LAST CALL FOR PANTHER dub versions in stereo 1984-2008
1. Burn (Hello)
2. Cold Beer
Same credits as original recording session: HERE to get to PANTHER OF THE SUBURBS.
Dubbydubs by axemen King Dub Come
BONUS TRACK!
The Panther Of The Suburbs — live at the Star & Garter, late 1984 or maybe even 1985—anyway, that gig with Children’s Hour, anyone remember that one ?
LIVE AT CITY MALL Volumes 1 & 2
AXEMEN
Stu K-drums/Steve M & Bob B-gtrs/Al Rite-sax/Gary Scott-clarinet/Pete Hall Jones-trumpet
The Message (E. Fletcher-M. Glover-S. Robinson-C. Chase)
The CONNOISSEURS
Rent Hamilton-gtr, vocals/Shorty Hamilton-bass, vcls/Doug Hamilton-snare, vcls
with Al/Gary/Pete as The Horned Hornet Horns
Divorce Me COD/Just Because (Carl Smith/Bob Shelton-Joe Shelton-Sid Robin)
Setting The Woods On Fire (Hank Williams)
Long Tall Texan/When The Saints (Henry Strzelecki/Trad. arr. Connoisseurs)
Your Cheatin’ Heart (Hank Williams)
<*>
AXEMEN/The CONNOISSEURS/The Horned Hornet Horns
recorded the same night as Vol.1, same people ALL play
There You Go (Johnny Cash)
Turn Around (Carl Perkins)
Roadhouse Blues (Morrison-Krieger-Manzarek-Densmore)
The Untouchables, Fred & Barney
Bonnie Parker Clyde Barrow monsters on the loose, Axemen heroes
LIVE AT CITY MALL notes
These songs were definitely recorded on a Friday night, the 19th, before the Saturday of the Band Rotunda Free Festival, whenever that was (May? June? July?), at City Mall in Cashel St, Christchurch, 1984 (that information unavailable at the times of THIS & that previous post). On Volume 1, the first four songs are the Axemen busking at one end of the Mall. Note that the version of “The Message” included here is about 6 minutes longer than that one posted previously, and “Untitled By Unknown” is a new mix. Notice Gary Scott noticing cops at the end of “Axemen, Dogs, Cops.” I noticed that – nice of you to notice – steve Hear Stu Kawowski briefly note the date & introduce The Connoisseurs (having discovered them after marching up the other end of the Mall) who play the next four songs accompanied by the Al Right-Gary Scott-Pete Hall Jones Horned Hornet Horns horn section. By the time the songs on Volume 2 were recorded, literally moments after those on Volume 1, the non-horn-toting members of the Axemen had “changed” their “minds” about rumbling with the country and western Connoisseurs for poaching their blowers, and instead passed around the coffee wine & joined in for 8 more fine examples of City Mall-style busking magic. ALL SONGS IN STEREO. The cover photo, almost certainly by Stu, shows Doug & Rent Hamilton playing pentatonic scales in a brave attempt to shield their sensitive nether regions from McCabe’s out-thrust disaster-finger.
PANTHER OF THE SUBURBS
1. BURN
2. COLD BEER
6. HOLES IN MY CURTAIN (They Don’t Even Let In The Sun)
RECORDED 12-6-1984 AT 212 PETERBOROUGH ST, CHRISTCROTCH
by AXEMEN bob brannigan DAMON CROWE stu kawowski Steve McCabe AL RIGHT
& special guest star NEW GRAPHIC EQUALIZER aka the punk panther
dub versions available HEAR NOW!
