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Speaker: Funny, sexy and ours

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  • Robyn Gallagher,

    Christ The Clean were a brilliant band

    Goodness, that sentence really, really, really needs a comma. (Unless I'm so unhip that I've never heard of this band called Christ The Clean).

    But in case someone accuses me of not seeing the forest for the trees, it was a pleasure to read that piece. I love it when people write so well and so enthusiastically about music that it's almost as good and as inspirational as the music itself.

    Since Nov 2006 • 1946 posts Report Reply

  • Richard Bartlett,

    I don't believe I've ever read anything from Mr. Campbell before: I'm glad that goofy grin comes through as loud and as clear and as cajoling without the aid of TV stage lighting.

    Choice!

    Wellington • Since Dec 2006 • 5 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    "Christ The Clean were a brilliant band"

    Goodness, that sentence really, really, really needs a comma.

    Nah. I thought about it when I was editing, but sometimes leaving out the comma gives you a certain punch. Try and imagine Brian Turner enunciating it as an opening line ;-)

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Kent Parker,

    And then there was The Great Unwashed...

    Hawkes Bay • Since Nov 2006 • 36 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Rowe,

    you and the rough diamond behind the microphone will both have New Zealand accents

    And that is why I love the Chills. I was listening to Submarine Bells in my Palmy flat in 1990 and my flatmate said "but he can't sing"...I thought about that for a minute and realised what bullshit that was, Martin was singing in his kiwi accent!

    Lake Roxburgh, Central Ot… • Since Nov 2006 • 574 posts Report Reply

  • noizyboy,

    Martin was singing in his kiwi accent!

    And through his nose. Quite a talent, that.

    wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 171 posts Report Reply

  • Joanna,

    Speaker: Funny, sexy and ours

    Is JC describing himself there too?

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 746 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard,

    Still, the 80s in NZ were a tough time for anyone who didn't like guitars. We had all those local equivalents of Joy Division or the Smiths, but where were the local equivalents of Depeche Mode or Art of Noise?

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Andrew,

    but where were the local equivalents of Depeche Mode or Art of Noise?

    They came later...

    Does anyone else remember the storm in a teacup that erupted when the Headless Chickens won the Rheinech Rock Awards way back when? There were plenty of commentators of the opinon that they weren't guitary or rocky enough.

    Hamiltron - City of the F… • Since Nov 2006 • 900 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Does anyone else remember the storm in a teacup that erupted when the Headless Chickens won the Rheinech Rock Awards way back when? There were plenty of commentators of the opinon that they weren't guitary or rocky enough.

    I do know that the controversy was a complete pain in the ass for the band - who needs some radio fool on their case? - and winning the award was in some ways more hassle than it was worth.

    But Chooks got their commercial revenge, didn't they?

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Andrew,

    I know I had been vaguely aware of them via some airplay on good of waikato student radio, but the extra publicity cemented them in my mind as a band to watch for.

    Hamiltron - City of the F… • Since Nov 2006 • 900 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    One thing no one's mentioned about the whole FN whatever is how they played in the US .... I had the interesting experience of living in Dunedin through the early 80s and left for the US in 84 (the very day the Muldoon govt started to collapse ...). It was pre-internet then and it was if NZ dropped off the face of the earth .... a few years later suddenly all those Dunedin bands were being played on US uni-radio and they were hip - those Dunedin bands got their own "NZ" bin in the local record stores on Telegraph in Berkeley - there were people in there I'd gone to high-school with - it was very strange.

    A whole generation of US college kids grew up with Dunedin bands - I currently have a customer in Philly that I visit periodically who's such a fan he'd even made a pilgrimage to Dunedin .... now that I'm living back in NZ I've taken him FN releases as gifts when I go on biz trips ....

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • FletcherB,

    Me, I've never really "got" the whole Flying Nun thing.... especially the early years...

    I'm not here to detract from the bands or the label.... different strokes for different folks and all that...

