This is how this post began, some ten days back before I found myself distracted by life:
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So here I am, a week into  Auckland town and I’m still rather wondering where I am. I wandered up and down Queen Street this morning – beginning at 8am (the hour wasn’t intentional – I misread,  or, rather, lazily didn’t bother to check an appointment and found myself in an empty ballroom). It’s an odd, quite lonely place at that time of the morning, with no-one conversing or interacting – aside from the odd order for hot coffee – as everyone, head down, pushes towards offices or shops. I was rather out of step as I lazily gaited downtown, through the ice-cold extreme beauty of early morning Albert Park to the CBD. I was killing time but my unhurried time was somewhat unique…

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I’d forgotten I’d scribbled that until last night and decided to leave it unedited as a precursor to my trip to New Zealand travelogue.

And a travelogue it is – I’m a tourist. I came to New Zealand this time, it’s true, on a mission which was very much not that of a tourist or an off-shorer (more of that in another more timely post soon as I gather my thoughts and allies) but day to day, after 11 months away, I’m a tourist.

I write this at 40,000 feet, or whatever height aircraft really fly at, having left Auckland’s odd little airport (did it really get an award for retail design? Really?) a few moments ago. I feel torn. I’m flying home to Bangkok town, a wonderful, vibrant, huge buzzing monster of a city that I love and love living in, and I can’t wait to see and hold Brigid after ten days apart (although an hour each day on Skype tempers the pain – I guess when technology advances to a tactile level where I can rub the dogs digitally on the chest and they wag their distant tails the longings may abate a little more).

But, I’m leaving home. I went up the escalator at the airport, waving to my parents, struggling awfully with the everpresent thought that I hope this is not the last time I see my elderly dad who is now a better friend than he has ever been. I waited until I turned the corner, beyond their sight, and stopped to gather myself before going through immigration.

And friends. Every one, every day, I felt like grabbing, like hugging. I love talking to you, I love talking nonsense with you. I miss you so much. All of you. I’m so privileged.

Two days in a row, the two before I left, Peter dropped everything to spend an hour, just sitting sipping coffee and talking nonsense. I love you matey. I love you all.

And I love Blake and Sandra for making me laugh like a silly teenager every day and being absolutely incredible hosts. And for taking me on a tour.

I’m not a tourist but I was a tourist. It felt odd. Everyday it felt odd. The street was odd and alien; the way you talk and interact was alien; the shops were alien; the signage was alien; the media was alien; and – the thing I liked least – the faux Ponsonby/Parnell small-town sophistication and need to aspire to sophistication was utterly alien.

Again, I find the casual and accepted racism in the educated and should know better classes alien. Worse: it horrifies. The advertising imagery is overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon too – like it used to be (and may still be) in Australia.

The cost of everything – the outrageous cost of everything (can anyone tell me why a 17” Macbook Pro is $1000 more in NZ than anywhere in Asia) – was very alien. Hell, Duty Free in the airport charges more than the standard street prices offshore. I don’t like being gouged, and it didn’t used to be that way. What changed?

I went places.

I went to Barrio. Roger Perry’s fabulous neigbourhood bar in Ponsonby hosts the sort of music you’d put on the stereo at home after tumbling in at the end a stressful day. It has warmth, humour and – in the winter – a big roaring fire. And it has Roger. Cool as..

I listened to 95bFM. (Inoffensively) way slicker than it has been in years, it was awash with new – at least to me – New Zealand bands and New Zealand songs and clearly nobody asks – or bothers much of the time to mention -  if they are from New Zealand anymore because, rather simply, it no longer matters. That war is clearly won, and Manu Taylor, the station manager, said when we had brekky together the other day, that ‘it’s 1981 again’ – implying that we are on the cusp of a explosive golden age of New Zealand musical creativity, the difference being that this time there is an established industrial backbone to support it.

Perhaps so, but this time 1981 has been bought to you by an uninterrupted cultural frenzy that now stretches back years, rather than a reaction to a vacuum as it was in the punk and post punk era. There is a difference. We have a legacy, now we just need to document it.

I went to Tabac. Tabac, owned by my old business partner and friend, Tom Sampson, and adroitly managed on a shoestring by the iconic and – if you understand the history of the cocktail in Auckland – legendary Kevin the Hat,  is home to many of the more interesting bands in Auckland. The night I went I was offered a free ticket to The Chills at The Kings Arms but declined – I preferred, buzzing off the noise I’d been hearing on bFM, to hang around for the trio of new bands playing and being promoted by the Rekkit Crew, fronted, partially, by Dylan Cherry, the son of Workshop’s Chris and Helen Cherry and someone I’d known since he was knee high.

‘How good were Yolanda!’ Dylan msgd me a few days later, after I apologized for, somewhat under the weather, telling him as he stood on the door that ‘last time I saw you, you were this high….’

And they were.

As was Jesse Sheehan, the headliner. Both blisteringly so….

Although wary of being the old guy at the end of the bar, I was very tempted to change my flight just so I could do another Friday Rekkit at Tabac.

I went to Hanoi. And it was a little disappointing. The place was fabulous. The staff were wonderful, they were turning away dozens, so the formula is working. The food was monochrome. It had no bite, no edge, no unexpected dimensions. We asked for chilies to see if they would help. They came out in a small dish. They had no bite either. We can’t get the hot ones in New Zealand the waitress said. The Thai place – Zap – in the next street seems to have no issue doing so I thought.

I guessed the formula – for that market demographic (the Pons ‘sophisticates’ as above) – doesn’t include too much challenging of the diners’ palates. It gets good reviews in the right places.

Most high end food in New Zealand – the pricey stuff at the chic city and Ponsonby places is monochrome – at least in my experience, which I admit is not universal, however nor is it limited. We simply don’t do the ab-fab or silver service well at all and never have, but most especially when we try to do ethnic blends like modern Thai or Vietnamese, sub-Sydney Chic style as seems to be the current flavour. The foundation of the cuisines is often ripped out of it – the heat and spice provides much of the support that the other flavours are built on and if we extract that and other essentials there is no solid place to start. Ho hum.

