Peter McLennan has a bit of a stab at the worst NZ album covers of the past year. My favorite is the Young Sid comment:

“Young Sid forlornly stares out from behind a chain-link fence, like it’s 1988. See, he is from the streets. He is from South Auckland, where you gots to be packin’. In fact, he is so dangerous that the chain-link fence from which he looks *might* be jail. Or he might just be in a local school playground.”

I’d not seen that one, but it truly is a shocker anyway you look at it. Most of the time, when New Zealand tries to be urban American it just makes me grimace, and this is just another bloody example of the same, slightly embarrassing cartoon street that inhabits the world of the likes of Savage (who of course the Australians quite liked…but if you’ve heard the Hilltop Hoods then its fairly clear that Australians don’t, and never have, got hip-hop beyond the most grimace inducing level.

Talking of shocking artwork…I’ve had a few moments over the years when I’ve been less than satisfied with, uhhh, the cover (and some which I’m rather proud of). But it’s funny how time smoothes things. I had an email from some guy in the UK going spare (in a positive way) over my terrible (yes I did it) Doobie Do Disc album cover from 1982. Apparently it was a positive affirmation of the rawness found on the record….uh, no, it was a rather quickly knocked out thing, using the first image I could find, which happened to be a drawing a photographer called Mike had done in the far corner of our office, and the rawness…well despite our best efforts that may have been something to do with they way they were recorded.

But, to the point, what I have done is upgraded my old label pages (Propeller..hence the photo of The Ainsworths who appeared on Class of 81) into an overview, a 7″ page, a 12″ page and an album page. But, being several thousand kilometres away from my storage space, I’m missing a few sleeves on the album and 12″ pages, so if anyone ancient out there, reading this (Chad?) happens to have a copy of any of the missing sleeves, well I’d be keen on a scan…..simon.grigg at gmail dot com dos the trick. You’ll get a nice credit….

Ta

There is a song by the, would-have-been-forgotten-like-The-Simple-Image-if-it-wasn’t-for-Nature, NZ pop act from the sixties, The Formyula, called Home. Everyone has the odd killer song that lurks forever in your head, personal songs, and this is one of mine. I like it so much I put it on the Give it a Whirl Soundtrack. Recorded at Abbey Road in the late sixties whilst this lot were stuck in the greasy spoon hell that London can be on no budget, it was on the B side of Nature, which my sister bought. I borrowed it permanently for the flip after she moved on to her next pre-teen 45 and I still have it. The Formyula were also notable for having one of the best lyrics in NZ pop history:

People Turn on in Otaki / I wish you were here

Which of course is absolute nonsense, especially in the late sixties. Anyone who has ever been to Otaki knows that nothing of the sort happens there, although I suspect this refers to a long past music festival of the sort that used to spring up in surprised backwaters back then at a moments notice followed closely by the police and concerned TV crews and National Party politicians. Good lyric though and not a bad song.

The Formyula also had this annoying habit of running out of lyrics half way through a tune and finishing it with loads of la la las….

But, back on track, Home is a more confusing concept than ever for me right now. Ten days in Auckland in October made me feel like a tourist there, and yet, returning to Indonesia, where I am an alien, I felt at home. I was consumed by pangs of homesickness for this stricken paradise from the moment I hit Auckland. The expat scene here is scary…superficial, shallow, ugly and I want no part of it really. But what I am loving is an alternative quirky little scene I’ve discovered where Indonesia and the west meet as equals, where the cynicism I need to survive thrives and sparks. And I’ve got the systems in place to ease me through. Thanks to the good people at Globalxtreme I’m off dial up and on to broadband again…how the hell did the planet exist before fast internet. I have access to music and information and have a wireless network that allows me to sit in a bale by the pool and write this. Thank god….

And those wonderful surprise parcels have started arriving now and again. I opened the mailbox last week to a couple of things I’d not really expected.

