It can't be easy being an under-aged band. You can't play at bars (mostly), and if you play in a non-conventional venue it's really easy for someone to call noise control and have you shut down. Where do you play? How do you keep momentum after that riotous Rockquest performance that changed some of your schoolmates lives but didn't tick the boxes on the judges checksheet? And then with all that there's often a lack of financial means for instruments etc, curfews, lack of transport, still developing musical skills...
Hamilton used to have a thriving music scene in the mid 2000s. They might still do (do they?), but you wouldn't really know it because there's a dearth of places to play. I'm no authority, but from the outside it looked like one of the reasons why Hamilton had so many good bands midway through the last decade is there was a place for their youngest incarnations to play. Youth Zone was a venue in the city centre which was relatively affordable and accessible to young bands. From what I remember it was council run or subsidised. Bands young and old could play there and it was a skip and a jump, literally and figuratively, away from R18 venues like Ward Lane. It gave kids somewhere they could safely listen to or play music on Friday and Saturday nights. Youth Zone is gone now and it seems like it took Hamilton's thriving music scene with it. Our other main centres have had similar problems, when there's a viable all ages venue it's surprising how many incredible bands come out of the woodwork, but the venues come and go, and so do a lot of the bands. As an aside, you can see why Parachute became such a popular destination for underage punk/hardcore bands and fans (Christian and otherwise). If there's no venues in your town and your drummer went to church, you could play for kids from up and down the country Parachute still seems to hold a place like that for punk and hardcore bands, but now with things like Camp A Low Hum and Chronophonium that kind of festival opportunity is becoming more available for good young bands.
Pressure To Be - 18 and Under New Zealand is a compilation of bands where the members were all 18 or under at the time. While playing live is filled with obstacles for young bands, these guys managed to find places to do it. Not to say that this is the only document of an all ages scene in New Zealand, but with all the barriers stopping young bands from being able to play and release music, a document of posterity like this feels really valuable. Even if our cities remain unhelpful towards underage bands being able to play live, at least the home recording revolution means that we'll increasingly have documentation of their music.
Something I really enjoy in these kinds of documents is that there's often some sort of statement in the liner notes. The compiler inevitably cringes at them, but they're pretty great in their context. I wish I'd been including these from the start. Here's a snippet from Pressure To Be's liner notes.
"We feel that there are too many good young New Zealand bands around for this [compilation] not to happen; there are many more exceptional young bands around, but these are our favourites. Even if some of these bands disintegrate over the next years, this won't be the last you see of these individuals."
I haven't seen too many of these bands, even though Pressure To Be isn't far removed from the time of Awesome Feeling and the heyday of A Low Hum. It's interesting to hear the compilers talk about the influence of Awesome Feeling on their compilation (it's worth noting one of the compilers of Pressure To Be was Nicole Gaffney, a member of Auckland act Moron Says What?! - a teenaged band of wunderkinds that first came to many people's attention on Awesome Feeling II). And with Pressure To Be's proximity to that time, they feel like the second shockwave after that earlier boom of bands and their recordings.
It's not just age that ties the compilation together. With the cyclic nature of musical movements, there's a definite 1990s flavour that runs through the songs, a tendency towards distortion, with vocals low in the mix, a youthful disinterest in making anything with overt commercial ambition, but a lot of great songs. There's These Dancing Wolves recalling Dischord Records, the slacker vibes of Nevernudes on White Teethed Teens (cease and desist Lorde), wunderkind Shipwreck's (now renamed Lontalius) bedroom pop and the almighty racket of TFF.
These Dancing Wolves with album opener Chief, King Sir
While there might not be any huge names
on the compilation (at least looking at it now...) it seems like a pretty worthy moment, and a lot of
them are probably doing/going to do amazing stuff down the track and
we'll look back on their stuff on this compilation as this thing of
precocious beauty. Let's hear from Pressure to Be compilers Nicole Gaffney and James Stuteley after the jump.
It's not just age that ties the compilation together. With the cyclic nature of musical movements, there's a definite 1990s flavour that runs through the songs, a tendency towards distortion, with vocals low in the mix, a youthful disinterest in making anything with overt commercial ambition, but a lot of great songs. There's These Dancing Wolves recalling Dischord Records, the slacker vibes of Nevernudes on White Teethed Teens (cease and desist Lorde), wunderkind Shipwreck's (now renamed Lontalius) bedroom pop and the almighty racket of TFF.
These Dancing Wolves with album opener Chief, King Sir
