SATURDAY LIVE AT 3
Promotional photographs taken by David Lleon Mitchell in the Thorndon Railway yards in Wellington, January 1990.
The new decade began for The Pagans with a photo shoot in the Wellington Railway yards, pictures taken by David Lleon Mitchell. I'd known David for about four years through advertising. He was a tremendous photographer, but also a kindred spirit, an animator and artist of the highest quality. At the time he lived in Buller Street in the city and had a darkroom at home. As always, he chose a fantastic location and shot the band in his favourite Black and White.
The first railway track out of Wellington was laid in 1872, although the present configuration of the Railway yards (post land reclamation) occurred when the current Railway Station was built in 1937. Prior to that, there were several stations along the waterfront Lambton Quay and Te Aro, where trains would depart for Lower Hutt, the Wairarapa and Palmerston North.
David photographed us close to where the original Pipitea Point Station was on the eastern side of Thorndon Quay. We wandered down from our practice room one Saturday morning, met him and crossed the road into the Railway yards. Balancing on some old train wheels and all upon a large ladder were two sets he shot, some were taken on a pedestrian over bridge.
Next up for The Pagans was a January 5th trip to Paraparaumu for a Battle of the Bands competition, which turned into an absolute farce. We were pleased with our billing at the Kapiti Carnival, positioned toward the end of the card, but were fucked over by a local band called Wall of Surf.
It was a Friday night. They were originally either first or second, but failed to show up for their spot, the organisers instructing us that we had to take it instead. Then - rather than be disqualified for not showing up - they were given top billing and with all their local support, of course they won.
I was drunk and incensed. I ended up in a scuffle and being clocked by one of their bogan entourage and was quickly whisked away by Andrew in his infamous yellow mini. His timing was probably fortuitous enough to save me a good beating, never-the-less, I lived on McDonalds thick shakes for a couple of days as I couldn’t open my jaw. We played the following night at the Western Park, but it is doubtful that there were any backing vox from me that night.
The saving grace with the whole evening, was acknowledgement at the events completion from MC, Robert Rakete, that The Pagans deserved mention for the fact that they had accommodated the judges and another band, seemingly at their own expense after delivering an outstanding all-original set.
Wall of Surf were essentially a covers act. I enjoyed nothing more than knocking them out during our heat at Wellington’s “Battle of the Bands” a month or so later.
For whatever reason, something that Andrew organised, we did a song as part of our set with a woman (whose name escapes me) on lead vocals. She or she and Andrew must have composed it, I cannot recall exactly. Maybe we just backed her?
(Left) An acoustic set at the Mardi Gras on Oriental Parade and (Right) Cindy at her favourite dining haunt, the Horn Kung on Courtenay Place. (Below left) My 26th birthday, post gig party at St. Mary. Geoff Beavis with hand on my hat, Rowena Cudby, Greg Pugh, PA and Martin. (Right) Poster design by Brendan Herring.
The next appearance by The Pagans was at the Mardi Gras on Oriental Parade, part of the Wellington City Council’s Summer City programme. We delivered up an early Sunday evening acoustic set to festival goers, on the street outside what was Nicholson’s Brasserie at the foot of the old Band Rotunda.
Designed by the City Council's Engineers Department and built in 1936 (at a cost of £6756) by Walter Hodges, a builder of Roseneath, the Band Rotunda is an integral part of the seawall, a prominent landmark in the centre of the sweep of the Bay. The Moderne architecture is unique in Wellington, a piece of nautical art, constructed as a public facility for the use and enjoyment of visitors and residents of Oriental Bay, the closest bathing beach to the central city.
Three Western Park appearances followed on January 19th, 20th and 26th. The 19th, being my birthday, was a double gig with the Accelerants followed by a party at St. Mary Street. It was also the first night of a two month relationship with a young graphic designer named Adrienne Potts.
Adrienne worked for Vertigo Design Company with John Creagh and Miranda Witford. Miranda would often provide the cover (if illustrated) for the NZ Listener magazine at the time, if memory serves.
