Who's ready to Shake Rattle and Roll?!

You'd have had to be living in a cave, or possibly overseas, not to know about Christchurch's 7.1 magnitude earthquake. It was a big'un and we're still feeling the aftershocks today, and from what I hear we'll be feeling them for weeks to come.

This will be one of those events that will be indelibly etched into our minds for the rest of our lives - one of those "where were you when..." conversation pieces.

I thought it might be of interest to find out how Christchurch venues had feared after the big shake. Here's what I know so far...

El Santo - Remarkably has only one broken bottle. Business as usual at this great wee bar.

Wunderbar - Hard to get exact details but there is certainly some damage at this iconic bar. Word is the back bar will need to be rebuilt and this will take anywhere from 1 to 3 months. There is a Hold Fast Harbour fundraiser with The Eastern and friends being held at Loons to support the local rebuilding effort.

The Harbourlight - I haven't heard anything about this venue yet, but from the state of a couple of photos I've seen it doesn't look too good. 

POPLAR LANE: (all info here taken from GBMs website)
Goodbye Blue Monday - Thankfully GBM had earthquake strengthening put in when it was converted to a bar so despite all the brickwork it's got off relatively lightly. Lots of broken bottles but otherwise ok. Their FB page stating "All of our whiskey survived but I'm sorry to say the kahlua didn't make it". GBM is will hopefully open up next week - no business this weekend :o(. 

Vespa Room looks ok, hope to open on Friday.

The Twisted Hop looks ok

Mac’s and Mitchellis will survive

Bismark - the building can’t be inhabited at the moment


Dux de Lux - All ok, business as usual.  

Al's Bar - All ok, business as usual.

Cartel - Open for business as usual.

The Bedford - has postponed a gig so I'm assuming this is because of quake damage.  

Repertory Theatre - looks like good news for this lovely building. It seems the damage is not as bad as it looks and it will be restored. Yay! Check the details here.

The Empire (Lyttelton) - Not looking good for this lovely old building. Appears to be major cracks on photos I've seen. 

Liquidity, Le Plonk, and Mex Cafe - all either taken a hit or in the cordon so out of commission for the meantime.



OTHER PLACES OF INTEREST:


Galaxy Records - is ok but has limited access and cannot open. 

Real Groovy - closed until further notice  

CJ's Musicworks  - This store is still in one piece with minimal damage to stock. Due to hazardous neighboring buildings and constant road closures it will be closed until Saturday at this stage. 

The Sitting Room Recording Studios - this building has just been condemned and they are moving out today. Word is they'll be back with new premises soon as they can.



I'll post more info as it comes to light.

Keep safe rockers!

Tasty Thursday Morsels

Check out this awesome video from Cairo Knife Fight. This band is HOT HOT HOT right now. They are winding up their EP Release Tour at the Kings Arms in Auckland on Thursday the 2nd September. If you're in Auckland then get down there, do not miss them!

I asked Nick when they might be back in Christchurch

"Not for awhile now. Just done our EP release show the other day. Possibly in November. We're off to the USA in October and are looking to get out there into NZ again upon our return..."

Sounds good to me.

Well known music blogger Simon Sweetman had this to say about the famed duo in an article appropriated titled "The best band in New Zealand":

"I really do think that Cairo Knife Fight is a world-class act. And one of the most innovative duos working in music - and I say that not only because the band works with a singing drummer, who also provides samples, loops and bass lines while playing drums and singing, but because the dynamic between guitarist/vocalist Aaron Tokona and drummer/singer/everything-elser Nick Gaffaney is perfect."

Enough said really. 

ANOTHER GREAT FREEBIE
I absolutely love that bands are so generous with their music these days. Yep, I'm love love loving it.

"Sparticus R have almost finished recording their 2nd album and to celebrate they are touring the country and giving away this 4 tracker. Its got something old, something new, something borrowed and something purple! 1 track of the new album, 1 rare recording from the Spartacus R in Octophonic show from 2007 and 2 new remix's of songs from When The Fever Takes Hold."
Taken from Spartacus Bandcamp's blurb.


WHAT ON TONIGHT?

Palmy Band The Nerines play the Dux tonight with support from Christchurch's Sleepy Age. Should be a good'un.

Barnard's Star Nostalgia

After a few comments on yesterday's blog I turned into the crazy fossicking squirrel and managed to dig out a couple more pieces from my Barnard's Star archive. In the interest of having a complete set online I've posted these remaining bits and bobs for your viewing pleasure.