The DVD collection of Elvis Costello’s videos is a mixed bag. I remember quite a few of these but not all and they veer between the sublime (Annabel Jankel’s animated Accidents Will Happen which uses the late Barney Bubbles’s graphics and was so profoundly influential; the strangely perverse Good Year for the Roses; I Wanna Be Loved, four minutes of people kissing EC’s head, which, I think, predates Godley & Crème’s Cry; and the simply lovely Veronica) and the plain ugly (Don Letts’ appalling Everyday I write The Book…such a great song, such a terrible video; and the Darryl Hall duet The Only Flame which is neither a great song or a great video). The rest often show their age but I admit to having a soft spot for the white background studio vids from the late seventies of the sort that TVNZ were still making until about 85.

The problem is that Elvis was never a great video performer and often looks forced, uncomfortable and clumsy (check him forced to dress as Satan..doncha love A&R men..) unlike the stage where he comes in to his own. Which is where this disc really works for me. The bonus stuff is a series of live TV performances of which my favourite has to be the slowed down No Dancing, from Tony Wilson’s So It Goes in 1977, where a young Costello plays it as a grinding country funk closer to his demos than the officially released take.

As the Indonesians say, baik.

The New Order singles collection, called, with their usual wit, Singles, is pretty firm evidence that they are and remain the second greatest British singles band ever. Unlike the earlier double, Substance, which may or may not still be available but is essential for that untouchable run of 12 inch singles from 1981 to 1987 (although some on here are not the original 12s), these are the tight 7” mixes and it is way better, and more up to date than the half baked compilations that London put out in the mid nineties when they did their reissues of the Factory material.

I guess New Order have a simple Formyula (sp..sorry puerile but I couldn’t help it) but it works, and works and works and I’d forgotten just how good some of those mid nineties singles were.

I also scammed a copy of the Paul Weller album, As is Now, whilst in New Zealand and I quite like it which is a pleasant surprise as I’ve not really got much from Paul, who used to be a bit of a hero, since Stanley Road and even then it was only a track or two. His best work was pre 86 and its been diminishing returns ever since, with the last few albums being increasingly dull and humourless rockist songs, which kinda saddened me, as it does when a hero falters. The Style Council and The Jam worked when they did when he matched a wry quirkiness, and an unashamed understanding of his place in the British pop masterplan, to counter the increasing self importance. Oh, and a more than a few killer tunes.

As Is Now is not perfect but it’s the closest thing our Paul has done to a consistently great album since Our Favourite Shop back in the early eighties and it’s a fine thing to have him back. Come On Lets Go sounds like an outtake from This is The Modern World, a much derided album at the time but one that has aged gracefully, and From the Floorboards Up likewise could’ve been one of those singles that followed that album. And Pan is simply lovely adult pop, as is The Pebble and the Boy…I like a good epic I do….

I live for new music but its warming to have the odd happy revisit from old buddies like this.

I love Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom’s Days Of Mars (on DFA who really are having a hell of a year with The Juan Maclean and LCD’s albums easily sitting in my most played albums), and I played repeatedly Rise off the DFA Comp #2..a big late night car record. That track opens this album which is fine as ten months on it still doesn’t drag. That said, I suspect this longplayer will sell about a dozen copies worldwide as it’s hardly accessible. Reviewers are and have been utterly confused by these guys which is as much as an indication as to why one should always treat any review with scepticism. Why review something you don’t understand. The words Vangelis and Jarre keep on jumping up as reference points but neither are appropriate. It you need a reference point look at either the first Fripp and Eno album No Pussyfooting, still a masterpiece, or the Eno associated No Wave movement of the early eighties in NYC. This record is more Arthur Russell than Jean Michel. Beautiful punk electronica, almost indefinably sensual.

Which brings me to Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, whose self titled album might take this from a different slant but the overall drift is the same, elegant electronic landscapes, often performed with more traditional instrumentation than DG & GR, by these two Norwegians but both albums are essentially from the same place and owe so much to the work of the aforementioned Eno, but also the hugely influential Western European pioneers of electronica, re-stating it in a contemporary fashion, which makes it sound dull, but its anything but. I guess if house / electronica or whatever tag you feel the need to apply, is going to go anywhere in 2006 then both albums are hopefully a signpost.

If anyone wants any indication of what went wrong with dance, look at the new DJ Magazine Top 100.