Arthur Sheep/Axemen ETHER BREATHER HABITAT Lost SpacePunkJazz Gem
fellow travellers in spirit realms
ARTHUR SHEEP saxophone
M. S. AGRO bass
BOB BRANNIGAN, STEVE McCABE guitars
STU KOWALSKI drums, percussion
recorded 10-12-83 at Steve’s, Christchurch (EARTHside)
& FutureHabitatNOW, Antichristchurch (alterEarth side)
cover design by Ron Nabbibang (Etherdom Free Skypilot)
EARTHside
the untouchables fred & barney
nice place (skin might peel, toes might curl)
alterEarth side
DIRT GAME MIX
aka Return to the Planet of “A Scar Is Born”
Map 2a: Axemen in Christchurch, Jan-Aug 1984
By January 1984, McCabe and Brannigan share a house in Peterborough St, inner-city Christchurch, with Steve’s then-girlfriend Virg, her sister Bernie, and Lisa Preston. Notice how said house is positioned: almost on a straight line almost equidistant from two pubs, the Gladstone and the Star & Garter, where the Axemen will play repeatedly over the next 6 months (with or without instruments).
Celia Pavlova Mancini scores some flagons one Sunday out the back door of the Gladstone c.1988 (NB. it was against the law to sell alcohol on Sundays in those days).
1980 pic of Kawowski & first kit at his Mollet St screen-print studio (pre-Axemen).
Stu & the lovely Maryrose rooftop at their Colombo St pad late '82
Kowalski lives downtown in an upstairs pad (no lily-pad, but surprisingly sanitary) on Colombo St, next door to a brothel; he also keeps a workshop, by day an anonymous triangular lockup on the 13th floor of an unassuming tower block on High St, by night the location for hours of screenprinting (posters, stickers, t-shirts, album covers), tape-testing (after recording sessions at members’ homes and live performances), breezeshooting, pisstaking and all-round byyourwitsliving. It is INK INC HQ. Central Christchurch is soon plastered with Axemen posters, stickers, etc., as well as attention-grabbing graffiti, large & small, stencilled & freehand.
AXEMEN sticker 4-colour screenprint from graffiti sketch 1985 by Stu
Stu's plumbing tag in 1984
Stu trident graff ChCh 1984
Stu's 1984 San Pedro graff lasted nearly 10 years in Mollet St, ChCh
Free Festival Poster A2 by Stu Kawowski printed at INK INC.
That summer the band plays at a festival in Hagley Park, the infamous Big M gig which leads to the recording of their protest album BIG CHEAP MOTEL. (That story will be milked in the future. It’s one any protest album fan would do well to get abreast of.)
AXEMEN Big Cheap Motel cassette sleeve: screenprinted label on bubble bag 1984 by Steve'n'Stu
Bob's sketch for the Big Cheap Motel protest set at Christchurch's Summer Festival in Hagley Park 1984
The next couple months are devoted to gigging around Chch, adding members here and there, making forays into the Carlisle St-England St ‘Hall Circuit’ popular with punks (see Map 2b),
Newspaper advt by Stu for England St Hall gig
going to Wellington to play anarchic Rewa House gig (popular with anarchopunks), defining & refining the Axemen sound, and building up an arsenal of tracks to be issued on the next album, the scary 2-hour long A SCAR IS BORN.
Map 2b: Location of Carlyle St Hall & England St Hall
Today’s post features tracks recorded at the same time as the Scar sessions, around Feb-March-April 84, assigned to a cassette called DIRT GAME MIX but never issued until now.
the game of love (clint ballard jr.)
neverending circus (lisa preston-axemen)
–features Lisa P. on vocals. She also sang the first track on side 1 of A SCAR IS BORN (“Untitled”) and co-wrote with Steve & Bob the instrumental “Paté-On-Raisin Bar-Mitzvah” later on the same side. And lived at 212 Peterborough St. Axemen salute her!
because (lennon-mccartney)
untitled #3 (lisa preston-axemen)
–Lisa on vocals again. In the mid-80s she started the band Nux Vomica with Lawrence Lens. (Do drop the cyberAxemen a line sometime, L.P.)
big four-eyed dave
–this might actually be called something else, but it does sound like that’s what Steve’s saying.
when the saints go marching in
casio clay (enter the casio dragon)
i remember nothing (ian curtis)
<:>
<:> an axemen anno xxv rediscovery series production <:>
<:>
AK87 – The S–T POP BOYZ (Sleek Bott, 1987)
original Bott 15 cassette cover, 1987
CD reissue, mid-90s
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