Random Play: Pauly Fuemana: How . . . sad
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Very touching. By the end of your piece I was thinking of that quote from J D Salinger that has circulated in the past few days. The story is that in 1984, Ian Hamilton approached Salinger with the intention of writing his biography. Salinger turned him down, saying he had "borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime."
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Thank you, Grahame. A lovely dedication. One great song is far, far better than no great songs.
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Cheers Graham. I'm a little lost for words today as many are.
But it's only fair to note that, as you briefly mention, the media people who gave Pauly his biggest break were Dylan Taite, who did an extended piece on Paul for TVNZ which ran on the 6 O'Clock news the day we released the single, John Russell from Rip It Up who gushed over the song, and, probably most importantly, yourself, who took a huge risk and gave a complete unknown the front page, full, of the entertainment section on same day. It was that page which led to Dylan ringing me later in the morning.
And it was that day's coverage which snowballed in NZ, launched How Bizarre and sent him on his way and I've never been able to say thank you enough, so I'll try again.
Thank you, from us all. And thank you for your words today.
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This song was on Mai constantly throughout the 90s, and blasted through Mangere, at the Town Centre, at the pools, through car and house windows... if there was a soundtrack to my youth, this song would feature pretty prominently.
And it felt so, so good to have a hit from someone from your own community, to show you that it was possible to make it across the world, even from Manukau.
Nostalgia is a pretty powerful thing, and I wonder if the impact this is having on me is that it so positively identified with a particular time and place, both of which are now gone.
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Thank you for that beautiful heartfelt piece, Graham. Your writing, as usual, is eloquent and sincere, and utterly utterly spellbinding. And it reflects what many will feel, I think. Sad, even if they didn't meet the man.
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Lovely, Graham. Lovely. I always thought that album contained a handful of great songs: How Bizarre, Land of Plenty, Right On. And I always felt Pauly's voice in Land of Plenty was beautifully right in its New Zealandness. (It appealed both to my mawkish sentiment and my latent nationalism.) That's fine praise from Simon Grigg (above). You deserve it: both for your writing way back then, and for your writing today.
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Driving down I95 from Connecticut to New Jersey in 2007. Hearing a 1990s NZ hit song on the radio - How Bizarre.
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I'd second John Campbell about "Land of Plenty"...that and "How Bizarre" are an amazing legacy for anyone to leave...
And thanks Graham-
because I never knew the man except for the songs, I'm playing them right now, joyously-
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because I never knew the man except for the songs,
Same. All I have read above, is deeply moving and your words Graham, brought tears to my eyes. I am sure his parents would be deeply moved also. For Pauly Fuemana, may he R.I.P. For Pauly's Family, my deepest condolences. Two sons too soon. :((
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Thanks Graham. Like you, I mostly knew Pauly in a professional context, but I've thought more about him as the day's gone on.
I'll write more later, but for now, people might be interested in the pre-stardom Otara Millionaires Club on the groundbreaking Proud compilation.
It's here on Amplifier.
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he’d had accusations of “sell-out” on his phone
*sigh* First, lovely tribute Mr. R. but that really steams my sprouts. Until we all get over the bullshit that being a commercially successful artist is some kind of moral degeneracy, nobody should be weeping any crocodile tears over the endless tales of those who get sucked dry by con-men and parasites until they end up dying in poverty.
And just for the record, don't knock the magnificently catchy ear-worm that can still make your rump wiggle decades later. They're the musical equivalent of catching lightning in a tea strainer, and I'm profoundly thankful for each and every one.
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Otara Millionaires Club
Always impressed by the ballsy confidence of that name and the determination behind it. Inspiring.
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Driving down I95 from Connecticut to New Jersey in 2007. Hearing a 1990s NZ hit song on the radio - How Bizarre.
Such moments are memorable moments. Gazing upon a small bin of NZ-imported, very wrinkled tamarillos in a supermarket in Toledo, Ohio in July 2007, whilst Bic Runga's Sway was playing over the PA!
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I was in a Club in Prague and the song brought on a new meaning.
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Since we are trading memories
I remember driving down to the east coast to build a house for Habitat for Humanity during university. We had a person from canada with us and I played his CD. Two things stick out
1. She knew How Bizzar but didn't know it was from NZ. (That showed just how big it got, it wasnt some song from nz that was cute it was truely global)
2. Driving through the coromandel listening to Land of plenty with tears in my eyes. (thers a song that speaks our new zealandess what ever that is)
PS Tried to play it in Itunes and it wasn't there, I still have his double CD in a dust wallet time to put it on the PC
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Thanks for your wonderful tribute Graham.
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Just dug out the Winter 94 Planet magazine, which has an interview with Pauly's older brother, Phil, about the Proud tour and album, where the first incarcation of OMC appeared.
Pauly doesn't feature in the story, but I met him the day I went out to do the story (Phil I'd met when his group House Party played a disastrous, floor-clearing set at the second Housequake party I'd run in 1989 -- we laughed about that.) Pauly was cool, confident, handsome.
I'd chat to him socially after that, and he struck me as someone with a good sense of who and what he was. He told me about the way his father (and, I think, the family) had lived in, of all places, Parnell when he first arrived to seek his fortune -- in the rough part, where the wharfies lived. And then they were gradually pushed out to south Auckland as the Parnell slums disappeared.
