June 29, 2004
in the sprawl part 2 / sonic youth review
As predicted the Auckland visit's leached away my savings, so I'll have to see if I can get a day or two of work from Student Job Search. They don't seem very keen on answering the phone though and the website only has longer term jobs so I'll have to go into town and visit them. I dropped a friend off at work this morning, had a taste of Auckland commuter traffic - not something I could be bothered living with every day. On the other hand having managed to borrow a car has been handy.
Sonic Youth gig was good. I got there in time for the last twenty seconds of Birchville Cat Motel's set, great to see him up there - made a change from playing to audiences of two or three people at The Space. The St James complex was a better venue than the town hall where I saw SY in 1998, a tall theatre building with a warm glow. SY were having a good night, this was immediately apparent from their entrance. Last time they walked in, waited for applause to die down then started quietly. This time there was a noise drone and they came in one by one, Lee Ranaldo nose down in a book, and it led into something off the Sonic Nurse album - I'd heard the album but don't know the track names. Their sound these days is very sensuous, relaxing and gentle even. It swells in waves, kind of a sonic representation of a magic mushroom trip, almost dub. Even when they do get into the feedback & distortion it's not an abrasive noise, just another textural level.
Jim O'Rorke fits in well on guitar & bass, though it's hard to say what difference his joining makes to the music. Freeing up Kim to dance and play trumpet at the end was good. None of the guitar playing looks at all technically difficult, a lot of their unique sound is about using alternative tunings so they have five or six guitars each, and it's all about the overall group sound. They looked a little different from last time, Lee now salt & pepper haired all over rather than just grey at the temples, Steve actually less overweight than last time, Thurston finally starting to look older than 22 though not by much. He's fairly skinny as well as tall, and it looks great to see a 6'6"guy jumping around. He was climbing on top of his amp fairly early on, and towards the end he was wrestling with a guy who'd jumped up from the crowd - and grinning throughout. Kim's still the centre around which the others revolve on stage, though now that they're a five-piece she seemed to dominate less.
The concert was pretty much a pop set by their standards, heavy on songs from Sonic Nurse. They threw in a few oldies, 'White Cross' from Sister was a major adrenalin rush and served to highlight the differences in approach between their music in the 80s and now. Mostly they stuck to fairly short songs, no half hour 'Diamond Sea' type material which was maybe unfortunate. Also a year or two ago they'd been getting booed by audiences in Europe for playing avant garde compositions from their Goodbye 20th Century album rather than rock songs, but now they seem to have come out the other side of that. So Birchville Cat Motel was the evening's hardcore minimalist. Overall though whatever a band plays matters less than how they play it, and Sonic Youth were on form. They're one of the all-time great rock bands, what more can you say?
I made my own contribution to Auckland's cultural scene by playing at Vitamin S last night. I got thrown in with another guitarist and a computer guy in the first set, then with a drummer and two saxophonists in the second. Not earthshatteringly great I thought but fun. Free improvised music is always going to be disposable in a sense, there for the moment above all else. I don't think it was recorded so I'll never know exactly how it sounded. The locals were very hospitable with me the visiting dignitary - ha!
The downside of my stay so far, besides having burned through my savings (I got ripped off by the Kodak Express in Newmarket, having a car is nice but it needs petrol, and it cost me $61 more than it should have to get to Auckland), is that I've come down with a cold. Every cold has it's own distinctive style, this one's mainly about my nose and throat filling up with bitter-tasting histamine slime. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse. Have to see what I can come up with to fill in the next few days...
June 26, 2004
in the sprawl
Here I am in Remuera, looking out on Rangitoto. Tonight's the night Sonic Youth are playing in Auckland, and I'll be there. I saw them in 1998 and to be honest found it a little anticlimactic, they were good rather than great. I left feeling like I wanted to see them again and get them on a good night. People still talk about seeing them on the Washing Machine tour of 1995...