That said, and I say this on loop, we do ethnic hole in the wall and mid-level really, really well and I was taken – by Blake & Sandra – on a gourmet tour of a few of the small places.

We went to KK.

I love KK. I’ve (well, Brigid and I) have been to KK, in Greenlane perhaps 60 times over the years. The massive number of glazed-with-hunger waiting patrons queued outside every time we arrive perhaps means that I’m not alone in in thinking that it may the best Malaysian food you will find almost anywhere. That includes Malaysia. In many, many trips to that country, and many many researched expeditions to find food, we’ve yet tto find a place that offers food like KK, either the breadth of menu, or the quality of the food. All for silly prices. It has bite.

We went to Sri Puteri’s. In Panmure, where much of Auckland never treads ¹. Shoebox sized, with spotless formica tables, its Mamak (Tamil) menu was a long way from KK’s more Melayu styles. We ordered so much that I found myself gorging on the spicy reheated lamb curry the next day. Fab, and thoughts of the mouth-watering small South Indian places in Penang which we frequented after escaping the horrible tourist traps on Gurney Drive and the repeatedly unappetising hawker markets.

We went to Little India in Kingsland. I know the hipsters go on about Satya, but the textures at Little India are – to my taste at least – far more complex, layered, and interesting than it’s oft touted groovier counterpart ² despite the almost classroom-like ambience of the restaurant’s large room. Satya always feels, like so many name restaurants, to have adapted their food to soothe the masses. That word comes to mind again – Little India’s food has bite. Satya has queues – what do they care what I think?

We went to New Flavour. There are so many cheap but over-lit Chinese (am I alone in being offended by the New Zealand domestic use of the word ‘Asian’ to describe Chinese folk in New Zealand – I guess I am – it’s a big place, Asia), Thai, Indian, Cambodian and other Eastern regional cafes along Dominion Rd, it’s pretty much impossible to know where to start without expert advice. I had such advice and we joined the queue for a table at this wee diner that has all the ambience of the inside of an overcrowded shipping container with flood lights on.

The deep fried squid was greasy and a mistake but that was the only one. The various varieties of Shanghai styled dumplings (hand-made by an old lady in the corner) we gorged ourselves on were better than any I’ve eaten in mainland China, and the so-called Omelette, which was more like a flat fried bread, stuffed with various things (I liked the red bean, Sandra went for the spring-onion, Blake ate both) was wonderful. However, the dish that really nailed it was the Tofu and Cucumber – long shredded strips – salad, the likes of which I’d never had before. We were reluctant to pass over the table but the growing queue was looking increasingly tetchy. I’m not sure why – it’s open until 4am.

It’s interesting how big parts of the creative soul of Auckland City seems to be slipping further and further away from the traditional core. Places like Dominion Rd and parts west are increasingly enticing and whilst Ponsonby, or some of it, seems increasingly soulless. It goes around I guess.

We went to Santos – like Barrio it still has soul, and is in Ponsonby. What a wonderful institution. As Glenn made Blake, Peter and myself some of their reliable reliably great coffee, he espoused the global financial crises, rugby, and South American politics, all with sufficient depth that he wasn’t just another barrista talking shite on Ponsonby Road. A cafe with bite. And history.

And Auckland’s best eggs benedict.

We went to Grand Harbour. It may have the best Dim Sim on Planet Earth but we’re not allowed to talk about them at the moment as they’re the only New Zealand joint on the Shark Fin wall of shame.

We went to Russell & Fiona’s. It was his (Russell’s) birthday and he and Fiona served up a feast of mid-winter New Zealand soul-food that went blissfully with the conversation and the whisky. The birthday boy was sitting on the sofa grinning widely to a soundtrack of Donna Summer when we took our leave at 3am.

We went to Mexican Specialities. Why I love Auckland, part 1153: tucked away in the faceless suburban wash that is the space south of St Johns Rd, and north of Marua Rd, sits this unassuming Mexican shop which becomes a cafe three lunchtimes a week, and, for the rest of the week is just (not just – it’s a big plus in a city where Mexican food has forever been the uninspiring slush served up by the likes of The Mexican Cafe) a retailer selling genuine and quality Mexican sauces, shells and, I assume there is a market for these, religious artefacts.

The food, on those three days, is wonderful, and, as far as I’m able to judge given my limited exposure in the Americas, as close to the real thing as you’ll find beyond those shores. And silly cheap. There are, of course, queues.

I met Blair Parkes. I’ve long been a big fan, and we’ve conversed digitally for years, but I finally was able to meet him, at the Great Blend where he seemed to me to be the star (although I doubt the word would sit easily with him) of the evening, with his brickface font and his multimedia presentation. I felt humbled and at a loss for words as he explained quietly how his life in Christchurch had evolved over the past year or so, and the trauma and loss, both personal and in a wider sense, that he had had forced on him and his world. I was also humbled by his talent. I’m always humbled by great talent.

Finally, but of course not least, I said goodbye to Minka. That I was in town for her funeral was a (and I want to use the word fortunate but of course it’s wrong and I can’t) timing that I was grateful for. She was a good friend, although not a very close friend as our friendship was, over the years sporadic (we had been talking via Facebook over the past few months and did so quite often – I was also thrilled that a photo I had taken of her was included amongst those shown during the service).

And 40 – I still can’t work out how that happens – rational thoughts are overwhelmed with the awful injustice and ‘why?’ But the song of choice at the service, the complete, quite raunchy 1969 take of Zep’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ played loudly was Minka’s final goodbye. As it began, that riff, the whole of St Matthews smiled then laughed. Once last time she’d managed to lift a whole room by her presence, just as she did so many times over the too few years. Bye Minka.

 

 

Since we’re celebrating record stores and all things vinyl, I thought I’d repost this, originally from August April last year – posted again for record store day (late) and NZ Music month (1 day early).

I’ve had a couple of conversations of recent with people about record stores in Auckland – the lost sort – where was Record Warehouse? When did Taste close?

That sort of thing.

