[Mysterex] Smelly Feet – live and on record – 1981 – 1982
Reprinted with kind permission of Andrew Schmidt, http://mysterex.blogspot.com/
Originally posted on Mysterex Friday, 25 January 2008
Original Article: http://mysterex.blogspot.com/2008/09/song-for-world.html
Smelly Feet – A Song For The World – Real Records 7” EP – September 1981.Smelly Feet – Masterpieces/ You’re A Person – Real Records 7” – February 1982.
When Shoes This High’s Jessica and Kevin were away – which was frequently – singer Brent Hayward passed the time learning to play guitar and writing the songs he’d perform as Smelly Feet when STH split. As he travelled the country he’d sell the newly recorded songs by turning up at shows and asking to play between sets, relying on contacts such as The Chills’ Martyn Bull, who was a childhood friend from Masterton. Nine out of ten said yes. Smelly Feet played on The Fall’s last night in Auckland in August 1982. The 3Ds had the sense (and obscure taste) to cover Smelly Feet’s learn-and-record-as-you-go solo folk classic, A Song For The World, while follow-up Masterpieces shows just how fast Hayward was developing as a songwriter and recording artist.
Dates (Smelly Feet plays all shows): June ’81 – The Clean. Reverb Room. 18. 19. 20. September ’81 – Naked Spots Dance. Second Nose. Knives of West Eleven. Beware House. The Clean. Alms For Children. Rumba Bar. 18. 19. Alms For Children. A Second Nose. Auckland University Cafe. 25. October ’81 – Gladstone. 29. 30. 31. November ’81 – Second Nose. Station. December ’81 – Rumba Bar. 4. 5. January ’82 – Old Synagogue. March ’82 – Zombies of the Stratosphere. Rumba Bar. 24. 25. April ’82 – Youth Resource Centre. 20. June ’82 – Star and Garter. 23. 24. Empire. 25. 26. August ’82 – Real Theatre. Globe 31.
[Mysterex] – Shoes This High
Reprinted with kind permission of Andrew Schmidt, http://mysterex.blogspot.com/
Originally posted on Mysterex Friday, 25 January 2008
Original Article: http://mysterex.blogspot.com/2008/01/shoes-this-high.html
The need to unsettle rock’s steady, but predicable beats, and the DIY independence of Ralph and Recommended Records, and small indies like Pere Ubu’s Hearthan Records were 
pre-punk lessons that flowed freely into the space punk created. The Wellington post-punk scene of 1979, 1980, and 1981 was New Zealand’s most concentrated outbreak of this art-punk coupling. Pioneering quartet Shoes This High were one of the finest acts to emerge from that scene. Brent Hayward, one of the most distinctive voices in New Zealand music was the frontman. He talks. Andrew Schmidt listens.
“52 were quirky dudes. I met all of them, and later lived with a couple. Malcolm Wardlaw – he was the keyboardist for 52 – was almost like my father figure. He was older than me and Kevin Hawkins. He was from the same town as us – Masterton – a real sicko town.
“He used to come up on weekends and stay with Kevin. Kevin had a massive collection of records and books. He was my favourite candy store. Malcolm used to come up, and be with us, and hallucinate. He was a crazy dude. He had a big square head. He played the keyboards with his head; with any part of his body. He got right into it. He was really accomplished as a musician. He was really bright, and I thought here’s a guy who is interesting.
“52 were my mates. No one really remembers them as far as New Zealand music goes. It was more about a local thing, and being into the experimental English rock like Robert Wyatt, Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Eno, Roxy, the drug way, not the Brian Ferry way, the Eno/ Manzanera – that kind of experimental rock, quirky rhythms. “There was an Italian guy Dino (Houtos) on guitar. Andy Drey on bass (later Steroids / Body Electric).
ziggy’s
“Ziggy’s was a Wellington rock club/ cabaret which was firebombed in its original spot on Jervois Quay in 1976, and moved to Vivian Street, where it eventually became Rock Theatre then Billy ‘d Club. It was out there, and interesting/ burlesque. It was transient people. It was a big deal for the kids in the city. They dug it. 52 were resident band in September 1978.
shoes this high
“Jessica (Walker – bassist) heard some trans-sexual people getting on a big red bus and they were gossiping. “And how high did you say her shoes were?” “Those shoes were this high.” The name. Jessica and Kevin went out together, and I don’t think there’s ever been a relationship that’s as intricately woven. Even though he’s bi. He really loves her, and she really loves him, and they’re crazy fucks these two cats, crazy as, and they were like cats, real lovable.