Oh dear.

Yep, and then there is Carl Craig’s remake / remodel of the no-longer-beatless Darkness originally on the wonderful Just Another Day EP i…real Paperclip people stuff, albeit without the disco loops. I quite liked the Radio Slave boot of the same track although it came from a different place and upset the bloody purists (which can’t be bad).

Today I had my hair cut by a guy who had a picture of Osama Bin Laden on his wall. He offered to razor me as well…I politely declined. I guess that’s living in Indonesia.

Public transport…its quite a thing isn’t it. Well actually in most of the world it is. Auckland of course is another matter…more or less it has none. I used to catch the bus when I was at University a year or two back but since then for me, more or less, its been the totally pervasive form of public transport in the Queen City…that being the four door sedan with one person in it, sitting in traffic. How sad, and I guess my only excuse is that I’ve always lived within reasonable walking distance of my working space and I meant to walk…honestly, oh and the fact that over the past couple of decades much of my working time has been when buses and trains don’t run. That’s as good an excuse as any. Yep so Auckland has trains too…it always has had as far as I know and there is a cool blog devoted to this at Slow Train Comin’, where Miles muses about his niche subject with humour and the inevitable frustration.

I’ve caught the local train in Auckland twice.

The first time was with my Grandmother back in 1967. I have no real memory of it…

The second time was last year when my ten year old daughter said to me last year “Dad…what’s a train ride like?”. I felt very guilty. She had of course caught a train quite a few times in Sydney when I took her there at age four, Australia having superb public transport in most cities; but she had no memory of it either.

So we trekked down to the new palace under the old Britomart car park (wasn’t that a shitty old building and deserving of smashing….unlike the wonderful and iconic building in Jean Batten Place that the BNZ wants to bowl for a corporate headquarters… didn’t Auckland learn anything from its Tizard endorsed gutting in the Eighties…I guess not, and the fact they would even consider it says more ugly things about the BNZ than I would think they’d like to say). I’d been there a couple of time earlier for a look…curiosity y’know, as to what we paid for, and to muse as to how much we almost spent and how much so many people walked away with. It really didn’t impress. It’s kind of like the Auckland Casino…when you’ve seen a real one its hard to get excited about something like that. But, hey, it’s a start and god knows we need one in Auckland. Now they just need to get trains that actually go somewhere, like the North Shore for example, and go often & on a regular timetable. I tried to get a ticket to Glen Innes and back but there was an extensive wait of an hour or so to come back on one of Auckland’s few lines. I inquired as to why so few bloody trains and I was told there weren’t enough people to justify the train. It seemed to me, thick as I might be, that the reason there were so few people wanting to use the train was that there was no train offered….

So we went to Newmarket, past my old flat in Parnell where Jonathan Tidball and I tried to lasso the Wellington night train with the other end of the rope tied to our uninvited lodgers’ shed…yes I know it was irresponsible of us but…………… a) he (Ted the lodger who had just moved in without invitation and preceded to terrorise our female flatmates) was at the pub, and, b) the state we were in that evening we stood no chance of successfully throwing the rope, let alone successfully hooking the choo-choo. What used to really worry me about Ted was his mate Bill Smith with a missing hand and a steel hook instead coming out of his old army jacket, which he used to drunkenly brandish in our direction of an evening.

Then we went Newmarket and bought a computer game (the complete Doom..the early ones, still the best PC game ever…end of story…I used to sit upstairs in the Box office at 3am with all the lights out, Roach Motel’s Wild Luv coming up from downstairs, all the lights off, the speakers on full, playing this….scared out of my wits) and came back.

The trains were dirty, uncomfortable and about half full and I think Isabella lost interest until I took her to Singapore and showed her a real public transport system….fast, clean, efficient and regular…everything Auckland’s system is not. And it actually goes places….