I guess its part of being some sort of aging vinyl buff, but the thought of all those places, many of which I spend endless hours in as a kid, or older, still gives me some sort of huge nostalgic buzz. I used to spend days trekking around the second hand stores and the junk joints, most long gone, looking for the hundreds of 45s that I still have in boxes in my storeroom.

Rhythm Method, outside Rock’n'Roll Records, Queen St, 1980

There have been countless record shops in Auckland over the years, we New Zealanders consume vast qualities of music, but I’ve only listed ones here in central-ish Auckland (Newmarket, the CBD, K Rd and Ponsonby) and shops that have closed down. The stores that are still open can tell their own stories. And I’ve only mentioned the stores I actually personally remember, and, yes, despite my best efforts I’ve clearly made some mistakes (and missed a few stores).

These shops were often filed with passionate people, both in front of and behind the counter (and more than a few snotty know nothing kids who looked down on almost all their customers and helped kill the stores) but despite that record retailing is an extraordinarily risky business and more than a few of these stores, most in fact, including some big operators, went bust and disappeared from the streets of the city forever.

However many of the most colourful and creative people I’ve known over the years came out of record retail or supported their creative enterprises on the rarely good wages paid in record shops.

I worked in several of these shops over the years myself and have huge memories of scaring the fuck out of quiet Parnell with the New York Dolls, or the joy of turning someone who’d never bought jazz (and actually asked for Kenny G) onto Miles and then watching him grow into Coltrane, Bird, Gillespie and beyond over the next few years.

Now where is that copy of Neat, Neat, Neat I bought at Direction Records in 1977….

Lost Record Stores In Auckland

Record Warehouse

One of the major players in central Auckland retail from about 1977 to 1987 when it went under. It was originally owned by Mike Dow and Guy Morris, and, later, Roger King amongst others and grew out of the collapse of the Direction chain. It’s major branch was in Durham Lane West, with the best 7” selection in Auckland, thanks to the wonderful Kerry O’Connor, and at other times had branches in other locations in the city, including The Corner (the old Peaches store) and in Lorne Street (which they called Rio for some odd reason). Record Warehouse went the way of most record retailers and ceased trading after the stockmarket crash. It’s staff included Trevor Reekie, who worked there when he was playing his huge part in inventing the indie label in NZ. Roger King also managed Dave Dobbyn for many years, and later managed Don McGlashan. In the interim he spent time in Wellington working for the Alliance Party. Mike Dow was instrumental in bring FM radio to NZ, and later sold real estate in Omaha. He died in June, 2009. Guy Morris passed away on 3 Jan, 2011. He was one of the true pioneers and visionaries of the NZ music industry. Respect.

Sounds Unlimited

Sounds Unlimited began life in Newmarket in a small shop in Remuera Rd in the early 1970s, owned by Henry King. He opened a second store with his brother Jim running it in Panmure about the same time. He quickly expanded to 101 Queen Street, Papakura and into much bigger premises still in Remuera Rd. They also opened a second store in Broadway (see Broadway Records). In 1982 Henry sold the chain to Gary Nuttall (the Newmarket stores), Terry Anderson (Queen Street) and Jim Lum (Panmure). Nuttall and Anderson kept the names and traded as a unit for a brief time but fell out, with Anderson keeping the name and Nuttall rebranding as Tru Tone. King moved to Sydney where he opened Chelsea Records, passing away a few years back.

Sounds Unlimited eventually expanded across Auckland but went under in the early 1990s. Out of its collapse came the Sounds chain, which also went under a decade and half later, costing the record companies millions. It had, at other times, stores on the corner of the Strand Arcade and Queen Street, 256 Records (see below), and a store in K Rd, infamous for it’s big coke bust in the early 1990s. Robin Lambert, the group’s sales manager was perhaps the best salesman I’ve ever seen in a record store. His famous refusal to sell a customer the third Iron Maiden album, because he didn’t own the first two and would not understand it, was typical (the guy left the store with all three, very happy).

Under Henry King, Sounds Unlimited revolutionised music retail in NZ and paved the way for a new generation of aggressively fronted, with loss leading items, and discounting, record stores. For better or worse, it paved the way for the current dominance of The Warehouse, whose music retail, appropriately, is headed by Terry Anderson. Henry’s name survives with King Exports, an independent distributor. Sounds Unlimited’s buyer, Steve Morice, also managed Push Push, which can’t have hurt their chart returns.

Tru tone

Gary Nuttall, with his wife Allison, rebranded his stores as Tru Tone (with the exception of Broadway Records, which kept it’s name) after the fallout with Terry Anderson, and expanded into the malls and ‘burbs. Of note was the St. Lukes store, staffed by Phil Bell, Jason Howson, and Andrew, the drummer from Garageland. Under their management it became a centre for imported dance music, both house and hip-hop. Tru Tone went under in 1999, and many of the stores were taken over by either Sounds, with some irony, or ECM.

Direction Records

The first of the alternative stores of the post hippie era, dating from about 1971, and owned by Guy Morris, Direction was quite an empire for a while. It had stores in Darby St, Swanson St, Queens Arcade, and outside Auckland, and sold hip records in recycled brown paper bags. Direction ran a record label, which not only released local bands but licensed overseas labels like Casablanca, and they were also tied to Hot Licks, the alternative music

magazine edited by the late Roger Jarrett, which is the blueprint and granddaddy of all NZ music press since. The shelves were often full of imported pressings of hard to get underground records from the US, but, like all NZ indie chains, it inevitably went bust, in the late 1970s. From it arose The Record Warehouse.

Peaches

Peaches was owned by industry veterans Brian Pitt and John McCready, and was essentially the retail arm of the RTC operation, which had NZ rights to Virgin Records and a few other labels. It operated from the mid 1970s in The Corner (formerly John Courts, and now Whitcoulls, Queen Street), and for me is remembered for all those well priced Virgin reggae imports, and, especially, as the place where I managed to pick up my EMI pressing of Anarchy In the UK. Record Warehouse took it over around 1980 and it closed shortly thereafter. They also had a branch in the old Direction store in Queens Arcade.

