live like a rockstar: legion of frontiersmen hall 2012

Live like a rockstar. The collage covered door of the now dilapidated Legion of Frontiersmen Hall in Bond St, Auckland. I was looking for a commemorative plaque. This hall is where the Clean recorded Boodle Boodle Boodle in 1981.

goodbye sweet dreams: roky erickson 2012

Roky Erickson at the Powerstation, March 7 2012. With support from Roky's son Jegar and band, and also from Shaft.

Above: Shaft. Below: Jager Erickson and band.

There was a lot of media coverage during the fortnight before the show. Graham Reid put through a call to Roky's home in Texas and got some interesting insights. Marty Duda interviewed Roky as well, and wrote in his review that he couldn't believe we were seeing Roky in Auckland in 2012. I covered the show for VOLUME, and had to supply at least one good shot. I was in front of the barrier with my camera for the first three songs. Roky hit his stride quickly, playing some great guitar. His voice was still powerful, although it's true he looked a little bewildered. His band were so supportive and protective of him and that was touching to see. After the final song - You're Gonna Miss Me, of course - the band clustered around Roky, encouraging him to acknowledge the very enthusiastic crowd, who were calling for more. Roky had said nothing to the audience all night, and said nothing now. He simply looked out at the crowd and raised his fist for a few seconds, walked offstage, and it was over.

good news blues: doug jerebine 2012

Doug Jerebine recently released his 1969 London sessions - recorded when he was being groomed for transatlantic fame & fortune under the pseudonym of Jesse Harper - on LP and digital formats via the Drag City label. If you have any interest in great and timeless psychedelic blues rock you should check this out. However, of all the available formats, I will say that only the LP cover does justice to the magnificent 1969 photographs of Doug, who looks so right for the times in a very cool herringbone weave overcoat and paisley shirt.


The three photographs above were taken on 25 February 2012 at Silo Park, Auckland. Doug played solo, then jammed with for a bit with Paul from the Cavemen/Trash Can Duo, and then Miles Gillett joined them on drums. The photographs below were taken on 14 March 2012 when Doug & the ten piece World Band played a sprawling and celebratory set at the Kings Arms to mark the release of the "...is Jesse Harper" album. Chris Orange and Yuk Harrison were playing basses, Miles Gillett was there on one of the two drum kits, there was percussion, more guitars, keyboards, sitars, backing vocals ...






"… I’m tired of this negativity about the blues, tell me the good news. My pain is that everyone’s telling me the bad news. And call me. We’ve had a ball on the weekend, but I want to hear from you on Monday as well, just in case you’re feeling bad …" Doug Jerebine, quoted in Nick Bollinger’s extensive and highly readable sleevenotes in the 'Jesse Harper' LP.

a thousand people just like me: new order 2012

February 27 2012: This was the fifth occasion I have seen New Order play in New Zealand. So, given the task by the editor of VOLUME magazine of both photographing and reviewing the show at Auckland’s Vector Arena, your correspondent initially had some misgivings, remembering not only past complaints from disgruntled punters about the sound at Vector, but about all the trappings of regimented rock shows. The early start ("doors at seven"), the overpriced merchandise, the creepy “Welcome to Vector Arena” messages over the venue loudspeakers, the $5 bottles of water and $9 draft beer in a plastic cup. However, once the talisman of a laminated photo pass was placed around my neck, all cynicism disappeared. The security was helpful, the venue interior had been reconfigured to a more intimate size, and the crowd was buzzing. Welcome To The Machine.

Junica (guitarist/vocalist Nik Brinkman, above) played a short but impressive support set. Their influences are clear - there's plenty of '80s/'90s Church/Cure/New Order/Creation Records in the mix. But the songs were well-constructed pop rock: loud, swirling and dynamic. No complaints about the sound so far.

Then waiting for New Order. Pondering the big questions: would they cut it without Peter Hook? Is this really The Other Two feat. Bernard?

The arena floor was comfortably packed when the lights went down and the group appeared, starting with a truncated Elegia and moving through a 90-minute set that touched on almost every album and aspect of their career. It was a retrospective journey from their beginning, but with no surprises (except for obsessive fansite followers of the group, who know exactly how many times Round & Round has been played in the last twenty years. Not once until tonight, apparently). The group went from plangent guitars and hesitant vocals (Ceremony) to synthesisers, sequencers and drum machines (Bizarre Love Triangle, Blue Monday and Temptation). Bernard Sumner signalled the change at the end of Love Vigilantes when he announced “… Right, that’s enough of the guitar rubbish. Stephen, turn on the drum machine.”

They ended with a rousing football stadium version of Love Will Tear Us Apart, which would have made me cringe if I hadn't already been appalled by the same treatment meted out to the song 10 years ago at the Big Day Out.