Adie lived in Russell Terrace in Berhampore and Simon and I would spend a lot of the rest of the summer of 1990 hanging out with her and her flatmates, Malcolm and Dean. One of those three, Adie I think, provided the title “Reared in Captivity”. I liked it so much I wrote four verses around the idea and Simon chimed in with the two pre-chorus pieces, which were about enjoying the late night entertainment options available in the city.
Wellington had good culture and etiquette. A good mix of cafe’s, bars, pubs and nite clubs. For the most part we had a good array of international flavoured restaurants, largely owing to european immigrants, who brought their cuisine and culture with them, engraining it in their adopted home through opening their own establishments.
Remiro Bresolin, for example, who owned Il Casino in Tory Street, would always at some stage during the evening, visit your table to enquire as to whether all was well. The class of the continent, the personal touch.
But dining out for us then usually meant the Horn Kung on Courtenay Place, where a full Chinese menu was available, but where Euan and Frederick were still able to order sausages, eggs and chips. Cindy was the chief advocate of big table bookings at the low-lit Horn Kung whenever possible.
Outside 'No Names Bar' on Plimmer Steps, 1990.
Photograph: Colin McLellan
One night at St. Mary, Adie, Malcolm, Dean and I were in my bedroom smoking a joint, when an ambulance cruised up the street, no sirens or anything, just coasted in and parked across the road. Two St. John officers got out and went down the alley way adjacent to number 18.
Being stoned we were curious as to exactly what was going on and like children we squatted in the window and watched as the officers returned to the ambulance, collected some gear and went back down the alley. About 20 minutes later they came back again, bearing a stretcher with presumably a body on it, as it was all covered over.
As they went past the window, one said to the other. “Jesus this body stinks, it must have been there for some time!” The cheshire cat grins were instantly removed from our faces. How gross I thought. All the time we’ve been living here, there’s been a dead body in a flat across the street.
The 27th of January we played the Johnsonville Sports & Fair Day, another outdoor summer city initiative and another gig organised by one of their employee’s, Andrew ‘Giff’ Richards. The guy who did the sound for us was a young musician himself called Phil Knight, he was playing in a teenage band who had just emerged called Shihad.
We packed seven gigs into January of 1990, the most we’d ever do in a calendar month. But even though it became more obvious that cracks were developing within the band, the name of The Pagans was out there and promoters were keen to have us. It was a shame in so many ways, as we’d put in a lot of hard work to get to this relatively prestigious position near the head of the queue.
Western Park dates aside, February’s activity was crammed into the tail end with gigs at two new venues in the city; Rocky’s Nite Club and the Carpark Performance Cafe. Reception, reviews and managers opinions could not have been more different.
Peter May (of the famed New Zealand entertainment business family), ran “Rocky’s”, described at the time as; “Wellington’s new live rock venue”.
Located at 171 Cuba Street, built in the 1920’s as a purpose built factory for the assembly of shoes, the premise has some rich history. Thirty years on, as manufacturing was pushed out of the inner city, it became Koolman’s Gym, named after Anton Koolman, an Estonian immigrant who had wrestled for his country at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.
From the closure of the gym, a very different path was undertaken by the premise, a path that would lead directly to February 23rd and 24th, 1990, when The Pagans and The Accelerants double-gigged at this, the seediest venue the capital had to offer.
By the late 1960’s, it was Ali Baba’s, predominantly a music venue. Wellington’s Avengers, one of the highest profile bands in the country, were invited to open the new club in October of 1968. The occasion was captured on tape and a live album released; "Dial Triple A, Alive! Avengers in Action". It was New Zealand’s first ever live rock recording.
The popular nightclub (which closed in 1977), was also known as the Cave, as the interior was Papier-mâchéd into stalagmites and stalactites. In fact, the venue carried several names during this part of it’s history; Staxs, Tycody’s (named after the proprietor’s sons Ty and Cody), Sonic Temple and Stilettos (a Hell’s Angels strip bar), which lasted just a fortnight. The building seemed to have a multitude of layers as every bar, club or strip joint that occupied it added more and more.
Cuba Street was renowned amongst merchant seamen as a great place to party. Seamen and ship crews started frequenting the club, which had taken over the mantle from the old Sorrento Coffee Bar/Sunset Strip in Ghuznee Street (when that popular spot was burnt down in the 70’s), providing a popular replacement hangout for sex workers to pick up clients, transsexuals, homosexuals and Wellington’s petty criminals. And that is how we found it in late summer of 1990.