Taste Records

Taste was, with Direction, the other post hippie retailer, moving into the punk era. Taste was owned by David Perkins and, for a while, Rhys Walker. Rhys had worked for Pye Records and David had worked, in the 60s whilst at university, at a store upstairs in Vulcan Lane, called The Loft. Taste opened first in Lorne Street in the shop under what is now The Lorne Street Lofts, and had a special listening booth with extraction fans to allow the listener to get him or herself in the right state of mind to listen to that new Yes album. It was extraordinarily hip and moved early 1975 into the Southern Cross building in High Street (leaving the booth behind sadly), where along with the rock, it imported jazz and underground music. I was there one day in 1975 waiting for that first Split Enz album to arrive, and I bought one of only two copies of the first Ramones album in NZ there in 1976 (Johnny Volume bought the other). In 1979 it took over Professor Longhair’s in Parnell (acquiring me in the process). I managed the shop briefly in 1980 and ran my first label out of it, but Dave Perkins had lost interest and shut it in September that year. He later ran Snake Screen-printing studios which dominated NZ music merchandising for years, and died in 2004. His funeral was like a who’s who of the NZ record industry of the last three decades. RIP Dave.

Professor Longhairs

Professor Longhair’s was an offshoot of Richmond Records in Melbourne and owned by Nadine Huru, an Australian who had come to NZ with her husband in the mid 1970s and opened the store in small space just up from the Alexandra Hotel (now Iguacu). The shop was, from late 1977, the only shop which really stocked and played the punk and new wave sounds in Auckland, thus became one of the epicentres of that scene, which was helped by the fact that not only was it the only record store open on Saturdays in Auckland City, but was 150 meters up the road from The Windsor Castle, which was home to many of the Auckland punk bands on Saturday afternoons from late 1978 onwards. I ran it for Nadine from early 1978, with the legendary graphic artist Terry Hogan (the man who signed Toy Love to WEA, and did the AK79 sleeve) as my weekend staff. It was taken over by Taste Records in 1979 and I went as part of the package, before moving to Sydney for six months.

Basement Records

A second hand shop in the basement of The Corner in the late 1980s. They were, as I recall, briefly in the old Record Warehouse space in Lorne Street too for a while.

Rock’n’Roll Records

Jan, the owner, opened Rock’n’Roll Records in Symonds St, on the corner of City Rd, in the early 1970s, as the first dedicated second hand store in the city. It moved to Queen Street, just down from where Real Groovy is now, in the middle of that decade, where it’s staff included Simon Mark-Brown and Kerry Buchanan. It was a mecca for the vinyl obsessed (yes, guilty) and the shop’s rare records auctions were huge drawcards. I remember outbidding Graham Brazier on a Stooges album about 1979. I loved the huge boxes of 7″ EPs and 45s behind he counter. In 1983 I sold much of my record collection to Jan & Kerry before moving to London (their prices were never less than fair but damn, not a day goes by when I don’t regret selling what I sold). It moved to Fort Street, in a space next to the small Fort Lane, in the 1980s, and added Kirk Gee to the staff. Jan sold out to Real Groovy in the late 1980s and they closed the site, moving the staff up to the Queen Street store. Phat Wax took the site briefly and it’s a laundromat now.

Record Exchange

Along with Rock’n’Roll Records, Record Exchange dominated the second had market for years. At one stage it took up much of the end of St Kevin’s Arcade in K Rd. Neville Lynch and Chris Hart opened it in 1976 and it soon became a second hand mecca with thousands of copies of everything imaginable and tons of rarities. Neville bought Chris out later in the decade (he then opened Real Groovy) and eventually bought in his son, Liam, and moved in the 1990s to K Rd itself, near the Queen Street intersection. There was another shop too, briefly, further along K Rd. The retail shop has gone now but Neville and Liam continue to trade successfully via TradeMe and Ebay and claim to have 200,000 records in their catalogue. I don’t doubt it…

Quaff Records

Owned by Phil Clarke and UK DJ, Roy the Roach, Quaff initially took over Bassline’s shop before moving down the road to a space in O’Connell Street next to Zambesi. It lasted some 2 years from about 1994.

The Big Orange

This was not just a record shop but the best example of that long forgotten artefact, a head shop. It sold music, incense, clothes, posters, and accessories of all sorts (including bongs and the like). It was around from about 1970 for a year or two in the Canterbury Arcade.

Criminal Records

A well regarded dance specialist in Symonds Street owned by Nick Collings, it traded for 8 years and specialised in hard dance and trance.  It opened on April 14 1998 and ceased trading of December 2008. [Thanks for the update, Nick - see the comment below for some pretty cool links]

Revival Records

This shop began life in the late 1980s as a second hand shop in Victoria St, about where the Sky Tower is now, moving in the 1990s up to K Rd, before closing down later that decade. The stores, in which I spent many hours trawling, were owned by Colin Cleave.

256 Records

At 256 Queen Street, this store was owned at various times by a couple of guys, Godfrey Woods and Kit Kingston, and also by Sounds Unlimited. I’ll always be grateful for the gross underpricing of the 18 volume Philadephia International boxed set, which I picked up for $50 one day. 256 was the first shop to import dance music as a speciality and amongst its staff were Grant Kearney and Sam Hill who went on to found Bassline Records (see below). It’s staff also included Kerry George and Mike Haru.

Broadway Records

A Sounds Unlimited / Tru Tone owned shop in Broadway, Newmarket, that specialised in Classical and Jazz. I worked there for about three years part time to support my record label work, in the early 1980s. It was managed by Mel Moratti, a record industy legend who knew literally everything about classical music and the world’s classical releases, and is still employing that knowledge at Marbecks at the time of writing. It was the first shop in Auckland to have a CD player and stock CDs, when the local record companies were still rather nervous about this new tech.

 

246 Records

On the first floor of the 246 Shopping Centre in Queen Street (where, incidentally, the mezzanine café had the best Iced Chocolate in the city). It was partially owned by Dennison Smith’s in Rotorua and was renown in the 1970s for having the best annual sales in the city. I’m unsure exactly when it opened but it closed some time in the early 1980s. Derek Fletcher, who ran it at the end, assisted by Joanne Middlemiss, later opened a health food shop on the site of the old Direction Records in Darby Street.

