Boots and Bombs

If you’re a regular everythingsgonegreen reader then the chances are you’ll be reading a lot of Craig Stephen’s words and not so many of my own (as the actual “supposed” blogger). I hope one day to reclaim the blog as my own but in the meantime, Craig’s doing just fine. As I’ve said previously, Craig takes the page places I wouldn’t dare to take it, simply because his knowledge of indie or alternative music is varied and vast, whereas my own is somewhat more limited and mostly retro pop-based. He’s the windswept and interesting one. I’m the lazy boring one.

Anyway, Craig’s just finished writing a book about New Zealand football called Boots and Bombs. It focuses on the New Zealand national team’s visit to war-torn Vietnam in 1967, to play in a football tournament, during the height of the Vietnam war (!), but it also offers a potted history of the code in New Zealand. I did some proofing, fact-checking, and research for the book, and offered Craig encouragement along the way – in addition to our mutual love of music, we also share a passion for the beautiful game. And since the book’s publication a little over a month ago, I’ve also been helping him out with some promotional stuff in a sort of auxiliary publicist capacity.

As part of that, I submitted a review of the book to a website called Friends of Football, a site which can rightly claim to have the widest reach of any website that concerns itself with football in this otherwise god-forsaken rugby union-obsessed land we call Aotearoa. It certainly seems to have the most active local social media presence. Since Craig has been doing almost all of the recent heavy-lifting for everythingsgonegreen, I thought it only fair that I reproduce that book review here:

 Friends of Football Book Review: Boots and Bombs ‘a bloody good yarn’

A newly-published book explores the state of football in rugby-mad New Zealand in the 1960s and 1970s.

Boots and Bombs: How New Zealand football grew up in the 1960s and 70s, by Craig Stephen (2023, ISBN 978-0-473-67266-9).

Reviewed by Michael Hollywood

1967… the year of Sgt Pepper and the original summer of love.

The year of decimalisation and the introduction of our dollar. The year we mercifully stopped dishing out free milk in New Zealand schools.

The year our feted All Blacks became the first team to complete a grand slam-winning tour of Britain since the great invincible side achieved the same feat way back in 1924.

And it was the year, somewhat incredibly, when a group of largely amateur footballers from New Zealand were sent into the heart of war-torn Vietnam to represent their country in a football tournament.

Life was clearly very different in 1967.

You could say it was another world, and it’s a world revisited in some detail in Boots and Bombs, a new book by first-time author Craig Stephen.

A book that has that Vietnam trip at its core, and it’s quite some tale.

The notion of playing international football in war-ravaged Saigon while battles raged all around the South Vietnamese capital is worthy of analysis in itself, but that part is merely an otherwise scarcely-documented centerpiece for the book, or one part of a much bigger story; the story of how New Zealand football finally came of age.

1967 is simply the focal point of that wider story, not just for the drama surrounding the Vietnam excursion, but because it represents the year the national team played its first full international fixtures in five long years.

It was a kick-start, if you will. It was also the year of other tours of interest to these shores — by soon-to-be European champions Manchester United and the visit of a Scottish FA selection.

Plus there’s some coverage of that year’s trip to New Caledonia, which rather curiously coincided with the Saigon tournament, and featured a second national team made up of an entirely different squad.

You wait years for a municipal transport bus, and then two arrive simultaneously.

Highlights include the chapter on the disastrous and questionable 1964 World tour (no full internationals played).

Coverage of the various British clubs who toured here during the period, especially across the 1970s. Coverage and comment around the evolution of club football in New Zealand. Critique and analysis of our three pre-1982 World Cup qualifying campaigns, a forlorn process which commenced in 1969 with New Zealand’s first attempt to qualify for the world game’s global showcase.

And, of course, for an unrepentant anorak like myself, Stephen’s potted history of the code here, across the early chapters, is invaluable.

We tend to view history through rose-tinted glasses, and it can often be difficult for younger generations to really comprehend how different things used to be.

Small things like leading footballers being forced to work in their day jobs on the day of a big game so as not to lose income.

Footballers paying their own way, absorbing their own travel costs, and buying their own kit.

