I
found a variation of it somewhere up in the far-flung north, but as much as I’d
like to bore you with tales of wild dolphin trekking offshore in the sun-baked
Bay of Plenty, this is a pop culture blog, dammit. Suffice to say the blog has
been neglected while your blogger attempted to recover from such wanton pursuit
of “rest”.
So
before any of that, there was the small matter of a New Year’s Eve gig to
attend – a party to say farewell to the iconic Wellington venue San Francisco
Bath House, which officially closed its doors in the wee small hours of January
1 2014. I just couldn’t let the passing of the venue go undocumented on
everythingsgonegreen – aside from Bar Bodega (old and new versions thereof), I’ve
probably spent more post-millennium drinking hours at SFBH than I have at any
other establishment. But I try not to think too hard about that, and neither
should you (Mum). So I have to say my piece on its closure if only to sate some
kind of weird need to do so purely for posterity purposes.
I’ve
blogged about SFBH before and it seemed appropriate that the subject of that
blog, DJ Bill E, was on hand to help give it a proper send off by way of his
annual NYE bash ‘Hang The DJ’ – which combines the Eighties aesthetic of
‘Atomic’ with the more (or less) contemporary hue of ‘24 Hour Party People’.
And it was equally fitting that the Phoenix Foundation, another iconic Wellington
staple, opened proceedings … a band with plenty of “previous” at the venue.
I
know New Year is a special night on the party calendar, but the first thing
that struck me was just how crowded the venue was on the night. I’ve been to a
lot of ‘Atomic’ nights up there over the years (less so the past two years), plus
a fair few ‘24 Hour Party People’ nights, and plenty of other gigs as well, but
it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it so busy up there. There’s no doubt the
band brought its own following, and there were a lot of old faces I hadn’t seen
for a while. It all made for a pretty special gig.
The
Phoenix Foundation kicked things off early on, before 10pm. There were a few
songs I couldn’t quite place in my vodka-induced haze, but the core of the set
– the likes of ‘Walking In The Rain’, ‘Buffalo’, and ‘Sideways Glance’ – was well
worth the price of admission alone. The band’s take on ‘Walking In The Rain’ is
one of the most twisted Grace Jones live cover versions going, and the weird
processed vocals give it a sleazier, even more decadent feel than that of the
original … if that’s actually possible.
The
brand new song, ‘Bob Lennon John Dylan’ was another
attention grabber, before the set concluded amid a crescendo of squally guitar
and other psychedelic nonsense, the band building to its all-hands-to-the-pump wig-out
best on the closing couple of “songs”, most notably Fandango’s monster jam, ‘Friendly
Society’.
A
typically loose and infectious Phoenix Foundation set was the perfect way for SFBH
to rock out on its final night, and a great way to see off another calendar
year.
From
there DJ Bill E and his ‘Hang The DJ’ time machine took us all the way into
2014 and beyond. I thought our man called it pretty shrewdly early on in his set,
dropping a couple of Kiwi music classics with The Clean’s ‘Anything Could
Happen’ and Coconut Rough’s irrepressible ‘Sierra Leone’ to help generate a
second wind amongst the strong local muso contingent and older sections of the spillover
crowd still dazed from the band’s onslaught.
The
DJ remained meticulous in his selections well into the wee smalls, and the dancefloor
was packed to overflowing for much of the night … or at the very least until
sometime after 1.30am when your blogger and his dance partner said goodbye to a
special venue one last time. Our cross-town post-gig scout around revealed a
paucity of anything remotely close to the vibe of SFBH, as it so often has in
the past, and Wellington nightlife will be very much poorer for its absence.
One
story I’ve heard is that a refurbished premises will return as a “jazz bar”,
whatever that actually means, but I can’t account for the veracity of
its source. That particular Cuba Street site has a long and
illustrious history (read dubious) … it had links with the capital’s red light scene – various
incarnations and uses – for many years in the Seventies through to the
mid-Eighties. I first encountered the premises as a cave-like club around 1989,
early 1990, as a venue known as The Sub Club, a short-lived yet hugely popular
Thursday - or was it Sunday? - night scene catering to the first waves of Techno and Acid House. From
there it underwent various states of refurbishment, re-emerging as a player on
the live circuit in the Nineties as Indigo, before eventually evolving into SFBH
roughly a decade ago.
In
another development, it turns out that a second iconic Cuba Street venue is set
to close, this coming May, with the owners of Mighty Mighty this week
announcing that the bar has also run its course. The “four month closing party”
commenced in earnest on Friday night (just gone) with a three-pronged gig
featuring “bigger-in-Portland” local darkwave duo Black City Lights. I was
lucky enough to make it down to Mighty Mighty for that – so I’ll do a quick
review of that set for everythingsgonegreen at some point in the next week or
so.