Peter May was adamant that we not leave the front door on Cuba Street unmanned. There was to be a cover charge (payers stamped) and we were informed to “just say JÅ« dollar…JÅ« dollar!” I had no idea what JÅ« dollar meant until the arrival of about the third Japanese sailor.
Now, Peter May had never actually heard either The Pagans or The Accelerants live. He had hired us both for the weekend based on recommendations from pub owners and promoters, but the miss match was obvious just a few songs into our set, as the opening act on the Friday night.
The clientele - predominantly seamen and prostitutes - wanted some hard edged blues to wash their over proof rum down with, not an indie pop/rock band with floral shirts and winkle-pickers. Alas, The Accelerants feared no better, as I thought that their indie sound with Greg’s satirical lyrics may just be enough to win them over.
A5 hand out flyer from the gigs at Rocky's, double billed with The Accelerants, February 23/24, 1990. "Bands like you will be the ruin of me", said owner, Peter May.
A3 poster from Carpark gig March 3rd, 1990. The special guest was Sam Manzanza from Zaire, a recent arrival in Wellington who would go on to popularise traditional and modern African music throughout New Zealand.
As Peter was paying us out, after we’d finished on Saturday evening, he told us in no uncertain terms; “Bands like you will be the ruin of me!” Whether we were or not, “Rocky’s” didn’t last too long. The proprietor decided to change markets, re-decorated, renamed and converted to disco.
It is now the San Francisco Bath House. We partied on the Saturday night post-gig, at the flat of Sean O’Donnell, Accelerants guitarist, in neighbouring Torrens Terrace.
Both bands had decided to enter the Wellington Battle of the Bands competition and we were in heat one in just a weeks time. The venue was another new to the city, the “Carpark Performance Cafe” in the Williams Building (now Plimmer Towers) on Plimmer’s Steps.
Originally developed by construction tycoon, Sir Arthur Williams, the 34-level building and car park was opened in 1977 as the Williams Centre and at the time, it was Wellington's tallest building.
Sir Arthur was a hard-working philanthropist. He went into the construction business after emigrating from the United Kingdom in the late 1940's and was later responsible for building dozens of commercial buildings in Wellington. He used Valium to get through the day and tranquilisers to get through the night. Known and honoured in Wellington, he was a charming man in public, and an abusive tyrant in private who terrorised his family.
We got to try out the new venue on February 27th, three days after “Rocky’s”. We took a spot at the regular Tuesday night jam session to test the waters and how the venue sounded. Manager, Sean Murrie, believed that these jam nights became the breeding ground for inner city Wellington music.
The Carpark had opened it’s doors in October the previous year and was considered a bright new idea in night time entertainment. Live bands or a DJ six nights a week, food, wine and a cafe atmosphere appeared an ambitious undertaking by Sean, but it had worked.
Inside, it was immediately obvious why the place had its name. Low ceilings and large concrete beams gave the venue the look and feel of a decorated basement carpark. Before entering, a closed circuit TV showed the interior of the club, where punters could check out what was going on inside before paying the price on the door.
Sean wasn’t a fan of restrictions and the dress code was relaxed as juxtaposed with most night spots in New Zealand at the time. He wasn’t a fan of ‘aggro’ though and if one had developed attitude, one needed to think very carefully before taking on the boxing champion bouncers.
Personally, I really enjoyed the Carpark. It reminded me very much of the early days of The Last Resort Cafe at 21a Courtenay Place, which I had frequented on several occasions a decade before. At both venues, food and ambience was of equal importance as music and a beer or two. They were both sophisticated venues, until the Last resort became headquarters of the punk scene during 1981, the year of its demise.
Fifteen bands were competing for $1,000 worth of recording time with Marcus at Word of Mouth, as the “Battle of the Bands”, 1990 version swung into action; Lets Planet, Relentless, The Pagans, Synchroniser, This Will Kill That, Disraeli Gears, Southside of Bombay, Bad Boys, The Rusty Nails, The Accelerants, Columbian Necktie, Wall of Scurf, Smile to the Earth’s Core, Funk Sneakes, Fall Apart and Yang to the Power.