I love public transport and use it when I can. I like all subway stations (apart from the one in the South Bronx that Harry Russell and I got off at by mistake in 1990) and some buses. I always took the bus when living in London, upstairs with a walkman – I used to get the #159 from my front door in West Hampstead to my work in Norwood…enough time to read the Guardian or The Independent from cover to cover and do the crossword on the return with the added bonus of the London vista. I remember being stuck upstairs for hours surrounded by gridlock and cops the day the Libyans shot the WPC, and I’ll always associate Jah Wobble / Francois K / Holgar Czukay & The Edge’s mesmerising Snake Charmer with the lower part of Regent Street as that was where it kicked in for the first time.

That’s one of those records that seems to revisit me every few years. I never quite leave it. Quite a combination that lot…I think The Edge is one of those wasted talents. His earlier stuff (I mean his contributions to the first couple of U2 albums) had its moments and I guess the fact that he could contribute to a record like this (although maybe their mutual label, Island, when it used to be an adventurous indie, advised him it was a good credibility move..these things happen in A&R) means something. But to me U2 stopped being vaguely interesting, became an ever increasing self parody about album three and stifled the previously intriguing and astounding Brian Eno. I’ve always liked Jah Wobble too. I like the way that a completely untrained and musically illiterate bass player could revolutionise popular music in such a way…and he did…anyone who thinks that the first two PIL albums didn’t change the musical landscape forever, in so many different ways and so many different genres……………

Sadly we seem to have come to a place where people like this are no longer allowed by larger record companies (big indies like Island and Virgin…majors ceased allowing things like this many years back and have never done so in US) to make records like this. Richard Branson may be your classic offensive upper class English twat, but, all credit, he did allow so many acts to indulge their whims and without that you would never have had records like Metal Box or the first Human League album or all those Front Line albums or all those heinous Gong & Henry Cow records for that matter. Then again, it was a time when Joy Division and, indeed, The Screaming Meemees (thank you) banged their way to number one in the pop charts without a moments airplay. I guess the torch, as the majors gobbled up and neutered any large indies has been passed to the thousands of struggling little labels who continue to push the envelope. Just go and look at the releases on a site like Piccadilly and tell me music isn’t alive and well. It inspires.

Yeah, so as I said, I like public transport. Here in Bali we have these cute little bus type things called Bemos…a couple of thousand Rupiah and you get taken places…efficiently, regularly, but not comfortably, what with the roads, the motorbikes and the fact these things are not designed for a six foot bulé. But you can’t have it all….

Tunes today: Gangstarr-Take it Personal…fifteen years on / Oasis-Guess God Thinks I’m Abel…a great song…what Oasis really meant really hit me in a pub in Burnham near Slough in 96..I was pissed as a newt and for the last hour before we got tossed out EVERY bloody song on the juke was Oasis & every bloody person in that pub, young and old, knew every bloody word / The Casuals- Jesamine..big cheesy song for me when I was a young teen and I found it again on Paul Weller’s wonderful Under The Influence collection. There are so many things I’d want to thank Paul Weller for and this just adds to the list…..so…/ The Jam-Liza Radley

What the hell is it about godzone….eat eat eat eat eat. The obsession with eating endlessly even when you’re not hungry is something I’ve only encountered in New Zealand and the USA. It scares the living daylights out of me and it does me no favours whatsoever. I’m one of those unfortunate people who spend weeks battling to deal to that one steak and cheese pie that I succumbed to in a moment of pathetic weakness (the ones in the bakery next to Glengarry in Ponsonby Road are especially good by the way), only to lose the battle in another momentary lapse. I despise beyond reason people like my bro Peter Urlich (we figured out today we’ve been close friends for thirty years this month..not bad, so I don’t really despise him at all, quite the opposite), whom I had Yum Char with today; he can eat inhuman amounts of anything, washing it down with lager, with no noticeable effect.

I like the Asian way of one decent meal and then a browsing, if and when required across the day. It makes perfect sense..de-bloating, and a succession of flavours.

All this, really, is just self flagellation and complete nonsense, as I’ve just got in from a massive gorging, with the associated guilt, from our hidden secret, KK Malaysian in Greenlane. At least, it was our secret, until bloody Metro (which has, to change the subject completely, a must read article about Iraq in the current issue) made it “hot”, and ruined it. Happily we’ve been going there so long, enjoying the food prepared with such obvious soul and love, that we’ve jumped to VIP status, and we can still get a table in this Formica tabled shoebox at whim…so ha! There is nothing quite as satisfying as pushing past the food Mafioso with a knowing look and declining the menu as we know what we want already. Yep, its puerile but I don’t care at all….