“I wasn’t in the band at the start. There was another guy from Dunedin (Andrew Strang) in it for a short time. He was a mate of Terry Moore (The Chills) who used to stay with us in Wellington.
“I hadn’t done any music with Kevin since The Amps. I was living out in Wellington’s suburbs. I was psycho. I was going off my tree. I just had the most violent thoughts about stuff. You’ve got no idea. Real homicidal stuff. “Kevin says; “Come and play with us.” The drummer then was a gardener at the Botanic Gardens in Wellington. (He was replaced by Chris Plummer). We played in his house. I just unleashed all this blood and guts. I thought this is cool.”
toy love – the last resort – 27th to 30th of September 1979
“When Toy Love came they played at The Last Resort on a Thursday night. I thought what’s this about, and Bob Sutton (local character) said; “These guys used to The Enemy. You should check them out tonight. Toy Love sounded a bit kinky, so I thought, ah yeah. They played there for four nights. They brought them out. All a certain audience.
“Jane, Toy Love keyboard player, and Jessica were sisters. Jane and Paul (Kean – Toy Love bass player) used to crash at our place.
“Toy Love had their own PA, and when passing through they’d always want to play on Sunday in Cuba Mall. Someone had figured out how to rig up the power free.”
opening billy ‘d club with the newz on 1 may 1980
“We were trying to make money to buy musical equipment; amps, speakers. The big news was that we blew the PA up, and they were pissed off. We had a soundcheck and the soundcheck sounded great. We played exceptionally loud at the soundcheck like everyone liked to. We were just gonna blow whoever The Newz were off the stage.
“Our sound guy who was right into Robert Fripp was quite a strange guy, Richard Sedger. He’s a Victoria University professor now. George Henderson was his best mate. George and Lyndsey Maitland. Those guys were interesting. They had The Spies, and Chris Plummer was the drummer. They played some good gigs in the Speakeasy (Willy’s Wine Bar). I used to go down there for drugs in 1973 and 1974.
“Richard was in a Kevin Ayres frame of mind that night. He took too much of something, and he couldn’t get the sound loud enough, (that was fine by us), and blew up the PA.
“It was big shindig, lots of hairdressers there, lots of new wavers, bullshit artists. They wanted to confiscate the gear, and there was a big argument.
“No one would give us a gig after that. They didn’t want to lend us amps. We’d have to get Jenny Lealand and little Billy Labortski to get PAs. So we eventully moved up to Auckland to get away from that sort of bullshit. No, that’s not true. Billy the Club let us use their PA.”
toy love – the last resort – may 1980
“When we first played we were lucky to play with Toy Love. People used to come along and they had all the gear. We really just threw ourselves into our gigs with them. We made these little dinky A4 photocopied posters that were real cool. Little cuts from other magazines. The idea was anything and everything was up for grabs.”
rockfest – billy d’club – queen’s birthday weekend – june 1980
“We played the Rockfest in Billy D’ Club. Kevin had a good sound live. He could make his guitar sound chook. An electronic chook. Schreaking. In Wellington a lot of the stuff was public stuff. There were no rehearsals.”We had a real healthy music scene in Wellington. It made things interesting, and there were quite a few women/girls that were into it, and wanted to play music. They had a real energy for it. It’s not that feminist shit, this was interesting real creative rhythms, and patterns with melody, particularly Naked Spots Dance that Jenny was in.
“The bassist (Kate Walker) she was interesting, and she wrote a lot of their stuff. I was really proud coz when bands were passing through they got to see what a great music scene was going on in Wellington. “We had a lot of bands, and lots of those bands were related with other bands. A real community of people and of bands. And everyone who came was into the music, and they had their personalities, their fixes, and their vices.”
punk
“I’ll give you an idea about the antagonism we had towards music and bands. I was a smart little cunt, cheeky as, probably the cheekiest person on stage. I didn’t have respect for too many people, and I just thought our band was the best, and if any band was going to get in the way, well, I’ve got mates over the hill. We’ll sort them out.