Organiser, Penny Bainbridge, said that bands would be judged on four categories; presentation, musical ability, content and communication with the audience.
Ania Glowacz (producer/director of Radio Active), John Pilley (Solid Air Records), Colin Morris (record store owner) and Alistair Thompson (Dominion newspaper journalist) were the judges, handpicked by Penny, who wanted judges who had been around the music scene and didn’t have a fixed idea of what music should be like.
Andrew and I frequented Solid Air regularly and Giff had a good rapport with John Pilley, who provided ‘Rip It Up’ magazine with a monthly run down on what was happening on the Wellington scene. Following our heat, feedback received was favourable from Colin Morris also, stating that he believed we had a marketable presence and good, strong original compositions.
We breezed through our heat on March 3rd and were looking forward to the semi-final on the 17th. The day before the heat and again on March 7th, we would play at the ill-fated Sesqui Carnival on Wellington’s waterfront.
It was going to be bigger than Texas, but the Sesqui Carnival turned into an unmitigated disaster for all concerned.
Sesqui or 'Spasqui' as the defaced billboard suggests?
The festival was planned to include a wide range of cultural, trade and scientific exhibits as well as entertainment events and funfair amusements. An “enchanted forest”, an alcohol-free disco, a Bavarian-style beer tent (serving Australian beer) and a seafood restaurant (where diners could watch trawlers unloading their fish) were all to be included.
It was scheduled to run for six weeks and anticipated to attract 30,000 visitors per day, despite the fact that the population of the entire Wellington region at that time was fewer than 400,000 people.
But advertised and promoted as it was, people did come, from all around the country. Most would have left with a sour taste in their mouths and the real loser in the piece was the cultural credibility of Wellington itself, although I guess the hotels/motels must have done well.
It ran for two weeks and closed with debts in excess of NZ$6.4 million, with barely 2,500 on average paying the exorbitant ticket price and going through the turnstiles on a daily basis. The highest attendance figure was achieved during the final days of the event, when 32,000 visitors took advantage of a decision to waive all entry fees.
An outdoor stage would feature 12 hours of entertainment daily (with a budget of $1.2m), from 170 groups and 40 solo exhibitors. But the organisers had also adopted a policy against advertising the daily schedules for musical and other performances taking place at the venue. This strange policy resulted in a number of popular musicians, singers and other entertainers playing to largely empty houses because the public did not know when or where they were performing.
In such circumstances, we found it amusing that with just 13 people at our first gig (Simon counted them between songs), we had a bigger crowd than many notable national acts of the time, some of which had played to virtually no-one at all.
My endearing memory of being on stage and looking out, but also of just walking around and checking out the whole place, is one akin to being in a ghost town. The temporary seating erected opposite the stage was blue and mostly all one could see, with the odd person splattered here and there. It looked like the disused remains of a movie set.
Even the Ferris Wheel remained motionless. The atmosphere was lifeless, with thin crowds and halls full of lamentable exhibits and one expected a pack of zombies to appear on the side of the set at any minute. This is reflected in the lyrics of “Saturday Live at Three”, especially the line; “paper on walls of the alley said ‘Saturday live at 3’, but nobody queued for a ticket, there was no one but me.”
The song was introduced by Simon, at our final gig at the Carpark on May 3rd, as; “This is a song we wrote for Sesqui shortly after our cheque got bounced!”
Marcus Wilson did the sound for us, which was one thing to our advantage, as he had an air of familiarity with our songs and their peculiarities. We had him record the second gig for us, Andrew has/had that cassette tape. We were followed by The Nairobi Trio after that gig.
The collapse of the festival forced a number of small companies that had been contracted to supply various goods and services to the event, into receivership and/or bankruptcy. It was a spectacular commercial and administrative failure and the event has subsequently become an icon of corporate mismanagement within New Zealand popular culture.
Ten days later, we were back at the Carpark for the semi-final of “Battle of the Bands”. I don’t remember much about this gig. History says that we won a place through to the final, but on the night of the semi, Andrew told us that it was all over.
