Hard News: Friday Music: Making the scene with a time machine
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punk, dance music and hip hop – all appeared at once in an evolutionary flurry. But did anyone experience all of those, or was each largely inaccessible to the other?
Blondie ?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Blondie ?
Indeed. You could call it dilettantism given that they weren't really involved in those other scenes, but the way they brought them to light was really important.
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I think the On The Tracks gig at the Railway Station for New Years Eve 1988 (I think) was a great experience and Entrain in Golden Downs for New Years Eve 1995 was too. You felt that both gigs were ground-breaking - a new era dawning.
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I wish Auckland would follow the current London trend of audiophile listening and dancing nights, which often employ the same Klipschorn speakers
Me too.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Me too.
It'd be great, wouldn't it? Sure, you'd have a bar open, but the focus would absolutely be on music. I'd pay a $20 cover charge for a night done right.
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Scott G, in reply to
punk, dance music and hip hop – all appeared at once in an evolutionary flurry. But did anyone experience all of those, or was each largely inaccessible to the other?
Blondie ?
The Clash?
Never been a scene person (probably too introverted) but if I were picking one, I'd go with 1950's NY jazz scene around the 5 Spot in lower east side. Miles, Monk, Mingus, Coltrane + mobsters. -
Time ain't on my side...
I woulda liked to have been around mid '60s for San Francisco in full flowering at the Fillmore, Avalon Ballroom and other Family Dog events... The first Zap Comix, etc..
But I was about 8 at the time and in Chchch... sighBut I am in Chchch tonight! - and I'm not sure if I should tell people about this gig - as I want to get in!
see: https://www.facebook.com/Lyttelton-Coffee-Company-124944044265591/
in precis: a BYO Donation entry gig tonight (Thursday 24) at the Lyttelton Coffee Company featuring some giants of NZ Music - Hamish & David Kilgour, David Mitchell and Bruce Russell and it even starts earlyish at 8pm - I think it might even be an Autumnal solstice full moon as well - propitious indeed! -
Russell Brown, in reply to
I think the On The Tracks gig at the Railway Station for New Years Eve 1988 (I think) was a great experience and Entrain in Golden Downs for New Years Eve 1995 was too. You felt that both gigs were ground-breaking – a new era dawning.
Wasn't it Rule the Track? I can't recall whether it was before after the Housequake parties in early 1989 (I was out of the country) but that was Grant Fell et al stretching the boundaries.
And the Audioculture article I did about Entrain is one of the most popular ones we've published. It definitely set the scene for The Gathering and Splore.
It's interesting how many of the most popular Audioculture articles are about what we call "Scenes". The Wellington clubland in the 80s one has been huge for us. It shows the way people place a lot of emotional stock in people-and places.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Never been a scene person (probably too introverted) but if I were picking one, I’d go with 1950’s NY jazz scene around the 5 Spot in lower east side. Miles, Monk, Mingus, Coltrane + mobsters.
Yeah, that's a goodie – and one I wouldn't have been able to summon to mind.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I think it might even be an Autumnal solstice full moon as well – propitious indeed!
My goodness. Were I in Christchurch, I'd be wth you.
As it is, I got given a ticket to the sold-out Lontalius album launch on K Road, so I'm going to be down with the serious kids.
Interestingly, that's a 7pm showtime! (I approve)
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The 'I was born in the wrong age' response seems reasonably common. Like Russell I would loved to have been at the Loft for those seminal times (see Last Night a DJ Saved My Life by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton as a great insight into the history of dance music and DJing).
I'd also have loved to have been immersed in either of the Sumer of Love explosions or in Goa between 89 and 93. The early years of Burning Man.
I was lucky enough to have been immersed in the Entrain experience between 92 and 95 and had the distinct impression at the time that there's nowhere I'd rather be. There was a feeling of 'relevance', an impression that something great was happening, something bigger than the individuals. While there wasn't any sweeping social change as a result of people dancing outside to amplified music, it is interesting to see those summers in the context of our history 20 years later.
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La Belle Époque does it for me, Satie, Debussy, but the scene would have been wild.
A link to one of the best musical things to come from the influence of French colonialism in the Congo.
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For me it will always, always, always, be Bowie. I became a fan in the later half of the 1980s when he had better days both before and behind him. I don't know if I would have spotted the potential in the folk-singing mime artist of the late 60s (though I suspect his cheek and cheekbones would have made up for a lot) but I would have adored seeing the birth of glam. That Top of the Pops performance of Starman still looks tremendous but the power it would have had at the time must have been unbelievable.
