POX: New Zealand

can i just say not given lightly 10 times?

i forgot tall dwarfs 'crush' and chris knox 'woman inside of me'

Somebody must be kidding me-ee-ee-ee
Somebody must be lying to me-ee-ee-ee

That's "Titus" off of Mental Notes (let's forget about the sterilized, Manzanera-produced version on Second Thoughts). Great song! Phil Judd is a genius!

king loser - '68 comeback
rainy days - hot cakes!
olla - septic hagfish
gordons - spik and span
bailterspace - x

folina vili - markdown
look blue go purple - circumspect penelope
b.c - dog
tall dwarfs - turning brown and torn in two
coconut rough - sierra leone
space waltz - out on the street
the renderers - so blind
the terminals - touch
doublehappys - needles and plastic
skeptics - AFFCO.

i have obv missed out URGENT AND KEY stuff by the chills, the clean and the gordons.

chants r & b - i'm your witch doctor
the la de das - how is the air up there
sharon o'neill - maxine
the chills - rolling moon
the gordons - future shock
the clean - anything could happen
folina vili - canongate
the chills - pink frost
straitjacket fits - she speeds
snapper - buddy

also I can't believe I spelled Alastair G's surname wrong up there. Please shoot me.

And we need some Toy Love on this thread!!! I nominate "Squeeze"

Fat Freddy's Drop - Midnight Marauders
The Phoenix Foundation - Lambs
The Phoenix Foundation - Sister Risk
Fat Freddy's Drop - Hope for a Generation
Trinity Roots - Little Things
Bongmaster - Ground My Ego
Nathan Haines - Let It Go
HDU - Lull
Rhombus - Clav Dub (Jagwah remix)
Fang - Somewhere Out There

not really a fan of the Dunedin sound :/

Whack It All Down EP - great
s/t LP - top 5 NZ album of all-time ("Jaffa Boy" is the best song to ever emanate from the country, IMHO)
& the "Jaffa Boy" 7", too.

Also, no love for the Able Tasmans' A Cuppa Tea and a Lie Down LP?

yes!

*the introduction/simplification of race WAS a deliberate trife-echo, & I forgot to use the &(etc); code to make sure the brackets didn't disappear into HTML - it was a stupid thing to do.

**on this board/the internet (indie-centric bias, I guess (or even the NZ=noise industry)) - the sorts of music I'm talking about ARE known by the "larger public", university students, etc (Salmonella Dub, say), & a lot of the bands you're talking about aren't (with m4rc3l in Dunedin, we all listened to P-Money & Scribe, Salmonella Dub, HDU & so forth on student radio, but it took me ages to convince him of the merits of the Chills & the Clean), but yr (people like you? does this hold up) more likely to write the history (I think) & I don't think you (=people) should have to choose.
& due to my age/location - first piece of New Zealand music I purchased was Shihad's The General Electric from the Warehouse in Rotorua - they'd gotten a lot of publicity, they'd toured (& even to Rotorua, although I didn't/couldn't go) - up until that point I wasn't aware of NZ music, or rather able to distinguish between local & non-local music. & this was when Fur Patrol, tadpole, stellar*, Weta & so on were getting hyped, & there was this sense of excitement that NZ music was undergoing some sort of resurgence, & I first heard about the Skeptics & Bailter Space from a Shihad interview, & so on - I had this sense of wanting to follow NZ music in the same way I wanted to follow NZ film or NZ literature or NZ television, local pride. It would be (it is) disingenuous for me to make some remark about not being as clued-in, or as indie, or whatever, as a lot of the other NZ posters here (but I did get the Flying Nun myth/etc drilled into me in Dunedin (as well as being exposed to a lot of (comparitively) obscure international music), & I listen to those bands a lot lot more than I listen to the aforementioned bands).

sorry - I've been thinking (not very well/clearly, apparently) about this a bit recently - I saw my first episode of Give It A Whirl on tape last night - the final - & some of the things Peter Urlich & one of the Finns were saying really itched my brain, & a lot of K Rd scenesters (again, the disingenuousness) are totally committed to a certain rock'n'roll myth that, again, really upsets me; & the thread title - pick only ten songs from New Zealand - seemed almost ridiculous (I almost wanted to start at POX : USA or POX: England thread & see what people would say), & I knew the list would be composed, largely, of Flying Nun bands.