“I learnt a lot about scenes in Wellington; how they ostracize people. Rhys Bassett was the first one because he burnt the sheep. Everyone said he was a prick. I liked him. He was a good dude. I liked those kids. Sure they imported a bit of the English argy bargyiness, but…”
leaving
“Shoes This High got this tag: “Something’s bad is gonna happen.” We couldn’t do anything more in Wellington, and it was getting so small. Everybody knew everybody at the parties. After a while it became a bit passe.
“Chris Orange, The Features’ bass player said; “Come up to Auckland. You guys are good. It’ll be a good injection for here. The bootboys will really like you.”
We’d made fast friends with Chris, Karl Van Bergen (Features singer), and James Pinker (Features drummer). They were nice guys, and we liked them so we came up.”
auckland debut at cafe xs on 27 july 1980
“Before we got a gig. I got to hear more and more about this bootboy thing. Bootboy. Bootboy. Bootboy. Fight. Fight. Fight. Never actually heard anybody talking about any music. Like: “See that guy over there? He’s part of the bootboys … blah blah blah.”
“Our first gig was on a Sunday night and lots of people came. Two guys turned up on the Sunday night that were looking like: “Is he gonna be on our side?” I could sense them thinking; ‘Nah I don’t think he is.’”One hundred and fifty came The Auckland Star said. They checked us out and didn’t fuckin’ like it. There was a review in the paper about it by Louise Chunn. A god awful review that was so down and depressing. She didn’t have any idea about music. All she knew was what was going on locally. But it got us some interest.”
anti-violence dance with the features – cafe xs – 31st july 1980 to 3rd august 1980
I rang up the Auckland Star and said; “Can I come to your photographic library?” I asked to see all the photos of violence. When they turned their back I nicked a photo of this black punching another black by a telegraph pole to use for a poster.
“The next gig we got I decided to call it the Anti-Violence Dance, and used the photo. I said fuck it; enough is enough with this violence number. The Features went along with it.
“The show was at Cafe XS. Thursday night this guy called Billy Bullshit comes up and sez (in dumb tones). “Who put the name on the Anti-Violence Dance. That’s not a good look fellas.”
“He said that to The Features, and it trickles back to me. I said I did. He said that’s a bad mistake, mate.
“Then on Friday night there were like bootboys and punks, and I noticed in the audience some long haired people had turned up for our show, and were beaten up. Some had bare feet, and they were beaten up for it. It seemed like the only people who weren’t beaten up were blue jean, drainpipe wearing normal boys who hadn’t experienced anything in life other than hanging out in a mob trying to act like the National Front without knowing what goes on behind that.
“These people with long hair were wearing flowers and stuff. I thought good on them for coming to see some music. We were about music, not violence. It was so different from the Wellington music scene. Even though you had that element there. There was too many interesting people, too many beautiful people for it to dominate.
“So there was more and more antagonism from moi. In fact, I was so cheeky to everyone, I was just rarcking them up.
“By Saturday night they were like: “Somebody’s gotta do something about that guy.” So this bootboy gets up, drunk as, swaying, wobbling. He takes a swing at me and misses. He doesn’t even get close. My best mate Jessica Walker, with a big Rickenbacker bass, just puts it up as a block. She was one crazy girl. She had heaps of energy. She would have ate that guy for breakfast. He wouldn’t take it any further. A bottle was thrown quite fast that just missed her. It was meant for me.
“It bought the violence to a head. Exactly what I wanted. They were dictating who played. The subtext was: “We like bootboy music. We like music that’s gonna continue playing while we beat up people that look different from us.
“I outsmarted them. Anybody did that had any sort of brain. I stood up to them, and because I did others did as well. We became very unpopular overnight. The Auckland Star wanted a photo after that. They weren’t there, but they heard something had happened.”
famous fans – barry jenkin and neil roberts
“There were people in the audience who were very into the music. Seminal characters like Neil Roberts. The serious anarchist dude who blew himself up. There’s another transformation. He came to the first Shoes This High gig on Sunday. He was kinda straight, a chef, and after he came to our gig he just changed. He came back to our place that evening. I asked him where he was from. He said Mataikona. I said that’s where we’re from, me and Kev – the Wairarapa. I said Mataikona’s a sheep station. He said yeah. Real desolate, mate.