Anecdotes around coaching, and coaches — there’s a tidbit or two around the eccentricities of national coaches like Juan Schwanner and Lou Brozic — that illustrate both the extreme gulf, and at times, the fine line, between amateurism and professionalism.

We already know all about 1982, and about 2010; those stories don’t need to be told again.

And no book can possibly cover the same amount of ground or level of detail that mainstream media and indeed, social media, offer to today’s All Whites.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Boots and Bombs wraps things up around 1982 or at the very least the early 1980s.

Stephen’s book is all about how we got there, not to Spain specifically, but the journey to credibility itself through the 1960s, through the formation of the sport’s first-ever National League, and right through the 1970s.

It provides a snapshot of history, and as ever, the really good oil is in the grassroots, the local, and the peripheral.

Local football luminaries such as Earle Thomas (who writes the foreword), Brian Turner, Dave Taylor, Owen Nuttridge, John Legg, Ray Mears, Alan Sefton, Paul Rennell, and coaching guru Barrie Truman all contribute extensively to Boots and Bombs.

Along with many others — too many to mention in a single review. Offering reflection and tales from those who were there is priceless, more so given their advancing years and the inevitable decline in access we’ll have to their words of wisdom in the future.

Bombs and Bombs offers both context and perspective around all of those things. It is a compelling resource for history obsessives, every bit as much as being a bloody good yarn.

Stephen employs an easy, almost conversational writing style, and at just short of 250 pages, Boots and Bombs is a very digestible read.

There’s a decent photo section with a few gems relevant to the stories, and the era overall, and this book will appeal not only to local football fans but to football fans of all tribal colour and creed, whatever their poison.

Recommended.

This review was originally published here: Book review: Boots and Bombs 'a bloody good yarn' - Friends of Football (friendsoffootballnz.com)

You can read an excerpt from the book here: Special feature: The teenage All White left to die in a war-zone hospital - Friends of Football (friendsoffootballnz.com)

You can purchase the book here: Boots and Bombs: How New Zealand football grew up in the 1960s and 70s | Trade Me Marketplace

Book Review: Backstage Passes, by Joanna Mathers (2018)

I’m usually quite easily pleased when it comes to books of this nature. Local music stories with a grassroots and historical bent are right up my proverbial alley. I’m always game for some of that. It’s fair to say then, I had high hopes for Joanna Mathers’ Backstage Passes, “the untold story of New Zealand’s live music venues 1960 to 1990” …

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? 

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

Book Review: In Love With These Times, My Life With Flying Nun Records, by Roger Shepherd

Published a few years back, In Love With These Times is Roger Shepherd’s memoir-come-history of the Flying Nun record label. It’s taken me an age to get around to reading and reviewing it. Never let it be said that everythingsgonegreen is anything other than current and relevant …

There’s a sense that Roger Shepherd is something of an accidental hero in the Flying Nun story. The notion that he founded the label - on the whiff of an oily rag - primarily to release the highly original music being made by local bands he was enjoying live, and regularly networking with as a record shop employee, makes for a wonderful backstory. It becomes quite clear he did so on little more than a whim, without much thought, forward planning, or finance. At the outset at least.

All of these things would come back to haunt Shepherd, and his label, at various junctures over the course of the next three decades. Yet, in many respects, it was Shepherd’s determination to trust his instinct, to embrace the DIY ethic, aligned with a fierce sense of independence, that came to define the label. It was precisely the same modus operandi employed by the many bands that eventually benefitted from his risk-taking. 

The Clean, The Chills, The Gordons, and the rest, would all have existed regardless, sure, but it seems doubtful anyone associated with the conservative major labels of early 1980s New Zealand would have had the vision to release their music. Shepherd grasped their (collective) appeal immediately and made sure the rest of the country - and eventually, more curious or enlightened individuals globally - would get to hear the music. 

Shepherd pays credit to the crucial roles played by the likes of Chris Knox and Doug Hood, among many others, along the way. He writes extensively about the label’s evolution, the rise, particularly through the fledgling years of the 1980s, the relocation to Auckland, the fall, the (forced) financial and artistic compromises, the post-millennium rebirth, plus his own travels, and his personal battles with addiction and mental health.

Shepherd writes passionately and candidly about all of that stuff. He’s a decent writer, an engaging and witty mine of information throughout. 