The show reminded me of Kraftwerk's performance in 2008, where the band was anonymous and the visuals became a seamless part of the whole package. This was especially noticeable during 586. That visual anonymity added to my feeling that there was something missing. Tom Chapman (above) has to fill a big pair of badass motorbike boots. He plays Peter Hook's bass parts well, and adds some new flourishes of his own, but the sight of Hook's ridiculous but endearing rock star posing, flailing his low-slung bass, always made a great foil to Sumner's trademark yearning vocals, air-punching, whooping and dancing.

I enjoyed the show. I liked the way Lou Reed's Street Hassle riff was dropped into the intro and outro of Temptation, and the way the bassline at the end of Ceremony dipped and dived like the Joy Division version. Unlike the 1982 show this was nothing revolutionary, although I wasn't expecting anything except good songs played to a receptive crowd who were well up for it. Like so many of my contemporaries, I was dancing really badly, and I wore earplugs. I took the plugs out halfway through The Perfect Kiss because I wanted to hear the rest of the set at full volume. I wouldn't go so far as one local promoter who bagged the show on Twitter, describing Bizarre Love Triangle as "a mid-morning singalong at Sunny Hills retirement home".

New Order may record again, take chances again, and one day surprise us again. But I can see Bernard Sumner 10 years from now, onstage like Ralf Hütter, with huge video screens, three faceless accomplices and a row of laptops: the new New Order.

(A shorter version was published in VOLUME, March 7 2012)

through the sodium haze: sisters of mercy 2012

The Sisters of Mercy at the Powerstation, Auckland, February 22 2012. They sure brought the smoke and the strobes. With only the first three songs available to get the photos, I was concerned that the group would remain invisible behind the dense cloud of atmospheric fog. They emerged, eventually. Grant Bastard reviewed the show for VOLUME - read more about it here.






Craig Radford of Sticky Filth (above) played a powerful opening acoustic set.

dawn's coming in: shayne p carter 2012

Shayne P Carter, with Vaughn Williams (bass) and Gary Sullivan (drums) at the Laneway Festival at Silo Park, Auckland, on January 30 2012. The trio played a great set, the highlights including 'Done', 'Crystalator', 'Dawn's Coming In', 'Needles & Plastic' and a lengthy finale of 'Seed'. After a long afternoon in the blazing sun, it was a relief to hear that distinctive guitar buzz, crackle and howl as night fell ...

blue meanies: opossom & unknown mortal orchestra 2011

Opossom (Michael Logie, Kody Nielson and Bic Runga, above) and Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Kody Nielson and Ruban Nielson, below) playing their first New Zealand show at the Kings Arms, Auckland on December 17 2011.



Above: Jacob Portrait on bass for UMO.

we got the stage: jed town / fetus productions / x-features 2011

Kings Arms, Auckland, November 25 2011: Framed by a video backdrop of a campfire, Jed Town begins to play his acoustic guitar, and talk about the backstory of some of his songs. The audience falls almost silent. This is good, I think to myself. Respectful. It doesn’t last long. For the rest of the set, Town struggles to be heard above the rising chatter. So we move closer, and enjoy the 12 string flourishes on ‘Sparse’ and ‘Now That I’m Wanted'. Towards the end of the set Town is joined by a friend on second guitar and harmonies for a heartfelt “Norwegian Wood’. “Shut up!” Town tells the crowd, but he’s laughing. “You won’t be able to hear yourselves when we play the next set.”

He’s right. Fetus Productions are brutally loud. At first there is only Town on stage, in cape and balaclava, playing his Travis Bean guitar (famed for their sustain) to a backing track. Between songs, I hear someone beside me saying “They used to play video of an autopsy. It was full on, man. You wouldn’t want to see that on LSD”. Then, with almost comic timing, the autopsy film begins. The music pounds, the audience don’t know whether to laugh or scream. Some do both. It’s a fine line between hilarity and horror.




Town is joined by Serum, Ian Gilroy on drums and Chris Orange on bass, and they play ‘What’s Going On’ ‘Flicker’ ‘Backbeat’ and ‘Sparks Fly’.



On to the next set. Chris Orange’s powerful playing propelled the X-Features through ‘We Got The Stage’ (which dates back to Town’s pre-Features band the Superettes), ‘Victim’, ‘City Scenes’ and two of my favourites: ‘Human Weakness’ with its thundering bass line, and ‘Party’, where the protagonist wants to find that party but there is only ‘a room full of vacant faces/broken bottles’. Orange joked that Town was thirty years ahead of his time, but he is not far wrong. At the end of 'Nunvember' it was good to see Fetus Productions and Jed Town’s musical and artistic legacy so enthusiastically received.