(every other comment I've made on this thread has been more or less sincere/serious - I do like singles by the bands I've mentioned, this & the revived LBGP thread have re-piqued my interest in music I'm not familiar with - I have a tendency to express all my doubts about something before I can buy into it).

it's been claimed on the one hand that "brother love is a genius" (duane), or that "brother love ripped [such'n'such] off", "brother love is too blues-centric" (various other people)

the band he used to be in (space dust) did put on a good show recently with different guitarist (Mick) and re-united with hitherto estranged bassist (John Christoffels) -- like they were a real rock band rather than an art installation

what i really wanna ask is, is it really up to YOU to "stand up" for brown new zealanders? i know you have good intentions - i was a wigger once, remember? but you maybe should think about things like co-opting oppressions and how that might (not would - i'm not trying to represent anyone either) be perceived.

there should have been a couple of dozen episodes, and some time devoted to playing whole songs -- this was a doco about music, but to get any feel for that music you'd have had to know the music already, you'd have had to be familiar with most of the bands & their music

this doco took the audience for granted i think, relying on peoples' memories to put the pieces together

oh, and it was _really_ gross to be reminded just how revolting rock got in nz in the late '70s (hello sailor & dragon), and too much time was spent on that scene (cf: the tenfold increase in musical output & creativity that followed in the eighties)

and even split enz got a pretty raw deal given how much music they produced that was interesting and adult (cf: hello sailor and dragon, both too adult, too "cool")

flying nun was paid lip service, with no attention given to all the 12" eps they issued that made them a force in the mid eighties, and we got no mention of the way that flying nun actually took on major labels, corporates that treated local indigenous music on f.n. as the enemy and how f.n. got around that by pioneering these black and white covered e.p.s, really a whole new format

i could go on .. but to make sense of that doco you really had to have been there, so i think it failed to tell the story of nz music .. to me it was a pretty cheaply thrown together thing, a big disappointment .. and you could not show this to anybody not from nz at that time and expect them to make much sense of the real story of nz music at all

I haven't seen Give it a Whirl but i understand it was designed to be a documentary about the nz music industry rather than nz music. Most of those FN EPs were released in editions of 300, which makes them even less significant to the industry than metonymic or corpus hermeticum. i live under the delusion that foreigners putting out zines and NZ CDs (thanks again for the TKP and related reishes Tim!) are writing the history of NZ music much more than a crappy tv series.

I didn't see anything that ess wrote as "co-opting oppresions"; none of the popular 'nesian musicians would give rats arse about some record collector nerds on the net ignoring their sounds. What is of concern to me is people thinking of "NZ music" as being something that could have come from anywhere in the US and not from the South Pacific (and Ess isn't the first person on ILM to complain about this/ point it out).

well i thought their cd was pretty neat as i remember, and so i lent it to someone who clearly felt that way too, so i can't tell you anymore about it now

but speaking of paying of your dues duane, _you_ were the biggest fan, the biggest defender musically and muso-ethically of the brother, bigger than any of those casual female hangers on -- he was "integral" to your band, you remember, you hung out together and the routine would be as follows: he'd do one of his tantrums about being "under-appreciated" etc. etc. and you'd reassure him that he was "the man" (ie you'd reiterate it until you'd brought him 'round to him believing once again that you thought he was "the man")

hamish, i claim to have been a wigger because thats what i was called by all the Polynesian girls who i hung around in high school. they meant it as a putdown and they found my fetishizing of their culture rude and patronising. i did not mean it to be "cute" or "amusing" at all. so YES hamish i know first hand how that kind of thing is perceived by Polynesians. i don't think i should have to explain this to you, you never explain YOURSELF for any of the smarmy self-righteous shit YOU say.

1. Alpaca Brothers 12"
2. Ziggy Stadust Band
3. Say Yes to Apes double LP
4. Axemen "Three Versions/3Virgins"
5. Dead C. "Bad Politics" 7"
6. Trash 1st 7"
7. Randolph's Going Home 7"
8. Clean 1st 12"
9. Verlaines "everything"10.3D's 1st two 12's

and Tall Dwarves, Omit, Anything Duane or Robbie Yeats played on, David and Denise, Bailter Space, Mad Scene esp "Newgarden Era"

also: it is intimidating, but mine will sadly be flying nun/xpressway biased, sorry NZ-purists.

What is of concern to me is people thinking of "NZ music" as being something that could have come from anywhere in the US and not from the South Pacific

who are these people you speak of? please provide examples of this kind of thinking. i don't think anyone would doubt that NZ music, even our indy rock, could have come from anywhere BUT new zealand.