And while the guts of the Flying Nun story may have been told (elsewhere) before, it’s never been told with the same level of insight and colour as provided here by Shepherd. Just as you’d expect from the man with the most intimate insider knowledge of the label. And it’s this level of detail, the highs and lows associated with that, alongside the personal anecdotes and the frequent self-deprecating stories around his own journey as a man - as opposed to a reluctant businessman - that make In Love With These Times the definitive account. 

Recommended. 

Here's Shepherd’s own account of writing the book, as published by Audioculture:

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/writing-in-love-with-these-times

Book Review: Goneville, a memoir, by Nick Bollinger

Goneville: "it's a place you could almost find on a map, but not quite" ...

In Nick Bollinger's preface for Goneville, the author describes the two New Zealands he grew up in – the one where males worshipped rugby and beer, and a rather more free-spirited bohemian one, where art and music was at the centre of everything. No prizes for guessing which version Bollinger found himself more comfortable in. In fact, Bollinger embraced the latter with such ease, he'd eventually go on to become not only an accomplished musician, but something of a highly influential tastemaker in his role as an arts critic, columnist, and music reviewer for the NZ Listener, and more recently, with Radio NZ.

 

Goneville, nowhere near Wanganui

Goneville works on a couple of different levels. Firstly, it’s Bollinger's memoir, his account of growing up in Wellington during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Secondly, it’s a detailed – if not quite complete – history of the capital’s music scene throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, as seen through the eyes of a man who was very much at the heart of that particular scene. There’s also a natural crossover into all things social and political, and it provides a genuine snapshot of a world – or of a fledgling nation – that we’ve, for better or for worse, long since left behind.

Things jump around a little bit to begin with, but much of the early part of the book deals with Bollinger's childhood – with stories about growing up in 1960s Wellington, attending Onslow College, discovering music, and an acknowledgement of the hugely positive role his free-thinking, academic father (who died while Bollinger was still in his teens) had in shaping his own worldview.

From there we move into the core of the book, covering off Bollinger’s formative musical experiences; sneaking into gigs whilst still underage, playing wild-west-type gigs with school friends in the Hutt Valley, and being inspired by bands like Mammal, Blerta, Space Waltz, and early Split Enz (Split Ends), to name just a few. 

During his time at university, Bollinger was recruited as the bass player for Rick Bryant’s blues and soul-based collective, Rough Justice, and much of the book deals with his weed-ravaged experiences on the road, something of a hand-to-mouth existence, travelling in what might loosely be described as a “hippy bus”, as the band traversed the nether regions of New Zealand’s live music circuit.

Bryant features heavily throughout, along with local promoter-come-Dragon manager Graeme Nesbitt, plus there’s a fair bit about the late great Bruno Lawrence. Bollinger writes passionately and at length about each man. He clearly reserves a special affection for Bryant in particular, and the much-travelled rocker is the key protagonist in several of the more humorous anecdotes on offer.  

“He (Bryant, whilst driving the bus) starts telling me about the soul singer Joe Tex. This leads into an analysis of Tolstoy and winds up with the history of the New Zealand labour movement. It feels as though I have stayed at university, although it's hard to say what paper I have enrolled in.”

Onetime Lion Breweries promoter Richard Holden also features prominently, and there’s real insight into just how difficult it was for local bands to find the right balance between being able to earn a living, and fulfilling a wider ambition to produce original work. 

Richard Holden, on bands looking for work in brewery-owned establishments: “There has been some good original music but a lot of original rubbish. They will have to realise that we're not in the musical genius business. We're in the entertainment business.”

There’s also some interesting stuff around the breweries' attempts to control or monopolise nightlife and the live music circuit, with nepotism and licensing restrictions making it near impossible for venues like Wellington's Last Resort and Charley Gray's Auckland club, Island of Real (just two examples of many), to become fully licensed. Bands and promoters were forced to play a game imposed upon them by the beer barons if they wanted any level of exposure – beyond, by dint of some miracle, landing a “hit record”.