He said that he had tossed up whether to mention it earlier in the week as conscience wise, he found it a little unethical to see the competition through at the expense of other contenders, if our band was breaking up.
We found it unethical that a band member should pull the plug in the middle of a competition, but he did have a point. We pulled out of he final. I can’t even say who did win in the end. I know The Accelerants didn’t get through to the final and looking at the others involved, Lets Planet and Southside of Bombay were really the pick of the crop.
Let’s Planet were well established and in October, released their first album “Favours”, on Trevor Reekie’s Pagan Records.
Southside of Bombay were already making waves. This was the embryonic incantation of the band that would go on to fame providing their single “What’s the time Mr. Wolf?” to the soundtrack for the Lee Tamahori directed feature film, “Once Were Warriors”.
I think what may be a little misunderstood is that Andrew wanted to move on and in other directions and that is how things roll in a band and nobody really could blame him for that. But I felt (and I know PA the same) that we had literally been chopped down in our prime.
Since the arrival of the animal, we had made giant strides in quick succession. With no disrespect to Martin, who as mentioned had always indicated that his hold on the seat was tenuous until a replacement was found. PA completed our sound, adding his own rhythmic alliteration.
The songwriting progressed as a uniformed group effort, because since the heralded arrival of M.J.P. Paterson esq, songs grew out of jams at practice sessions and everybody put something in. “Bohemian Spies”, “Saturday Live at Three”, “Chills”, ”Bells of Thorndon” and “Reared in Captivity” all came out of this stable, all works composed at the height of what maturity and nous we could muster at where we were at. “Saturday” and “Chills” were Simon and mine, taken to the band for the Pagan make-over, which they certainly received.
Another couple of self-composed Simon classics should have gone into this mix, along with “Off the Beaten Track”. He had them. His song - never recorded - “It’s Cold Out Here This Winter’s Day” could and should have been his finest hour, such strength of composition and strong, emotive lyrics. The song was written following the death in Telluride of a good friend of ours, Vaughn Shelley, following a skiing accident.
Bolton Street Memorial Park (Left) Looking across the tombstones and daffodils with the city of Wellington behind. (Right) 1989: On the Early Settlers lawn, with the suburb of Thorndon in the background. A few orbs floating around
“Tombstoned in Bolton Street Cemetery” was another. A very sombre but melodic piece by Simon, which naturally lent itself toward classical instrumentation, probably strings. I wrote the lyrics, which certainly encapsulated the spirit of the composition.
Josephine Brien and I would often meet in the old, disused early settlers cemetery in Bolton Street Memorial Park, virtually directly across the road from the bottom of St. Mary Street. Although we only vaguely remembered it, our mothers had played tennis together in Kilbirnie when we were very small children.
Verse one is about that historical connection we shared, verse two about lighting a joint, the chorus about smoking it and wandering through the cemetery and neighbouring Botanical Gardens. All cleverly disguised of course.
Opened in 1840, Bolton Street is an excellent example of a colonial cemetery, using imported and local stone, iron and wood, with a nationally important collection of heritage roses. Its iron memorials, wooden tablets, picket fences and wrought iron surrounds are offset by a raft of interesting pathways from which to choose to wander down, best in spring with the daffodils and chrysanthemums. Hence, enhancement was a good idea.
New Zealand poet, novelist and journalist, Robin Hyde (real name, Iris Wilkinson), made reference to the cemetery in her bewitching novel about a girl in 1930s New Zealand (published 1938), "The Godwits Fly"; “There’s the old closed cemetery at Bolton Street, nobody goes there now. It’s nice in the cemetery. The chapel, with broken blue windows, has been long since strawed and bespattered by the starlings, who dashed in, thudded about in panic and presented only the drops of blood from their torn breasts as communion wine. Arms of wild rose, streaked irises and great masses of re-flowering weeds grow all about. The place has been closed for so long now that nobody mourns or lays wreaths or flowers in jam jars at the feet of graves.”
The Godwit is a small migratory bird that spends part of its year in New Zealand and the rest in Siberia. It was also the livery symbol of our former domestic airline, 'National Airways Corporation', better known as NAC.
Huge controversy prevailed in the 1960’s, when urbanisation and the building of the motorway, which straddles Bolton Street cemetery, led to the removal and/or exhumation of 3,700 graves which were cleared in the name of progress.