Most of my favourite bits of Bowie happened later but those first few years of the 1970s are when so many of the ideas about theatre and performance, that informed the rest of his career coalesced.
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I was a teenager in the 60's ,living in a small country town.....there wasn"t any scene just boredom... and a love of anything that sounded new,like when I heard the lead break in "Green Onions "by Booker T and the MGS,and English R@B....black mans music at breakneck speed....it was so hormone driven,I nearly lost the plot when I heard the Pretty Things...Im A Road Runner Honey on a Mk 1 Zephyrs car radio......shifted to Dunners discovered LSD and Jimi Hendrix ,MC5,Blue Cheer.....then discovered pot[ Dunedin was arse about face with its drug introduction schedule] and entered a very strange prog rock phase that was hard to shake......punk scared the living daylights out of me when I saw 999 perform at my local in London in 1977........It took me quite awhile to recover.......
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Lyttelton ... full moon
In the end I got crook and weary and didn't make it - and apologies to those I enthused about David Mitchell's appearance, as apparently he also didn't make it to town to play - but a great night was had by all I hear, big crowd, guest appearances by Paul Kean (Bats) and John Collie (Straitjacket Fits) - a night of legends!
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Mike O'Connell, in reply to
Indeed it was Ian, Yes, Paul said you were crook. Big crowd young and old-er. You're right, David M wasn't able to make it. Paul played 'bass' on Fish and Point that Thing - basically the top strings on an acoustic. It all went down a treat. Bruce Russell opened proceedings. John Collie hopped on drums for a couple and Stephen Cogle closed the night with ... as the Clean often did, left us wanting more. Short and sweet.
I wonder if Hamish K has considered an alternative career - in the spirit of Easter, he quipped (knowing the flag referendum result was in) that John Key should be nailed to a cross, upside down, placed on the back of a truck and hauled through the residential red zone, wrapped in a Lockwood flag loincloth!
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oops, closed the night with Lolita
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Wasn’t it Rule the Track? I can’t recall whether it was before after the Housequake parties in early 1989 (I was out of the country) but that was Grant Fell et al stretching the boundaries.
Rule The Track was late 1989 I think. The first dance parties in Auckland were parties in various warehouses around the city in 86 or so, put on by Peter Urlich and Mark Phillips, the last of which was heavily raided by the cops who confiscated all the booze (which had been supplied by the VBH restaurant in Parnell). They took a truckload of beer etc to Central and then denied they had taken it. It was never seen again.
Then – if I can blow my own trumpet a little – came The Asylum in what was then The Galaxy (now The Powerstation) from 1986 to late 87. It was a sporadic party, as in only operating when there were no live shows at the venue. We’d put an advert in the Herald that simply said “Asylum Friday” or “Asylum all weekend”, and Radio B would give us a free promo. We would regularly put through 1000-1200 on the nights we had open, all to a diet of hip-hop and early house which was being supplied to Roger Perry and myself by Manchester’s Eastern Bloc Records.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Indeed. You could call it dilettantism given that they weren’t really involved in those other scenes, but the way they brought them to light was really important.
The whole NY No Wave scene at the cusp of the 80s was a real hothouse of the emerging sounds too of course. Into that punk, hip-hop and post-disco boogie sound you probably need to mix the new wave of jazz and the 70s Latin explosion. It’s incredible just how much happened in such a compacted era – any part of which would have and did change the world.
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Jonathan Ganley, in reply to
a night of legends!
Shayne Carter at Silo Park today, captured here playing 'Crystalator'.
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My efforts. The light was a bit difficult for my iPhone, so I had to go hard on the filters.
The light did fall nicely on that well-travelled Fender amp though.
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The Beatles with a string section?
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The Lontalius album launch show at the refurbished Las Vegas on Thursday evening.
As well as his own songs, Eddie did a sweet cover of Anika Moa's 'Dreams in My Head'.
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In the spirit of many comments....'Born in the Wrong Time' from Peter Gutteridge, live in New York. Was originally a Great Unwashed song, circa 1984.
Vocal here is a bit rough, but.
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Mike O'Connell, in reply to
And some here from the Thur night show in Lyttelton - not super quality but you get the gist...
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