Reid & Ruins - The Piano - Christchurch - 26 November 2020

 

Nadia Reid must be getting pretty popular after needing to put on a second show with Tiny Ruins after the Friday night show sold out rather quickly. This was good for me as I dithered around for ages deciding whether I was going to go or not, especially after already seeing Nadia down in Oamaru earlier in the year. It actually turned out that we got the invite to my wholesalers end of year bash for early on the same evening as the gig and there were still tickets for the Thursday night and my wife indicated she would like to go also, so it all fell into place. 

After scoffing ourselves full to bursting at the work do, we headed off the to The Piano, and duly found some good seats once the doors opened. Nadia and Tiny Ruins (Holly Fullbrook) duly take the stage with just acoustic guitars and with out any introduction, go straight into their first number. After that they then explained the format of the show, and after doing "rock, paper., scissors" Nadia played her solo set first. 

She was a bit slower getting into the groove this show, although the first couple of songs she played were unfamiliar to me even though they maybe on one of her  three records I have, but then she started playing stuff I did know and I thought her performance lifted and my wife though the same. She swapped around between electric and acoustic guitar and again showed just hoe good a songwriter and singer she is. Although not as powerful a set as she did down on Oamaru earlier, it was satill a most enjoyable set.

Tiny Ruins has also been round the tracks for a while now and has a few albums under her belt. I saw her play live with a band about three years previously and wasn't all that impressed on that night with what I heard, so I had not bought any of her music until her last album "Olympic Girls" which had impressed me a lot.  Tiny played a bunch of her songs, some I didn't know but a couple from the aforementioned album I did and they were great. She did a lot of talking between songs but what really impressed was her guitar playing. She is technically, well ahead of Nadia in this department  and really impressed with her skills on her acoustic. The first song had all sorts of cord and tempo changes and almost felt like it could have sat well on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album with its jazzy feel.  Her singing is almost as good as Nadia but she is not as strong a songwriter. She also played a great set.

The last part of the show was them both preforming together. They are old friends and also flatted together several years ago, so they know each other well and sing together wonderfully. They have a similar singing style and their voices complemented each other well on the several songs they did, including a Dylan cover and a Don McGlashan song. The ending to a very good show.

Mt O'Malley - 22 November 2020

 Uncle Roddus Tramping Dairy: Tramp No. 182

Mt O'Malley - 22 November 2020

Short Report as I have done this trip before back in 2015 and there is another post covering that. A club trip with 12 participants on a not too hot partly sunny day. Typical Arthurs Pass very steep slog up the first 500m of climbing through the bush to our first scrog stop then onto point 1844. Some scrambling along the tops and some sideling round the difficult bits. Myself and one other decided to drop down to the tarn instead of summiting O'Malley, where we relaxed in the sun until the others joined us. Then the downward slog back to the cars. About 7 hours and a bit.

 

Ben Lomond - Queenstown - 13th November 2020

 Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No 181

Ben Lomond 13th November 2020

A long weekend and a trip to Cromwell for the Mother In Laws 90th Birthday. While my Wife spent the day with her mum, I took the opportunity to stretch my legs after the layoff while recovering from my fall on the last trip out. Ben Lomond towers above Queenstown and offers fantastic views of the lake and surrounding mountains. This was my second trip up this hill, the last time being at the start  of 2013.

 The trip is a straight forward 1400 M slog up a very well used track from the waterfront through the pine forest and mountain bike tracks. Rested and ate soon after reaching the bushline and had another rest on the saddle before the more rugged slog up the last 300m to the peak. It was very hot. I was a lot slower on this trip than the last time I did it. took me about 7 hours this time.

The Dead C - Lyttelton Coffee Company - 7 November 2020

 

The Dead C, New Zealand's most famous noise outfit, been together over 30 years, terrorizing receptive audiences the world over with their improvised rock noise. I have been vaguely aware of them over the years and may have even seen them play in 93' when they supported Sonic Youth in Christchurch, although I have no memory of the support band so I may have been late or distracted. 

Since my re immersion into New Zealand music in the last 5 or 6 years, much more of the Dead C has become known to me and I have several of their vinyl releases now in my collection and so it has been about 5 years of wanting to see them live on top of their recording output. Live Dead C appearances are rare, even in New Zealand. There was a gig in Lyttelton(where Bruce Russell lives) in 2014 which just precedes my renewed interest and they played down in Dunedin several months ago, but that is all I am aware of recently. Both of the last two lines of flight festivals in Dunedin I went to, all three members of the band were there and played, just not together. So it was with great excitement that I saw a poster come up on the Dead C Facebook group announcing this gig.

I arrived rather early as I had about an hours drive to get to Lyttelton and I wanted to get there as doors open just in case it filled up too quick, it wasn't likely but it is a small venue and it was door sales only. Alistair Galbraith was doing his sound check when I arrived so I got a drink and sat at the front table and watched him setting up and playing some stuff, he had another guitarist with him and after they stopped they were joined by a drummer wherein they proceeded to rock out incredibly to a couple of songs from Alistair's vast repertoire, one of which I recognized. Alistair was shredding his guitar, it was almost the highlight of the night, and it was just the soundcheck.

Friend Craig arrived soon after and joined me at the table as we talked and watched all the local underground and some not so underground Christchurch Musos arrive, including Hamish Kilgour, of The Clean, Stephen Cogle of The Terminals and Chris Heazlewood of King Loser fame. Alistair started his set alone using quirky pre recorded samples to back up his mostly short but very quirky and unique songs. After several of these the second guitarist joined him as he picked up his guitar and showed us just how good a guitarist he is on several more songs, again many are very short and finish suddenly. The Drummer, Matt Middelton, joined them for the last couple of raucous songs that really impressed , like the sound check.

The Dead C then set up and rather informally kinda just started in playing as they each got their gear plugged in and adjusted and set upon the first piece of industrial improvised noise. The lights were mostly off, so it was to dark to see much of what the lads were doing but as you would expect it was a pretty unholy wall of noise and feedback and manipulations with Robbie bashing away in the back.

Robbie sort of brought the first piece to a close by leaving his drum kit and coming round to Bruce and got the crowd to sing  Happy Birthday to Bruce who had just turned 60 I believe. They then set into the next piece which to be honest didn't sound a lot different from the first piece but it was just as good, and towards the end of the piece Hamish Kilgour snuck in with Robbie and started in on his drums adding to the chaos. and as the piece ended that was it, they took off their guitars and stopped. Two pieces in probably less then half an hour, which was a little disappointing, I could have handled a lot more.