In 1990, for me personally, it was an escape from the city, within the city. Somewhere one could hide, but still look out and know that the concrete and clay was tangible and accessible, but also at arms length. I spent hours walking through both the cemetery and the Gardens, tossing lyrics around and formulating ideas, many that would materialise instantly or over the next decade.
One, like a ghost, could literally stand motionless and quiet like a statue amongst the tombstones and watch passers-by move within metres of the space, where, when windless, one would struggle to suppress the sound of even breathing.
Both songs would have to wait. “Winters Day” was on the playlist for our final gig at Carpark, but you can hear in the audio, Andrew call for us to move straight from “Special Feeling” to “Billy Run”, axing the song during what would have been it’s debut outing. Time constraints were in place.
“Tombstoned" has had several incantations, but none yet which have accurately done the song the justice it deserves. The closest is a live recording made in Tauranga, 2006, with a series of vocal and keyboard overdubs which bring it close to what a finished sound may have been like. Had it actually become a Pagan song, it may have been very hard to top in any case. The end may have come when it did for a reason.
(Left) Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul on Molesworth Street in Thorndon.
(Above) Watch The Pagans video for "Bells of Thorndon".
On April 5th, we played a second gig at the Union Hall at Victoria University, which went done really well but for me will always be synonymous with the live debut of our newest, the very last and arguably greatest (combined) composition, “Bells of Thorndon”.
"Bells" was written about the bells of Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, which would ring out through the valley every Sunday morning, sounding very much like a surreal requiem for fallen foot soldiers from past combat.
Little did we know at the time that the original plans for the cathedral were to have a memorial to those who had fallen in the war and as a thanks offering for those who survived. In 1907 the Wellington Anglican diocese acquired land for a cathedral not far from the Basin Reserve. In July 1917 the Anglican synod approved preliminary plans being drawn up by the architect Frank Peck, for an elaborate Gothic structure on the site. But In 1923, the synod decided the original plans were too costly to proceed with.
In 1937, a fresh start was made and it was decided to make the Cathedral a national centennial project. A new architect was selected in Cecil Wood, who had a reputation as New Zealand's leading church architect. The majority of his ecclesiastical commissions were for small churches, mainly in his home province of Canterbury. Designed in a free Gothic manner with English Arts and Crafts influences, they were unpretentious, superbly crafted and skilfully combined a range of stylistic details and materials.
A new site was acquired, this time in Molesworth Street, near Parliament Buildings. Construction was delayed by the war and its aftermath, and ultimately the project took more than half-a-century to complete. The foundation stone was laid by Queen Elizabeth II, on 13th January 1954.
As previously mentioned, the song itself was born from a jam session following rehearsal, largely from memory an Andrew composition. Simon and I penned the lyrics, a sort of ode to those soldiers, moving through to the modern world and the ho-hum of everyday life, where things seemingly go on forever without much change.
Pie Cart proprietor, Phil Dickson, quick to reward his regular clientele, which included Simon, Frederick and myself.
But change was afoot in many ways. Firstly, Simon and I moved out of St Mary Street and into 15 Pipitea Street, also in Thorndon, literally two minutes walk from our rehearsal space at the Pipitea Computer Centre on Thorndon Quay and more tragically, only another couple of minutes to the infamous pie-cart, located outside the Wellington Railway Station.
For Simon and I particularly, the pie-cart was dining heaven. KK Patel may have curbed our pork pie habit, but he would have been powerless to stop our march toward the station and horrified at our 'regular order'. We were even held in high esteem by the owner/operator, Phil Dickson, as was divulged one night when a drunk punter started complaining about the service. "I'm a regular here," he began, but before he had time to even finish his sentence (in the pouring rain), Phil was onto him.
"No you're not!" he spat back with some venom and pointing to Simon, Frederick and myself, some three or four rows back and waiting to order. "They're regulars!" Addressing us directly in a most civil fashion, Phil enquired; "Regular order is it gentlemen?"
And that 'regular order' consisted of a cheese burger, with the usual crispy-edged patties and a toasted sandwich, two if excessively hungry. Ham, cheese and another partner of choice; onion, pineapple or corn.
