It was the late 70s, early 80s when I got the music bug big time and graduated from LP’s and Singles on the stereo to live gigs. Since then I have never looked back. There is something visceral about a live performance. It is hot sweaty and communal. For the night we are all in this together audience/band/bouncers/bar folk. The band has rehearsed and has their art and craft to deliver. The audience is up for receiving, dancing, swaying, stomping, and cheering. Pub rock in a town, on a circuit, is where it all begins. Here is my story of those formative experiences.
Provincial Aotearoa New Zealand has its limitations and freedoms. There will be some local bands, often your mates, giving it a go. There will be the back rooms of pubs and clubs with enough of a sound system and lighting, so the bands in vans can plug in play. Every now and then you get the excitement of the big out-of-town bands coming through to strut their stuff on your small stage.
Everything of course starts with your mates who can play a bit and the High School band I knew was ‘Ulster’ (I think, it was a long time ago). The bass player later went on to form ‘Drone’ who did a bit in Auckland and later the UK, a highlight for them was opening for ‘Beat Rhythm Fashion’. ‘Ulster’ rehearsed a lot and got the odd under-age gig before musical differences sent them their separate ways. There is nothing like the teenage buzz of seeing your mates up on stage and getting a crowd up on their feet.
By the time I was of legal drinking age or could bluff/fake my way in, the big acts had graduated from Aotearoa New Zealand shores and were chasing greater success in Australia: ‘the Dudes’, ‘Dragon’, ‘Hello Sailor’ and ‘Mi Sex’. Returning either as conquering heroes from time to time, with the big rigs (sound and lighting), the road crews, and the rock n roll reputations; or having found the grass was less green in Sydney, Melbourne, LA.
So moving in behind them were the bands of my generation and if they came to town we saw them, each and every time. The venue was pretty much always Colonel Greer’s, the entertainment side of the sprawling Greeton Hotel, located in one of the bigger suburbs on the outskirts of town. It had the acre or two of asphalted car parking, the public bar for working folk, the Cobb and Co family restaurant at the back, the off license/liquor store. Colonel Greer’s (regrettably named after a British officer involved in land war with local Māori) was always my choice of location. A cover charge, a bar, a stage, a dance floor and shut off from the light outside, it became the de facto club headquarters for a year or two, and summers later in between university terms. Lion Brown or Red draught beer or rum and cokes was the beverages of choice for our gang. It was the early eighties, so sneakers, blue Wrangler, or Levi jeans, maybe the grey bomber jacket in winter, was the standard Friday/Saturday night attire.
Out of all the acts seen, the ‘The Mockers’ would likely take out band most seen. Forming out of a Wellington/Victoria University punk band, with a talented out there frontman/lyricist in Andrew Fagan, they toured and toured. Bedford vans traversing Aotearoa New Zealand North and South, gaining musical chops and discovering which tunes got the audience dancing, and might just translate to radio play and sales. Building an audience and seeking that elusive hit record. They kind of went against the grain of bloke rock. Fagan would embrace eyeliner, new romantic threads, even as far as a pink flamingo outfit as the front person; the band had a young, skinny, rolled up jacket sleeves thing, and the drummer with the short peroxide hair would eye up prospective girlfriends from the stage. At its core was some songwriting class, usually from keyboard player Gary Curtis, and their best songs hit that vein of pop pathos. Murder on Manners Street harks back to their Wellington beginnings and celebrates the edgy feel of Wellington’s seedier side, it has a rough and heavy bass line and stabs of keyboard. My Girl Thinks she is Cleopatra is an early aspiration for pop success and it largely works with its wry take on an out there girlfriend. Alvison Park is the big song, a seven minute tour de force, with a soaring chorus, pathos in the narrative, and many a musical interlude in between. With Swear it’s True and more so Forever Tuesday Morning they hit their radio friendly patch and developed a swagger to go with the flash of success. ‘Tuesday Morning has a neat trade and balance between guitar riff opening and keyboard punctuation to the lyric in which Fagan plays up as the lover lost in a moment in time, throw in the backing vocal call and response to the chorus and they have hit nadir. The one I recall in their later period that reminded me of the more youthful edgier band is After the Rain which, whilst slow has the wonderful imagery and evocation of that immediate period when the weather clears and is counter-pointed to tempest in human world relations. Finally Good Old Days has a pub rock chug, an early statement that things are unsettled and that these times may not be the great things of future memories. Of course that pursuit of popular success meant my gang moved on as the younger, predominantly female fans moved in and we needed another band.
