By general acclaim, the refurbished Aotea Square proved to be a wonderful venue for Laneway 2011 on Monday. The layout, which let the punters choose anywhere between up-close-and-personal in front of the stages and decked-out-on-the-grass up the back, was the result of a late change to the design of the site but, I think, a fortuitous one.
And there'll be more to come, according to Mayor Len Brown, who took the stage before Warpaint to enthuse about music and events in the city. He'll want to be careful to stay the endearing side of cheesy -- and he did get near that line -- but there was no doubting that the mayor was delighted to be there, whether charging around shaking hands or sitting down drinking beer with the electors. If there is any ironic detachment in Len Brown is it present at levels my sensors cannot detect.
It seemed the only people who weren't happy were local residents who suffered hours of unwelcome noise -- and who, in some cases, made angry calls to noise control officers. They've been widely scorned as party-poopers, but I have some sympathy.
Let's be clear here: the festival was assigned one of the half-dozen days in which event in Aotea Square are permitted a higher noise limit and, apart from a few minutes when Children's Hour caught everyone on the hop, it stayed within those limits all day.
The problem, as Public Address reader Melanie pointed out to me, is that many residents had no idea what was going on:
No notice was given to residents that it was happening. The building I live in has quite a few older people in it. Like 60 plus. We had noise levels of 80+ decibels outside the building. I was pretty happy - I got to enjoy the music without paying for a ticket. I also knew it was happening. 85 year old Bob on the 4th floor: not so much.
If you let people know, they can make plans to be out if they don't like the music. It's all about consultation with your local community - you live in the suburbs, you're having a big party, you let the neighbours know and they generally cut you some slack. Some goes here. A mail drop outlining what's happening and how long it's happening for would have gone a long way to preventing complaints.
Instead for many people the noise came as an unpleasant surprise, and they started visualising it happening every weekend.
I think there's a fairly clear lesson here. Yes, although Aotea Square has been quiet for five or six years, there should be an expectation that it will be a gathering place and sometimes a very noisy one. It will be a popular "fan zone" during the Rugby World Cup. But it's incumbent on the council to let residents know what is going on.
It might also have helped if we hadn't spent years letting developers slap up apartments that not only resemble a shoebox in size, but have about the same level of acoustic insulation.
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And the music? Well, Holy Fuck! The controversially-named Canadians were every bit as great as I expected. I adore the way they continually drag their music away from the rhythm of the machines by employing analogue, manual elements. Most notably, a vintage film synchroniser exactly like this one.
It's the most analogue "instrument" you can think of. And this is how it is played:
Earlier, I thought An Emerald City provided a nice, ambient introduction to the day. And while everyone else's response to Children's Hour seemed to be OMG! DARK SCARY INSANE NOISE, I had a lovely nostalgic singalong. Onstage sound problems meant their set wasn't as thrilling as the show they played at the King's Arms three or four years ago, but it was still a blast.
Lawrence Arabia, thereafter, was as charming as ever. I'm not quite so hot on some of the other current indie darlings: Aerial Pink's Haunted Graffiti were a bit of a mess and I couldn't help but think that Deerhunter owe a good deal to the Flying Nun canon. I wished we'd been able to hold out for Beach House, because they sounded delightful in the few tunes broadcast live by 95bFM.
But, basically, congratulations to the local Laneway promoters for taking on board criticisms from last year's inaugural event in Britomart SQuare and getting it so very right this time. I trust this will be the first of many Laneways in Aotea Square.
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A less well organised show: Aloe Blacc at The Studio's Backstage bar. No complaints whatsoever about the music, but the room was bordering on the oversold -- and if the management of The Studio wants to keep getting gigs, they should spend an evening at the Powerstation to see how to run a bar. There were only two staff serving hundreds of people in the main room, and one of them went on a long, mysterious walkabout. And yes, it's hard to justify the lease of proper Eft-Pos terminals for sporadic shows -- but the answer is not mobile Eft-Pos. It's a cash-only bar. Sort it out before Aloe comes back, please.
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I should note that I had a delightful time in the week of the Big Day Out with The Bilders at Whammy Bar. So many intense, poetic types in one room! There are a few of us who regard Bill Direen's canon as a particularly special body of work, and we got a good deal of it -- from the twinkling 'America' to 'The High and The Mighty'. In the context of evolving Bilders lineups, this is a good one. It was particularly nice to see Stuart Page back behind a drumkit. And Bill, as ever, is a vastly underrated singer and guitarist.
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Best of luck to the Splore-City organisers for next week's shows (I'll be away Foo Camping). I suspect the shift from Aotea Square in to the Town Hall was a response to sales as well as potential noise issues, but it's the kind of bill that will benefit from running later than the outdoor setting would have allowed, and I admire the enterprise they've showed in marketing their event in a crowded calendar.
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This won't be for everyone, but it makes some of us (ie: the fanciers of classic Chicago house music) very happy: Leftside Wobble has a 30-minute mix from the highly-anticipated DJ History compilation Trax Re-Edited, which is released next week. It is fab.
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And finally, we were back doing a Media7 this week. The show that went to air last night isn't exactly the one the studio audience saw on Wednesday -- like everyone else, we are obliged to be very careful with respect to the Urewera 18 trial, and there was some lawyering-out done yesterday -- but I think it's still an interesting show.