“Doctor Rock in his leather coat. He really liked Shoes This High. He used to give us quite a lot of airplay on his show when the EP came out. But being young bucks at the time who didn’t have the respect for anything. We didn’t appreciate it.”
18 bath street, parnell
“He had about three bands living in Bath St – us, The Gordons, and Nervous Wrecks. Fifteen people in a three bedroom house. We used to do a food run with The Gordons. They used to have this van – a Commer van. We never had any money, and there was always this food delivered at the back doors of shops, so we used to go round in Brent’s van and steal it, chock up the van with food, and come back to Bath St. People used to appear out of nowhere grabbing it.”
all over town
“When we got to Auckland, we started asking Livesound for big rigs, loud as. We started playing at parties, in some ways, paying our dues. When fighting broke out again, we stopped the music.
“We played at the University a few times in the cafe and the quad. We played a lot of places with Toy Love when they came back from Australia. We played in Devonport at some big pub. We played Mainstreet. We played the Windsor Castle. We always had a support band like The Newmatics at Cafe XS.
“We’d play an hour and a half. We had long tracks. We had one called Monodrone. That was trance-like. It was hypnotic. It put people in a state so they didn’t really know how long time was. That’s a very Can/ German thing. We were into them. We used to listen to a lot of Can. A lot of Neu! and Faust. We also had some fast stuff, real fast. We had rhythm and intricate patterns.
“We used to busk as well. We did lots in Wellington as well. It was encouraged there.”
the gordons
“When The Gordons came up to live with us, we played quite a lot of gigs with them at Cafe XS. By then, bootboys were almost non-existent. They’d had a gutsful and found religion; found salesmanship in insurance. Most turned back to regular Joes, which is what they always were. More interesting people started coming. University people would come to our gigs. They’d want music and the scene started picking up again. Got a bit healthy again.
“We also played unconventional gigs with The Gordons. We used to go out to Carrington Mental Hospital. You can hear Kevin and Jessica were screaming away on The Gordons’ first EP track Future Shock.
“There was a race over who was going to get a record out first.”the nose one ep recorded – december 1980″It was recorded in Mascot Studios, which was run by Hugh Lynn in Eden Terrace. Gerard Carr recorded us. We did it in one session on a Sunday. Gerard was unhappy because I said: “Bro, we haven’t actually got the money.” He said: “Don’t you know this is Hugh Lynn’s place? He’ll wanna bust someone’s legs.”
“The last track we did was Not Weighting. Even though it was kinda rigid it had piano (with a bottle smashing after falling from piano). The songs were just the ones we chose that day, but there were other songs which really did stand out as being good compositions. They were really intricate and Beefheartish. They had a definite thing that was only really touched on as far as the recordings go. There’s a Cafe XS tape that’s really good that Chris Orange was helping us mix.
“On that walk back from Mascot, the night we recorded it, we were four happy people. We’d been into a recording studio proper, got down something that we felt was good. I said to Kevin: “I just want to do more.” We had an insight into what it could be like going into a recording studio.
“For us it wasn’t about being popular. It was about recording some interesting scenes and sounds in the studio.”drugs”I had a real hate towards anyone into drugs. I ostracized myself from Kevin because he was into drugs. I said: “Mate, you don’t fuckin’ need it,” but that was where he was getting his confidence. He had doubts about his creativity. I thought it was fucking up the music.”
wellington – december 1980
“When we went back and played, to me, it seemed like Wellington was dead. I was really angry at the band for going off. The music seemed more and more harder to make. On one hand, some interesting stuff was coming about, but we really had to make a go of it.