Screaming Memmees were just a delight. A High School band from Auckland’s North Shore that had that amalgam of four dispirit persons that formed something special when they played together. Every band needs an extrovert, and guitarist Michael O’Neill stood out with the blond shock of hair and effortless riffs and hooks in his playing. Throw in a steady drummer (Lawrence “Yoh” Landwer-Johan) melodic bass player (Peter van der Fluit) and a tall singer with beat dancing winkle-pickers and a floppy fringe (Tony Drumm) and all the ingredients are there. In England they would have fitted in effortlessly to the British indie scene and sold records by the 100,000s and not the 1000s. Live they were urgent, fun, poppy and relentlessly upbeat. With Michael as a left-handed player on the left they formed a symmetrical three at the front with bass to the right and anchored at the back by drums. As Colonel Greer’s was so close to our houses, my mates tripped up there the next day to interrupt their lie in (band accommodation was onsite) to get some in bed record signing and a yarn about the night before. They were humble and friendly. Such was their rep’ as the pre-eminent North Island youth act they even played my High School ball, what a difference from the usual middle aged covers bands playing radio dirge. As to the songs, their mega hit was See Me Go, as perfect piece of indie pop you will hear, just the slow guitar intro followed by each instrument joining in on a rolling riff, before finally settling down to the vocals entering at the 1.10 minute mark. It is an infectious slower verse/urgent chorus combination that resets with an almost ska rhythm guitar underpinning the fun. Although the one album was not strong, the singles were, including Sunday Boys, a nod to church school days: Till I Die, a marching drum beat that maintains its urgency right through (as do the band on the video) and throws in a cheeky self-name-check part way through (look at you screaming me me) and the exit single Stars in My Eyes shows what they may have developed into with horn section, falsetto vocal confidence and increasing musical arrangement nous.
Also hailing from Auckland were four piece the Pleasure Boys, sadly no recordings have come out. Dressed in black jeans and shirts they unashamedly were a tight two guitar line-up, a la ‘the Clash’ and played fast urgent indie rock and were always a great sweaty night out. They had good stage presence, a projected back drop, and one funk based beat number that always stood out from the four-to-the-floor set. Very little is written up about them or accessible, somewhere I read one or two of them moved on to other Auckland bands.
Running in parallel were ‘Dance Exponents’ as they were known then and later just the ‘Exponents’ they had a similar arc to ‘the Mockers’. Hailing from South Canterbury and building up a reputation in Christchurch, they joined the band in a van and slugged it out nationally. Like ‘the Mockers’ they had a fabulous front person in Jordan Luck whom not only sang and charmed audiences but also had a gift for melodic song hooks and wrote tunes that are still played forty years on. Songs that are seemingly baked into the summer psyche of Kiwi’s both home and maybe even-more-so abroad. With a single, then later twin guitar attack, alongside the rhythm section, they rocked. Initially there was a dress code of the eighties threads and maybe psychedelic shirt cool from Chris Sheehan. Then came a little military frock jacket chic from Jordan before Kiwi casual endured. They had the look, the songs, the sound, and the fan base grew. A five piece that rocked like rock stars on the stage at Colonel Greer’s was something to behold. As the eighties moved on the sound softened to a more pop bent and the drummer tried out electronic drum pads, delighted with the ease of set up/pack down. The songs picked up radio play and success brought new younger and more often female fans and I recall my last Exponents gig at the University Orientation week where I ceded my traditional front row placement to the young women and headed to the back. They were on their way and I was looking elsewhere. Before that though, these are the songs that hit the mark back then. Victoria was the early one that put them on the singles map. In a not dissimilar narrative to the ‘Psychedelic’ Furs Pretty in Pink it is a slow burn tale of urban female woe, wonderfully told from the third person observer. Fun fact, the Furs drummer Vince Ely became the session drummer for them on a later album. Initially as a four piece, singer Jordan had to double up on the building rhythm guitar so ace guitar player Brian Jones (true) could play the flash notes of the intro. Then came the upbeat hook laden run of songs: Who Loves Who the Most, What Ever Happened to Tracy, Airway Spies, I’ll Say Goodbye Even Though I am Blue (barroom/rugby club/camping ground sing along favourite). Different was their ode to their hometown province with Christchurch (in Cashel St I Wait) and Caroline Skies doubling up on female name and the Timaru Bay of the same name and summer carnivals. On Know Your Own Heart, we got the soft slow radio friendly love song with the nifty guitar riff. They then tried the old, ‘time to go to Australia’ and make it bigger path, only to find they were soaked in New Zealand imagery and pathos and returned, albeit harder and darker with this gem, the oddly named Sex and Agriculture (they were not thinking many radio plays with that name) but it signalled the end of their first phase well.