It does add to my sense that 2004 is for me about revisiting things from the last few years and wrapping up loose ends so I can move on overseas next year. This is a much more stable year than last year, and I'm finally managing to relax. One of the good things about being a student again is that we get reasonable length holidays (three weeks a year is nowhere near enough, I think ten would be better, and nobody should work more than 30 hours per week unless they really want to) so I'm spending the first half of my semester break in Auckland. I'm not without responsibilities, I'm way behind on shorthand practice so I've got the holiday to catch up (wouldn't want to fail the course now would I?), but it is good to have a break.
It's all spring from here. I went to a pot-luck dinner last weekend at a 14-person flat on Allenby Terrace (in Wellington), seemed a good way to mark the solstice. I was amused to be mistaken for a gay when I didn't immediately make the sign of the cross and run screaming when I walked into a bedroom and some girls were watching gay porn. It was the meal where I asked for more Greek salad rather than more beef curry that convinced them though. Ironically in the end just for once I didn't have to sleep alone.
Getting to Auckland was pretty absurd, I waited for a bus to the airport when I should have got a taxi, and missed my flight. I hitchhiked to Palmerston North and got the overnight train from there, so not a big problem except for the $115 plane ticket down the toilet. I've always thought of Auckland as a black hole which sucks away my bank balance whenever I visit. I had a cheap night out last night though, went to a party for Fleet FM (which is just starting to broadcast in Wellington) - seven or eight bands for $5. I bought two beers and stayed out til 6am.
I arranged to play at Vitamin S on Monday. This is the Auckland weekly free improv music evening. Unlike Wellington which seems to have a core group of ten or so 'regulars' who always play together, the Vitamin S system is to draw three names out of a hat, people who haven't played together before, and see what happens. So I'll be thrown in the deep end with two locals on Monday and have no idea what to expect. Could be something good.
I can hopefully borrow my nephew's guitar for Monday - there's a choice of a Fender Stratocaster, a Musicman, and a Suzuki classical guitar. Vox or Fender amps. My nephews are rich kids, their dad (my brother in law) is a Fonterra executive. They've just come back from Tokyo and I'm now staying with them in Remuera. The house must cost a million dollars minimum, it has a small swimming pool etc. The boys are competitive swimmers, out all day today at a swim meet on the north shore. It's all another world to me. Auckland as a concept is hard to get my head around, it consists of suburbs and built up areas as far as the eye can see. It's rolling open countryside except for all these buildings and roads on it. From a good vantage point in Wellington you can see the edges of town, not so here. You could walk all day and still be in town I imagine.
Anyway, it's good to have reached the mid-point of the year, and doubly good to be on holiday. Auckland should keep me entertained for the next few days. If I can afford it (if I can get some work during the week) it should be worth staying around for the Dead C next Saturday. And Sonic Youth tonight... noise mecca. Anyone want to explain why they're not both playing in Wellington though?
June 22, 2004
The time I played at Sweetwaters 1999
Here's one from the archives - I found this on an old floppy disc from about four years ago. It was meant to be a magazine article but never got published...
The term “noise” is much maligned in music, especially when used by insensitive neighbours/parents/flatmates. But there are whole musical subcultures and genres that thrive on it. As a teenager, falling in love with music for the first time I had the natural urge to share this love with the whole household. This never went particularly well, but as my tastes developed, my responses to the inevitable turn-that-noise-down had to make a strategic retreat from a petulant “it’s not noise (you are)” to a sheepish “but it’s good noise”.
To the connoisseur, there are fine distinctions between everything from Anti-Pop to Pigfuck, and everything in between. What the non-noisenik doesn’t recognise is that all sound is noise, including all music. The Oxford Dictionary defines noise as “a sound, especially a loud or undesired one”. So Mozart is noise, especially at high volume and when you’re not in the mood.
By contrast the dictionary definition of music as “the art of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion” is very narrow. If it isn’t beautiful, harmonious, and expressive, it can’t be music.
Rather than attacking narrow preconceived ideas of what is music head-on, like the avant-garde or punk, noise side steps and subverts these ideas. Melody, harmony, and even rhythm are simply not that important, if they exist at all. The important thing is sounds and tone.