“We played in this place called the Red Cross Hall in Vivian Street on the Saturday night (with The Gordons.) We were going to play twice in Brooklyn Community Centre, and they did some weird thing on us, and we could only play there on Friday night. What an out of the way place it was. A strange place to play.”
the nose one EP – january 1981
“When the record came out Polygram Records had put them in this sheath saying Polygram as if it was their record. We were the wrong people to do that to. We defaced the sleeve, had all these characters saying piss off Polygram. All of a sudden another five hundred sleeves turned up. They found out we’d defaced them.
“Kevin did the face drawing for the cover. On the back, we had cut up quotes of the Louise Chunn review from the first Auckland show. We had people knocking on the door to buy it. We sold it mainly at gigs.”
the beginning of the end
“A lot of the times Kevin and Jessica, and even Chris, started fucking off. They’d just go walkabout. Chris would go up to Wonderland or Wilderness up Coromandel. Kevin and Jessica would go to her mother’s place. She was a Doctor in Lower Hutt. They weren’t around. That used to fuck me off. I was left to design the posters. Take the photo of the shoes stacked on top of each other. And go to the printers.
over
“The sign was when we practiced one time, they were just playing Gordons songs, the two of them (Jessica and Kevin). They got really infatuated with The Gordons. They didn’t really want to do it themselves, so what was I to do? I wasn’t part of that scene.
“We had a gig to play in a big marquee in Orakei Bay. This punk girl, her mother was on the committee of the Orakei Fair day. We were going to play there in the afternoon in the marquee, and it was going to be good. I was really looking forward to it. I was telling everybody. You got to turn up to this. Barry Jenkin was going to turn up.
“The night before we split. Jessica and Kevin – they had so much energy those two, but Kevin got tempted by drugs and alcohol and boys, and Jessica got tempted by Alister from The Gordons. She slept with Alister. Kevin found out. I came back to 18 Bath Street. Kevin was in a ball of tears. Jessica was in tears, and the band split.”
3 comments:
anonymous said…
Kevin Hawkins sigh. Of all the casualties along the way Kevin is one of the ones I miss the most. He was simultaneously one of the most talented and caring people and one of the most emotionally up and down.
There was a tape that circulated of Kevin Hawkins and his Walking Brothers doing his magnum opus “I’m a queer” with lyrics like “I’m a happysexual, I’m a goddamed raving queer”, an absolutely over the top version of Walk on the Wild Side and ending the tape with “Just remember not all faggots are cowboys, but ALL cowboys are faggots” – 15 years before Brokeback mountain too 
Jesse did some great stuff with Sparky’s Magic Baton and the Electrick Church – there was a tape going round with those as well.
Last I heard from Jane, Jess’s sis, Jesse and hubbie Ian are well and happy and raising a happy crop of kids.
raz
5 April 2008 21:36
anonymous said…
Cool – great blog post! Thankyou to Brent. I’d just like to make a correction and a small addition. The gardener at the botanical gardens was Don Campbell. He was Shoes This High drummer for pretty much all of STH beginning period on Wellington, during which time Chris Plummer was the Spies drummer. But when we (The Spies) moved to Christchurch, having met Bill Vosburgh, Chris decided he’d rather go to Auckland with STH. When we got to Christchurch we became The And Band (It’s been 30 years and I get the feeling I may be compressing several months into a much shorter time and thereby making a complex set of relationship changes fit a simpler story – grain of salt required).
As for me, I never got past an MA at VUW but did do some tutoring in the last couple of years I was there (early 90s). I guess this is how Brent got the idea that I was teaching at VUW.
Richard Sedger
6 April 2008 13:01
[Mysterex] – Kevin Hawkins after Shoes This High
Reprinted with kind permission of Andrew Schmidt, http://mysterex.blogspot.com/
Originally posted on Mysterex Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Original article: http://mysterex.blogspot.com/2008/08/kevin-hawkins-after-shoes-this-high.html
November ‘82Fishschool. CBC. Kiwi Animal. Green Eggs and Ham. Sick Dogs. Maori Mission Hall. Auckland. 20.
Fetus Productions. Nocturnal Projections. Fishschool. This Sporting Life. Windsor Castle. 26.
June ‘83
Flying Nun Recording Party. Children’s Hour. This Sporting Life. Phantom Forth. Exploding Budgies. Eight Living Legs. Flak. Heptocrats. Lesser Specked Gottliebs. The Gramme. Kevin Hawkins. Rumba Bar. 6.
