ve decided to dedicate a series of blogposts to the genre, a handful of posts about the magazines, incorporating music “papers” and the odd comic, that have been important to me across the past four decades or so. Little bursts of nostalgia, with some context and detail around why each publication meant something to me.

Thanks to the way we now consume news, information, and infotainment, magazines will never again have the influence, or carry the gravitas they once bore. These days, there is less need – or desire – for tangible copy. Everything is available in an instant, on a hand-held device, no less. All the news and information we’ll ever need can now be accessed within a few seconds, and be discarded just as quickly. And that’s fine too.

When I was growing up, during the 1970s and 1980s, it was inconceivable that such an option could ever exist, that technology could open up so many possibilities, and I’m certainly not about to dismiss that level of accessibility in any “oooh, it were way better in my day, lad” kind of way.

 

But I do feel a little sad for my children, in that they’ll never experience the thrill of a weekly magazine subscription. Not for them, the rush of excitement as they walk into the newsagent and spot the new issue of something they’ve been looking forward to, sitting up there on the rack, in pristine condition, in all of its colourful glory. It’s quite probable they’ll never really understand the catharsis that can come with sitting down to casually flick through the latest issue of a magazine they’ve been forced to wait a few weeks for.

One of the goals behind everythingsgonegreen is document some of this stuff from the past, purely for posterity, or else it’ll be allowed to fall between the cracks. When my children can post online, for all of the world to see, from now until eternity, what they’re about to eat for dinner, then surely it’s up to my generation to record some of the pre-internet tidbits relevant to our own otherwise undocumented grassroots existence … and clearly, my former OCD-level need to collect, has now been surpassed by my self-indulgent need to document the trivial. If it’s not recorded, or written about, it surely didn’t happen, right?

I’ll break the series up into several parts … part 2 covering the 1970s, part 3 will look at the first half of the 1980s, part 4 will tick off the second half of that glorious decade, part 5 will look at the 1990s and beyond, leading into the slow steady demise of the printed glossy in the ever less functional world of everythingsgonegreen …

Review: The Wellytown Get Down, Wellington Museum, 18 August 2016

I love a bit of nostalgia down here in the padded cell that doubles as the basement at the everythingsgonegreen mansion. Especially when it comes to celebrating all things local and grassroots. So when an event/gig with a focus on Wellington club culture in the Eighties comes along … well, let's just say things don't get much more near and dear to my heart, or indeed, more local or grassroots than that.

The event was called the Wellytown Get Down, and it took place last Thursday night at the unlikely but salubrious surrounds of the Wellington Museum on Queen's Wharf. It was essentially a chat-seminar-presentation put together by youthful next-gen hip hop aficionado/curator Sen Ski, featuring four genuine pioneers of the Wellington scene: past New Zealand DMC champs Rhys B and DJ Raw, plus ex Radio Active DJ Mark Cubey, and ex Soul Mine owner/event promoter, Tony Murdoch. What these four men (collectively) don’t know about the Wellington club/party scene in the Eighties, really isn’t worth knowing.

The idea was that each man would present, play, and discuss five records that they considered important to the era, with audience participation encouraged – that audience numbering roughly 80-100 by the time the event was in full flow. Sen Ski had clearly done his homework, and the backdrop to the stage – which housed a two-turntable rig/mixer – featured the projection of a series of images and video clips of the time, mostly specific to Wellington and those involved, but also some visuals offering wider scene-setting context (early break-dancing clips etc).

Murdoch was first to (re)present; his essentials being a mixture of hip hop and early house – see Digital Underground, Jungle Brothers, Eric B & Rakim, De La Soul et al – and he was thoroughly entertaining throughout, his knowledge shining through as he dispensed with facts and tidbits relating to each tune, and more generally providing an insider’s view of the dance music scene as it related to music retail and event promotion. Murdoch also paid tribute to two absent DJ’s who were also crucial to the Wellington scene – the now US-based pioneer Tony Pene (“TP”), and the prolifically talented but now sadly incapacitated Jason Harding (“Clinton Smiley”). Murdoch is a natural showman (he’d deny it) and during the course of his “set” was able to offer definitive proof that men can multi-task when he took a phone call (from his “homeboy”, who he urged to join us) while simultaneously continuing to present and play music. Remarkable.