    But, I seem to recall at the time, that mine was not a minority view.... And it seems to me an awful lot of people claim to have always loved Flying Nun/The Dunedin Sound....

    They may indeed love it now, but some of them are full of it when it comes to thier historical view.... Just ask Flying Nun themselves about the early sales figures.

    West Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 893 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Speaker: Funny, sexy and ours

    Is JC describing himself there too?

    You know, I was going to say that like most of the liberal thirty-something chicks I know, 'correcting his grammar' doesn't make it onto my 'list of things to do to John Campbell', but I'm scared he might be reading and I'd look desperate and stalkerish, not cool and urbane like I was hoping.

    So I didn't say it.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • bob daktari,

    it wasn't very cool to be a Flying Nun fan back in the day

    it seems to be now, especially it seems for them that hated all that Flying Nun was and became

    Though for a lot of people (and most people don't buy music) the Nun and her bands was ours (kiwi) and it was very, very special.

    A feeling John has captured well in his article/post - cheers

    auckland • Since Dec 2006 • 540 posts Report Reply

  • hamishm,

    Yeah, they were ours.
    While arguing with other students about the "Technical brilliance' of ABBA or the "relevance" of the Eagles, that was what I wanted to say.

    Since Nov 2006 • 357 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    Still, the 80s in NZ were a tough time for anyone who didn't like guitars. We had all those local equivalents of Joy Division or the Smiths, but where were the local equivalents of Depeche Mode or Art of Noise?

    They were called Car Crash Set, Body Electric, Marginal Era, Ballare and dozens of other bands pulling quite good crowds. The tough time they were having was getting much coverage in the media. There was a huge swell in electronic music happening.

    I remember the Headless Chooks getting the Rheineck award too. I was at the ceremony. There was a big fuss, but there had been as much of a fuss when Adijah won the year before. I think the biggest problem was that Lion wanted a Dudes or instant Split Enz to sell their beer.

    I'd also question whether all acts were singing in imported accents prior to FN. I think its a little bit of revisionism to say that and unfair. Go and listen to The Features 12" (Jed Town's vocal on Victim is pure North Shore), most of Ak79, Mental Notes ("even his friend, the hippie man" by Judd in pure enzildspeak), or anything by The Blams or Hercos. All of these predate FN and I think, not trying to take anything away from FN at all, but the already thriving indie sector (at least in Ak which was my experience) had long since moved away from that by the time FN came along.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    But, I seem to recall at the time, that mine was not a minority view.... And it seems to me an awful lot of people claim to have always loved Flying Nun/The Dunedin Sound....

    They may indeed love it now, but some of them are full of it when it comes to thier historical view.... Just ask Flying Nun themselves about the early sales figures.

    Hmmm ... Tally Ho! went Top 20, and Boodle eventually achieved platinum sales. 'Heavenly Pop Hit' made #2. And most of the bands could tour nationally when they felt like it. The likes of the Verlaines would play three straight nights at the Windsor Castle.

    So they weren't exactly obscure, just largely absent from commercial radio. That said, no one locally was achieving the kind of multi-platinum sales that mark out a really big release these days.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Richard Irvine,

    it wasn't very cool to be a Flying Nun fan back in the day

    It seemed that back then non-Flying Nun listeners would clump all the Dunedin bands together in a tuneless, hairy, pissed, mumbling, black jersey-clad mess. Funny Business (Willy De Wit etc) even did a parody called 'I Love My Black Jersey' or some such. It was fairly obvious they'd never listened to a FN record in their lives.

    Auckland • Since Dec 2006 • 242 posts Report Reply

  • FletcherB,

    Russell... thats a valid comment...

    Perhaps my own tastes were more heavily influenced by commercial radio and Ready To Roll than the stronger NZ presense on Karen Hay's Radio With Pictures... I was, after-all too young to attend live gigs at the time...