July ‘83
Fishschool. Freedom For Sheep. Coalition BC. 134 Symonds St. 29. 30.
August ‘83
RIU interview.
Fishschool. Freedom For Sheep. Coalition BC. Wellington. 12. 13.
Fishschool. Freedom For Sheep. Ngamotu.
April ‘84
Off The Deep End improv. fest including Kevin Hawkins, Phantom Forth, and Stridulators.
December ‘85
Say Yes To Apes. Kevin Hawkins. Performance Cafe. 12. 13.
April ‘86
Kevin Hawkins records an album as Screaming Kevin Hawkins and his Walkin’ Brothers.
January ‘88
Kevin Hawkins dies in Masterton.
Discography
Fishschool – Detective Song – Ima Cassette Thing – Ima Hitt Records tape – 1983
Fishschool – Present Pastimes – Ima Hitt Records tape – 1983
Kevin Hawkins – Song With No Future – Live At The Rumba – Flying Nun Records LP – 1984
Kevin Hawkins and his Walkin’ Brothers – album – unreleased – 1986
[Mysterex] – Jon Segovia on Vacuum, The Volkswagons, Ritchie Venus and The Blue Bluebeetles, and The Axel Grinders
Reprinted with kind permission of Andrew Schmidt, http://mysterex.blogspot.com/
Originally posted on Mysterex Friday, 25 January 2008
Original Article: http://mysterex.blogspot.com/2008/01/jon-segovia-on-vacuum-volkswagons.html
John Markie is todays freshest catch
Jon Segovia, country picker, family man, Anarchist, session player for hire, onetime Axel Grinders and Shaft guitarist and Vacuum bassist talks to Andrew Schmidt.
He’s the man responsible for The Axel Grinders’ hardest moments, Don’t Hurry, Be Sappy, and, I Don’t Wanna Know, and some of the finest records of the 1990s via The Axel Grinders, Shaft, and session work for the under-rated Greg Fleming.
He’s Jon Segovia, in the beginning plain John Markie, just another teen-punk, who after playing in a Gisborne punk outfit called Leprosy lit out for Auckland before moving to Christchurch to attend art school.
There he saw a brilliant by-product of punk, the Vacuum, an eerie guitar band which spawned Bill Direen, Allen Meek, and The Terminals axis, Steven Cogle and Buck Stapleton, and seemed to plug right into that crusty southern cities mystical underbelly.
Segovia: “The songs stood out, but the thing was, they weren’t like anybody else. Most of the other bands were trying to be like an overseas bands. These guys were totally original. Their recordings don’t sound like the Velvets to me. They didn’t think – ‘how do we get a Velvets guitar sound ?’ They were definitely aware of pre-punk punk. These guys imported records themselves. Buck Stapleton did. He was a watersider. His father was one.
“I’d been in Christchurch less than a year the first time I saw them. I was blown away. I thought they were fucking amazing. Heard the bass player was leaving and…”
Markie played bass in The Vacuum from 1979 to the very early 1980s, when Direen, organist Alan Meek and drummer Malcolm Grant split to form Kaza Portico. The only recorded evidence of this era turned up on Split Seconds, Direen’s 1984 collection which included Vacuum-era recordings. Markie played bass on Inside and Remember Breaking Up, recorded at the converted-garage studio of Robbins Recordings.
Segovia took two of Direen’s best compositions, Girl At Night and Bedrock Bay to his next band, The Volkswagons, who’d been running at the same time as the latter-day Vacuum.
Segovia; “We started it to back this guy we’d met. John Throufull from the Hawkes Bay. He was older, eccentric. I don’t think he’d played in bands before. His nick name was Johnny Devo, given to him by Johnny the Slasher, a Christchurch identity who used to slash himself on the dancefloor – which I fortunately never saw – he used to pin badges to his chest – a total utter punk.