 

Rough Justice, 1978, Bollinger - bottom right

Later in the book, Bollinger deals with the demise of Rough Justice and writes extensively on just how much the landscape had changed by 1980, due in part to the arrival of punk on these shores. Near the conclusion, coinciding roughly with Bollinger travelling overseas to expand his musical horizons, he looks at the hugely divisive Springbok rugby tour of 1981, and his own involvement with the protest movement.

 

In some respects, Bollinger completes a full circle by the end. The counter-culture that took him under its wing in the early-to-mid 1970s had, according to all other accounts, supposedly died by the early 1980s. Yet in the form of punk and the protest movement, here it was again, reinventing or manifesting itself in a remarkably similar way.

Writing about the ultra-conservative Robert Muldoon gaining a third term in office as Prime Minister in 1981: “He (Muldoon) often talked about ‘the ordinary bloke’, a notional person on whose behalf he was fighting. The ordinary bloke seemed to be a New Zealand male who just wanted to be able to do a day’s work, go home, drink beer, and watch rugby. Anyone with progressive views on education, environment, or equality, was the Prime Minister’s natural enemy.”

Which is pretty much where we came in.

There’s a generous helping of black and white photos scattered throughout the book, all meticulously documented in the closing pages, multiple sources (of quotes and other content) are noted and acknowledged in great detail, and as you’d expect from someone of Bollinger’s pedigree, there’s even an extensive “selected discography” referencing the work of many of the bands covered in the book.

It’s an important book. Not just for fans of the Wellington music scene of yester-year, but for anyone keen on the social history of New Zealand. You simply won’t find anyone else more qualified to write about this stuff. Recommended.

Kiwi Music Reading 101: Five essential books on New Zealand Music …

Love it or hate it, May is New Zealand Music Month. I’m firmly in the “love it” camp, and can never really understand the criticism it attracts. Surely there’s a lot to celebrate, and there’s nothing wrong with attempting to champion local sounds and flavours, whatever month of the year it is. Regular blog readers will appreciate that everythingsgonegreen doesn’t need an excuse, and the local stuff has always, and always will, form a large portion of the blog’s content.

Anyway, as part of that shameless balls-out cheerleading process, I thought I’d compile a list of books I consider to be essential reading when it comes to coverage of this thing we call New Zealand music. There’s way more than a mere five “essential” books on the subject, of course, but those listed below are titles that take pride of place in my own collection, and they all offer something of a historical perspective, which is more or less my bag when it comes to reading material. It could be that I enjoy these books most because they’re the ones I wish I’d written myself … cue that old Dad-joke about wanting to be a historian before discovering there is no future in it (boom!):

Stranded In Paradise (1988/2005) - John Dix

Often considered the "bible" of Kiwi music history, John Dix's coffee table tome, Stranded In Paradise, was first published in 1988. A perfectly balanced mix of anecdotal stories, factual accounts, insightful analysis, and photos of varying vintage, the book was unprecedented in its scope or depth of detail, effectively tracing the evolution of rock music and pop culture on these shores from the mid-1950s onwards. An initial print run of 10,000 copies was completely insufficient for the barely anticipated level of demand, but it also helped to create something of a myth around the book - brand new copies were all but impossible to source, while used copies became highly coveted prized possessions. That all changed a little with the publication of an updated 2005 edition which not only sated the long running demand for the original publication, it also updated its coverage to bring us right into the 21st century. Where the first edition took us to the emergence of the Flying Nun label, post-punk, and the Compact Disc, the later volume took us into a bold new world with fresh challenges. One where hip hop was the predominant emerging force, a world where the CD had already reached its use-by date, and one where music was being consumed in hitherto inconceivable ways. And, of course, we’re now more than another decade further on from that … the next edition of Stranded might well need to be virtual. My own version of Stranded In Paradise is the 2005 (expanded) update, given to me as a farewell gift by colleagues in a workplace I never really left. Evidently, they knew me (and my reading habits) much better than I had anticipated. I’m sure I read something in early 2016, hinting that a fresh limited reprint process was underway, specifically to replenish barren Library copies/stocks across New Zealand, but I’m not sure that actually happened.

