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?

 

New Zealand Music Month, AudioCulture, and All That Jazz ...

New Zealand Music Month has its critics. For many it represents little more than an inward-looking self-indulgent “pat-on-the-back” fest, and I understand that argument without necessarily buying into it. My own point of view is that NZ Music Month comes from a good place, has good intent, and if we – as New Zealanders – don’t celebrate this stuff, then nobody else will. It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t all that long ago we had to introduce quotas just to ensure New Zealand music was played on local radio. 

For this May’s annual celebration of New Zealand Music Month, I’m posting a series of classic (and some not so classic) local music clips on the blog’s Facebook page. You can check out the page and perhaps even give it a 'like' or a 'follow' (steady on!) here …

But it also seems timely to once again celebrate the ongoing contribution to the rich tapestry of New Zealand music history currently being made by the AudioCulture site (click here), which documents artists, bands, scenes, venues, and just about every other conceivable angle on pop culture in this part of the world – archiving stuff from days gone by right up to the present day. There really is nothing else like it. The “noisy library of New Zealand music” is an incredible resource that will only continue to get bigger and better as more boxes are ticked, as more artists/bands are profiled, and as more scenes and venue histories are explored.

I feel lucky to have been a part of it, and to have been paid for being a part of it, with site content dudes Simon Grigg and Chris Bourke having indulged a few of my own ramblings about various things near and dear to my own nostalgic heart. With – gratuitous plug alert – my “scene” contributions about nightclubbing in Wellington in the 1980s (here), the fabulous Soul Mine record store (here), the long-running retro Atomic and 24-Hour Party People club nights (here), and my band profile of early 90s Wellington funk-rockers Emulsifier (here). 

I appreciate that I’m not a particularly great writer or wordsmith, but these articles are born from a passion I can scarcely contain, one driven by a love of all things “us” and local, and I’ve always felt that unless those of us who were there at the time (pre-internet, pre-Social Media) make an effort to document the regional grassroots stuff, much of it will fall between the cracks and be lost forever. 

It’s also something I try to achieve on this blog. I take some heart from the fact that as I approach the blogpost number 600, all lack of direct feedback aside, everythingsgonegreen is fast closing in on some 250,000 unique page hits. Small beer in the wider context of things, I know, but it may surprise you that local or specifically New Zealand-based content accounts for three of the four “most read” posts. The most read being a very niche piece about 1980s um, nightlife, in the sprawling metropolis that is Palmerston North. Who knew nearly 13,000 readers even cared? 

So I guess people love nostalgia, especially smalltown/local nostalgia. Go figure. 

Finally, just quickly, I also want to give a shout out for NZ Musician magazine (see here). Writing various bits and bobs (features and reviews) for that publication (unpaid) over a five-year period – although I’ve contributed very little of late – has been a pleasure, and I guess it gave me the confidence to write that other stuff for AudioCulture. 

Things don’t get much more grassroots than NZ Musician. It really does dig deep, and although it too has come in for some unwarranted criticism over the years, specifically for being unable to pay its contributors, so many artists and bands have received an important leg up from the exposure provided by that particular mag for the 30-odd years its been doing its very funky thing. Long may it continue … online or otherwise. 

When all is said and done though, the absolute best way to celebrate New Zealand Music Month is to find some time this month to go to a local gig. Pay on the door. Support young up and coming bands. Buy something local from Bandcamp (or elsewhere if you can find an actual store). Buy something direct from the artist or band itself … and keep doing it, not just across May, but all year long. And tell your friends to do the same.

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.