The Mint Chicks at The Big Day Out<\/p>\n
(Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland, January 21, 2005)<\/p>\n
Here it is, the pinnacle of my very short-lived and consistently out-of-focus gig photography career: a photo of Blink taking a much better photo<\/a> of Kody Neilson chopping down an advertising hoarding with a chainsaw at the 2005 Big Day Out. Talk about history in pictures. <\/p>\n The truth is I more or less hated both Big Day Outs I went to, but for the half hour or so the Mint Chicks were playing I was in pure live music heaven. The energy, the antics, the unpredictability\u2026 this was my Wrestlemania. My most ecstatic memory of this set isn\u2019t even the chainsaw incident \u2013 it\u2019s when they launched into a cover of \u2018Ever Fallen In Love\u2019, and the naivety of youth led me to believe I was the only person in the crowd who recognised it as a Buzzcocks song. Live music!\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2013 Calum Henderson, production editor<\/p>\n Aldous Harding at Auckland Town Hall<\/p>\n (March 14, 2020)<\/p>\n It\u2019s early 2020, the last year of your life has been soundtracked by Aldous Harding\u2019s Designer and Weyes Blood\u2019s Titanic Rising and now both are putting on a show at Auckland\u2019s Town Hall. Meanwhile, there\u2019s this buzzy little bug named Covid-19 shutting down the whole world, and you\u2019ve got this weird feeling this might be the last normal thing you\u2019ll be allowed to do for a long time.<\/p>\n Anyway, ignore the man mumbling nervously behind you, dropping dead from sickness, and mimic Harding\u2019s robotic dancing instead. Twirl under blue lights with your friends and laugh and sing even though you\u2019re the only ones treating it like a party. When Weyes sings \u201ctrue love is making a comeback\u201d, you really believe it. When Harding sings, \u201cthe wave of love is a transient hut\u201d, it sounds a lot like \u201churt\u201d. You\u2019re only 19 and but you\u2019ve had enough alcohol in a plastic cup to know both can be true.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a night you remember for the whimsical way you felt moving to the music and the poetry embedded in between. And the afters in Myers Park, drinking under the moonlight. Just over a week later, the prime minister announces that the country\u2019s going into lockdown. That night and Harding\u2019s gossamer tones are the last memory you have of what life felt like pre-Covid.<\/p>\n \u2013 Lyric Waiwiri-Smith, politics reporter<\/p>\n JPS Experience at Sol Bar<\/p>\n (Wellington, April 23, 1993)<\/p>\n It was April 1993 and JPS Experience, for some reason, were playing at Sol Bar, upstairs in the Oaks, Wellington. This was the place that would later become La Luna, but at this point it wasn\u2019t really a live venue. It was glassy and the sight lines were no good, with the bar smack in the middle. We were in first year at university and went along mostly because a friend\u2019s older brother worked behind the bar and was very generous with the pours. But despite everything the show was dazzling, infectious, with the reveries of Bleeding Star, which must have just come out, at its centre.<\/p>\n At some point during the show they announced they\u2019d also be playing the next night, a Saturday, at Bar Bodega, the grubby temple of live music in Wellington at the time, up there on Willis Street, where the main act almost never began before midnight. If my memory is right, David Kilgour also played that night and it was even better, even more entrancing and mysterious. That album didn\u2019t leave my trusty five-CD changer for at least a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2013 Toby Manhire, editor at large<\/p>\n Shihad at Aotea Square<\/p>\n (Auckland, May 1, 2005)<\/p>\n It\u2019s 2005 and I\u2019m 16. Clad in converse and Dickies shorts. My best friend and I had journeyed from the depths of east Auckland (most likely via the Half Moon Bay ferry) to Aotea Square. We were there to see Shihad. It felt like a big deal. Their Vodafone-sponsored show on May 1 was kicking off New Zealand Music Month and significantly, especially so for underage teenagers with part-time jobs (I washed dishes at a neighbourhood restaurant), the gig was free. Due to that, and the band\u2019s mid-career success \u2013 \u201cbig\u201d by New Zealand standards, and newly returned from the US after a brief rename \u2013 Aotea Square was packed with people waiting for Shihad.\u00a0<\/p>\n I remember bogans, indies, normies and a lot of teenagers like us there for a free gig with no ID required. The crowd was 7,000 strong, I learned later, which is more than the population of Kaitaia. (Rumours of the damage caused to The Civic carpark below were debunked by Chris Schulz<\/a> in 2025.) As the band took the stage at 4pm and started playing, the heavens opened. I don\u2019t remember the set list. I don\u2019t remember how we got home again. But seared in my memory is a skinny, shirtless Jon Toogood, with black drainpipes and long dark hair, absolutely saturated. He didn\u2019t care and neither did we. To this day I\u2019ve never seen so many people unfazed by a downpour. The crowd was steaming like cattle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Revisiting coverage of it \u2013 you can watch the whole thing on YouTube \u2013 I read a report of the show by a young Derek Cheng<\/a>, early in his long Herald tenure, noting that local music enjoyed 20% of the airplay on commercial radio. Compare this to now, with NZ on Air recently reporting that the majority of commercial stations didn\u2019t meet that voluntary standard<\/a> last year. In 2005 it really did feel like New Zealand music was everywhere. As teenagers we watched C4, listened to bFM and Radio Hauraki, scoured Real Groovy and treasured every issue of Rip It Up and Pavement. Music discovery felt physical and hard \u2013 although, yes, Limewire and MySpace existed by then too. Standing in the rain felt worth it. It still is.<\/p>\n \u2013 Emma Gleason, contributing writer<\/p>\n Adam McGrath at the Wine Cellar and Sam Prebble at the Maritime Museum<\/p>\n (Auckland, May 10, 2016;\u00a0Auckland, October 31, 2013)<\/p>\n At the risk of sounding like the Blade Runner tears in rain monologue<\/a>, I\u2019ve seen local bands you wouldn\u2019t believe. Reb Fountain on fire on the top floor of Lopdell House in Titirangi. Aldous Harding glittering on stage at the Wunderbar in Lyttelton. But still some of my most enduring local music memories are tied up in the bits between songs from two shaman-like folk singers.<\/p>\n Both are road warrior working musicians. The first, The Eastern\u2019s Adam McGrath, has a personality to match his really quite massive size. I\u2019ve seen him play probably a dozen times, mostly in lounges or small spaces. He carries himself like a booze-soaked preacher, espousing the gospel of old-fashioned folk, pouring scorn on sellouts and cynical politicians and advocating for the people at the end of their boot. I don\u2019t know when I became a true believer but I still remember him explaining his beautiful ballad \u2018People Like Us<\/a>\u2019 at the much-missed Wine Cellar.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sam Prebble was a different kind of preacher, though no less committed to a potentially hopeless cause. His final album with his band Bond Street Bridge was The Explorers Club: Antarctica, a catalogue of songs about the Scott and Shackleton expeditions. At the album release show at the Maritime Museum, he embodied the manic energy and desperation of those men\u2019s journeys on stage, throwing his hair about wildly and monologuing about days, months and years spent freezing out on the Antarctic tundra.<\/p>\nYou had to be there.<\/p>\n
Aldous Harding and Weyes Blood in The Beforetimes (March 2020).<\/p>\n
Memory affirming media: Rip It Up April 1, 1993 and City Voice April 22, 1993. (Sources: Papers Past, Wellington City Libraries)<\/p>\n
A soon to be soaked Jon Toogood. (Source: Shihad Youtube)<\/p>\n