 

Blue Smoke (2011) - Chris Bourke

 

If Stranded In Paradise takes the story of New Zealand music and pop culture from the rock’n roll era through to the early 2000s, and I think we can safely say it does, then Chris Bourke’s Blue Smoke is the crucial sister publication. Subtitled ‘The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918–1964’, it’s a book that dares to delve a little deeper, to go back even further, before parking up and concluding its coverage in the mid-Sixties, which is more or less where Stranded launches in earnest. It’s the other half of the story, if not the most important part of the story, because without the pioneering artists, venues, and scenes covered off in Blue Smoke, there would surely have been no need for a Stranded In Paradise. And so it is that Chris Bourke, in meticulous detail, is able to transport us back to an immediate post-colonial, yet still very colonial, New Zealand. Different eras and variations thereof, in fact, depending on your location, your generation, and any predilection our illustrious subjects may have had for the temptations of the devil (and his/her music). But it is about much more than the history of local music; it’s also the most comprehensive account you’ll find of how the people of our previously wild and untamed land evolved in a social context. It’s the story of coffee (or milk) bars, of rural pubs and clubs, of small town cabarets, of big city ballrooms, of the first recordings, the artists involved, the first influential and important performing troupes, and indeed, those of the much less important but still very noteworthy variety. It’s about how we - the collective New Zealand, if you will - found our feet, if not our rhythm, exactly. It’s about styles, trends, and fashion during times when those things were largely - according to mainstream society, at least - considered frivolous and more than a little self-indulgent. Like Stranded, Blue Smoke is built for strategic placement on a coffee table, and is packed full of terrific photos and various odd bits of fascinating ephemera from yester-year. A hugely important body of work.

Soundtrack (2007) - Grant Smithies

 

Subtitled ‘118 Great New Zealand Albums’, Soundtrack is another coffee table offering, but one that looks specifically at those albums author Grant Smithies considers to be all-time Kiwi classics - 118 being the seemingly random number which met Smithies’ criteria. As a long-standing journalist within the pop culture realm, what Smithies doesn’t know about the local music scene really isn’t worth knowing, with the bonus being that he’s also able to provide a very entertaining and frequently amusing narrative. Along the way he recruits a variety of friends, luminaries, and experts to contribute their own take on specific albums, and those alternative voices - including those of musicians - ensure genuine diversity (of perspective) is on offer throughout. As a result, we end up with Flying Nun classics nestling comfortably alongside hard rock/metal albums, post-millennium poly-soul and hip hop works featuring alongside seminal albums from a bygone era - see self-titled albums from La De Da’s (1966) and Space Waltz (1975), for example. For the most part Smithies and co avoid the bleeding obvious, with just two Split Enz albums, only one from Crowded House, and rather surprisingly, nothing from Seventies giants Hello Sailor, or Th’ Dudes. If anything, and it’s not really a criticism as much as it is a highlight, it does feel like Smithies has scratched something of a post-2000 itch with his album selections … which works well if, like me, you missed out on many of the musical gems released during what was clearly a hugely productive (2000 to 2007) period for local albums, and thus need some insight into what is what, or what was what. In that respect, Soundtrack makes no claim about being definitive, in fact, Smithies makes it clear right at the outset … “you hold in your hands a book crammed with blind prejudices, foggy memories, rash declarations, unsubstantiated assertions and, quite probably, lies” … and that’ll do quite nicely, thank you very much.    

On Song (2012) - Simon Sweetman

 

I’m probably a little biased here, because the author is known to me, and has in the past helped me out a couple of times with complimentary gig tickets, and on one occasion even allowed me to contribute a fanboy piece (on On-U Sound) to his widely-read but now defunct Stuff-published Blog On The Tracks page. That said, there’s a lot of musical matters we disagree on, and I sometimes wonder why a guy who is often highly critical of NZ music-related issues (his dismissal of NZ Music month, and of NZ Musician magazine, being just a couple of examples) set out specifically to write a book about, umm, New Zealand music. Whatever the case, On Song was, and is, a superb read, thanks to Sweetman’s boundless knowledge and an inherent understanding of his subject matter - regardless of whether or not he thinks NZ music is an actual “thing”, he writes like a genuine fan of the “genre”, with his passion and sheer enthusiasm fair dripping off the page at times. More than any of that though, it’s the way the book is pieced together that makes it far more essential than most - Sweetman selected 30 songs and then set about interviewing each song’s key protagonist(s). So the author provides the framework, adds the context and/or some historical perspective, but the really good oil comes direct from the artist, which makes the whole reading experience a lot more in-depth and intimate than it otherwise might have been. It is key to providing On Song with a real point of difference. I’m not sure that the 30 songs featured are meant to be any sort of definitive guide to NZ music, they’re mostly popular and important, and they may just be the songs that matter most to the author, but each one offers something about who we are, or where we’ve come from, or in the case of a couple of one-off hits, they serve to highlight or offer a reminder of a particular time and place in our history. And that’s a pretty cool thing.

