New Zealand pop
culture heritage site, AudioCulture, recently published my profile of pioneering
local darkwave band Disjecta Membra. A band I’ve mentioned a few times already
on the blog, and although I’m a big fan, writing this became quite a mission.
It started out as a labour of love and wound up being something else entirely. I think the
initial bare bones of the piece were drafted in early 2019, maybe earlier, then
it was abandoned for months, before I could finally summon the energy to finish
it, edit it, and submit for publication late in the year. It became something
of a huge “mental block” for me - I carried on with various other writing
projects throughout the year while this piece sat lonely and unloved in my
work-in-progress file (aka, the “too hard” basket).
What I learned
most of all during this protracted process is that you never quite know a band
as well as you think you do. Even after it was published, after further editing
by the site, the band’s key protagonist Michel Rowland politely contacted me to
ask if a few factual errors could be corrected (done, to some extent, I think).
When you’re writing a profile about something niche for a site as widely read
and mainstream as AudioCulture, there is a danger that your account becomes
definitive by default, and it’s hugely important to get timelines and band line-ups
absolutely spot on. Otherwise, why bother? Another thing I learned is that it’s very difficult to condense 20-plus years of band history,
particularly one with so many band personnel changes across that period, into a
manageable, readable, digestible 1500 to 2000 words. Nobody visiting a pop culture
website wants War and Peace, after all. Initially, back
when the idea of a Disjecta Membra profile was still forming in my befuddled
brain, I had approached Rowland to ask if we could sit down to record a
conversation about the band’s 20-odd year journey. We’d previously met at one
of his gigs a few years back, we shared mutual friends, and tentatively planned
to co-author a piece about local musician Chris Sheehan (R.I.P.) for
AudioCulture. Rowland is something of a keen historian and researcher, and a
Sheehan fan, and I was hoping my own fandom and knowledge of Sheehan’s early
years would help shape that piece. For one reason or another, that idea has
been (temporarily?) shelved, and it turns out that life also got in the way of
Rowland and I sitting down to chat about Disjecta Membra. I’d have transcribed
the chat and use his direct quotes to form the basis of a band profile. With the benefit
of hindsight, that would have been the best thing for all concerned. It is certainly
what worked best for three of the four profiles I’ve previously submitted to
AudioCulture, and it is a process I’ve become more used to when writing similar
stuff for NZ Musician. Left to my own devices, without the time, will, or any real
insight, it became very difficult, despite the band’s own meticulously detailed
website being on hand to guide me. I still feel I didn’t do a particularly
great job. Anyway, you’re not
here for War and Peace, and I’m most definitely not Leo Tolstoy, so just
click here (Disjecta Membra profile on AudioCulture) to learn a little bit more about one of Aotearoa’s most underrated bands of the past couple of decades …
I thought I’d re-post a blogpost from some 18
months ago concerning Chris Sheehan, who sadly lost his long battle with cancer
yesterday. This is the closest thing I can offer to a tribute piece on one of
New Zealand’s most underrated musicians. Chris was an inspirational figure for
me growing up, and one of the reasons I came to love music as much as I do. My
thoughts are with his partner Claire and family … R.I.P. Chris >>>
The
recent social media coverage given to ex-Palmerston North musician Chris
Sheehan’s fundraising campaign has been heartening to observe. Sheehan, aka Chris
Starling, is presently based in Spain, and is raising funds for a shot at “one
last album”. He’s been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic nodular melanoma, and
the outlook for him is apparently pretty bleak. But there is a lot of love and
respect out there for his work, and Sheehan’s fundraising efforts have largely been
successful thus far. You can contribute to Sheehan’s cause here. I’m personally
looking forward to any new work he can offer us.
Sheehan’s
sad news, and a wider collective desire for his fundraising to gain requisite
exposure, offered the chance for bloggers and mainstream media alike to profile
and pay tribute to someone who’s tended to fly under the radar for long
periods. From a number of small independent blogposts to that of Wellington blogger
Simon Sweetman, whose recent piece on the mainstream Stuff website generated some
good support from Sheehan’s homeland.
So
with a few of the more high profile aspects of Sheehan’s career … the Dance
Exponents, his move to London, the Starlings, the “solo” career, and stints
with acts like Curve, Babylon Zoo, the Sisters of Mercy, and briefly, NZ’s own
Mutton Birds … having been well documented elsewhere in recent times, by others
far more qualified than myself, I’m going to offer something completely different
here, and give you my take on an otherwise very much undocumented stage of
Sheehan’s career … let’s call it his “Shades of Grey period”:
Chris Sheehan circa 2000
I
first knew him only as Chris, the teenage guitarist in a shit hot covers band
called Shades of Grey at the rough-around-the-edges Café de Paris pub in my
hometown of Palmerston North. I’m pretty sure it was 1982, perhaps late ‘81 to
late ’82. I would have been 17, going on 18, under the legal drinking age of
the time, and there I was, every Friday and Saturday night, frothing with
excitement, in the back bar of the Café. I soon became friends with a guy named
Jim Conlon, a fellow muso who knew Chris well, and despite the significant risk
to my person as the son of a well known local cop (the front bar was the haunt
of the local “motorcycle club”), I quickly became a Café fixture, albeit a bit
of a wallflower.