I had a really keen sense of these sharp young brown kids coming in to the city and it fascinated me because there'd been none of it when I'd first lived in the inner-city in the mid-80s. I'd come back in 1991 to find these, as they called themselves, "new urban pasifika" coming into town. Or, in Phil and Pauly's case, coming back to town.
We tend to forget how non-mobile NZ Pacific Islanders were then. For most of the Proud crew, the tour was the first time they'd been to the South Island. Said Phil:
"Our tour was all these really streetwise people meeting naive middle-class whiteys in the south. They took the Otara on tour with them, rather than leaving it behind. The drinking, the womanising, spending their dole all in one day ... I think next time I'd take more leadership --or their mothers."
I gather it was pretty novel for the south too. We didn't see many PIs in the culture back then. But within two years Pauly, having shed the group but kept the name and the creative relationship with Alan Jansson, was jetting around the world.
I finished the story with this from Phil, about coming back to Auckland from the tour:
"The cool thing about Auckland is that the European guys have really warmed to it. We really missed Auckland when we were away. We've got our hassles, but the inner city especially is colour-blind. You can do anything, go anywhere, do what you want. It's really changed. Mags like Planet, using Polynesians as models, our mates -- we can get it and say, yeah, that's us.
"Proud is here because it's a fresh, cultural thing, but more because the guys are talented. If they didn't have that talent, it wouldn't be happening."
It's sad that, Phil and Pauly, two members of that vanguard, and of that special family, departed so soon.
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I loved OMCs album and didn't know Pauly. I vividly remember hearing "How Bizarre" for the first time on New Years Eve Day in Mapua Camground before attending N-Train. It was on high-rotate on the radio and I thought it was an amazing song. After three plays over 2 hours the DJ came on and said it was Otara Millionaires Club. I was stunned - and very proud to be a kiwi. I was 100% convinced that it was the latest sound from London or NY.
I lived downtown in the late 80's and I thought the arrival in town of Karlos Quartez (fashion modelling at the time) and Darryl DLT Thompson changed the whole scene - suddenly it was very cool to be non-pakeha. OMC sealed the deal! -
Wow dead at 40. That is tragic.
Condolences and best wishes to the family and friends.
I hope they will one day be able to let someone share the story of these brothers with the a wider audience.
I hope their grief is not too unbearable.
Because of that one song they are in our hearts. -
Thanks for that piece, Graham.
If I'm getting my bands mixed up, apologies in advance, but this is what plays out in my memory...
First I can recall hearing of OMC, I and a few other University mates had headed off from Central / West Auckland to catch a free Crowded House concert in the Manukau Shopping Centre carpark. Was probably 3rd or 4th year varsity, Together Alone tour - so 1993 I guess.
OMC was the support act, and out came a fearsome looking man, dressed in traditional polynesian carb, brandisihing a machete and rapping a fairly hardcore song with the refrain "I'm just another coconut". The non-locals were stunned and we didn't know whether to laugh or run for our lives.
It was a weird show all round. About 3pm in the afternoon. About 10 minutes into the Crowded House set Hester exclaimed he had to go for a piss, and I don't think he returned. If he did it may have been for the last song. Neil Finn handed out batteries to someone who was trying to bootleg the show and whose tape-recorded had died.
Neil got some local kid "Billy" who was busking in the square up on stage after Paul departed and they played a Get Up Stand Up / Exodus medley for about 15 minutes, and the kid (and his mate who I think took over on drums for a while) stayed on stage for the rest of the performance to fill in.
Then, a few years later in 1997/1998 I was living in California and the song was picking up big time. Local buskers in the streets of Santa Rosa were singing it, and VH1 had 'Pop-Up Video-ised" the clip, adding OMC and NZ trivia as the song played.
Cherished memories (I hope the former actually happened as I remember it).
Thanks Pauly.
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What's been running through my mind most since I heard the news was the fact that he was a 40 year old father of five. It just seems too young, no matter who you are, and to leave five kids without a dad. I'm not often moved by the tragedies of people I never knew at a personal level, but this time, yeah, it hits hard.
It's funny talking to my American friends too, to realise that many of them remember "How Bizarre" as part of the soundtrack to their college years. That a song that felt so completely Kiwi could be adopted by other people in a completely different cultural context without losing its essential element (fun) is pretty ka pai in my books.
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It's funny talking to my American friends too, to realise that many of them remember "How Bizarre" as part of the soundtrack to their college years. That a song that felt so completely Kiwi could be adopted by other people in a completely different cultural context without losing its essential element (fun) is pretty ka pai in my books.
That's what interested me about "How Bizarre". That a cultural process that happened so often the other way (from overseas to NZ), got turned around. So unusual for us as a country to have that feeling.
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Graham, thank you. Thank you for writing this for us. This devastating news is an untimely opportunity to celebrate the importance of the Fuemana name in our musical & cultural history, which, as you and others have written, stretches back more than two full decades... and takes me back to late 80s/early 90s, living in Papatoetoe, getting to witness the nutty young energy of those early Fuemana outfits, House Party and White Boy Black and OMC, and thinking 'this is choice!'.
Choice. I can't think of a better word to describe what it felt to watch all that stuff happen. And it's harder still to describe the sadness when Phil died. And now Pauly. So thanks for giving it a go for the rest of us. -
Simon Grigg has a beautiful Jane Ussher portrait of Fuemana on his blog.
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John Campbell did a great job tonight of getting amongst the mourners at the Fuemana family home and talking with those who knew Pauly and his impact at close quarters. Masterful context, maximum respect.
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