100 Essential NZ Albums (2009) - Nick Bollinger

 

I’ve just picked up a copy of Goneville, Nick Bollinger’s memoir/account of growing up in and around Wellington’s music scene of the Seventies and beyond. I’ve yet to make a start on it, but I’m really looking forward to reading it, partly because, for my own sins, I’ve met a few of the characters who feature. But mostly I’m looking forward to it because Bollinger is a terrific writer, someone who I always sought out and respected as a reviewer during one of his past lives with the NZ Listener. 100 Essential NZ Albums does exactly what it says on the spine - it’s Bollinger’s choice of local poison, presented in a slightly more orderly fashion than the Smithies/Soundtrack list, which creates the impression - and it may just be me - that it is somehow a more authoritative or definitive list of albums. Which it probably isn’t. After all, we’ll all have our own opinion about what should be included and what shouldn’t. Bollinger’s list of albums certainly appears to be a wider-ranging set, historically very savvy, with a lot more emphasis on pre-1980 albums - the likes of Hello Sailor and Th’ Dudes are acknowledged, as are earlier works by pioneers like Bill Wolfgramm, Johnny Devlin, Dinah Lee, Ray Columbus, and Max Merritt. On the other hand, there’s something distinctly off-the-cuff (yet still very considered, surely) about the Soundtrack list, something more personal and less generic perhaps, than Bollinger’s inclusions. It feels as though Bollinger deliberately set out to tick boxes and cover all eras rather than simply present coverage of his own favourite local albums. It offers a big picture overview, one that Soundtrack lacks, or doesn’t even attempt. They’re both quite brilliant and absorbing books, covering the same subject matter, but still very different in style and approach. If the Smithies book is one I’d most likely pick up and flick through, Bollinger’s is the one I’d be more inclined to read cover to cover … aided by the fact that, unlike all of the above, it’s a handbag-accommodating soft cover, perfect for reading during my daily commute on public transport.

Ps. I will likely post a review of Goneville on the blog when I’m done with it. I’ll also get around to completing a review of Roger Shepherd’s Flying Nun memoir, In Love With These Times, at some point in the near future. Well, okay, probably not the “near” future. I haven’t exactly been prolific when it comes to blogposts in recent weeks, so we’ll just see what happens …

More Bizarre ... and some Linky Love

Following on from my review earlier this week (below) of Simon Grigg's book, 'How Bizarre', I just want to link to a great interview with the author himself on Auckland journalist Duncan Greive's website The Spinoff ... Greive actually nails a review in far fewer words than I managed when he asserts the following with his closing words:

"I read it in less than 48 hours, and was absolutely riveted. To me it’s an instant classic of pop industrial non-fiction. And so much more impressive and enjoyable because it’s from New Zealand – it’s so much better than you’d expect from our entry into the genre, somehow."

Read The Spinoff's full interview with Simon Grigg here

Book Review: How Bizarre … Pauly Fuemana and the Song that Stormed the World by Simon Grigg (Awa Press, 2015)

I'll be honest, when I first learned that New Zealand music identity Simon Grigg was writing a book about Pauly Fuemana (aka OMC) and the hit song 'How Bizarre', I was more than a little bit wary of how it might work out. Of whether or not it would work at all.

After all, how much could possibly be said or written about that one song and an artist whose musical legacy was otherwise strictly limited? An artist who is no longer with us (RIP Pauly), and a song that is the best part of 20 years old.

What I didn't fully appreciate at the outset however was Grigg's intimate knowledge of his subject matter, or indeed, his ability to weave all of the peripheral events into an utterly compelling tale. Even just a few pages in it soon becomes obvious that this book is about so much more than the making of a global hit record; it's an in-depth analysis of the inner workings and peculiar mechanisms of the music industry, both locally and abroad. Well, at least the pre-internet music industry as it stood in the mid-to-late Nineties.

