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 …