HMV Records

In about 1994 the HMV chain re-entered the NZ marketplace and rented the space on the corner of Vulcan Lane and Queen Street. They opened with a huge band, putting some $10,000 on the bar at Cause Celebre. However they closed about two years later and the space is now occupied by the National Bank.

The EMI Shop

EMI was owned, of course, by EMI Records, (originally trading as HMV) and at one time sold all sorts of things like Fridges and Washing Machines as well as vinyl and cassettes, dating back to the 1940s when they dominated the NZ music industry. In the 1960s and 1970s they had a large store in Queen Street about where Burger King is now, near Victoria Street. They carried a huge stock and later moved up to where 256 Records was. In the late 1970s EMI upgraded the stores and opened one in the Downtown Mall. This was staffed initially by Peter Hewitt (who was later manager of 256), and then by Chris Caddick, who was later to become MD of EMI NZ, and Adam Holt, who is now MD of Universal NZ. EMI closed these in the late 1980s and a Sounds store was in the Downtown site for a while. EMI briefly re-entered the retail world with HMV in the 1990s.

Bassline Records

Owned by Sam Hill and Grant Kearney, both ex-256, Bassline was Auckland’s first dedicated dance and DJ store, and was DJ central for some years. Situated in what is now the Karen Walker shop in O’Connell Street, it was famous for Grant killing the records being played regularly so he could listen to the horse races through the PA. And the mad rush as the imports arrived. It opened in 1989 and closed about 1993 when Quaff took over the site. Grant Marshall provided the staff and the shop was often filled with friendly record company staff on Fridays filling out the chart return to pad NZ’s eternally and completely inaccurate charts.

George Courts

In K Rd, had, for years, a record bar just inside the door, with a smallish selection, but great sales bins. Closed well before the store closed in the 1980s.

Lewis Eady’s

In Queen Street, next to Whitcombs and Tombs (now Whitcoulls) near Durham Lane East, Lewis Eady had a multi-floor store with sheet music, instruments and a massive but almost impenetrable record selection, which nobody in the staff seemed to know or care about. Although it had been there forever, and in Queen Street selling music since 1918, it closed in 1980 and moved to the ‘burbs, where it remains now, albeit without the records. They also pressed vinyl and had their own label at one stage in the distant past.

Cyberculture

Heath Burgoyne ran Cyberculture and sold alternative and electronic music from K Rd for most of the 1990s. The shop was a heaven for the eclectic and the leftfield.

Arthur Eady

One of the seemingly endless number of retail offshoots of Lewis Eady, Arthur operated until the late 1960s at 112 Queen Street, on the lower side of Vulcan Lane, selling instruments, sheet music and records.

Crucial Records

Crucial was owned by Miles Kuen and Matt Drake, upstairs in Canterbury Arcade from the late 1990s until about 2003, selling a huge range of techno and house vinyl and CDs.

Beautiful Music

In K Rd, near the Newton Post Office, from the mid 1990s, Gary Steel’s Beautiful Music offered his personal selection of interesting, the eclectic and the plain desirable. Amongst his clients, famously, was the late John Peel.

Phat Wax

Tony Young, an Australian DJ, opened a record store in a house in Jervois Rd, moving it to the old Rock’n’Roll Records space in Fort Street when Real Groovy bought them out. He later moved to a space in Victoria Street East just up from Lorne St. The shop had a range of Italian house to begin with, which rather confused NZers, as the style had never really crossed the Tasman, but later expanded to cover other styles, although it never really worked.

Lamphouse

The Lamphouse was an appliance, and lighting store, with a mezzanine floor that stocked records. It was a great place to pick up long deleted obscurities that had sat in the racks for years. Closed in the 1980s after being in the same spot for several decades, on the corner of K Rd and Queen St.

Bond & Bond

I have vague memories of a Bond & Bond with a fairly healthy vinyl department in the Dilworth Building in Customs Street in the 1960s

John Court

Where Whitcoulls is now, John Court once had their department store with a smallish record department. Closed in the early 1970s.

Rendells

Another department store that had a record department, just inside the door and to the right as I recall. They shut the record dept in the 1980s.

Farmers Trading Company

And another. The record dept in the Hobson Street store was at one stage quite large but mostly full buckets of Zodiac and Viking Peter Posa or Pacific albums with half naked girls on the cover. I guess that was their market.

Milne & Choice

And another. They had records for sale in both Queen Street and Remuera Rd, until they closed Queen Street in the 1970s, and Remuera a few years later. I remember buying David Bowie’s Pin Ups there in 1974 (and, yes, I still have it).

Second Hand shops Q St

For years there was a row of bric-a-brac stores on the eastern side of Queen Street, about where Mayoral Drive cuts through now, full of ever changing boxes full of dusty vinyl, with loads of 7” singles and sixties soul and pop.

Sounds

Sounds, the last of the mega chains, with it’s roots in the Sounds Unlimited chain, had, amongst it’s dozens of stores in NZ, the huge one in the old Whitcoulls shop on the corner of Queen and Durham, one in the old 256 store (now a games shop), one in the Rialto mall in Newmarket and one in the old EMI shop in Downtown. Probably lots more but they were largely faceless…

 

Record store in Little High Street

There was for a year or two in the 1990s a record store in the mall called Little High Street, a shop packed full of imported US cut out and new release hip-hop and r’n’b vinyl. It didn’t last but was a goldmine, but perhaps better suited to South Auckland. The name escapes me.

The Vulcan Lane stores (updated!)

The names of both of these escape me too, although they were quite different. The first was upstairs between the two pubs, and I think was simply just called Upstairs Records, and closed about 1970. It’s staff member, Dave Perkins, later opened Taste Records. The second was owned by RCA / Pye at one time (it was tied into the RCA Record Club) and managed by Lorraine Tennant (later of Peaches). It was downstairs in part of the space now occupied by the CD Store, next to the city branch of the Pancake Parlour (the chocolate and banana pancakes were delicious..this becoming a theme I think). Update: It was Music City..thanks to Jock Lawrie who bought his first album there (Beatles Hard Days Night in ’74…not a bad way to start…).