    Heavenly Pop Hit was possibly the first Flying Nun release I did like.... I wasn't considering that part of my "especially the early years" it was 1990 after all :)

    Now, being older and wiser, I can see the difference between production/polish/presentation and the greatness (or not) of a song... but to young eyes/ears low production standards of the videos/recordings at that time were a hinderance to "getting" the music, and I've known my share of bands that were great live but could never get that greatness when recording...

    So perhaps if you were old enough to get to the gigs you'd get a better idea of how good they were, moreso than if your only exposure to them was radio/tv?

    I think its one of the great acheivements of digital technology, for start-up bands and the like, that its far harder now to tell the difference between a $1000 recording and a $10,000 one, let alone a $100,000 one, than it was back in the '80's.

    West Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 893 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Hosking,

    FletcherN wrote:

    But, I seem to recall at the time, that mine was not a minority view.... And it seems to me an awful lot of people claim to have always loved Flying Nun/The Dunedin Sound....

    They may indeed love it now, but some of them are full of it when it comes to thier historical view.... Just ask Flying Nun themselves about the early sales figures.

    Hmm...I wonder...I know I made an instant friend of a young bloke in the only decent record shop in Tauranga when I bought 'Death and the Maiden'...he was this subversive who, whenever possible, would pull Alison Moyet or Wham off the turntable and stick on the Verlaines or the Chills or -going offshore a bit - REM or Billy Bragg.

    I think a big attraction of the Nun bands - that early 80s wave anyway - was that they played real guitars. at the time synth music was everywhere, and some of the classic guitar bands had gone.

    South Roseneath • Since Nov 2006 • 830 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard,

    They were called Car Crash Set, Body Electric, Marginal Era, Ballare and dozens of other bands pulling quite good crowds. The tough time they were having was getting much coverage in the media. There was a huge swell in electronic music happening.

    I knew Car Crash Set and Body Electric, but haven't heard of the others. I wouldn't have known whether they pulled the crowds, since I was a bit young for gigs at the time. Certainly there was a certain amount of electronic music around at the time, especially toward the experimental/industrial end of the spectrum: the one live gig I was part of, we played support for Tinnitus, and made sure we skipped all the track where we had tried hard to sound like Yazoo or the Pet Shop Boys!

    But it seemed to us that synths and samplers weren't really a part of either mainstream pop or the FN sound. The cool kids were turning up the treble on their guitars and gazing at their shoes, not sitting at home programming a step sequencer and listening to Kraftwerk.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • FletcherB,

    It seemed that back then non-Flying Nun listeners would clump all the Dunedin bands together in a tuneless, hairy, pissed, mumbling, black jersey-clad mess.

    Um.... yeah, guilty as charged. :sheepish look:

    That was my original point.... not so many people now admit to having thought that way in the past.

    West Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 893 posts Report Reply

  • Robyn Gallagher,

    Nah. I thought about it when I was editing, but sometimes leaving out the comma gives you a certain punch.

    I learned my word skillz on the streets, so I'm totally open to punk-arse comma use.

    Try and imagine Brian Turner enunciating it as an opening line ;-)

    Hey, this gives me an idea for the Flying Nun competition.

    Since Nov 2006 • 1946 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    But it seemed to us that synths and samplers weren't really a part of either mainstream pop or the FN sound. The cool kids were turning up the treble on their guitars and gazing at their shoes, not sitting at home programming a step sequencer and listening to Kraftwerk.

    I may get in trouble for saying this but there was certainly a belief, fairly commonly held, in Ak by the mid to late eighties that FN represented the conservative side of what was being created in the NZ homegrown industry. It was something you heard said a lot.The Chooks were largely seen as a the exception to this perceived conservatism. Things moved very fast in the eighties, partially as a result of the massive changes in NZ, and partially as the result of the huge musical revolutions that followed the punk and post-punk electronic and rhythmic (including the things happening in Detroit & Chicago) explosions.And then there was hip hop too, which had a huge effect on white indie rock'n'roll. What was radical in 82 was very old school in 85.

    They were heady times around the world, NZ included.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

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