More than that, it's the story of a charismatic young man swept up and washed away by a series of events that took him beyond his comfort zone. Beyond anything he could possibly have previously imagined during his humble South Auckland upbringing. Events that eventually started to spiral well beyond his control. The story of a talented yet massively troubled young man ill-prepared for the fame and (limited) fortune that came his way.

And if it's about Fuemana, it's also about producer Alan Jansson, the studio wizard and collaborator behind 'How Bizarre', a far less tragic but equally inspirational figure, without whom there would have been no hit record and no story.

It's also Grigg's story, in context of the author being the owner of the label that initially released the record. As the friend, mentor, and almost constant globetrotting companion of Fuemana. And as the close friend and confidant of Jansson. That makes Grigg an authority on all of the events as they unfolded, and provides for a unique overview of the processes associated with making, releasing, and promoting the record.

Grigg is also able to offer honest views on all of the important personalities and parties involved. Plus rare insight into the era, the fledging South Auckland “scene”, and the wider “urban pacific” genre. The book is also testimony to the author’s meticulous record-keeping. Nobody else could have told this story with the love and detail offered here by Grigg.

And so 20 years on, the full story behind ‘How Bizarre’ – the first (only?) NZ-recorded and released song to feature on Top of the Pops – finally gets written. It’s a story every music fan should read. Many of the key elements within are surely not unique to this particular record. Or specific to New Zealand, for that matter. More simply, ‘How Bizarre’ is one of those hard-to-put-down books you’ll want to finish reading before you do anything else. Highly recommended.

How Bizarre ...Pauly Fuemana and the Song that Stormed the World by Simon Grigg is published by Awa Press, and is available now, priced at $38.

Book Review: Last Night A DJ Saved My Life … by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton (1999/2006)

Over the past few years I’ve been slowly working my way through several of the key texts that document the rich tapestry of (relatively) recent popular music history. There’s been Jon Savage’s seminal history of punk, ‘England’s Dreaming’, Simon Reynolds’ post-punk tome ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’, and most recently, ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’, the history of the disc jockey, courtesy of Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. As we head into 2013, the spine of a crisp brand new copy of Lloyd Bradley’s ‘Bass Culture’, a journey into Jamaican dub and the world of soundsystems, stares back at me – unread – from the bookshelf at the foot of the bed.

But it’s ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ that concerns me here. I’ll get around to reviewing the others eventually. First published in 1999, I picked up the updated 2006 edition of ‘Last Night’ a year or so ago, so that is the version under review here. And while that might not seem overly significant at first glance, the additional seven years of coverage is useful in terms of adding more perspective to the state of the DJ art as it exists today, in 2012, with the current “DJ-as-performer” scenario now firmly ensconced within mainstream culture – a very recent development, one that seemed highly improbable when the book was first conceived.

 

2 editions of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life

Brewster and Broughton kick things off by taking us way back, a full century, to the start of radio, drawing together the loose strands of the wider history of sound; the evolution of the gramophone, a quick foray into the earliest recordings, the first DJ broadcasts, and a look at where things were at on an international scale etc. Working my way through the early chapters I soon become aware that this is not only the history of the DJ, it’s the history of dance music, and more than that, it’s the story of a cultural phenomenon … the power music has to draw people together. To gather people from all backgrounds and creeds to one place, a mass gathering of like-minds, to celebrate a love of music, of dance, and of (gag reflex alert) other human beings. I’m sure there’s a thesis waiting to be written there: Nightclubs are the new churches, discuss.

Understanding the social impact of venues like the Wigan Casino in northern England, for example. Digesting the monumental influence clubs like the Paradise Garage and the Loft had on New York nightlife in the late Seventies and early Eighties – an influence that remains omnipresent today. And I personally had completely overlooked just how important the roles of the gay and (for want of a better word) “outsider” communities were in laying the foundations for the phenomenon we now know as clubbing.