Next up, Mark Cubey was equally entertaining, his angle being that of the student radio DJ – see Radio Active’s Uncut Funk Show and the Wednesday Night Jam – but he was also a genuine mover and shaker within the scene, as an event promoter, a club DJ, and (I’m pretty sure) as a performer in his own right as part of the wider Love Factory Band collective in the early Nineties. Cubey made the point that when he first started at Radio Active in the immediate post-punk era, the early to mid-Eighties, 90 percent of the music the station played was “white”. It was something he set about changing with the help of Pene, who became a fixture on the show, and Dr Johns nightclub, which was an early sponsor. Cubey talked a little bit about the influence of sampling, referencing the widespread use of Chic’s ‘Good Times’, and made mention of the important labels – like Sugar Hill, and Tommy Boy in particular. His selections covered off the Jonzun Crew, the Beastie Boys, and the seminal hip hop precursor ‘Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel’.


Funky 4: Cubey, Murdoch, Raw, Rhys B (credit: unknown/but thanks!)

I managed to have a quick chat with DJ Rhys B (Rhys Bell) prior to the event getting underway as I wanted to thank him personally for helping out with some photos for the AudioCulture piece I wrote a few years back, and he’s still the same earthy and modest guy he always was. I don’t think the current generation of DJ’s – beyond the likes of Sen Ski and perhaps one or two others who know the history – can really appreciate what a living legend he is within the context of Wellington and Aotearoa dance music circles. He is a pioneer DJ in so many ways, not just in terms of club and warehouse party culture, but as a performance DJ in a competitive environment, winning the first NZ DMC title before travelling to London in 1990 to represent Aotearoa at the World champs, where he finished a creditable 12th, and met the great hip hop icon Tupac, among other major industry identities. Rhys B talked primarily about what hip hop (specifically) means to him, about how it possibly saved him and a few others “from the gang scene”, about belt-drive turntables, and about the wider culture of the genre. His selections included music by the Fat Boys and Grandmaster Flash, and yes, it wasn’t until pushed by the audience that he revealed that Tupac connection.

Speaking of humble, DJ Raw (Ian Seumanu), was the final guest selector. Raw is another ex-NZ DMC champ and still very much involved in the scene, as head of the DJ programme at Whitireia Polytechnic and an active mentor for many others in “DJ Battle” circles. I don’t think any of the other presenters will mind me saying that this was very much a case of saving the best until last because Raw closed out the show with a compelling display of what is known as turntablism (or cutting and scratching to us mortals), putting on a show and getting the biggest cheer of the night. Prior to that Raw talked about growing up around older guys like Pene, and Rhys B, and attending clubs for the first time, about how he was influenced by the NME charts, the scene at the Soul Mine, and how getting access to rare early DMC footage on video had effectively changed his life. After being blown away by his closing party trick, I’m struggling to recall his earlier selections but I do know they included Shannon’s high energy ‘Let The Music Play’ and perhaps something from Full Force.

Regardless, whether you’re a nostalgia freak like me, a massive hip hop or dance music fan, or simply someone who loves music and/or local history, the Wellington Museum was a pretty damn fine place to be hanging out last Thursday night. Huge respect to Sen Ski for having the vision and wherewithal to piece it together, and thanks to the participants who took the time to tell their wholly unique stories. It might just have been the best couple of hours I’ve had all year.

Emulsifier on AudioCulture

The blog may have been neglected recently but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy with other projects. Here's one of them, a profile I wrote for NZ music history site AudioCulture, looking back at the life and times of early Nineties Wellington funk/rock/party merchants Emulsifier ... another one of those lost-between-the-cracks stories I felt compelled to expand upon.

Special thanks to Adam Bennett (aka King Ad B) and John Martin (Juan V) for sharing their time and some laughs. Click the link below.

AudioCulture on Emulsifier

Pitchfork, the Eighties, and Me ...

It’s pretty widely accepted in my house that I spend copious amounts of time “living in the past” and generally indulging in nostalgia. I can’t deny that, and everythingsgonegreen itself offers ample evidence for the prosecution … this blog is nothing if not very Eighties-centric at times. Obviously I also like to keep things relatively fresh and relevant occasionally, but on the whole, my comfort zone is the decade that taste forgot, and one or two years either side of it. It’s often said that you should “write about what you know”, and I like to think I know the “pop culture” side of the Eighties as well as any other 40 or 50-something-plus out there. Another thing I’m often accused of – by those in the know – is being a compulsive list writer. This is also true, although that fact is not reflected so much on the blog.

So, you can probably imagine my excitement earlier this week when I noticed a brand new “Staff List” over at the prolific Pitchfork website titled “The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s” (as rated by the many contributors to that site) … which represents a veritable orgy of Eighties-related nostalgia. Obviously every last one of us would have our own ideas and preferences about what should and what shouldn’t make that list, but I think Pitchfork pretty much nails it here (aside from an unfathomable top two). Take a look, click on the link below.

Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1980s

A Labour of Love

I posted a link on my Facebook page earlier this week that generated quite a lengthy thread. The link was this blogpost from Michele Catalano (click here) over at medium.com which looked at the lost art of the mixtape. The post generated plenty of comment, and no little amount of collective nostalgia, proving it was a subject near and dear to the hearts of people of a certain generation.

Catalano completely nails what it was that made a mixtape something special, and offers some food for thought on how a lot of the love has been lost with the throwaway nature of the way we consume and share music today.

Let’s be clear, by “mixtape”, we’re talking about collections of tracks or songs compiled from vinyl to actual cassette tape. Or in later years, those recorded from CD to cassette tape, rather than any of the more recent definitions of the word. It’s interesting too, that much of the “art” itself was lost during that very transition between vinyl and CD. 

Funkin' Marvellous (1987)

But mixtapes were never just random sets of songs transferred from one medium to another. A quality mixtape had to have a theme or a specific person in mind (usually the recipient). They had to include songs/tracks from a variety of source material. Across a 90 minute time-span – with a C90 always preferable to a C60 – you couldn’t include more than a “couple” of tunes (at most) from the same artist. The title of the mix had to be specific and relevant, and preferably the cover or inlay had to be handwritten by the compiler.

Most of all, a great mixtape had to be made with love and care; be painstakingly compiled and crafted, not clinically thrown together like we tend to do with mp3 or wav file playlists today.

These were just a few of the basics, and not rules unique only to everythingsgonegreen. These things were more or less unwritten but widely accepted prerequisites when it came to the now lost art of making a mixtape.

I made dozens of mixtapes through the course of the mid-Eighties to mid-Nineties. I’d buy boxes of TDK or Sony cassette tapes in bulk, and I loved the sense of anticipation involved in opening a new box, and removing the cellophane from the first hitherto virginal untouched tape. It was something of a ritual.

Some tapes were made for purely selfish reasons – often taping music from the collections of friends or flatmates simply to “acquire it” – but mostly I made tapes as gifts for friends and acquaintances of the era. Because I loved the music and genuinely wanted to share it, or as with a few cases, because I wanted to be “the guy” who shared it. Sometimes I just needed an excuse to pass on my “message” – whatever that message may have been on any given day or week. Ahem.

 

A Festive Compromise (1988)

So Catalano’s post was inspirational and as the Facebook thread evolved and started to take on a life of its own I was able to share a few photos of mixtapes made for me by a few of the friends involved (in the discussion), and they were able to share photos of long-since-forgotten-about tapes I’d made for them.

One particularly astute commenter, no stranger to compiling mixes himself, made the point that “the perfect mixtape is always just out of reach. There’s always at least one track that doesn’t quite work, or another that would be better” and how we were always “limited by what records we owned or could scrounge from friends.” Quite something, coming from a guy who owns more than 3,000 records.

As the owner of several boxes full of cassette tapes, many of them being those of the home-produced variety, I also understand the significance of the mixtape as a time-marker. Or the idea that each tape works as a standalone reminder of the period during which it was made. Each tape being representative of something, be it a genre, a place, a friend, or a lost love. Each has a short story behind it, and works as a memorial for days we’ll never get back again. A snapshot of a brief moment in time. And I like that.

*Funkin' Marvellous (September 1987, mixed): This was compiled and created in the DJ booth at Clares Nightclub one afternoon in 1987 by my (then) best friend, who also happened to be the resident DJ at that club. This is a good mix of funk and pop, with a hint of nascent hip hop and house music flavours. The value of 12-inch extended dance mixes is aptly demonstrated on this one, near the end – during the fade for the wonderful State of Grace tune – when DJ turns MC briefly to apologise for a messy transition: he’d been disturbed and the record played out longer than was ideal … a nice personal touch that always made me smile when I heard it.

*A Festive Compromise (December 1988, unmixed): This was compiled and created by yours truly in the lounge of my Hataitai (Wellington) flat during the week between Christmas and New Year in 1988. My partner/flatmate of the era was a design student who had returned “home” to Auckland to spend the festive season with family. I worked in hospitality and time off at New Year was nigh impossible. Thus, I was stuck at home and perhaps feeling a little dark (you think? – Ed). I partly raided the record collection of our other flatmate – who was also (rather more mysteriously) absent – to create what would later become one of my all-time favourite road-trip tapes. The title, of course, references a lyric from the Cure track featured.

 

Speaking of ...