We’d got behind in the rent at St. Mary, but the flat had also run it’s course. The Pagans were finishing and with their demise, so to the residency at the Western Park, although Geoff Beavis had by now also moved on and the new manager was intent on returning the premise to a sports orientated bar anyway. We still drank there and it wasn’t more than a 10 minute walk away, but sands were certainly shifting.
May 3rd, 1990, Frederick’s birthday (becoming AK’s at mid-night), The Pagans stepped onto the stage for the last time, at the Carpark. We had arranged the gig with Sean and to have it recorded for prosperity on the in house desk, the engineer was Denis Cody. Colin was on lights.
The songs in playing order were; “At the River’s Edge”, “A Flag in My Hand”, “Love on a Ledge”, “I Can’t See You Again”, “Van Gogh”, “Off the Beaten Track”, “Give Me Love”, “It’s In My Head”, “Reared in Captivity”, “Bohemian Spies”, “Saturday Live at Three”, “Chills”, “Bells of Thorndon”, “Special Feeling” and “Billy Run”.
“Bohemian Spies” and “Bells of Thorndon” were written within a few weeks of the band breaking up. The balance of the songs were a fairly good reflection of the 19 months in between. Six from 1989 and six from the first few months of 1990.
We invited everyone we knew and they came out in droves. So much so that The Pagans had the house record for attendance (single night) which we were very proud of. The couple of hundred we had was completely monstered by The Chills some months later, when a couple of thousand turned up to tried and get in. Luckily I did. Records are good while they last.
Andrew was moving to Twizel, he wanted to be a blues man. Simon and PA and I thought about replacing him and attempting to carry on, but largely it came to nought and fun as it had been, acceptance slowly kicked in that, as John Lennon once said; “The dream is over.”
Personally, I was relatively philosophical about the whole situation. I always told Simon that his line from "TTFN"; "It's exactly what I had in mind, what I'm doing at this stage", was an accurate description of how I felt about things, my life in general. So it was disappointing that a lot of hard work, time and energy had been expended along with the fun and camaraderie.
Ultimately, we had fallen short of our aim to release a Long Playing record, but even that is subject to decisions made by a few at the top, some we respected, others not so. Local people we did respect, Colin Morris for one (a man who really knew the market), thought we had a great original sound and were thoroughly marketable. He told us he believed we should have been signed to a label.
We were also unfortunate at times, to run across wankers who controlled the strings and who said there was no place anymore for an all-white boy band. So much for political correctness.
Free tickets were handed out to friends for our last ever gig, Carpark, May 3rd.
Before Giff departed for the South Island, we decided to get Colin to shoot one final video and figured that it may as well be in our band room at Pipitea. We must have decided the song would be "Reared in Captivity", as Simon eludes to this when introducing the song at the final Carpark gig. Colin stepped up to direct and had Simon Riera shoot the footage, which he in turn edited.
We decorated the band room with John Brien's artwork, put Alf's backdrop up and Colin had a few other prop ideas. One was a revolving fan which dispersed the smoke around, looking amazing through the camera lens. A TV (positioned for "shoot at me through the TV") was left running and had my VHS continually rolling over; "Compact Snap" by The Jam, one of Simons and my favourite bands.
Two young women turned up who nobody knew, but they were dressed to kill. Where did they come from Colin?
"The two girls in the video… well, it’s a funny story, and its funny that you should ask. So I latched onto a heavy metal band from New Plymouth and was determined to shoot NZ’s first real rockumentary and so followed them around Wellington for about two weeks and smoked a ton of ganga with them. I was incredibly fucking broke and willing to do anything, and like any good rock and roller, when you aint got money, you give yourself to your art and say fuck it to everything else. These two chicks were hanging around and I thought, “Phwoar!! Check out those fuck me boots. And yes, I want to!!”
Their classy faux leather jackets and their budding mullets were all I needed… well, that and they worked in KFC.
I impressed them with stories of music video, another band I knew, called The Pagans, and that they also had mullets. They were in!!
The rest is history!"