 

Larry Levan of Paradise
Garage fame

And so we move from Northern Soul to Reggae, through to Disco and its offshoots like Hi Energy and House, from Soul to Hip Hop and its roots, then into more specific strands of contemporary dance music – Garage (both US and UK), Techno, Balearic, Acid House, and beyond. Right on up to the present day where discussion focuses on that most peculiar thing: the Superstar DJ, the guy who becomes the music he plays, the one who is now just like any other “artist” or band, a solo performer who creates something fresh from segments of someone else’s original piece of art. The age of the DJ-as-composer/producer. Recent examples would be the high profile likes of Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Skrillex, and David Guetta (spit). Just compare and contrast the pop charts of 1987 with those of 2012 for the removal of any doubt about where the DJ now sits in terms of mainstream/public consciousness.

 

We get overviews on the key places people gathered, the cities that hosted them, so many of the more high profile clubs and venues being much shorter lived affairs than I’d previously imagined. And loose profiles of the messiahs who held court at those venues – the leading DJ’s themselves – often prove hugely revealing in their depth and relative intimacy. That might then be expanded to a whole scene, or linked to a specific genre. The birth and subsequent expansion of the Ibiza scene, for example, is an especially compelling section.



Of some wider social interest in one of the later chapters, there’s a look at the drug culture that surrounds popular music in general, but clubbing specifically. After talking us through that whole crazy Rave/random party scene in the UK, circa ’88-’93, there’s a discussion about the drugs that fuelled it – particularly the use of euphoric chems like ecstacy. We learn of the legislation that effectively pushed people back indoors, away from outdoor raves and festivals, back into licensed premises, and how that effectively reinvented – and reinvigorated – clubbing at a time when it was all but dying on its feet (no pun).

The cynical angle of course, is that the breweries and those with a vested interest in keeping alcohol at the forefront of the party scene evidently had a major say on legislation that banned public gatherings and killed the chem-orientated outdoor Rave scene. Whatever the case, it did result in the revival of “the nightclub” as primary place of worship, and from a law enforcement perspective, an element of control had returned. Or so you would think. The point is … the book doesn’t shy away from important social issues that otherwise might be regarded as peripheral to the dance music scene. It seeks to explain and add variations of colour in its search for context.


Tiesto asks what time it is ..

At the end of the near 600-page tome we get some charts – the ‘Wigan Casino 50’, ‘Loft 100’, ‘Warehouse 50’, ‘Hacienda 50’ etc – designed to present in quick reference form a list of the key tracks as they related to each major club or the scene it spawned. This is a fascinating section for anoraks like myself, and it seems like a perfect way to document the music – the key ingredient in all of this, remember – that propelled the DJ to such great heights in the first place. And don’t we all love a good list?

So it’s a great book – thoroughly researched, packed full of detail, unrelenting in its coverage and reach. Every bit the definitive history of the DJ (and dance music) it purports to be. Recommended.

Speaking of lists, here’s a not-so-totally-random everythingsgonegreen DJ Hall of Fame* (your author recognises a large element of bias and accepts the high likelihood of the list being instantly dismissed if your own favourite has missed the cut!):

Juan Atkins, Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, Ashley Beedle, Jellybean Benitez, Matt Black, Prince Buster, Michael Capello, Dick Clark, Norman Cook, Carl Cox, Steve D’Acquisito, Coxsone Dodd, Double Dee & Steinski, Terry Farley, Alfredo Fiorito, Froggy, Grandmixer DST, Grandmaster Flash, Walter Gibbons, Francis Grasso, Bobby Guttadaro, Kool Herc, Tony Humphries, Steve Silk Hurley, Jam Master Jay, Norman Jay, Marshall Jefferson, Francois Kevorkian, Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Ian Levine, David Mancuso, Derrick May, David Morales, Tom Moulton, Paul Oakenfold, John Peel, Gilles Peterson, Danny Rampling, Sasha, Kevin Saunderson, Nicky Siano, Tiesto, Pete Tong, King Tubby, Junior Vasquez, Armin van Buuren, Andy Weatherall.

*49 listed, there was going to be a nice round 50 but on account of recent revelations and consequent disgrace, one Jimmy Savile (arguably the UK’s first superstar DJ) has been omitted. As has current “star” David Guetta. Guetta’s omission is basically because he’s shit.