So…nineteen years.

I love doing radio. Its a massive buzz. It stands head and shoulders above TV when it’s done well (and makes a soul shudder when its not, as, unfortunately, so much NZ radio is not). Radio can be a direct line to the spirit and has a one on one relationship with the listener when it aspires to be more than a mindless opiate. The car…that’s where I listen to radio. I spend a lot of time in the car…like the three hour return trip from the city to Royal Oak today. I guess Auckland and traffic congestion are pretty much one and the same thing these days and, to be honest, I don’t mind a bit and I get a little pissed off when I get somewhere before the tune ends. I play vinyl, CD & digital bits at home and in the office, but the car is for radio. I like it loud…even radio based on talk, and I canter through the pre-sets: B for the Wire and the intelligent discourse, but not so much the music; George for assorted shows, especially the Sunday shows and Saturday mornings, Outerdrive and a bit of Churchill noise; the BBC and National Radio for the joy of being spoken to like a thinking adult and sheer information overload; Nui & Flava for the humour and the soul; Base, just because it sounds warm and has the best breakfast show on the planet….

Actually I did my first radio show more than nineteen years ago. Back in 76, as a young lad, I approached Radio B (or Radio Bosom as it was known for some odd reason back then..you have to wonder about those student wags with their excellent sense of humour…the sort of people who turned in Murray McCulley) about a show. Whoever was programming then…it wasn’t much of a job as they only broadcast in the University area …told me I was on and threw me into the on-air studio at midday with virtually no instruction, on my own. For some reason I freaked and found the longest track I could find, Emerson Lake & Palmer’s gruesome live take of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at a Exhibition”, so as to fill my hour with minimum number of voice breaks (I don’t think I spoke once truth be known). I was terrified and went from prog rock hell into a Santana track which took the whole side of a bloated multi disc live album called Lotus. I wasn’t asked back. I guess I was perceived as simply latent talent…

I did more than a few shows in the early eighties as a guest specialist…Elvis Costello b sides and the like, but it was frustration that Roger Perry and I felt which led the two of us to approach bFm to do a regular dance based show in ’86. Nobody at all was playing the stuff we liked on the radio…that funky club stuff, that hip hop, that garage and funk-punk. And, to be honest, B was less than keen too. Murray Cammick had the killer soul show, Land Of The Good Groove, but that was purist soul…not the sort of stuff we wanted to play. Eventually we managed to find an ally in Lisa Van der Arde and were given a midday Saturday slot. So was born Asylum FM. The relationship was fairly symbiotic…we played in return for free ads for our club and it worked well enough for a while, until the all-disco-sucks regime moved us sideways in 87. The station’s magazine completely ignored us…and dance culture, until they turned up with a full page piece that year accusing our club, The Asylum, of quiet racism because we, allegedly, had a bunch of white kids dancing to black music to the exclusion of brown kids. It’s the only time in my life I’ve been accused of racism, something I know I’m not guilty of, and it was doubly offensive since we had a blatantly open door policy and were known for our happily mixed crowds, the first in Auckland, something I’m fairly proud of. Roger and I quit B as a result but never said anything beyond that. I’m not one to let something fester but 18 years on, I’d like to say…fuck you..

There, off the chest, thank god….
(just to clarify..my comments seem to have caused some offense to Mark Tierney but should be put in context..they relate to this particular incident only. Mark was a pioneering force in recorded NZ electronica and a person I hold, otherwise in high regard…sorry Mark).

Mark Phillips, the unhailed founding father of Aucklandclublife, and I, did a show in 88. The Playground. Without Mark none of this stuff would exist, and I wish to hell he didn’t live in Sydney so I could see more of him…..

I guess I should also apologise to Nick D’Angelo for hijacking the Beats Per Minute show in 1989. It was his name, but I convinced B management I could do it better. Sorry Mr Laan.