“We did some of John’s originals and a whole bunch of 1960s covers. An Italian guy played bass. I played drums for them originally. Then we got Norman Dufty on drums. “We played the Victorian Coffee Gallery, the only late night joint in Christchurch. Everybody would go there and get really gone. The Volkswagons would play there quite regularly. When Norman came in on drums, we were going to make it a regular rock band and do pubs. We ended up having this big argument because Johnny Devo wouldn’t tell us how many times he did things in a song. He thought we should just be able to peel it. He walked out.
“Stefano left the country and Blitz (Martin Ellis) played bass. He was from Gisborne. Never played before. No one took it seriously. I wouldn’t do it now. But we’d do things like go tripping all night and stay up all the next day and do a gig.”
They played the Gladstone on May 13, 1982 with The Pin Group and 25 Cents. A reviewer noting the “three piece who did Louie Louie, Gloria and assorted originals in a quiet Velvets sort of way.
“With the addition of vocalist Liz Wyllie, the V’dubs stared to write originals, and recorded a song for the fated Gladstone compilation, intended to highlight the strong Christchurch original music of the early 1980s.
Segovia; “The two women who booked the Gladstone at the time, Rose and Laura, were going to put out a compilation album and got everyone to record. We were one of the first to go into Nightshift studios and start recording a song. The album got canned. Arnold Von Bussell (Nightshift engineer) later erased the mastertapes.
” Segovia, Blitz, and Dufty meanwhile were busy backing Christchurch rock n roller Ritchie Venus (real name – Michael J Braithwaite) as the Blue Beetles with Roy Montgomery on occasional backing vocals:
Segovia: “Roy told us about this guy, said, he’s got all the licks down, does all these 1950s songs, but he plays with this really lame backing band. You guys would be good with him. Ritchie and Roy used to play the Solo Parents club in City Lights.”
Cue a strange marriage of two eras. Retro rocker Ritchie Venus backed by the offspring of punk. Having a singer up front and singled out in the Punk era, let alone a 1950′s style rocker like Venus was rare and decidedly uncool. They seemed more like a throwback to the cute end of the mid-1960s garage era, than the latest wave of the punk assault on the music industry.
Segovia: “The act was based on 1950 and 1960s covers with own stuff thrown in. We did a couple of really good shows at the Gladstone. When Blitz went overseas, we kind of dropped it, but we got offered a Troggs support in the South Island. Mick Elborado (Scorched Earth Policy/Terminals) joined on bass for the tour. We carried on playing with him over the years.” With Segovia on bass and a drummer, Venus would also play pubs.
Ritchie Venus and The Blue Beetles would release two singles, Bleeding Heart (1981) and Candy, and two albums, Rebel Blood (1987), a collection of originals, and You Can’t Fight It (1989), a collection of 1950s and 1960s covers. ‘Bleeding Heart’ is the pick of the singles, a snide putdown of the liberal mentality (again out of sync with the times) armed with a rebel sneer and minimal backing from the Blue Beetles. It was one of the first singles released on the Flying Nun Records label.
It would be six more years before the best realisation of Ritchie Venue and the Blue Beetles’ creative partnership hit the record shelves. Rebel Blood, their 1987 debut effort for Campbell McLay’s Onset/Offset Records, mops up many of the group’s originals onto what is overall a patchy record plagued by thin sound and under-realised songs. Persevere. Amongst the Venus/Blue Beetles/Desmond Brice originals are two Christchurch classics.
The Legend isn’t as you’d suspect a tribute to some rock n roll legend (or a Venus self tribute) but a spooky Velvets chorder close kin to the Victor Dimisich/Pin Group/Bill Direen strummers. Desmond Brice has obviously had a big hand in this. Segovia likewise dips back into his Builders riff bag.
It’s as though Venus, Elvis/Devlin fixated retro 1950s rocker that he is, has suddenly woken up in early 1980s Christchurch, looked around and seen the factory streets of Addington instead of the lush Kentucky fields of his idol.
He stumbles across the railway tracks, his silver and gold lame jumpsuit and silver glitter boots in stark contrast to the greasy track grave, pushes open a factory door as an eerie guitar and heatbeat bass edges along a long factory corridor, finally coming level with an open door.