Update: Nige Horrocks says the one upstairs in Vulcan was Gordon’s, and that rings a bell, but the one I meant, Chris Bourke rightly recalls as The Loft. And Nige reminded me about another one:

Beggs Wiseman

The national chain had a store in Queen Street, between Durham Lane East and The Canterbury Arcade, although I’m unsure when it stopped selling vinyl

Woolworths & McKenzies

There was a McKenzies, which was kinda like a NZ owned K-Mart, in Queen Street, which ran between what is now the ANZ Bank and Vulcan Lane, it sold vinyl near the Vulcan Lane door. I used to like the grand portrait of the founder, Sir Something McKenzie, on the staircase. Woolworths, before they became just a supermarket, bought them up around 1980, and closed the Vulcan / Queen Store shortly afterwards. The Woolworths store near Queens Arcade continued for a decade and a half, rebranded as DEKA, and it too sold music but very mainstream

Current retail outfits old locations…

Real Groovy was intially at the top of Richmond Rd, then the top of Mt Eden Rd and then on the corner of Queen Street and City Road before it moved to where it is now. Conch was in the Canterbury Arcade for several years before it moved to Ponsonby.

Crawlspace

In the Lagonda Arcade in the 1990s, had it’s own record label

Play Records

Another K Rd store, in the Lagonda Arcade, specialising in dance, in the first years of the 2000s. It was later Lopass Records and is now Uptown, specialising in dubstep and grime.

Central Station

An Australian dance store that opened in Durham Lane East in the late 1990s. Like Phat Wax it missed the mark because NZers really had a more developed musical taste than the cheese that sold so well in Australia. It moved briefly to the top end of Vulcan Lane before closing.

 

Bizarre Beats

Another on K Rd, which started in St.Kevins Arcade in the early 1990s, then moved down to O’Connell Street in the mid 1990s to share with Quaff, before heading back up to K Rd where it shared a space with Virus Clothing. They stocked alternative and industrial and still can be found via the Club Bizarre website, run by owner Mark Wallbank.

BPM Records

yes I’ll get to that…

And an update…a word from the legendary Terry Hogan :

Hi Simon .. nice work. There was another Eady store (was it Sydney Eady?) on the corner of Queen and, I think, Swanson, where I got a brand new copy of Love’s “Forever Changes” for a dollar from a bargain bin one day in the late 60s. True, a buck was still worth something then, but still..! And I bought it on the cover alone but sometimes that works out fine.

Your mention of the second-hand places up the top end of Queen Street calls to mind a real treasure trove that used to sit just below City Rd where I picked up a lot of US stuff that I still have, Stooges, MC5, and a personal fave, the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “Mendocino”. Can’t remember the shop’s name but the LPs were $2 and $3 (I never figured out how that distinction was made) and the guy was friendly and I dips me lid to him.

And yep, fond memories of working Prof Longhairs .. but go easy on the “legendary”.

T.

Lost gold – for me at least. Newly discovered shots of The Asylum taken by Ian Marriott, later the bar manager at Cause Celebre and now the co-owner of Tahi Bar in Warkworth.

Opening in late 1986, The Asylum was a part time club – in that it didn’t open every weekend, only when the space in Mt. Eden, now The Powerstation but then The Galaxy, was free.

Regularly pulling a 1000+ a night, it was the first club in NZ to play house music and pulled in people from all over the city – it may have been one of the first places where the North Shore and South Auckland met socially.

I love the shot of Roger and I in the booth – it was a shakey thing and whichever one of us wasn’t DJing had to steady the turntables for the other. Mantronix’s Scream, Sly & Robbie’s Boops, and a DMC album evident.

More here if you so wish, although be aware they’re ancient pages much in need of attention.

I never quite get used to flying part of flying, although I’ve been stuck in these claustrophobic tin tubes ¹ so many times over the years that I do it without much thought before, after, or during boarding.

The physical part of the flight is easy. I know how to check in, the tricks that get one through that process (internet check-in always, always, always ²)

The part I can never really get comfortable with is the lottery once on board, especially when transiting alone. Who is sitting in front of you? Why does the old lady three rows back insist on having an extended 3am conversation in Farsi with her husband while both have their headsets on?

I hate being forced into conversations on aircraft and dread the talkative sort placed next to me. That’s what my instantly placed Sony headphones are for. Sure they work for inflight diversion and audio too, but their primary role, at least for the first few moments before and after takeoff, are to make it obvious to the grinning inane curtain-rail salesman next to me that I have no interest in spending a few hours getting to know them or their stories. I’m not a snob. I just enjoy the fact that the aircraft seat is none of the few places on the planet that I can happily sit uninterrupted for an extended period.

And I really don’t care about your story.

Ok – I’m a snob.

As I type the brat sitting in the seat in front of me, aged about three, is leaning over, bashing my TV screen and shouting at me as his fucking mother sits obliviously watching NCIS LA. I am searching for a spare cushion to carefully press down on the charming wee thing’s face once mum has dozed off.

As I tweeted recently, the first airline to put all under fives in the cargo hold, with the pets, will get my business.

All of which is irrelevant, although I’m well pissed off that having travelled on Thai Airways (which perhaps should advertise itself as having the worst food in Thailand, just so one can compare with everything else served in the kingdom), it has not changed their in-flight movies in three months – they had a shitty selection ten weeks back – on the first of four trips. Repo Men was not good the first time. On the third spin through, it’s aged badly.

But I sound ungrateful. Russell flew me back to Auckland and for that I am not only grateful but thoroughly flattered.

I came back for the Orcon Great Blend. I found myself sitting on stage in the wonderful (aside from the drink prices I’m told..mine were free so I’m not complaining) Wintergarden, a truly unique venue that Auckland City seems to be almost oblivious to ³ and vastly under-used.

