Posts by Bruce Wurr
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I saw Echo and The Bunnymen in October last year - and I was impressed and surprised at how relevant they sounded. Mind you it was in a beautiful indoor venue (the camden roundhouse) so not sure how that would translate outdoors. It was a fantastic gig, my only lowpoint being the 3 doors segues they dropped in.......'cos I really f*cking hate the doors!!
As a firmly ensconced grumpy post 30's member the bdo this year looks to be the worst lineup for me ever.....and conversely the laneways couldn't be better. But not being there to see it makes that contribution a bit irrelevant!
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A very humid night at the ka in 2003 when fiery furnaces were playing......loads of hippies in the audience and it was the first night of the very shiny new smoking ban. All you could smell was stale beer, rotting carpet, farts and some incredibly overpowering b.o.....I remember thinking at the time "Oh wow, so THAT's what cigarettes masked.....actually that might be more preferable"......
Shellac playing at squid with Chris Mathews from the Headless Chickens heckling Steve Albini between every song.......
Any number of auckland chills gigs at the Galaxy would end up with the Sir Dorr bouncers inevitably beating up at least 3 people.
And tinnitus? Ears destroyed in the space of 3 weeks by Tackhead (muffled for 4 days after that...) and swiftly followed by the said Headless Chickens.....never did quite recover after that, so earplugs became a necessity.
And oh my word that Bad Brains gig!
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I'd be very surprised if the BDO organisers weren't aware of any controversy they would cause by making the initial selection and announcement.
If not, then someone wasn't doing there job properly.
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Looking at photos from the smh.com.au website and there's four from the north shore in Auckland - all featuring people being warned by police who came down to Takapuna beach to watch the tsunami......
sigh.....
That's not to make light of the very serious situation further north in the pacific
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This might not be your taste Graham but I highly recommend Mastodon - fully heavy, quite brutal, but they're great, especially through a big p.a.!
A wee bit underwhelmed with the rest of that lineup though.
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My memory of the glass spider tour in 87(?) at western springs is that he did at least 2 encores.......but I could be confusing that with Pink Floyd and the Genesis ones - hey, it was a long time ago! It was a good concert all the same.
I know I'm asking for it by looking at the "Your Comments" section but I can't believe the bile and disgusting comments appearing after Audrey Young's article on Sue Bradford in the Herald. Seriously - is this what people really think?
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oh my god. focault's pendulum. Completely crosseyed after that one.....and it took me 2 months......
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For such a long time now Auckland has been driven by people acting out of self interest, simultaneously lacking the vision to drive the city into a truly great one and the will to carry it out.
I'm still disturbed by the way this super city notion seems (from a distance at least) to have been promoted as a fait accompli, springing from nowhere with very little public consultation. And then to see some of the directions being put forward, well it just leads to despair.
Unless we get the fundamental things right Auckland will never achieve it's potential to be great. There are so many major things that just aren't done properly - town planning (particularly the cbd), public parks and stadiums, social housing and responsibility, common aims amongst councils and worst of all the public transport - I've said before any city worth it's salt MUST have a multi platform (rail, bus, ferry, subway even, and not forgetting decent cycle facilities) public transport system.
The one reason there ARE so many cars is that it's just not feasible (reliabitly and cost) to rely on the existing public transport systems to get you places cheaply and on time.
I don't have the answer to any of these things - but I do know that they have to happen for Auckland to be able to move ahead into the 21st century. Getting rid of the greed and self interest could be a start but the whole super city proposal just seems to be furthering those causes, yet again.
Thanks for a great article Graham.
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The Quietus is an excellent magazine and (I believe, but could be wrong) closely related to the Stool Pigeon, which is pretty much the only music magazine worth reading that I've found in London....it's free, and very much has an '80's rip it up feel. Less of the editorial and more of the actual interest in the bands they feature, interview and review. Plus it's free!
Mathew Hyland was criminally underrated as a writer (not as a musician though, he's excellent), and I remember came in for some flak at the time for being too highbrow. History seems to have vindicated that though.
In terms of magazines there doesn't seem to be much. I can't comment directly as I haven't been home for the last few years but Real Groove was always excellent, setting and maintaining high standards. There have been some excellent books recently though, two on the fall (Renegade and the Fallen) and Simon Reynolds has been producing some great stuff too.
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just saw Neil Young at the weekend in Hyde Park - f*@cking awesome. A brutal guitar sound when he went electric (which was quite often!) he started with Hey Hey, My My and also included a 20 minute version of Down By the River.......it was spine tingling.
The Pretenders were on earlier and they weren't too shabby either! But I still don't get them Fleet Foxes..........