Inside is a huge factory floor crammed with weaving looms and defeated workers. The strumming builds and the idol sings, not a Memphis drawl, but a sound from the deep determined heart of this English city on the South Island of New Zealand. And the words – how Brice got the acid sceptic of Bleeding Heart to sing this heart tugging Marxist lament is probaby a story in itself, but he does, and it’s a sound straight outta the soul of Christchurch.
Me, I stand alone,
in the heart of this factory,
I swear uneasy tuce,
with the captains of Industry.
But this solider is a pilgrimto the stations of the cross,
Is this life any kind of life for people like us,
Is this life,
any kind of life at all…
In contrast, the chorus is pure Elvis.
I am the legend,
and the legend never dies,
but if you listen to closely,
sometimes a legend cries.
I suspect the hard drinking Blue Beetles were more comfortable in the cheesy early afternoon lounge bar atmosphere of Rebel Blood, an arrogant strutting ode to a dissident spirit which is all seedy 1970s lead and churchy organ shimmering straight outta 1967.
Through Ritchie Venus, Segovia hooked up (as bassist) with New Zealand’s most famous veteran rocker, Johnny Devlin, New Zealand’s Elvis, for a South Island tour.
Segovia: “I thought it would be cool to meet this guy who was the big Kiwi rock n roll star of the 1950s, and that he’d tell us all kinds of cool stories and shit, but he was a pretty glum kinda guy, at the time anyway.
“We played Oamaru to hardly anybody and Devlin got up and said “it’s really good to be here in Timaru.” He was pretty down. It seemed like he didn’t give a shit about music at all, certainly what he was doing. He didn’t seem into it at all. He’d been a big star in his time and here we were playing these little country pubs where we went over quite well, but for him it was a come down.”
Fade to 1983 where Segovia is playing out with a new outfit powered by the songwriting partnership he’d developed in the V’dubs’ later days with early Pin Group bassist, Exploding Telephone Booth, and Hard Sum, Desmond Brice, who as L R Chamberlain had contributed lyrics to the MacGoohans and Ritchie Venus songs. In The Chance he played bass and Jeff Carey drummed.
Segovia: “In those days I was either on the dole or on a PEP scheme. Desmond Brice was in Hard Sums, and The Pin Group before they gigged. He still wrote lyrics. He was a Uni student.”
The trio recorded five Segovia/Brice compositions – Love Lies Bleeding/This Evil Dirge/The Scream of Engines/House of Secrets/Planes Over Thailand – for a Flying Nun Records EP release, which never eventuated. Segovia; “I told them not to release it. The band had split up, but Roger said he’d have no trouble selling it. In hindsight, I’m not happy with the songs.”
Love Lies Bleeding later appeared on a Krypton Hits compilation tape. The Chance lasted just over a year, and played only in Christchurch. Garden City music scribe, Michael Higgins, caught them at the Star and Garter and noted: “A constant stream of fast infectious metal pop songs.”
Next up was Swamp Beat, a covers band (who did Strychnine by The Sonics) and played a handful of gigs, including a weekend in Dunedin.
Elsewhere, Segovia’s ears and fingers had tuned to another genre – country music. He’d checked out Merle Haggard when he was in Gisborne, and thought it was good, but never really pursued it.
Segovia: “When I met Phil Ascott (upright bass), Simon Kearns (snare), and Simon, the other Conn, we had no deep knowledge of Country. But it went down a treat. We got on a PEP scheme and anywhere from played rest homes to big pubs and went over in all circumstances. Simon wrote us a lot of songs and Steve McCabe wrote us some.
“They hosted their own Cooking with The Connoisseurs cooking show on student radio for a year, where they would pretend to cook, then play one song live on the air. Lawrence Lens, later of Nux Vomica and The Portage, made a doco film of The Connoisseurs that was never finished.
Come 1987 and Segovia got a call from a mate asking him to play a party. Skate punk was big, so having not heard the genre, The Axel Grinders – Segovia (guitar), Graphite Lubejob (Kearns), Phil Ascott, Dwayne Zarakov, and later, Celia Patel – spiced up some Beach Boys songs with skateboarding references and began a notorious turn of the decade reign as one of Christchurch’s top groups. But that is (was) a story better told elsewhere, notably in The Jewish Beatle, Dwayne Zarkov’s fanzine.
© Andrew Schmidt – 1995
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