The His Lordships gig that never happened for bstar. There was a double-booking so
Blister and the other headlining act struck a compromise and both support acts lost out..

Flyers for the first EP release at Venus Cafe.

RDU Party at Mount Hutt 1998

This set of pictures was taken at the RDU work 'do' up at Mount Hutt I can't remember exactly when it was but certainly 1998. Actually, it may have been a Christmas party...

Darius - the roaring gladwrapped man.

It's such a long time ago now, but I remember this being a pretty wild affair. The bands had a captive audience up in the mountains for the night and that atmosphere created some pretty feral performances from one group in particular. I can't remember the bands' name but lead singer Darius(?) wrapped himself in gladwrap, tinfoil and gaffer tape and proceed to scream relentlessly for about 30 minutes. There was not enough beer in the world to make that sound any good. Sorry Darius that's a trifle harsh, perhaps I just didn't have the artistic nouse to 'get it'. In fact this performance is the indelible memory I have of this party - a roaring gladwrapped man.


As far as I was concerned Barnard's Star could do no wrong and the memories I have of this set are that it was a typical one from the band. Understated, polished and sonic. Here's a few pics:

Marcus tuning up - I think the Holden was a recent purchase around this time.

Barnard's Star: Nick, Helen, Tyrone, Sound guy name?, Marcus.

Tyrone and Nick with Mike? from Beat Atlas Records.

Party Party Party

Barnard's Star playing in a garage somewhere in Ilam

Another party - this one was somewhere in Ilam - possibly at Mike's place (gosh was that his name???). The thing I most remember about this party was that we had finally stuck all the second 7" EP covers together and put the albums in them so we took them along to give to various people including the photographer whose wonderful rose photos feature on this album. Well, horror of horrors, I'd spelled her name wrong in the credits. In my defence I'd copied it from info I was given - just happened that the info was wrong. Du-oh! Poor Pip she was so cross. So for the record folks it was Pip Spice NOT Pip Spence.

AND in relation to yesterday's post about photoshop filters the cover for the second 7" EP was all Pip's work not mine. The 'radial spin' you see was from Pip spinning her camera. Now that's old school!









FREEBIE OF THE WEEK

Pikachunes have finished their new EP and you can download it free here. Thanks Pikachunes, that's sorted out my morning listening just nicely.

Back when Photoshop was a baby

The studio - what a mess!

Back in the 1990's I was working as a graphic designer in what was, at the time, the ground breaking field of digital design. The studio I worked for was one of the first to adopt the new Power Mac 7100s - the best computers available for graphic design in 1994. From memory they had a speed of 88mHz, 8MB RAM and a staggering 250MB hard drive.

The awesome Power Mac 7100 - Feel the power!

We created large magazines and had to continue to use old technology along with the new to do our job simply because what we were doing was so cutting edge. This was true of all agencies around this time. Every design team was retraining. Digital cameras were still in their infancy. I remember trialling one that took about a minute to 'scan' the object and several more minutes to put the image onscreen. It's cost a mere $12,000! Needless to say all agencies stuck with film for many more years. Photoshop was an integral part of the new design process and it didn't take much to impress people. A simple 'extrude' filter was enough to blow the mind of most folk.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking 'Hang on, I thought this was a blog about music' - well it is - in a round-about way. During this time I had friends who were in Christchurch's much loved band Barnard's Star so I became the obvious and CHEAP choice for band posters, album covers etc. Digital print was also new at this time so being able to produce short runs of full colour posters and covers was pretty fancy too.

Here's an archive of the Barnard's Star album covers and posters created when Photoshop was a baby:

A3 poster for first EP release at Venus Cafe, Lichfield Street.

The first 7" ep. Pressed in Geraldine.

About Barnard's Star

The second 7".

"A wonderful, now-defunct, 4-piece shoe-gazer band out of the garden city that put out 2 singles, along with a few college radio songs and a stunning 5-track EP that turned out to be their parting recording some 2 years later.

Comparisons could be drawn to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and "Nowhere" era Ride but Barnard's Star took a decidedly more etheral approach - distilling the shoe-gazer sound to a fine pulsing tone, which was quite a spectacle live.

Playing coffee houses and small gigs in sporadic fashion, they became quite the cult act - especially due to their apparent lack of recorded material. So when they broke up in 2002 their recordings became as scarce as the musicians themselves.