I didn’t really get what Russell was trying to pull off until I saw it and when I saw it I was overwhelmed at both how incredibly ambitious it all was, and at how well it had been achieved by both Russell and the seemingly tireless Quentin at Pead PR. I was well impressed, which, given my ongoing and increasing-with-increasing-age cynicism, which is now coupled with a seen it before somewhere personal pre-judgement for almost anything, is something. It seemed to me that the spark of the germ of a notion of an idea had come to Mr. Brown, most likely as he lay in bed trying to drift off, when, let’s be real, most of the world’s great schemes are hatched, ⁴ and that he’d had the sense not to listen to rational wisdom and ran with it. Indeed, after it had all worked out so well, he told me he stood back and realised the, if not enormity, but perhaps sheer inadvisable scale, that most lesser people would perhaps scale back after the initial rush of the idea, of the damn thing. The fact that he ran with it instead of listening to those voices in his head is why he is who he is.

And pull it off he / they did. It was brill and inspiring.

As Russell and Brigid will attest, I was nervous as hell before I hit the the stage. In fact, I was impossible for the week before ⁵. However Russell commented beforehand, correctly, that I seemed more nervous about the DJing bit than the talking bit. Damn right..playing records to a crowd like that is far more harrowing than simply talking, something I’ve done more often than my creaky mind can sometimes recall ⁶.

I had also worked out that anything I said would be overshadowed by the, compared to me, literary giant that is Emily Perkins (and Dylan Horrocks), and the talents of Karl Maughan, which (the talents that is) I’ve always been somewhat in awe of, even when he was staggering out of The Box after an extended night in front of the DJ booth, as he was often seen to do in the early to mid 1990s.

And with that I want to apologise.

I don’t often get told off by barmen. I got told off by the barman. However, I wasn’t alone: Roger Shepherd, Murray Cammick, Doug Hood, Harry ‘The Bastard / Ratbag’, Benny Staples, PKNY and more all got told off by the barman too. For talking during the shows. For getting all reminiscent and old school over it all when we should have been listening. We really should have been. To be fair to ourselves, part of what we were saying was was related to the works in hand on the stage. But we were saying it too loudly – it was disrespectful and a wee bit arrogant.

I’m sorry.

Okay, that’s done. I feel much better.

A couple more things to clear up:

1. I was not slagging off Neil Finn’s achievement at getting the most played song internationally award at the Silver Scrolls. Quite the opposite – but it’s been almost thirty years. FFS will someone knock it off that perch. We did it with How Bizarre for some five years, and that song still sits comfortably at number two (with close to 100,000 radio plays a year worldwide – still ⁷)
2. Contrary to the tweet that went out I did not play any Hanson whilst on the decks. I’d left the album at home. But I did play Altered Images and for that I have no apology to make.

And finally, thanks to Stu Page whose images of the event, including the one above are here. For more incredible shots of early punk in NZ, wander across to here.

Stuart’s vids of my interview⁸ are below if you missed it.

It’s fine to be home…..

I’ve been meaning to link to this for a while: Chris Bourke’s rather wonderful and evocative obit, from 2002, for one of Auckland City’s most vital characters of the last half century. With a huge soul, generous and straight up, he’s very much missed..there’s always a bottle of Ouzo at the bar for you, buddy…

Phil Warren, Impresario

Irrepressible, imaginative, energetic, brash, provocative, entertaining, Phil Warren had all the ingredients to be a classic demagogue. Instead he used his talents to further his passions: entertainment and the region of Auckland. The two connected often; he believed show business and politics were natural bedfellows. Both require the gift of the gab – and a natural charisma to encourage people to get out and vote for you. He knew the old gag – “politics is show business in drag” – and once put it to use when he booked Diamond Lil for a Labour Party conference. Besides all the acts he booked, all the local body meetings he chaired, in the early 1970s he altered the social fabric of New Zealand when he acted like a one-man lobbyist to change archaic laws that prevented licensed drinking after 10 o’clock. “I always vote for Phil,” an Auckland friend once said. “He’s the only politician who believes people should be allowed to go out at night.

[From Distractions]

I’ve always wondered what the Auckland City Council has against Auckland.

Over the past three or more decades it’s hard to think of a time when Auckland’s controlling body has entirely worked toward the betterment of Auckland. There are huge successes of course and I think the city is blessed with it’s parks, pools (although Parnell Baths are a shadow of what they once were), libraries, Art Gallery and very much more.

But for all that I do think it’s been very poorly served by those we elect and those they employ, and I look at Wellington, or to Melbourne as examples of how cities can be administered and directed.

There have been missteps, many often benign in their intent, but missteps nevertheless, like the recent upgrade of Queen Street, which was done, I believe with the best of intentions, but tens of millions of dollars later left the city with a little less parking and a road that looked almost the same as before…more or less deserted apart from those looking for a bus, and full of large slabs of gray concrete leading to and from the various faceless banks, fast food joints and phone shops.

Or the viaduct which is mostly a pedestrian unfriendly quagmire of mediocrity, which Aucklanders only seem to value because the rest of the shoreline of what has a claim to being one of the most beautiful harbours in the world, is much worse. And was the last area the slacks-wearers at the council tried to develop as an ‘entertainment precinct’…

Or there is utter incompetence, such as the way Ponsonby Road, one of Auckland’s potential assets is kept half baked by stupid parking restrictions that restrict its development as a boulevard, and that fact that mostly it’s treated as a race track with often disastrous results. Or the way the greed and stupidity of the city’s parking department, with it’s onerous restrictions, which are applied at times when just about every other city in the developed world is actively encouraging people to come and spend, ensures that most of the inner city is deserted and the businesses there struggle to pay the outrageous rates.

Then there is the plainly evil. I’m thinking of the wholesale demolition of the inner city, with the active connivence of the council in the 1980s, under the supposedly leftwing eye of Dame Cath Tizard, which ripped the soul out of the city to enrich a few select developers who just happened to have rather excellent connections to well placed elected representatives; or the same happening around the Britomart a few years later, where an area which, whilst run down, was bustling and quite ready for revitalizing without an onslaught from, yes, more bulldozers, and, yes, more developers who just happened to have good connections to various council folk, getting rich from the council created mess that ensued.