I did the BPM show for 13 years. 1989-92 by myself, 92-95 with Rob Salmon, 1995-2002 with Greg Churchill and it was mostly a fantastic experience. It was a strange feeling for a while. It was the only dancefloor show in Auckland and we had to play a huge variety of stuff. For the first few years, we played hip-hop for the first hour (in 2005 its hard to believe that we were the only radio outlet for the genre on the air) followed by our top five at nine..really, I guess, the Auckland dance chart, then an hour of house. Later, we dropped the hip hop, and added a techno spot with Simon Flower and friends giving us 15 minutes of purist electronics. Our guests included the cream of the touring djs, with Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May (three times), Derrick Carter (twice), Andy Weatherall, Justin Robertson, Giles Peterson, Norman Jay, Elliot Eastwick, Juan Atkins, Sneak, Ashley Beedle, Phil Asher, Paul Oakenfold, Norman Jay, Lenny Dee and even Judge Jules, plus many more, doing shows. For years, bFm mostly ignored us. It wasn’t real music..it was a token, a novelty, late at night. Even when the station ran its own dance parties we weren’t asked to contribute or be involved. Odd really….

The arrival of George really removed the need for the BPM show…and, any way you look at it, 13 years was enough….

George also gave me the freedom to move away from what Greg & I used to call the fascism of the dancefloor. We’d painted ourselves into a corner where we were limited by having to play new releases and I wouldn’t have carried on doing radio if I was limited by that.

So, there you go. As I said, I love doing radio, and it’s going to be quite a tear not to be preparing the show the night before, hunting out new music and pre-programming in my head, as I’ve done for almost two decades.

Hey Ho…onwards..

Taking of which…I love the FK remixes of LCD’s “Disco Inflitrator”…big big record, both sides. See, its in the blood. Oh, and his new 10” with the mighty U-Roy..and the new Tussle on Rong, which come complete with a killer B side from Corey Black. Or the Soul Jazz acid comp, which is really the bomb. I own god knows how many old acid records from this era, including originals of a good half of this thing, but it still sounds fresh and revolutionary…and after 20 odd years, its hard to ask more than that….

I think this weaning off the music is a complete failure already….

Off to Singapore in the morning…the food, the food, the food!

Auckland Domain 1981 – bottom row: me, Harry “the Bastard” Ratbag, Yoh (Meemees), Adam Holt (md Universal NZ); next row: Mark Bell (Blam Blam Blam), Nigel Russel (Spelling Mistakes, later Car Crash Set) – not sure of the rest, except, standing: Dave Merritt..

Update: Adam Holt has identified Jeff & John from incredibly obscure North Shore band, The Bastards, behind him, behind him is Billy Wiffin- and off to the right is the late Paul O’Neill

How fucking cool are The Others?

I’m not talking about the US or the English bands with the same name, rather our Auckland version, 3 kids from Mt Albert that I first encountered at the Suede Bar in Symonds St earlier this year.

As I said in an earlier post, I’m not a massive fan of many of the current crop of NZ hip hop acts (although Scribe I believe is a true pop star – and has benefited from intelligent and dedicated hard work from his label -  he has what Pauly Fuemana had, and what a young Graham Brazier had all those years ago at the Globe Hotel in 1975, what Ray Columbus had, although without a global record company, which FMR is not, its hard to see how he’ll go beyond Australasia which is sad) and the failure of Misfits of Science album to set the stores alight (less than 300 sold in its week of release, out of 7500 shipped) may mean the kids don’t have much faith in most of them.

But there is something different about these guys, something I hadn’t felt since the early punk bands, an energy, a cool urgency factor. You can pick it in the room when they play – feeling that you need to be there, to experience this because it may never come again.

Which is something I last felt with The Enemy years ago at Zwines. And no subservient Americana either, in their delivery or appearance.

Since I’m trying to get these guys hooked up to a record deal, I’m more than a little biased, but I felt it the first time I heard them, long before that. The lush, almost epic soundscapes, the effortless verbal duelling.

Like I said, fucking cool. I’m seriously impressed, guys.