well that just shows how much the 'industry' in nz today takes the very industrious if non-corporate style efforts of those musicians and their friends back then for granted

the attitudes of the big multi-national corporations back then provided a very real and obvious target for anybody with a punk-like attitude -- i believe the punk d.i.y. thing happened here anyway (ie regardless of the goings on in the UK) given these multi-nationals attitudes to local creativity, art, music -- the attitude: make sure it doesn't get played on local radio, leave it to be a student radio cult, don't give any of these bands from chch or dunedin any money, ignore the pull that original music is having on pub audiences, put obstacles in the way of them cutting records locally

so local music exploded while these major label controllers of fashion were not looking -- oh, overseas people like it, that means it might actually be good -- let's put some money into it now, ten-fifteen years later, once the horse has bolted -- now there's a nice big shiny industry in auckland, that presumably uses those same awful american A&R management practises -- so let's have a documentary to remind people in nz how good the local scene is (by showing them how good it was back then depite the best efforts of most of the corporate players)

what did emerge from that doco for me was that interest in local music is a provincial regional thing, something big management in a bid city will possibly simply overlook or consider as significant as it's profit line margin of error -- if f.nun e.p.s sold in small numbers, that was still enough to ensure local bands orginal music got played on the student radio of the time, which was then a cult thing playing in high school common rooms everywhere (this was when i was in some high school situation myself) -- there was this shared consciousness back then amoungst young people that this was the real current music, the real pop music, played by real groups of local people, rather than 'industry' groups like fleetwood mac (and i still remember watching the equiv of TOTP in nz just to see how the latest clean e.p. was charting)

back then and still now, it's rare for a really _big_ international band to be bothered getting it's equipment to nz, so nz-ers have always felt left out of a lot of what's on TOTP or the local chart-parade equivalent (except for efforts like "See Me Go" which everybody wnated to go to no 1 as i remember)

yet the big industry that's here is still mainly concerned with funnelling overseas chart material like a continuous stream of soap opera tv product, and so it's perceived as a foreign (in all the ways that word's used) brainless and tasteless (yet calculating and sleazy) un-human corporate entity

maybe what people around the world like about music from new zealand is that it's music conceived and put out despite that big industry -- i think that that might the reason for new zealand musics perceived strength and integrity, & the reason for the continued interest in it

I'm not in any way saying we should all only listen to genuine indiginous music (even if it ever did exist). However the Beatles did sing in the language of their land...

Also, why is reggae/hiphop so much more suitable to becoming specifically South Pacific in origin?

Theres no reason it has to be that way, but they are the styles that have picked up the most Pacific/Maaori influences, lyric-wise and music-wise. Its kind of weird that NZ biggest contribution to the evolution of music is its unique form of hip-hop but is mostly known for indie-drone-postpsychedelic-jangle-pop, and when ess makes a joke about it people jump down his throat about it. Now people are accusing both of us of saying things we haven't said. Di I'm not going to respond to your posts when you make insults that have nothing to do with reality and when you misrepresent what i've written so grossly.

The question of whether our indie rock has anything unique and/or Pacifican from a musicological perspective (and there are many people on this thread far more qualified to discuss this than me) is a pretty interesting topic and i've raised some specific points relating to it, but if you'd prefer to ignore them and make bizarre assumptions about me / insult me then count me out. sheez no wonder i mainly only post lists on this board.

Hundreds of songs from NZ vs ten songs from the USA (all by the same band) = there must be something going right here.

*that's their name, the asterisk's included, maybe cos they knew they wouldn't be provoking too many footnotes so WHY NOT? I always sort of thought when I saw it on a gig poster that underneath it'd say "pending possible other commitments" or something

no more than before. i only go to gigs of dunedin bands and that wanky free jazz stuff and jacques brel tribute bands. its dub thats big here not hiphop.

Calling yourself or anyone at all a "wigger" is likely to get you the shit beat out of you in many parts of New Zealand; particularly in ones where there is no pakeha majority to decide which terms are cute and amusing.

oh so i'm supposed to believe that you weren't belittling me to start with?

The question of whether our indie rock has anything unique and/or Pacifican from a musicological perspective (and there are many people on this thread far more qualified to discuss this than me) is a pretty interesting topic and i've raised some specific points relating to it, but if you'd prefer to ignore them and make bizarre assumptions about me / insult me then count me out. sheez no wonder i mainly only post lists on this board.

i didn't ignore them, i just thought it was a topic that has been addressed just about everywhere there has been talk about nz music and theres academic texts about it in the library.

i dunno why i said wanky especially without quote marks around it, early morning defensiveness i guess. Theres still a great free jazz scene here tho its sad that Chris O'Connor is out of the country now. The scene has taken a bit of a hiatus at the moment after the old Space has closed and before the new one has opened. It was pretty good while it was in Newtown, most weeks they'd have a show on nearly every night, usually about three of them being free jazz. Not much of it is being released so it feels like a bit of a secret at the moment. Most of the musicians are playing jazz at other venues to much larger crowds (and making a living off it) because people here think jazz music played as boringly as possible lends their venue/function a feel of culture/sophistication. i'm not sure what the deal is with the festival but it seems that Han Bennink and Eric Boeren are coming here soon (not the Ex).

12:48 AM central time is a great time to bump this. the beths are the second best new zealand band of all time, fight me