Random mumblings and mundom ramblings on music (mostly), and whatever else pops into my mind . . .
[The files attached here are for review only, and should be deleted after two weeks. If you like the bands, go buy the albums . . . like I did!] . . .
And yes - EVERYTHING posted here is still available!
...And my last quickie post this week in appreciation for reaching the half-million visitor landmark...
From the old (and long defunct) Kiwi Tapes blog (credit for this narrative to original poster):
The Dunedin Double EP was a seminal record in New Zealand music. An unusual format, it contain two 45rpm 12" discs, and at nearly 50 minutes length, it is longer than many albums. Released in 1982, the compilation was one of the first releases from the newly formed Flying Nun Records label (catalogue number DUN-1), which over the course of the next ten years was to become the biggest independent record label in New Zealand. Many of the label's top groups came from the South Island city of Dunedin, and established that southern city's music scene as the leading source of guitar-based bands in New Zealand throughout much of the decade. The bands from the city which had music released on Flying Nun were grouped under the loose banner of Dunedin Sound, and several of them went on to not only national but also international success. The Dunedin Double EP established the names of four of these groups, each of which was represented on the double EP by one side. The four bands concerned were The Chills, Sneaky Feelings, The Stones, and The Verlaines. The Chills' song "Kaleidoscope World" in particular became very popular, gaining considerable airplay for the band (It later provided the title for the band's first album, a compilation of their early singles and EP tracks. Though the sound quality of the Dunedin Double EP was distinctly lo-fi (it was recorded on portable 4-track), the release of this record provided a major impetus both for Flying Nun records and for the four bands involved, as well as providing inspiration and momentum to the music scene in Dunedin.
For your consideration: Flying Nun's legendary Dunedin Double EP, released on vinyl in New Zealand in June 1982, and to the best of my knowledge never re-released on CD or any other format. Enjoy, and as always... well, you know.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
I love-love-LOVE New Zealand music! I wish I could have lived there back in the early 1980's, when it seemed like there was interesting stuff happening all over the country, and great bands - The Clean, Toy Love, The Chills, and many, many more - were popping up left and right. I've been an aficionado and collector of Kiwi punk and alternative music for donkey's years. Here's a real obscurity I got into almost a decade ago . . .
Shoes This High has its origins in the New Zealand punk/post-punk music emerging from Wellington in the late '70s. The band was specifically part of what was called the city's "Terrace Scene", a group of cheap, ramshackle houses on a street hard by Kelburn Park (and just down the street from Victoria University and Massey University) occupied mainly at the time by young students, artists and musicians. Lacking funds to partake in other local entertainment, the residents of The Terrace began throwing underground house parties with instruments available for participants to jam together on. From these jam sessions, several bands began forming, but none of them - including Beat Rhythm Fashion, 52, Life In The Fridge Exists, and Naked Spots Dance - lasted beyond 1982.
Of all of the short-lived Terrace Scene bands, Shoes This High was probably the most interesting of the lot. The band came together in the early fall of 1979, when Kevin Hawkins (lead guitarist) met Jessica Walker (bassist) at one of those impromptu gigs and they decided to join forces (Jessica came from a family that already had deep connections in the New Zealand post-punk scene; her sister Jane was a member of the legendary Toy Love). Vocalist Brent Hayward joined the group that November, and after running through a couple of drummers, the band finally settled on Chris Plummer. Shoes This High honed their chops on the Wellington scene, branching out from Terrace parties and playing more established city venues like Thistle Hall and The Last Resort. The band's name came from a conversation overheard in the street: “Jessica heard some transsexual people getting on a big red bus and they were gossiping. “And how high did you say her shoes were?” “Those shoes were this high.”"
The sound this group put together was far and away from what was going on elsewhere in the city, and country, at that time - scabrous, slashing guitar rhythms; Gang Of Four-style propulsive, almost funk-based bass lines; crash-and-bang drumming . . . all backing Hayward's aggressive vocals. Here's a good summary description of what the Shoes This High was about, taken from Wade Ronald Churton's book Have You Checked The Children?:
“The band were plainly punk-based (though influences like funk and even disco were coming through) but shared little of the form's clichés. Plummer and Walker locked together to form one of the country's finest post-punk rhythm-sections; taut, slippery, staccato and even funky (and remarkably reminiscent of 1980s' Features). Fused with Hawkins' menacing jangle and unusual melody-lines, the three were exemplary improvisers who could extemporise on a theme on a par with most jazz-rock hotel outfits. Shoes This High were working with much more exciting rhythms, however.”
However, while the band was carving its own space in the local music scene, they were doing so at the expense of establishing a more extensive audience or with an eye towards greater commercial acceptance. New Zealanders just didn't 'get' Shoes This High in the early '80s. In addition to the jagged, abrasive, angular music, Hayward would spend much of his time during the group's gigs spitting venom, hurling insults and abuse on their audience. All of this made it difficult to be a dedicated fan of this group back then - pissing off your audience is rarely a recipe for success. The situation got so bad for Shoes This High in Wellington that the group decamped for Auckland in the austral winter (July) of 1980, although things them up in that city, in terms of audience reception, weren't appreciably better.
Still, the band was provided one shot at immortalizing their legacy. In late 1980, they entered a local studio to lay down tracks for a four-song EP; here's the track list:
1. The Nose One
2. Foot's Dream
3. A Mess
4. Not Weighting
The EP was released on the band's own STH Records label, but sold very poorly (usually at the group's poorly attended gigs) and quickly faded away . . . as did the group itself. Shoes This High soldiered on in the North Island punk scene, but broke up before the middle of 1981 (rumor has it that Jessica's affair with a member of The Gordons - who Shoes This High gigged with extensively and lived with in Auckland for a time - was the final straw that did the band in).
I didn't know a thing about this band or its music until nearly a decade ago, when I came across their hard-to-find EP via Detailed Twang, a superb music blog that sadly ceased operations in 2009. The write-up they did for this band and its music really whetted my appetite:
“.....Think it was all whimsical happy-go-lucky goofball pop music down there in New Zealand twenty-some-odd years ago? Songs about sheep and fish and heartbreak? You gotta hear SHOES THIS HIGH, a quick-lived 1980 Auckland-by-way-of-Wellington quartet who are by far one of the best lost post-punk bands I’ve had the pleasure of finding out about. Think a more jagged Minutemen, The Gordons, Seems Twice, Pere Ubu, some Beefheart-like deconstructed stabs at atonality – or, as Gary Steel’s liner notes for the reissued 7” EP exclaim, “killer-riffing-angry-in-your-guts-avant-garde-pin-pricking punk funk". The lead track on their sole four-song single, “The Nose One”, has a real spastic stop/start structure which successfully masks some great weary, disengaged vocals. Guitars chime in and chop out of all four tracks, some of which are pretty biting and aggressive (hence the GORDONS comparison). The greatness of this thing again reminds me of the strong influence of The Fall in NZ, where “Totally Wired” went actually into the Top 5. Not that Shoes This High sound much like The Fall, but there’s gotta be a hook there somewhere. Recorded December 1980, released in 1981, reissued on Raw Power records in 2002. Please do yourself a favor and begin a tireless, unyielding quest for the Shoes This High EP forthwith.....”
I downloaded the music directly from the site, and immediately fell in love with it. Here's my favorite song off of the EP, the lead track, "The Nose One":
After being exposed to this fantastic stuff, I began searching for more offerings by this great band . . . only to quickly discover to my disappointment that apparently there was no more to be had; Shoes This High made no other official recordings, and it seemed that there was nothing else available . . .
Until about four-five years ago, when out of nowhere, a live recording of the group playing a June 1980 gig at Billy The Club popped up on the Web. There's a guy by the name of Bob Sutton who, back in the day, used to go around recording the shows of the various groups that came through his town. And over the years, he had collected a pretty extensive archive of live sets by some of the country's most obscure, short-lived bands - including Shoes This High. Here's the set list from their gig that night:
1. Monodrone
2. Living Hell
3. The Nose One
4. Sop Pong
5. Mental Whiff
6. Tic Toc
7. Ain’t 1/2 Right
8. Fatman
9. Gifted?
10. Stuk
11. Christian Song
12. Menace In Yer Head
13. Tunnel Vision
14. ——–
15. You Sold Out
16. Small
17. For Too Long
18. Scab
19. Catshit
20. Bull-fight
21. Cretin Time
22. Beach Muscle
23. Don’t Wanna
24. R U Happy?
Of course, I quickly snapped this offering up as well. For a bootleg concert recording in a dodgy venue, it has a remarkably clear sound and presentation. And it greatly expands the band's previously limited musical legacy. All in all, it's a great recording.
The reason I'm posting this stuff now is that, while browsing around the Web the other day, I came across a site selling a "limited edition" release (only 500 copies available) of live Shoes This High music along with "bonus cuts", called Straight To Hell (link to the site is here). I quickly realized that what these guys were offering up for sale was the Billy The Club gig I already owned, along with the original EP tracks as the "bonus" songs! And to add insult to injury, they weren't even offering the complete show - only about half of the original 1980 show tracks are on the album (I assume they're saving the remaining twelve for another "limited edition' release to gouge people with later on down the line).
As I've said before, blatant money-grubbing like that pisses me off. So in order to counter that, and to make available some great, mostly unheard music to you all, here's:
The Shoes This High self-titled EP, recorded at Mascot Studios in Auckland by Gerard Carr on December 21st, 1980 and self-released by the band in January 1981; and
The Live at Billy The Club (22 June 1980) set, from Bob Sutton's personal stash.
Enjoy this flashback to a mostly-unknown but influential and fondly remembered scene - and as always, let me know what you think.
Back in 2010, the mere thought of starting my own music blog was daunting, to say the least. I like to think of myself as pretty computer-savvy, but I honestly had no concept as to how to go about creating a forum to discuss and distribute to the masses selections from my voluminous collection of tunes. At the time, I figured that only hardcore computer geeks and programming experts had the know-how to set one of these things up, and that I was hopelessly outclassed in that field. It was only after finally sitting down and really looking into it that I found how easy it would be to go about establishing my own site. And I'm glad I did.
All in all, through this blog, I've attempted to sort out and organize my tangled thoughts to convey to you all my love for, hatred of, and, in some cases, mania for the tunes that I enjoy. I like to think that I've been successful with this, based on the number of visits I've had here over the years and the friends I've made via this site. And I must say that I've had a high, fine old time doing it!
I've been trying to think of an appropriate post to commemorate this blog's fifth anniversary . . . perhaps something with a "five" in its name, or a five-disc set. But in the end, I figured that there was no need for anything special. I'm planning on continuing this blog for a long time, so I'll need to save my selections for the future.
I will, however, leave you all with one of my longtime favorite albums, AK·79 - the definitive summation of the Auckland, New Zealand punk scene of the late 1970s, released by Ripper Records in late 1979. A fellow blogger and giant in contemporary New Zealand music by the name of Simon Grigg (who compiled the expanded CD version of this disc in 1993 and also wrote the liner notes) put together an excellent write-up on this disc; here it is, for your reading pleasure. I can add nothing more substantive to his fine words.
Accept this compilation as my thanks to you all for continuing to visit and comment upon this site. It's been a heck of a ride so far, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Thanks - more to come!
(And, as always, let me know what you think.)
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
This post will eventually be about Peter Gutteridge, the legendary New Zealand musician who died September 15th, 2014. But first, a few words about a well-respected drummer for my favorite band.
If you’re a fan of The Fall, then you may already know who Simon Wolstencroft is. He was the band’s drummer for more than a decade, and contributed keyboards and computer effects as well, on every Fall album from 1987’s The Frenz Experiment to 1997’s Levitate. In addition, Wolstencroft holds the distinction of co-writing one of the bands only three singles to make the British Top 40, and the only non-cover song, “Free Range” off of 1992’s Code Selfish.
However, in some music circles, Wolstencroft is known for another more dubious reason, and by another name: “The Nearly Man”. Why? Because Simon had the misfortune of being part of or nearly a member of at least three other popular and legendary bands before they hit it big, missing out of their huge success every single time.
As a 17-year-old student in Altrincham, England in 1980, he formed a punk band called The Patrol with two classmates, Ian Brown and John Squire. After much initial enthusiasm and a number of gigs that year, The Patrol just sort of petered out. Simon moved on, and in the following year became drummer for Freak Party, an instrumental funk band that he formed with two other schoolmates, bassist Andy Rourke and a guitarist named Johnny Mahar, who later became known by the name Johnny Marr. Marr quickly grew tired of funk and found a vocalist for the group’s new rock sound, but after a couple of demo recordings, Wolstencroft quit in late 1982, allegedly because he didn’t like the new singer, Steven Morrissey’s, voice and overall attitude. The
band, known as The Smiths, recruited another drummer and released their first single, “Hand in Glove”, six months later. The rest, of course, is part of music history.
He then rejoined his old friends Brown and Squire, who were just starting up a new band and going through months of rehearsals. But Wolstencroft’s reunion with them was half-hearted. During the rehearsal period, he was also auditioning for other groups, and in the summer of 1984 he left his friends to join The Colourfield, ex-Specials frontman Terry Hall’s band, as a touring member. Less than two months later,
Brown and Squire’s band, now known as The Stone Roses, played their first gig and inaugurated the ‘Madchester’ sound.
The Colourfield thing didn’t work out for him, so Simon eventually joined The Fall in the summer of 1987. But while in that band, he was approached by musicians from a local Manchester
band, The Rain, who were looking for a live drummer to replace their drum machine. The group’s lead guitarist, Noel Gallagher, asked Wolstencroft if he would leave The Fall to join their group, but Simon declined. The Rain shortly thereafter evolved into Oasis, one of the most successful British acts of the 1990s.
Why have I spent so much time and space detailing the career of a musician unrelated to this post? Because in many ways, Peter Gutteridge was the Kiwi Simon Wolstencroft . . . the Nearly Man of New Zealand. Gutteridge was involved in the founding of some of the country’s most seminal bands, but in each case never stayed around long enough to enjoy the fruits of the groups’ successes.
Peter Gutteridge was born in the South Island city of Dunedin in 1961. He was the kind of kid who took to music naturally, eschewing formal lessons and just bashing about, learning how to play on his own. His family had a piano that he noodled with at a young age until he got fairly proficient, and when he was in his teens he taught himself to play guitar and bass. While still in high school, he teamed up with two classmates, brothers Hamish and David Kilgour, to form The Clean in 1978. The Clean’s sound – made up of David’s angular guitar notes, Hamish’s simplistic, shambolic beats and Peter’s melodic, throbbing bass lines - was unlike pretty much every other band in New Zealand at the time, and the group became very popular and influential in their hometown. Within a few months, The Clean became proficient enough to play gigs around Dunedin, even opening for the premier punk band in the city, The Enemy, fronted by Chris Knox. The two bands became close, drawing inspiration from each others styles. And their combination of raw punk and ringing guitars, filtered through a Kiwi sensibility, led to the development of the celebrated “Dunedin Sound” of the 1980s.
After less than a year of existence, the Kilgour brothers began to feel that Dunedin was getting too small for them. Envisioning a move up to the ‘big time’ in New Zealand music, in 1979 they decided to relocate The Clean to Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, where they felt there were more advantages in terms of venues and opportunities for recording contracts. Peter wanted no part of this relocation, however, and quit the band just before the move. However, he did leave with The Clean a riff he created that evolved into one of the bands finest, most popular songs – “Point That Thing (Somewhere Else)”.
Initially, it appeared that Peter made the right move by staying in Dunedin. The Clean’s move to Auckland was, by most accounts, a disaster, and within a year the Hamish brothers came back to the South Island chastened, with their tails between their legs. Meanwhile, Gutteridge hooked up with another musician classmate, Martin Phillips, and in 1980 helped form The Chills. The Chills later became hugely successful and an important part of New Zealand popular music history. But Peter didn’t stick around long enough to revel in the band’s success. In fact, he only played a handful of gigs before leaving the group less than nine months after he joined.
By the time Gutteridge quit The Chills, the Kilgour brothers had reformed The Clean in Dunedin with new bassist Robert Scott, and had released their debut single “Tally Ho!”, one of fledgling indie music label Flying Nun’s first releases. The single became the band’s and label’s first hit, reaching #19 on the national charts. Peter did not have a role in any of this; instead, he spent the next couple of years as a member of various short-lived minor bands, including The Cartilage Family and The Craven A’s.
After a couple of years, The Clean fell apart. Hamish Kilgour moved to Christchurch to work on some of his own acoustic, more folk-focused material, and his brother David came to the city shortly thereafter to help him work on the tracks. The resulting music was released under a new band name, The Great Unwashed (the opposite of The Clean – get it?), and the
brothers went out on the road to support the album, Clean Out Of Our Minds (another pun). Needing some additional musicians for the tour, the Kilgours reunited with Gutteridge, just coming off a brief stint with another aborted band project.
Since the group refused to include Clean songs on their setlist and only had a limited number of songs off of their only album for their gigs, the Kilgours asked Peter if he too had some solo material to add to the sets. He responded enthusiastically – over the years, he had composed quite a few original works somewhat different from what was the New Zealand alternative mainstream at the time, but up until then had no viable outlet to present his music. Gutteridge flourished under his first real taste of artistic freedom; his songs proved to be popular, so much so that for The Great Unwashed’s next release, the 1984
Singles EP, three of the five songs on it were written by Peter. By the time the band broke up at the end of that year, Peter had gained the confidence to go his own way musically.
He moved back to Dunedin and started a new band, The Phromes, all the while looking for the ‘right’ musicians to start a new project he had in mind. After a couple of years, he found the people he was seeking – drummer Alan Haig, guitarist Dominic Stones, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Christine Voice – and formed Snapper in 1987.
In many ways, Snapper was Gutteridge’s protest of and response to the commercialization of New Zealand alternative music, embodied in the movement he had some hand in creating. As he told a national music magazine a few years ago, “When I formed Snapper it was a deliberate reaction against the Dunedin Sound, I couldn’t fuckin’ stand it.” The music he was creating was definitely a far cry from those early days, with a sound more akin to that of The Jesus & Mary Chain, Suicide, and late-80s/early 90s Kiwi noise rock bands like The Dead C and Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos. A music critic described an early Snapper gig as “a relentless throb… the enormous keyboard sound must be like getting a crew-cut with a Masport… cathedrals of electricity… great swinging mass of harmonics…” However, this journalist was one of the few at the time who understood what Peter was up to, writing that “Gutteridge, who’s finally got a band to play his songs en masse clearly has a wider vision for this band.”
Snapper’s first record, the four-song Snapper EP, was released by Flying Nun in 1988. It was welcomed with rave reviews both at home and abroad. In the UK, the EP was selected as Single Of The Week in the NME and even made John Peel’s playlist. The band continued gigging and prepping songs for an eventual full-length album. But in 1989, Peter couldn’t resist an offer from local independent record label Xpressway to release his demos and solo material under his own name. In 1989, the cassette-only Pure hit the shelves.
Pure was . . . well, I think that music journalist Richard Langston described the album best: “… it shows the full range of Gutteridge’s talents, so besides raw over-loaded guitar-and-keyboard-fed- electro-boogie we get some stuff that treads with the melodic delicacy of your favourite moments from The Chills, yep that damn good…just bloody wonderful …”
And Mr. Langston was right – there’s some brilliant stuff on this disc. Here’s the album lineup:
1. Lonely
2. Exhibition I
3. First Instrumental
4. Hang On
5. Ocean
6. Dead Pony
7. Fuck Your Mother to Hell
8. Suicide
9. Oil
10. Pure (Nr. 1)
11. Thumbaline
12. Cause of You
13. Rubout
14. Planet Phrom
15. Sand
16. Exhibition II
17. Having Fun
18. Bomb
19. Fifty-seven Seconds
20. Chinese Garden
21. Pure (Nr. 2)
Snapper’s first album, Shotgun Blossom, was released the following year. It received superb reviews as well both in New Zealand and in England; Melody Maker called it “a solid-gone, stone-cold, down-under classic.” Gutteridge finally had a winner done his way, and it seemed that he and his band’s star could do nothing but continue to rise.
But shortly thereafter, problems began to arise in Peter’s personal and musical life. Typical of many New Zealand bands of that period, the original Snapper line-up started slowly falling apart. Dominic Stones began having success with his own band The 3Ds, and left Snapper in early 1992. The group managed to release a single in 1993, “Vadar” b/w “Gentle Hour”, but these songs did not have the power or impact to the band’s earlier tunes. It was also around this time that Gutteridge got hooked on some fairly hard-core drugs. His addiction drew his attention away from his group, and as the gigs became fewer and far between and Peter’s health declined, most of the remaining members drifted away.
Snapper released one last full-length album, A.D.M., in 1996, but it was mostly a solo effort, with Gutteridge singing and playing almost all of the instruments. Snapper never really broke up after that – Peter reformed various versions with varying lineups for one-off gigs in 2000 and 2012. But due to his drug problem and resulting reclusive nature, the band was pretty much kaput before the end of the millennium.
While Gutteridge spent most of the 2000s hunkered down, the reputation of Snapper continued to evolve and grow, especially abroad. American bands began covering Snapper songs, and the name “Peter Gutteridge” began being tossed around in some music circles as a symbol and indication of being “with-it” and “in-the-know”. However, only a few people had ever heard the man’s music – the Pure cassette had by then long been out of print, up to that point the only Xpressway release never reissued on vinyl or CD. But a small New York label made a special effort, assisted by David Kilgour, and in 2013 Pure was finally re-released as a double LP.
The release relaunched Peter’s career. By this time, he appeared to have kicked his drug addiction, and was healthy and ready for action. He reformed another version of Snapper with Dominic Stones and a new keyboardist and drummer, and went on a much-celebrated tour of New Zealand’s North Island in early 2013. While the band’s glory days were far behind them, most people were glad to see Peter up on stage again where he belonged, doing what he loved. It seemed that he was back, and this time for good.
In the summer of 2014, he made his first trip to the States, spending time in New York seeing the sights and visiting his old friend Hamish Kilgour, who’s now a resident of Brooklyn. He even got the opportunity to perform his first American show that September 1st, at Palisades in Brooklyn, where he played his Pure album in full to a packed house. He was billed that night as "The man who launched a thousand Flying Nun bands."
No one knows what may have been going through Peter’s mind when he returned to New Zealand a week later, where he saw his future or envisioned what his legacy really was. Would he be known as the innovative, visionary musician behind Snapper and Pure . . . or as just the guy who missed his chance, over and over again? That’s a question that he will never answer . . . since shortly after arriving back home, Peter Gutteridge died. Details on the circumstances of his death are still sketchy, but it appears he took his own life.
Below, I’ve provided a copy of the liner notes from his solo album. I find the last line very poignant . . .
Compiled by Peter Gutteridge & Peter Jefferies Mastered by Peter Jefferies Remastered by Tom Bell and John Golden, 2013. PETER GUTTERIDGE vcls/gtr/kydgs on all the above. CHRISTINE VOICE gtr/vcls on 7, 8 & 14. ALAN HAIG drms on 4, 6, 7, & 14. DOMINIC STONES gtr on 7, 13 & 20. RUSSELL MOSES drm mchns on 2. GEORGE HENDERSON gtr on 15. BRUCE MAHALSKI vcls on 18. (c) and (p) PETER GUTTERIDGE 1989. ALL TRACKS RECORDED ON PORTA-STUDIO BY PETER GUTTERIDGE, 1986-87. More to come. Peter Gutteridge has been making music for ten years or so now. A former member of various Dunedin bands (the CLEAN, GREAT UNWASHED, CHILLS and PUDDLE, to name a few), his musical and compositional talents currently form the nucleus of SNAPPER. However, while all the members of SNAPPER (as well as several other friends) contribute to the music on this tape, the total result is not the work of a band. It is, as the title suggests, 'Pure Peter Gutteridge', 4-track prota-studio demos covering a two year span, compiled from his work-tapes. Peter's songs are here presented 'in the raw;, just as they came to him, from the first piece he ever recorded on his 'Fostex', through to early versions of some SNAPPER material. This collections presents the widest variety of Peter's music yet to reach the public, and we think some of the best too. What's more, there's at least as much again currently recorded, and more going down all the time - so look out for vol. 2!
Volume 2 never arrived, and never will; sometimes in life you don't get those second chances. There will be no more new music from him. . . but I am very happy that he did manage to leave us with what he did. R.I.P., Peter.
So, for your listening pleasure, here is Peter Gutteridge’s Pure, released on cassette by New Zealand’s Xpressway Records in 1989 and re-released by American label 540 Records on double vinyl discs in 2013. This copy was burned off of my mint-condition LPs, and is impossibly hard to find on the Web; as far as I can tell, this is the only digital source for this album currently available. Anyway, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Finally, here's a live version of "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" performed by the reformed Clean during a New Zealand gig in early 2014, with Peter guesting - kinda nice that he finally got to play his song with his old bandmates:
24 May 2015 - I've recently received a message from Mr. Zach Burba, who played bass for Peter Gutteridge at his last show in Brooklyn last September. Here's what he had to say regarding the Palisades gig:
"My band had a show in Brooklyn booked and the people that were setting it up ran into Peter at The Clean's reunion show. He told them he was trying to play a show in NYC and they asked him if he would want to play at Palisades with us. I was a fan of Kiwi music and The Clean and had heard some of Peter's music but wasn't deeply familiar. At the show I started talking to him back stage. He was helping me fix a Casio keyboard, he mentioned he wanted to play with a band and my friend Erin and I stepped in. He showed us his songs in the bathroom of the venue and then we just went for it. It was a lot of fun, I hope we did the songs justice. I'm about to upload our version of 'Born in The Wrong Time' which, for me, was the highlight of the show. We some how managed to play for 2 hours. IT seemed like 15 minutes. After the show we were all buzzing with excitement. Peter was SO HAPPY. He just kept going on and on about how much fun it was to play with a band again. He got our phone numbers and mentioned that we should try and record together sometime. Erin was texting him every now and again until the end. We were shocked to hear only a few weeks later about his death."
Here's the show video Mr. Burba mentioned above and so kindly provided - enjoy:
After their early wave of success producing and distributing the first records by The Clean, The Chills and Sneaky Feelings, New Zealand's Flying Nun Records released a couple of compilation albums in the early 1980s. These collections showcased the burgeoning underground/alternative sound emerging in various locations around the country, especially in the South Island cities of Dunedin and Christchurch. These early comp
releases (which included the seminal Dunedin Double EP in 1982 and the live recording The Last Rumba in 1983) had fairly limited distribution - essentially only within New Zealand, where they both were popular and influential albums. But it was the 1985 release of the label's Tuatara compilation that gave the rest of the world the first real indication that there was something special happening musically in Aotearoa.
During 1984-85, Flying Nun entered into limited distribution deals with a number of small international labels, including Normal Records in Germany and Strange Weekend Records in North America. They also established their own overseas subsidiary, Flying Nun Europe, for distribution on that continent. Tuatara was their first test of that international network, and for all intents and purposes it was a resounding success. By 'success', I don't mean that it was a huge seller. It was successful in that here in America, it was pushed along via college radio and word-of-mouth, and the 'right' people got exposed to it. I found a quote from Nils Bernstein, current Director of Publicity at Matador Records (and former owner/operator of the legendary Seattle music store Rebellious Records in the '80s) which sums up the impact of Tuatara here in the States:
“People were really floored by songs like "Death and the Maiden" and "Pink Frost". It was an album that new-wave girls, brainy pop geeks and noise rock fans all loved. You know how they say about the first Velvet Underground album: it sold terribly, but everyone who bought a copy started a band. It’s kind of like that with the Tuatara comp.”
High praise indeed.
As mentioned above, this album contains "Pink Frost", probably The Chills' most famous song, along with cuts by Tall Dwarfs, The Clean and The Verlaines. But there is also gold here in the tracks by the more obscure, less heralded Kiwi bands, including Look Blue Go Purple and Marie & The Atom. Pretty much every song on here is a winner, and in total they provide a superb overview as to what sort of cool stuff was happening in the New Zealand music world of the early '80s.
This thing is hard as heck to find online, so here's a copy burned off of my meticulously maintained CD. For your throwback listening pleasure, here's Tuatara: A Flying Nun Compilation, released by said label on 1985. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.
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Yes, folks - believe it or now, I'm still here, and so is Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole. Don't let the dearth of new posts here lead you to believe that the demise of this blog is nigh . . . far from it. I have yet to run out of ideas or stories. By last check, I've got at least a dozen posts in various stages of development.
The tragedy of it all is that, for the past three months, I just haven't been able to complete any of them to my satisfaction. Despite this being a silly little music site of no major consequence to anything else going on in the world, it is mine own, and as such I try to put a little care, work and editing into my screeds. With that in mind, I'm constantly in search of the perfect phrasing and narrative flow to make these tales at least somewhat interesting, in the hope that when visitors come here to grab the links for my latest album posting, they just possibly might linger a bit and actually read what I've penned in relation to the music.
Unfortunately for me, that quest for the "right" line has led to stagnation and writer's block. I visit this site with a sense of shame now, looking back guiltily over the vast number of unfinished postings stretching back for months and wondering when the fog will lift, and when I'll be able to add them to the others. It's annoying, to say the least.
But there is a bright side - this has happened before, and no doubt will occur again; sometimes I just get locked up. But in the end, I always end up completing the stragglers and clearing out the backlog. So keep watching this site; I will undoubtedly be backdating quite a few postings in the next few weeks. But they will get done.
Until then, here's a stopgap to tide you over, the Flying Nun 25th Anniversary Box Set, four discs jam-packed with pure Kiwi punk/alternative goodness by New Zealand's premier independent music label. These limited-edition discs contain a semi-chronological overview of nearly all of that country's (and label's) great non-mainstream artists - some of whom you may have heard of (The Chills, Toy Love, The Clean) and many others which may be new to you (The Pin Group, Straitjacket Fits, Love's Ugly Children, Chug, The Dead C). Many of the tunes in this set have long been out of print, making it a must-have for anyone with any interest in the New Zealand scene.
The reason I'm posting this (other than as an apology for being so idle over the past couple of months) is because not only is this a great set, an outstanding overview of the evolution of New Zealand alternative music since 1980 - it's also annoying difficult to track down online. And I know that if I have trouble finding it, many, many more of you are having a hard time as well.
So here - let me make it easy for you all: Here's the Flying Nun 25th Anniversary Box Set, eighty-three tracks of Aotearoa brilliance, released on Flying Nun Records (duh) in December 2006. Enjoy these while I get my act together, and let me know what you think.
And one more thing - thanks for hanging in there with me and this blog. More to come.
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In the wake of the disaster in Christchurch (despite the magnitude of the earthquake and the widespread damage, it looks like there are no deaths and very few injuries, thank God), I'd like to post a tribute of sorts, the compilation Christchurch: The Music, released by EMI in 2005. This double-disc set is a overview of songs by bands that originated from the Christchurch area, from the 1960s to the present day. Of the 45 songs on this set, spanning every genre from early rock to electronica, there are several by bands you may be familiar with (such as Ray Columbus & The Invaders, The Dance Exponents and The Bats), but most of them will probably be unfamiliar to you. Still, every song is great and/or interesting.
Have a listen - I hope you like it. While you're listening, keep the folks of that great city and region in mind; it's going to be a while before things are back to normal down there.
Thanks, and enjoy.
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In the late winter/early spring of 1993, just before I packed up and moved to New Zealand, I was lucky enough to hear some really great music by some then-unheralded bands. I was living in the DC area at the time, and by then, grunge had been going strong for almost two years. The local 'alternative' station, WHFS, had fully jumped aboard the bandwagon, and was rapidly devolving into an "all grunge, all the time" format (a move that was probably no small factor in the venerable station's decline and failure a few years later).
However, a couple of 'HFS DJs still showed some flashes of the old independent spirit, and dared to play some groundbreaking stuff. In those few months, the station began playing a superb little Pixies-esque LOUDquietLOUD song called "Creep", by an unknown English band called Radiohead. They also occasionally played a roaring guitar anthem, "That Ain't Bad", by a little-known (in the States) Australian band named Ratcat.
They were playing The Cranberries' debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, practically from the moment it came out in March of that year, nearly a full year before that album and its lead single "Dreams" became mainstream U.S. smash hits [side note: I loved that band from the get-go, bought that album immediately, and brought it with me to New Zealand, where The Cranberries were equally unknown. It was amusing when, months later, I bagan to hear raves from my friends in the States about this amazing 'new' Irish band and their great song . . .].
And then there was "That's It You're In Trouble" by The Starlings, another song in semi-heavy indie rotation at WHFS that I really enjoyed:
I think part of the appeal this song had for me was that the band was made up of New Zealanders, my soon-to-be home country, and it made me look forward that much more to moving there and really getting into what appeared to be a cutting-edge music scene.
The Starlings were essentially Chris Sheehan, a young guy originally from Christchurch (the place I was moving to). Sheehan was somewhat of a musical prodigy, so much so that before he turned 18, he became lead guitarist for the popular Kiwi New Wave band the Dance Exponents. He stayed with the Dance Exponents for three years, then followed a buddy to Los Angeles, where he found himself serving as a guest musician on the debut album of his buddy's girlfriend, Jane Wiedlin (ex-Go-Go's). He was in L.A. for only a year or so, before drifting over to London, England and starting to record solo records under the name The Starlings.
Early results were promising, and on the strength of an EP (Letters From Heaven) he released on Rough Trade in 1990, Sheehan/The Starlings were signed to Anxious Records, Dave Stewart's (ex-Eurythmics) personal label. And that's when the problems started.
One thing Sheehan didn't bring with him to London from the States, but picked up quickly, was a very serious heroin habit, which of course significantly reduced the volume and quality of his output. He was in pretty bad shape for the two-plus years following the release of his Rough Trade EP, but in 1992 he began trying to pull himself together. He entered drug rehab and began work on The Starlings' debut album, Valid. Valid is essentially a chronicle of Sheehan getting onto and off of the Horse, and its making was apparently theraputic for him; he got out of rehab the same week the album was released in 1993.
In addition to "That's It You're In Trouble" (my personal favorite here), there are a lot of good songs on this album, and it got glowing reviews upon release. But in terms of sales, Valid sank like a stone. Sheehan was ENORMOUSLY pissed off at his album tanking, and placed the blame squarely on his record label, which did little to promote it (I'm not sure they really had the money to do so). Sheehan was so ticked off, in fact, that he quickly returned to the studio and recorded an album's worth of splenetic, vitriolic songs holding nothing back regarding his anger at and contempt for his label, calling the album Too Many Dogs. In its own twisted way, Too Many Dogs is a "Fuck You" masterpiece, fairly dripping with bile and venom, but it did nothing to endear him to his label executives. They buried this one even deeper than his debut.
Anxious Records got the last laugh on Sheehan, though. Even though they were livid about Too Many Dogs, they went ahead and allowed Sheehan to record a followup to that album, making him think all was well. The moment he wss done, they told him they were NEVER releasing the album, confiscated the tapes, then unceremoniously threw his ass out of the building and off the label. The guy's been on the fringes ever since, working as a guest/backup musician-for-hire for several other bands.
Just goes to show you: if you can't say something nice about someone . . .
Here's the tuneage - enjoy:
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Toy Love, formed in early 1979, is essentially the beginning of the Golden Age of New Zealand alternative music. They were not the first band in the country to play spiky, anti-mainstream, punk-flavoured noise-rock. That distinction would have to fall to The Enemy, Toy Love's immediate predecessor (New Zealand punk godfather Chris Knox, guitarist Alec Bathgate and drummer Mike Dooley were all members of The Enemy prior to forming Toy Love). In addition, The Clean had formed in Dunedin in 1977 (although after an aborted start following an ill-advised move to Auckland in 1979, the Clean reformed with a new lineup in 1980 and found greater success). But Toy Love was the first New Zealand band of this genre to realize some measure of success. They were the first to be signed to a major national label (WEA New Zealand), and their first single "Rebel b/w Squeeze", released in July 1979, brought them great acclaim and a rabid national following.
But like most New Zealand bands with aspirations of glory, Toy Love figured that its next step to greatness would happen across the Tasman. In early 1980, they made the move in an attempt to break the Australian market. That move was an unmitigated disaster, punctuated by gigs at half-empty Aussie clubs and general public indifference (they just didn't 'get' Toy Love in Oz - too bad). The culmination of their Australian
adventure was the recording of their only (self-titled) album, a disc that was mixed so poorly (basically, they erased all the bass lines) that one member claimed that she burst into tears upon hearing the final release. Toy Love returned to New Zealand after less than a year in Australia, and broke up just before Christmas 1980.
Still, they are widely acknowledged as a pivotal point in NZ music, and many of its members, especially Chris Knox, have gone on to long, varied and heralded careers in music. Their album, as crappy-sounding as it was, was still a coveted collectors item, and there were several websites set up in honor of the band. Demand for the album was so high, that a few years ago an effort was made to uncover the original master tapes. Once found, the entire album was remixed and rerecorded, along with other Toy Love songs from that era. The
release of the resulting two-disc album, Toy Love: Cuts, was a major media event in New Zealand and a big seller, 25 years after the original album release.
Back about a decade ago, there used to be a great fan-created website (long defunct) called www.toylove.org. The Kiwi who ran it was a devoted Toy Lover, and in addition to downloads he had made available of the hard-to-find sole album, the guy also had bootlegs of live performances for sale, including a superb two-disc recording of one of Toy Love's last New Zealand gigs, at the Captain Cook in Dunedin in late 1980.
I contacted the guy immediately, sent him my money, and in a couple of weeks received the discs, which were burned off of a cassette recording of the gig. For a tape dub, these CDs sound superb. And they really capture what it was like to hear a definitive New Zealand band at the height of its powers. Just about every song ever written by Toy Love is included in this compilation, along with other songs that have never appeared on any official release.
CD.1
1. Amputee Song
2. Swimming Pool
3. Fifteen
4. Rebel
5. I Don't Mind
6. The second to last song Toy Love wrote (with non ad lib lyrics)
7. Toy Love Song
8. Don't Catch Fire
9. Bedroom
10. Unscrewed Up
11. Cold Meat
12. I'm In Love
13. Photographs Of Naked Ladies
14. I Wanna Die With You
15. Sheep
CD.2
1. Fucking Around
2. The Crunch
3. Squeeze
4. Fucking Around
5. Don't Ask Me
6. I Thought I Needed You
7. Good old Joe
8. Fingernail On Blackboard Grin
9. Lust
10. Greenwalls/Yummy Yummy Yummy/Positively Fourth St.
11. Siamese Twin
12. Death Rehearsal
13. Bride of Frankenstein
14. Ain't It Nice
15. Pull Down The Shades
16. Frogs
These are great, rare albums to hear and enjoy. Therefore, here you are. I look forward to your comments regarding them.
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I'm disgusted with myself that I didn't get into this band when I first went to New Zealand.
I didn't know anything about The Chills until I returned to the U.S. from Christchurch and entered grad school in Virginia. One of my classmates there, Stuart, was a native New Zealand who was born and bred in Christchurch, but who had spent several years living and working in the U.S. Word had gotten around the school that there were "two Kiwis" enrolled (one real, one adopted), and after being introduced, Stuart and I discovered that we had several mutual friends in and around Canterbury. We became fast friends.
One day, Stuart (knowing what a Kiwi music fan I was) brought a couple of CDs to school for me to sample and evaluate. One was by the Bats, which really didn't do anything for me, I must say. But one of the others was Heavenly Pop Hits, a greatest hits compilation by The Chills. That was the one that really hit home for me.
The Chills were formed in Dunedin, New Zealand (home of the aforementioned Chug and The Clean) in 1980 by Martin Phillips, a talented musician and songwriter who formed his first band, The Same, in 1978 (his other claim to pre-Chills fame was that he played the organ on The Clean's 1981 debut single "Tally Ho", Flying Nun Records' first New Zealand hit song). The Chills cranked out several memorable singles in the early 1980s, including "Pink Frost" and "Rolling Moon" (both included here), but the band didn't release a proper album until 1986.
The band's long delay in putting out an LP can be attributed to two things: lack of money (Flying Nun wasn't exactly rolling in dough in the early '80s) and, more significantly, the failure to maintain a consistent lineup. Dunedin bands are notorious for this (see my earlier entry for Chug), but The Chills were the poster child for this type of band turnover. Since its inception, the band has gone through (at last count) nineteen different lineup changes, with Martin Phillips being the only constant member (sounds a lot like The Fall, eh? Although I understand that Phillips isn't nearly the tyrant and band dictator that Mark E. Smith is reputed to be . . .). Former Chills members have pollenated several other bands throughout New Zealand (including Straitjacket Fits, The Clean and The Verlaines) and the rest of the world (Justin Harewood ended up in Luna, and Martin Kean resettled in England and became an early member of Stereolab).
Such band turmoil, of course, led to sporadic releases, which is why Heavenly Pop Hits is so great, and so important. It collects all of the band's best songs in one place, a one-stop shop for a concentrated dose of what makes The Chills so superb.
Like I said, after listening to this album, I was kicking myself for not getting into them sooner. I could go through and tell you, song for song, why every tune is so outstanding. I'll let you find that out for yourself.
However, the thing I want to convey to you about these songs, and The Chills in general, is that they SOUND like New Zealand . . . It's hard to explain, really, unless you've lived there or spent any significant time in the country. But to me, every song brings back a time, or a place, or a feeling I had when I lived there. Listening to "Double Summer" reminds me of summers I enjoyed there; in "Doledrums", I can relate to some of the lethargic Sunday afternoons I spent in town.
I know I'm not explaining this well . . . But it seems that the essence of the country is contained in the words and music of this album. I consider The Chills to be the definitive New Zealand band.
But I'll let you listen for yourself and decide. Also posted here is the Ice Picks EP that was included with select editions of Heavenly Pop Hits - good songs here as well.
Cheers.
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One hot and sunny summer afternoon in January 1994, I was driving past the Dux De Lux (near the Arts Centre in Christchurch) and listening to RDU, the student-run University of Canterbury station (and in my opinion, one of the best radio stations in the Southern Hemisphere). Suddenly, the station played this buzzy, frenetic guitar-and-drum-driven track that made me sit straight up in my seat. I remembered that it was the "Local Music" time slot at the station, so I waited anxiously to the end of the song to find out who the band was (RDU was and is good about IDing every note played, unlike a lot of other stations). Sure enough, the announcer said the song was "Flowers", by a band called Chug.
That was all I needed to hear. I immediately turned the car east, towards the center of town and most importantly, towards the two main music stores in the City, Echo Records and Galaxy Records, located just down the way from one another in the Cashel Mall area. Galaxy didn't have anything by Chug, but Echo had an EP, Kisser, with exactly the song I was looking for. Within ten minutes of hearing that tune, the CD was in my hand.
Chug was formed in 1991 in Dunedin, the birthplace of such well-known and acclaimed (well, in certain quarters) bands as the Chills and the Clean. They quickly signed to Flying Nun Records, and the Kisser EP was their first release on the label in 1993. They recorded an album for Flying Nun, Sassafras, in 1994, and another EP, Little Things, in 1996, before leaving the label for Alias Records in late 1996. Alias roped them into a seven(!)-album deal, which included a rerelease of Sassafras on the label and a new album, Metalon, in 1997. Both of the band's albums and both EPs went exactly nowhere.
Chug's major problem was that they could never keep a consistant lineup going, apparently a familiar problem for Dunedin bands (see "Chills, The"). No less that three different lead guitarists and three drummers passed through the band in its first four years of existence. That's what murdered them in 1995-96, just after Sassafras was released - they spent all of that time rehearsing with another new member, and by the time they were ready, their moment had passed.
The stresses of constant lineup changes, relentless touring, and that humongous record deal hanging over their heads caught up quickly with Chug, and by the end of 1998, the band was history. It's too bad that the band could never again put out anything as strong as "Flowers".
Epilogue: I moved back to the U.S. in mid-1995, and a year or so later, I was watching Nickelodeon on cable, for some ungodly reason. The network's "Coming Up Next" promo came on at one point, and I instantly recognized the background music - it was an instrumental snippet of "Flowers"! It was stunning to see that at least one person in the U.S. was hip enough to find that one cool song by an obscure band from New Zealand, and put it on TV (although I used to laugh to myself, considering what would have happened if Nickelodeon accidently played the vocal part, which prominently features the "F"-word - don't think the parents of the kiddies watching at that time would be too pleased . . . )
Here you go:
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Saying "Thanks" for the music you receive from here costs you absolutely nothing, and yet is worth quite a bit to me… If you can't bother leaving a comment on this blog for the first album/set we send you, don't bother making a request For a second album…
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