Generally noise can be used in two ways. The first is as a colour to spice up otherwise conventional music. The second way is to make noise the basis of a style. This is the hardcore approach. Like hardcore punk, which does away with any extraneous instrumentals to emphasise the rock structure, and free improvisation, which does away with any extraneous structure to emphasise the instrumentals, free noise does away with anything remotely musical to emphasise the sound.
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These concepts were not discussed in detail prior to the debut performance of the Bird & Truck Collision. The instructions given for our half hour were that a) no lyrics, recognisable melodies, or steady beats were permitted, and b) that the set would consist of a “quiet half” and a “loud half”. The transition from quiet to loud was to be signalled by the sound of a lawnmower starting on the four-track recordings we were playing along with. I asked Paul whether the change should be sudden or gradual and the question seemed to throw him a bit. The score didn’t specify.
I had spent the day in the back of a van, driving up to Auckland for Sweetwaters. I happened to have my electric guitar, a cheapshit Stratocaster-imitation, with me because I knew a guy who knew a guy who had a gig lined up at Sweetwaters. I had heard some of an album by this person, entitled Heaven on Earth. It consisted of complex high-pitched twittering sounds, interspersed with silvery chimings. It made me think of the seaside for some reason, though later when I played a copy to a friend he said it reminded him of rush-hour traffic.
I met Paul for the first time on the Friday the festival was starting. He said “so you want to be in the band”. I was probably wondering if I’d be asked for an impromptu audition (no I can’t play “Stairway to Heaven” sorry, uh…), but no I was in just like that. We discussed the plan for the set. This didn’t take long, and I got back in the van for a ride to the festival grounds.
The Sweetwaters site was pretty impressive to my festival-inexperienced eyes. I don’t think I ever did explore it all. It wasn’t until after the thing was over that I found out what a “failure” it was. In retrospect the not-quite teeming crowds and the cancellations of some key acts were obvious clues. But Sweetwaters was not a failed festival, only a failed business venture. An impression I did get was that people weren’t sure how much of a hippie thing this was – was it Woodstock or wasn’t it? And if so, how ironic to be? Remember the 90s; remember irony?
On Saturday morning, the members of the Bird & Truck Collision assembled to set up for our contribution to the festival. We were first on, so there were a lot of people running around setting things up. As I hadn’t met most of my bandmates, the way to tell them apart from the crew was that crew members kept running up to me wit technical questions, such as how many microphones we needed. I had to redirect all enquiries to Paul, even basic ones like “how many people are there in your group?” The answer to both questions was probably “how many can we have?”
Paul himself was busy setting up his equipment, which included a small keyboard, a large synthesiser unit, an odd-shaped bass guitar to trigger it, and his own mixing board. The synthesiser had just had a load of water dumped on it by the flapping tarpaulin strapped to the stage rig, which was a worrying start. The next time I saw Paul play, several months later, someone in the audience threw a handful of whipped cream at his gear.
The set began with the pre-recorded sound of cicadas blending with the backwards-chirping sounds from the synthesiser, which I had heard on Heaven on Earth. A drummer, one of Paul’s fellow veterans from the Sunset Coast Big Band in Waiuku, was quietly brushing and doing rolls on a single snare drum. I played a couple of staccato guitar notes and chords here and there.
The quiet half of the set had its own slow rhythm, the sounds rising and falling, with swells in volume. Things gradually became more active. An audience began to form. Vocalists started singing wordlessly. The guy in the bright red cape and hat, the Reverend Stinkfinger, started running around more. He had a bed of nails with him, and explored its possibilities as a prop. He also started climbing the scaffolding at the side of the stage, and was dragged down by security. I was playing my guitar with a knife and fork.
The sound of a lawnmower starting began on the tape. Paul was nodding at everyone. I started turning all the control knobs I could find up to ten. The amp started feeding back madly. The drumming intensified. The vocalists were yelling. A guy with a microphone ran around the stage, sampling sounds and throwing them back into the mix. I could no longer hear Paul – I found out later that the sound engineers had seen him put on headphones, and dropped him out of the monitors, so no-one else on stage could hear him. My guitar was so overdriven that I could play something and not be able to hear it make a difference to the roaring. I jumped around as much as I could, now quite possessed by the sound. Noise can do that. Unlike traditional music, which has many techniques by which to manipulate emotions, noise shuts out emotions and thought. This is the same goal Buddhists have in meditating.