Whilst we had missed the Dudes, co-singer/songwriter/guitarist Dave Dobbyn had put together a new band to tread the boards of summer stages and unleashed one of his best ever songs the Devil You Know, it has it all: the guitar/vocal/drums all seem to start like a horse race straight out of the gate, the guitars are rhythmic and flash, he has the assured musical chops to slow and speed the song with its narrative arc. They only downside was the rest of that album, which could not compete. Live you might get a couple of those Dudes classics, the barroom guitar/chorus sing along joy of Bliss and a contender for New Zealand’s greatest song: Be Mine Tonight, with its ringing and counter weaving guitars, perfectly paced vocal and lyric recalling one hell of a romantic interlude. Lyrically the lines “Another smoke/another can” just evoke the time and place so well.
In a similar vein ‘Dave McArtney and the Pink Flamingos’ was an off shoot from ‘Hello Sailor’. Whilst more of an older brother 70s working hard pub rock vibe there was enough of a quirk to the songs to check them out further. That opportunity came when the opened for Aussie rockers ‘Cold Chisel’ at the Tauranga Domain Sound Shell (no longer there). To be clear none of these two were cool with my gang but a teenager in Tauranga has to make do. Dave McArtney had the Rolling Stones rock star cool, in red leather boots, skinny jeans and was a charismatic front person. Three songs stood out: Virginia for its rock n roll vibe and full backing vocal chorus; signature tune Pink Flamingo which was light and fun; and I’m in Heaven which could have easily made massive radio play anywhere. Much later on Dave got a public revival when the wonderful TV series ‘Outrageous Fortune’ who picked up his ‘Hello Sailor’ Ponsonby reggae song Gutter Black to remind us of his songwriting abilities. Aotearoa is a small place, my aunt played golf with Dave’s mother. The other guitar player from ‘Sailor’ Harry Lyon also formed a band (Coup DE ‘tat) and had a radio hit with the light and friendly Dr I Like You Medicine, again with that Ponsonby reggae vibe. Not to be outdone “Sailor’ frontman Graeme Brazier tried out solo and wrote one of his best, the muscular Billy Bold. Dragon must have visited a few times, but I never caught them, like the Exponents, if you put a few New Zealanders’ together anywhere in the world and two ‘Dragon’ songs are certainties for the playlist: April Sun in Cuba upbeat and anthemic; and Rain full of pathos and loss and also oddly anthemic; hence both had big playing careers at our sport stadiums.
Two other Australian based Kiwi bands also came to town in this period.
‘Mi Sex’ and ‘Split Enz’ to show their burgeoning musical prowess and international edge. As for the Dave McArtney gig, both were also in the Domain. ‘Mi Sex’ played the QEII Hall and ‘Split Enz’ back outside in the Sound Shell. ‘Mi Sex’ had found that glorious cross over phase when a new song Computer Games hit the zeitgeist. It was 1979 and the computer age to mass market was dawning and what did it mean? Seemingly ‘Mi Sex’ had the answer: a matrix grid, XU-1 and stuttered computer games in the lyric, backed by a tidy rock guitar riff, and interspersed with keyboard trickery. They went from being a cool NZ band making it in Australia to everyone knowing them and mass radio play. Live they were outstanding, they had mean looking roadies in black tee shirts with the tour dates screen printed on the back (no one in public had band tee shirts back then); ‘Mi Sex’ in white was stencilled on all the black stage gear and amp speaker stacks; the band were black booted/black jeaned/black shirted and arrived on stage among clouds of smoke and a huge racked light show. They had the songs, the band, and a singer front person to deliver: Graffiti Crimes, Computer Games, But You Don’t Care, People, and Space Race. Very much later they had a career coda with Blue Day as a melancholic mini masterpiece. Interesting playing them again after a long hiatus they hold up for production values and delivery. For me, back then, it was real rock n roll school night, I got dropped off and picked up by my father and our next door neighbour farmer in town for a meeting. It may have been the last time I wore blue jeans ….
Finally ‘Split Enz’. Very much everyone else’s band than mine but you went along. You knew the songs. It was a band performance in your town and your mates were going. They were of course fun and quirky, genuinely of international musical quality (two Finn brothers in one band of course) and knew how to entertain. Standouts were I See Red for its out and out rock pace and delivery and Shark Attack for front person performance and slabs of keyboard synthesizer live. There must have been a few Neil tunes too.
Everyone has a teenage life, and many are played out in the byways rather than the highways. As for me, University, Flying Nun and Dunedin Sound bands were just around the corner. Whilst it maybe Forever Tuesday Morning the Outlook for Thursday is always ….