I wasn’t a big drinker but I craved excitement, the rush of
live music, and Shades of Grey with its prodigy guitarist, who I had guessed
was even younger than me, was the only game in town.
Shades
of Grey played dark pop, punk, and post-punk; covers like ‘London Calling’ (The
Clash), ‘Solitary Confinement’ (Members), ‘Rockaway Beach’ (Ramones), and a
raft of Cure tunes. They were pretty good, if very raw and occasionally a
little too loud for the confines of the small space they occupied. Lead singer
Don Stevenson possessed just the right amount of arrogance, and a great punk
howl. Drummer Brent Maharey was the epitome of surfer cool, while curly-haired bass
player Steve Dodson remained more of a mystery (to me). But the group’s real
point of difference was Sheehan, whose sheer unbridled talent propelled the
novice band to new heights each and every weekend on tracks like ‘The Fire’ (The
Sound), ‘Damaged Goods’ (Gang of Four), and more often than not most spectacularly
on the Dead Kennedys’ classic ‘Holiday In Cambodia’. Even something as simple
and understated as early Cure b-side ‘Another Journey By Train’ could be
transformed into something utterly compelling in Sheehan’s hands.
The
Café had a tiny raised “dancefloor” directly in front of what passed for a
stage, and when I wasn’t hugging the walls of said dancefloor, I could be found
standing directly in front of Sheehan, looking up slightly, mesmerised not only
by his expansive repertoire of fretwork and riffery, but by his stance, his
posture, and his nonchalant mastery of the instrument he bore. That, and the look
of apparent contempt he offered me whenever I caught his eye. With that slight
frame, and the shock mop of jet black hair, Chris appeared nothing if not very
cool, and his understanding of that seemed absolute. There was certainly something
extraordinary about him at that age, and we all knew he’d go a long way. And we
knew he’d have to go a long way away from Palmy.
Dance Exponent
That
time, and that band, rates as a period of genuine discovery for me, and I’d
often spend the weekday lunch breaks seeking out the originals for many of the
covers I’d heard the previous Friday or Saturday night. It became a labour of
love, and often involved hours on end trekking about Palmy’s limited record
shops. The Record Hunter outlet on Broadway did imports, so all was not lost if
I couldn’t find what I coveted any particular week. Suffice to say, no covers
band since has had quite the same impact on my music collection. And the thrill
of those nights at the Café remains with me to this day, the picture I have in
my mind’s eye of Sheehan on that poxy little stage is crystal clear. And for my
sins, all these years on, I remain friends with a good number of the fellow wastrels
I met in that godforsaken excuse for a “lounge bar”.
An
early incarnation of the band had a female keyboardist who may or may not have
been called Christine, and this was the version I witnessed the first couple of
times I saw them. A much later version – one that eventually moved away from
the Café to the more expansive Lion Tavern – saw drummer Brent move on, to be
replaced by a Turkish stickman called Nihat, who’d previously starred in
Snatch, Palmy’s other “new wave” covers band of choice during the era … (and
everythingsgonegreen might just indulge itself with a piece on Snatch at some
point in the future).
But
it all ended just as quickly as it began, and I probably only ever had a
handful of conversations with Chris, awkwardly snatched between sets at the
Café, before he got the call to join the Dance Exponents, one of New Zealand’s
premier pop groups of the time. Chris added a harder, more experimental edge to
the Exponents’ work for a period of time, and I was a little disappointed when
the recent otherwise definitive documentary on the band tended to race through
or gloss over the Sheehan years.
It
hasn’t always been easy for Sheehan, and while his work has often attracted a
decent level of critical acclaim, it hasn’t always hit the commercial heights
lesser talented individuals have frequently achieved.
But
I’d be a liar if I said I knew Chris Sheehan very well at all. I’ve just
followed his career from afar, and I was merely lucky enough to observe him as a supremely
talented work-in-progress, a young guy taking his first formative career steps.
I count myself pretty fortunate for that experience, and the chance to add this
small story to a much greater whole. I look forward to getting updates on his
progress via social media and I wish you all the very best Chris if you read
this …
I’d
love to be able to offer you a clip of Shades of Grey, but here’s the next best
thing – not the best quality clip, but one that showcases some great axemanship
from Chris Sheehan:
