Don McGlashan & Shayne Carter - Aurora Center - Christchurch 20 October 2016

Two of the Godfathers of New Zealand Indie rock/pop have teamed up for some live gigs around New Zealand in October 2016 and because I admire McGlashan so much I really needed to attend this, as I missed him last time he played here.

 Don has been in several legendary New Zealand bands over the last 35+ years, including  BlamBlamBlam, The Front lawn and The Muttonbirds, as well as putting out solo stuff as of late. I think his song writing is second to none in NZ and he is a most versatile musician and a great singer.

 Shayne, likewise is very well known in post-punk indie circles, also fronting several near legendary NZ bands such as, Bored Games, Double Happys, Straightjacket Fits and Dimmer, he also releases solo music of late.

 The Aurora center is a great venue at Burnside High School with a capacity of about 700 punters, the place was almost 3/4 full and surprisingly we were feeling reasonably young, looking at all the gray hairs milling about in the foyer before the gig.

 The lads hit the stage about 8pm, just the two of them and went straight into the first song, with Don on amplified acoustic guitar and Shayne on electric guitar. I think, from memory the first track was a McGlashen song and as Don explained they would alternately be playing Don's songs and Shayne's songs. He also explained later in the show that they picked the songs from each others catalogue, i.e.Don picked all the Shayne songs and Shayne picked all the Don songs. Of course I knew a fair number of Don's songs that they played even though it was far from a "greatest hits" show, where as I was not so familiar with Shayne's songs and indeed it appears Don picked several of Shayne's more experimental songs which made for some really interesting pieces. Don played drums on a couple of songs and also some sort of Trombone thing  where he played a bit and then put what he played into a repeating loop on a couple of numbers. The whole thing was very informal and laid back with plenty of banter from Shayne and some really great music, they played for a little over 2 hours and I was just so impressed, thinking what a couple of great old hands entertaining with so much fantastic music. Overall an awesome gig. If they are playing near you go and see them.

I didn't do any videos at this gig but below is one of the songs that they played recorded live in the studio for a CD they are releasing of the music they played us this night. 

  

Bill Direen & the Bilders - Darkroom - Christchurch - 8 October 2016

 Bill Direen has been around forever, it seems, an original in the Christchurch punk scene, as I have just found out, he was in an early Christchurch Punk Band called Vacuum before moving on to front The Builders among many other collaborations over the last 40 years. Bill is a bit of an underground legend in New Zealand, playing with many other semi underground figures in the local scene and some overseas artists as well, he now has a quite extensive discography, albeit, one that it is difficult to track down many of the releases.  

 I'm not familiar with all that much of Bill's output over the years but I do remember hearing some of his stuff on Student Radio back in the early 80's and I have just discovered, through checking out his discography, that I actually had a copy of The Bilders second album, "Lets Play" from 1985, which I had completely forgotten about. With my current obsession of collecting NZ music, both old and new, I had recently picked up The Builders 4th album "We Are The Coolest Cats In The World" from 1989, a fantastic record and listening to that inspired me to go see this gig when I saw it was coming up.

 I arrived at The Darkroom about 15 Minutes before the advertised start time and already there was a reasonable number of punters there and it turned out to be the biggest crowd I had seen for a gig at The Darkroom so far, not full, but close.

 I was in the toilet when someone got on the stage and started talking to the audience, and when I came out there was a lone figure on the small stage with a guitar about to start his first song. The concert was advertised as Bill Direen, Builders and Guests, I didn't know if that meant guests doing their own thing or guests playing with the band. I had never seen Bill Direen in person before so I wasn't sure who I was seeing on stage playing these short intense, very locally themed songs and I was thinking how amature this sounded as It started to dawn on me that this might actually BE Bill Direen. It took a bit of getting use to Bills singing for this portion of the show and his guitar playing was very minimal and staccato like, but he wasn't alone for long as he invited the first of his guests to join him on bass for some better sounding songs in this, what Bill called, "bracket" of the show. The gig was fairly chaotic or disorganised looking as each "bracket" started and stopped as other guests came and went for numbers throughout Bills career. The guests turned out to be various locals that Bill had played with over the last 40 years, including Steve Cogle, who played in the original Vacuum as well as other local bands like The Terminals and The Victor Dimisich Band and has a current band called Dark Matter. He also had another original acquaintance from those early punk days, the writer Grant McDonagh, who gave a reading from a manuscript he is writing, describing how he met Bill Direen back in the late 70's. His memoirs could be quite interesting for people interested in the local scene back then.

 As the evening progressed with each "bracket" I thought it got better and better until the final bracket that was the longest and included the current 3 piece line up of the Builders where they really rocked out the best, playing for me the songs i new the best including their "hit" The Alligator Song" which got a lot of air play on student radio back in the day.(see Video below)

 Bill Direen is a great song writer and social commentator, and although what I have heard of his studio recordings are far more complex than what they were able to play live in this situation, it was a great set that I enjoyed a lot.

Antipodes - Orange Studios - Christchurch - 6 October 2016

Another cool Jazz gig at the Orange Studio. Antipodes are a composite group of Australian and New Zealand Jazz Players with a couple of members being in NZ band The Jac, of whom I have on CD from Rattle Records. This Line up consisted of Bass, Guitar, Sax, Drums and Piano.
 Playing to an audience of about 30 people, the group were recording this gig for what ever reason. They played all original compositions and were a fairly young band. The first set went for about 45 minutes and although I enjoyed it I didn't think it was a good as the previous concert  we attended at Orange about a month before by Reuben Bradley trio . The second set was much better, perhaps because the material was better and also seemed more challenging to play as they lifted their game to suit. There were certainly some strong compositions being played. The Pianist was most impressive and was playing some pretty wild stuff in amongst it all but was often drowned out by the volume of the other players. The guitar suffered a similar fate when not soloing and one of his own compositions contained some most impressive ECM like playing.
 Still a most enjoyable gig and looking forward to some more jazz at Orange Studio in the future.
The video below is from a show in Auckland last year and has a slightly different lineup.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - Bold New Worlds - Christchurch 4 October 2016

Keeping things far more cultured again, we attended this, our second only classical music concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Like the previous concert, I was attracted to this particular concert by the inclusion of the piece "Three Movements" by Steve Reich. I have a soft spot for Minimalist music and have several Steve Reich CD's in my collection, including one with the above piece. Other pieces preformed this night were Mason bates "Violin Concerto" and  Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No.9 "From the New World"

  The concert was preformed at Christchurch's Horncastle Arena, and although I have been to quite a number of concerts there, this was the first of this type. Normally something like this would have been held at the Christchurch Town Hall but that venue is still closed from the 2011 earthquakes. Unfortunately, I felt the Horncastle arena isn't quite the ideal venue acoustically for this type of music, it is a sports arena and has a concrete floor and very high roof and also our seats were much further away form the orchestra than I would have liked. The ticket allocation, when I was purchasing the tickets suggested all the closer seats were sold and ye there were many empty seats below us on the night, go figure? The Charles Lumley Auditorium, where we saw the recent CSO concert was far superior to this sort of music, although may be a bit small to house the NZSO on it preforming area. I thought maybe the Aurora Center at Burnside High School might have been a better venue, but I'm not sure if their staging area is big enough.

  We took our seats about 10 minutes before the show, along with about 300 other patrons. It was more of a mix of ages this time, as the last show we were almost the youngest there, and although the very grey did predominate, many other age groups were present in numbers.

  They opened the concert with the Steve Reich piece, it's inclusion in the concert was in celebration of his 80th birthday, and in live performance I found it much more interesting and enjoyable than listening on CD. It is a great piece of music and it is gratifying to see this "Modern" music getting played here.

  After a big stage reshuffle, during witch the composer, Fawzi Haimor, gave a talk on the three pieces to be played this night, they then presented Mason Bates "Violin Concerto". Batede is a much younger composer and this piece was written specifically for Anne Akiko Meyers, whom we had the privilege to see actually preform this piece herself here in Christchurch. This modern piece is a very enjoyable composition with some great melodies and some outstanding violin from Anne Akiko Meyers. It also had some cool percussive moments and the orchestra did a great job of presenting this piece. Below is a video of the same piece played in 2013 by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

 The final piece, after intermission, was Dvorak's "From the New World" Symphony. I  had no idea what this would be like, I know Dvorak's name but couldn't tell you if I knew of his music. It turns out this Symphony is very well known and I certainly recognised the Melodies presented in both the first movement and especially the fourth movement. A great piece of music that, like the Copeland piece we heard at the earlier concert we attended by the CSO, evoked images of western movies ( the first movement) and surprisingly, the Star Wars movies. I wonder if John Williams borrowed from this music when composing the Star Wars music. The violins in the third movement reminded me strongly of the music to the fight scene with the Sith and the Jedi in the Phantom Menace. The forth movement evoked vision of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine in the very first Star Wars Movie. A robust and vigorous Symphony, full of great melodies and preformed with much gusto by the NZSO, it turned out to be the highlight of the night. 

Connie Benson - The Darkroom - Christchurch 30 September 2016

Who the hell is Connie Benson. I had never heard of her, was in complete ignorance of her and her music. Still am to a certain extent. First she was just another unknown name playing a gig at The Darkroom in Christchurch. Lots of small time Local bands play there and I seldom know who they are. Then I saw a video of her playing outside Death Ray Records in Wellington that The Darkroom posted on their facebook page and I was so impressed that I thought I had better go and see her play.

CONNIE BENSON PLAYS OUTSIDE DEATH RAY RECORDS from D.Thomas Herkes on Vimeo.

I showed the Mrs. the above video and asked if she wanted to come along also. She was keen.

We arrived at The Darkroom just on Nine, Connie was suppose to hit the stage around ten and there was supposed to be a guest playing first I thought. There was a pair of turntables on stage when we arrived but the doors don't usually open till 8 or 8:30pm and there were bugger all people there when we arrived, so if something happened before we arrived then no one saw it.

 We grabbed some drinks and found the most comfortable seating and chatted while waiting for the lass to come onstage.

 This girl is very young, she looks barely 20 or even younger, although playing in a licensed venue, she was probably over 18. She plays a great style of Rockabilly, and is a very very cool guitarist. I just loved her sound and playing. With just drums and guitar, the sound was pretty clear and so was easy to hear the great stuff she was playing. I am not all that familiar with this archaic style of music so I have no idea if any of the songs she played were originals, although I did recognise one song she covered but couldn't tell you the name. I thought, from the videos I watched before the gig, that it would be all instrumental songs but the lass does sing, although I wasn't all that taken with her style or her voice. I don't know if she was trying to sing in a weird American country accent of if that was just how her young voice really sounds. The vocals weren't mixed very well so got a bit overpowered buy her guitar playing.

They only played for just a tad over 40 minutes which I thought was a bit short seeing as they were the only band on for the night and the punters were keen hear more but maybe they didn't have any more songs to play. Don't know! They were quick to start dismantling their gear so we headed home. Definitely worth going to see, she plays so well, really gets into it. Great gig.