Guitarist Marcus has gone on to form The Undercurrents, whilst bass player Helen and guitarist Nick went on to perform material with a synth-drone focus under various names . Finally their drum programmer Tyrone (who replaced original drummer Frazer) moved to Sydney, forming electro outfit Swingingtastybag. He now resides in London. "

From an article by Chris Andrews http://www.thebigcity.co.nz 

The 5 song EP released 1999

A2 poster

 

The Barnard's Star EP is available at http://www.smokecds.com
 
Read more:  Barnard's Star

Hear that? ... It's band comp season

Oh I do love a good band competition and Christchurch seems to be veritably swimming in them at the moment. It can only mean that one; there’s enough bands working out there to warrant all the effort and two; that there’s a big enough market to support all the new sounds being produced. In fact there’s over 500 local bands currently listed on CHART the Christchurch Music Industry Trust site. How fantastic is that? Well pretty blimmin' fantastic actually - what a great environment for young bands to enter into.

It seems to me that the amount of venues with regular slots for original music has been off tha hook this year - it’s just so great to see after years of dreary covers bands being the only live music you could find most nights. Not that I have anything against covers bands but it’s great to see original local music pulling good crowds and riding high for a change.

Spring will see band competitions kicking off this month at Zebedees with Rapid Storm for bands under 20yrs and then Roundup at the Dux de Lux next month. The only problem I foresee is that the grand final of both these competitions are on the same night. But if you look on the bright side the good news is that there’s gonna be two great gigs on Saturday Oct 2nd at Zebedees and the Dux for your viewing and aural pleasure. You just need to plan carefully if you want to see both.

I’ll be heading to the Dux because, as I may have mentioned, I LOVE a good band comp and I can’t wait to see who will be in the Roundup final this year. Previous winners include Sleepy Age, Von Klap, The Tiger Tones, Bang! Bang! Eche!, Slipstream, The Undercurrents, Shapeshifter, The O'Lovelys, The Deceivers, The Insurgents, Heavy Jones Trio and P Bass Expressway - who will be next?

I should also mention that UCSA had their band comp recently which it was taken out by Von Voin Strum. Well done guys!

And this news just in - Chartfest Band Search winners Custard Bear have made the Smokefreerockquest Final. Whoop! They'll compete with 7 other bands in Hamilton on September 11.

Watch my blog and I'll keep you posted on who's entering Roundup this year, how the heats at Zebedees are going, and how Custard Bear get on at Smokefreerockquest.

Can Out - best damn party ever!

The poster

I recently organised an event called 'Can Out' to support the Christchurch City Mission Foodbank over the winter months. The idea was simple - organise a fantastic gig with great local bands and entry would be a can of food - all cans would then be donated to the Foodbank.

Here's what I posted on Myspace the day after the event

Can Out was a roaring success on Saturday night. Al's Bars was packed to the rafters. Everyone was in a very generous and jovial mood making for an absolutely brilliant night.
The bands were all top-knotch. Loafer opened and were followed by the wonderful Tim Moore. The Eastern brought the house down with an unbelievable set - praise be and thank the powers above for the Eastern family. Wow! Love love love The Eastern. And if that wasn't enough to get everyone hopping along came The Unfaithful Ways. These boys just kept the good vibe pumpin' with beaut songs, gorgeous harmonies all round fab musicianship. Love love love The Unfaithful Ways.

Loafer opens at Can Out

The Eastern get all the bands up for a rousing version of the
Carter family classic "Will the circle be unbroken"

We collected 4 trolleys of cans for the City Mission - I should've counted them but I was a bit under the weather when we picked them up on Sunday and the last thing I felt like was counting hundreds of cans. I spoke to Eli and Gareth who looked after the door all night and they said that there were only about 4 people who didn't bring a can - amazing.

Thanks soooo much to everyone involved and to all of you who came along and jammed out to support the city mission. On ya!

Can Out crew Eli and Gareth.

More pics on the Can Out facebook page.

If you'd like to read more about how Can Out was created check it out on my old Myspace blog: 

Welcome to my new blog

Kia ora and welcome to my new blog.

I've been blogging away on Myspace for a while now about the Christchurch music scene and it recently occurred to me that although people were happily reading my posts it didn't make a whole lot of sense for them to be tied up in amongst our band blog.

So in the interest of good housekeeping (something I'm sure to discuss in detail at some point) Loafer's blog will remain just that, and all other comments and thoughts I have on the local music scene will now be here.  Plus the Myspace blog space is quite limited in regards to content management and template styles so HELLO blogspot!