Brendon Gordon (sitting at the mixing desk), Justine Muxlow and one or two others drifted in an out during the day and all made it into the finished product. We ran through the song five or six times, Andrew was in a hurry to leave. The ill feeling that was there, thankfully didn't come across on the video, in fact, it all looks like happy times.
Andrew's desire to leave early meant he missed Colin's final photo shoot with The Pagans, which took place in our band room at the Pipitea Computer Centre, immediately post the filming of "Reared in Captivity".
But like all good bands, there was to be a Pagans encore, albeit an unexpected one. Six months or so later, Andrew arrived back from Twizel and expressed an interest in getting back together, which certainly did take the rest of us somewhat by surprise.
We decided to record another three tracks and pitch it around the record companies in the hope of securing some form of contract to record that bloody album proper. PA was pretty much against the idea, I guess he was of the opinion that The Pagans were dead in the water. But he agreed to drum on the recordings (as his name was in the songwriting credits for all three songs chosen) and as usual he did a fantastic job.
“Reared in Captivity”, “Saturday Live at Three” and “Bells of Thorndon” were selected and recorded at Crescendo Studio’s on Kent Terrace, engineered by Toni - whose surname we never found out. Why we didn’t go back to Marcus 'Word of Mouth' I am not sure.
The decision was made, by Giff from memory, to hit Auckland and do the rounds. Stu Beadle, a most successful businessman with a secret desire to manage a rock band, got on the phone and jacked up interviews with Trevor Reekie (Pagan Records), Mike Chunn (CBS) and Vaughn Stebbing (Eldred’s son) of Stebbing Studios and Key Records.
Vaughn was fantastic and talked us through some ideas, which included playing lunch-time gigs at local secondary schools in Wellington (initially) to raise awareness and a following. His initiatives were all top notch, but unfortunately, as none of the record companies were prepared to give us a deal, this was to be the definitive end of The Pagans.
The most disappointing aspect of the trip was that Stu arranged a meeting with Shona Laing and Dave McArtney at the Gluepot, so we could again talk through the entertainment business and get some tips from them, but neither showed up.
Andrew had bought an old Transit van, and I mean old. He had organised a band working bee on it before we undertook the trip, changing radiator hose pipes and attaching a new muffler. The vehicle was barely roadworthy though and we were very grateful to get back to Wellington without any major mishap.
We did have a minor incident on the way up. We had booked a night at a Motor Lodge in Turangi and not all that far short of our destination, we picked up a young Maori hitch-hiker, who was also heading to Auckland. He was broke so we smuggled him into the Motor Lodge for the night when the Manager had his back turned.
He had only been in the van a couple of minutes, when I sparked up a joint which literally sat him on his arse. Half an hour later when we pulled into our pre-booked accomodation, he was still stoned and nervous about being smuggled in, but we coerced him through it and he slept on the couch.
Of course, we had to successfully smuggle him out again also. So at 6am, we did and were prepared to leave, only to discover that we had a flat tyre. I was annoyed and rolled and smoked another joint before Andrew and I changed the tyre. Although offered some, it was a little early in the morning for our new friend, who was becoming more and more agitated by the whole experience.
All’s well that ends well and soon we were off, destination Auckland. About 30km’s down the road however, after a violent lurch, the wheel came completely off (we had failed to tighten the wheel nuts properly) and the left front side of the vehicle went down, the wheel drum riding the tar-seal and shooting out sparks as we bounced along for about 50 metres.
It was too much for our passenger. As Giff and I headed back down the road to find the wheel, he scarpered, without saying a word and we never saw him again. We put the wheel back on and that (luckily) was the end of the drama. We made Auckland about five hours later. From memory, top speed in that old shit heap was about 80km’s at best.
The absolute death nail in the coffin of The Pagans was a letter received, dated 19th November, from Mike Chunn at CBS Records New Zealand: "Dear Carl, Thanks for the tape of the Pagans. I ran through it a few times and felt that you had some good arranging ideas, but I guess where it fell down was the standard of material. I won’t be taking this any further, but I wish you all the best in your future endeavours."
Although, of course, we disagreed with him and considered that to be pretty much an Auckland orientated viewpoint. We considered ourselves to be most definitively a Wellington band, and that's like saying what works in LA won't necessarily work in London. But there seemed little point continuing after that. So we didn’t.