In the time that I’ve been actively aware of what’s happening in the city politik I don’t think Auckland City has had a mayor who can reasonably put his hand up and say “I’ve done a good job and, because of my drive and vision, left the city a better place”, at least since the, still talked about in hallowed tones, golden days of Sir Dove-Myer Robinson. His successor, Colin Kay, was the most insubstantial politician I’ve met (he kept a cigarette case on his desk with about half a dozen brands so as not to offend). Cath I’ve mentioned, and I’m trying to actually remember anything Les Mills or Christine Fletcher did. The last guy tried but seemed better suited to making museli, and the current incumbent is pretty much mostly concerned with loud-mouthed self aggrandizement.

Sadly Auckland’s inner city is an increasingly unattractive jungle of faceless blocks and architectural drabness and you can point the finger at most of those above, and the self righteous and fundamentalists who have largely dominated the council for many years.

But I guess you get who you deserve and Auckland’s sweeping and gray ‘burbs seem to like the faceless and the mediocre. So we get David Hay and Aaron Bhatnagar who make wide-ranging policy decisions about people and industries they neither understand or like.

Like the entertainment industry.

Which brings us to Aaron’s proposal on liquor licensing for Auckland City.

For most of the 1980s and 1990s I ran or was involved in clubs. One was named one of the ten best clubs in the world by a UK magazine in 1991, and recently celebrated a fairly large 20th Anniversary party. All well and good, but we spent most of our time operating up against the council. They were, not because of any attitude on our part, or any intent, the enemy. We battled unreasonable noise controls (and we know they were unreasonable because after hitting them with a legal opinion, they, despite endless attempts to shut us down, backed down and agreed we were operating within the law, unlike their staff who’d been trying to enforce something they had no authority to enforce backed by council paid thugs), ever-changing licensing requirements (once again often unreasonable and draconian in their application, from people who’d never spent a social moment in a licensed premise other than Cobb & Co), demands for instant access for disabled in a previously licensed 50 year old building (no the lift was not good enough, despite the fact it had been for years….fix it or shut now), threatened zoning changes that would force us to shut a long established business, endless road renovations neither asked for nor needed by businesses, which killed access (see below), and so on.

All of which is neither here nor there except as way to illustrate the way that we, and quite some other businesses trying to provide a reasonable standard of internationally acceptable licensed entertainment in a city striving for tourists, were forced to work against the body that was elected to support these things.

Go forward to 2009 and Auckland has a standard of nightlife, of bars, clubs, and live entertainment the equal or better of any in a similar sized city anywhere in the world that I’ve been. Across the nation’s only real urban area on most nights of the week you can find something pretty damn good to do, to listen to or to hang out.

Norman Jay and I were talking a few weeks back about the first time we’d met, many years back, when we bought him to NZ. He’d said how much he’d enjoyed the wide and invigorating nightlife in the city after his time in Australia. We talked about the talent our adventurous nightlife had nurtured….OMC (out of South Auckland but via the city), Nathan Haines, P-Money, Che Fu, Emerson Todd, Mark de Clive Lowe and so on. It’s launched radio stations that define large parts of the city..George FM, Base FM and fed talent to 95bFm. Artists, writers and designers have centered themselves around our thriving nightlife industry. We have wonderful late night eateries and hang-outs that bubble and do so much for the soul of the city.

And all of this exists despite the Auckland Council.

I’m going to leave it to others to tell you exactly why this proposed new law is so bad for the city but it’s shocking that some one like the Citizens & Ratepayers crew, who have absolutely no understanding of what is needed or what this industry is or what it requires are trying to draft this. But suffice to say that I can say with reasonable confidence that if Aaron Bhatnagar had turned up at the door of Cause Celebre we would have quickly turned him away as undesirable. It’s a cheap shot, but I just need to look at his images on his site to know that. It’s not that he’s necessarily a bad guy, he simply doesn’t come close to getting it.

And this all feels like yet another misstep on the part of a council who as a whole simply don’t get it and would do better to leave well alone when mostly its working and has worked. Or if it is going to be revisited, is done so by, and in consultation with, the largely responsible and experienced folks who work in the industries and know what is needed.

I’m also going to mention, with a quiet smirk that a friend of mine, whilst talking to an Auckland City licensing person recently had to explain who Dave Dobbyn was.

Disclaimer: I have a grudge against the Auckland City Council. I used to own a record store in High Street. It was successful and sold vinyl records and compact discs that others did not. We imported most of the stock ourselves, or used some specialist importers. We made a profit but the margins were very slim. In 2000-01 the council decided to undertake yet another major renovation of High Street..it had been 5 or 6 years since the last, so I guess a multi-million dollar upgrade, despite the protests of retailers (at a couple of meetings in the Ellen Melville Hall) was due. After all, it wasn’t their money.

It went on for many (6?) months and the street, and all pedestrian access was completely disrupted. For weeks you simply could not get into my shop, and when you could, you couldn’t get into the street. I turned up one day and a council worker told me to go and shop somewhere else. In the midst of it they decided to increase the rates. I wrote a series of letters and the first few were ignored. Eventually one Nicole Haines from the council came down and yes, in front of several witnesses, said that the council understood and we would a) get rates abatement, and b) a reasonable payment schedule would be drafted to take into account the huge losses we’d incurred. She advised us not to make any payment until she was able to get back to us.

So with this in mind when the next rates installment came due I wrote to the council. I received a very terse letter from some person who was too insubstantial to sign his name as anything but ‘Jeffrey’. The essence of it was: Get Fucked…pay up now. I wrote again, Jeffrey got ruder. I wrote again and then I received a letter from someone further up the chain. I was told that Nicole Haines had not said such a thing…not only that but she was willing to put in writing that she had never met me or been to my business. And I needed to pay up or it would go to court. Simply put, she lied, and if her boss was to be believed, it seemed she was willing to lie in front of a judge.

I found the money but we didn’t ever recover from the, I guess, $70,000 or so we’d lost as a result of the council’s actions. Yes there were other factors, the internet being one, but the money that the Auckland City Council had cost us was the primary reason we shut our doors a year later. Yes, I have a grudge.