All too soon it was over, our half-hour almost up. The stage manager was making cutting gestures across his throat. The sounds died away, reality came back. Some of the audience wore puzzled frowns, others were grinning. There is a rumour that one woman had an orgasm during our set (though even if this is true, there may not have been a causal relationship). One guy told us later on that we had been “too rock & roll”; others noted that it was the lawnmower sound, which seemed to start everything up. The Paua Fritters were the next band on; I have no idea what they thought of their opening act. None of us know what we sounded like, as the guys who were supposed to record the set failed to turn up. What I heard on stage is different from what anyone else on stage heard, and the audience heard something else again. Video footage was taken, but is now locked away in the vaults, as Sweetwaters seems to be something the organisers would rather forget.
I learned a couple of interesting things later on. The Reverend Stinkfinger was punk veteran and filmmaker Brent Hayward. I was later made an honorary member of his fan club. Paul turned out to also be from my hometown of New Plymouth, and in fact had lived on the same street before his eight-year stay in Houston, Texas. The official Sweetwaters Artist Passes got us backstage at the main stage, which with a bar and porcelain toilets was somewhat more luxurious than the fenced compound with Portaloos behind the NZ Stage. When Shihad played we stood at the back of the stage and looked out over the crowd. Neil Finn was there, but I had nothing to say to him. We had reached the lower rungs of pop culture.
Brent Hayward, aka The Reverend Stinkfinger. Chris Knox compared my first album Scratched Surface to him - interesting coincidence since I'd unwittingly played with the guy. Paul also gave me a lot of help with recording and playing on my second album The Marion Flow.
June 11, 2004
in the darkness
I think it was growing a vegetable garden in 2002 that did it, made me aware of the seasons as a way of timekeeping. I stopped wearing a watch around then too. Clock time's too fast for me, my brain works along slow processes. Now here we are back in the dark part of a year again, near the solstice. The summer decelerated, autumn came and went and now we're coming to rest on the bottom of the curve. I kind of like this time of year, more than 50% of the time is night, so it's a negative image of the rest of the year when we do most things in daylight. It's a good time for reading, I'm getting through Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and Bruce Jesson's Only Their Purpose Is Mad, about the NZ economic changes since 1984. I've also got another vege garden, and harvested a broccoli the other night. Fresh organic produce energises a meal.
Two weeks to go til the semester break. Is anyone else going up to Auckland for the Sonic Youth gig? I'd really like to get a lift & share petrol with someone. The cheap airfares are all gone and the train's not much better. Looks like hitchhiking might have to be the way to go. It's not a good time of year for it though as the daylight hours are short and the chances of fine weather aren't great. It is a fun way to travel though, or at least I haven't had any bad experiences yet, and adds a sense of occasion to the SY concert. I should also play my second Auckland gig at Vitamin S on Monday 28th.
I'm wrapping up my affairs for the first half of the year, finishing things off in time for the solstice. One more newspaper story to write - which looks like being a report on the Paekakariki Community Board meeting on Tuesday. Also a page layout to design, and I'm still way behind on shorthand (meant to be on 60wpm, I think I'm up to about 30). Outside the course I've been converting Loose Autumn Moans to CDR so I'll have to redesign the artwork. What do you think - should I include transcriptions of the lyrics? There's also the second draft of my chapter on The Space to produce, and I should adapt one of my short stories into a script for the Radio NZ season of new works.
The trip to Auckland comes just after the solstice so that should be the start of new things, the Spring regrowth. I hope I can get past this long period of being single, it gets kind of boring. I saw Elisa today briefly, she asked if I was entering the 48-hour film challenge in the weekend. Nope. I only heard about it today, sounds kind of fun. Maybe I've closed the door too firmly on working in the film medium, but I had my reasons. Film's a bad scene. Instead, tomorrow I lined up some work clearing a fence-line. I need some work, I've got $10 in the bank at the moment. I hope I can finance this Auckland trip somehow...