Getting a bunch of musicians to hand in tracks for a compilation on time already seems like a bit of a nightmare. Asking them to write brand new songs for a compilation seems far, far worse. Then again, perhaps if the recording and the mixing is free and being done by the same person putting together the compilation, the chances for musician procrastination are limited. Perhaps that's what made the daunting premise of A Very Little Christmas possible.

Dave Parker runs a pretty stunningly good recording studio out of his bedroom in Oratia. It's called Little Monster, and he's recorded artists like Ruby Frost, Artisan Guns, Great North, Watercolours and a whole lot more.

As he will explain, A Very Little Christmas covers the quieter side of that spectrum without specifically making a theme of it. Probably every one of the artists has played a set at Auckland's low key bar the Wine Cellar, but it's more just a loosely affiliated group of bands befriended by Parker and former Border Music rep, now Bones and Woods/all around good guy Marty Jones. And with one guy recording 18 bands in his bedroom using largely the same microphones, preamps, room and producer's instincts, it's only natural that the album would have a pretty cohesive sound.



It's also interesting to note that some of the artists would go on to recycle their Christmas tracks for later releases. The Gladeyes re-recorded their stunning Carols and Parties for Shadows Explode.

Dear Times Waste did likewise with her track The Drink, re-recording it and putting it on her sublime record Some Kind of Eden. 

Rather than the re-recordings being a slight on the original recordings, I tend to think of it as a desire to reframe a song in the same sonic context as a new album, and it's a reflection on the quality of the writing generated by the project that artists would come to see their Christmas songs as more than mere novelties. The constraint of writing a song to a specific topic and to a deadline can be a powerful tool for focusing a piece. There's any number of quotes about art and limitations, and these words from G. K. Chesterton serve as good as any. "Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame." Here's David Parker talking about the compilation after the jump.

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As we talked about in Various Artists #2 with Go With The Movers, the mid 00s was a boom time for local music. It felt like there was a new band popping up every week. The ground was fertile - there were places for them to play, sometimes quite a lot of people to come see them, Blink was hitting his straps with his A Low Hum tours (which probably served to unify bands and audiences from across the country with tours that might not have happened otherwise) and the popularity of MySpace and more widespread internet access meant that new bands from all points of the country could get heard sooner. Amongst all that, in 2007 Real Groove (RIP, and not to be confused with the zombified corpse of Groove Guide these days) had a bold editor - Duncan Greive - who'd give a fair shake to the new Paris Hilton album just as soon as a four track recording of something noisy and exciting from Christchurch. And I seem to remember Stevie Kaye foregoing sleep and food and oxygen in an effort to get tracks from unheard artists up and down the country and write about them.

I don't like NME - I think it overhypes a lot of terrible UK bands because they need a new flavour of the month. But at the same time, you have to admire their willingness to champion great local music (even if the greatness of the music sometimes feels self-generated by the magazine itself). If there's a band that's killing it and doing fresh new things, you'll hear about it - and the whole new genre said band is supposedly spearheading. Maybe things are changing here, or maybe it's a population thing, but it feels like we don't have that same confidence in our own culture until it's been validated by various outside sources.

So Awesome Feeling was really awesome. Months earlier it'd been Liam Finn on the cover, which wasn't so out of the blue given his pedigree, but still seemed kinda bold ahead of his album release and its singles. Then for the issue carrying the Awesome Feeling compilation it was So So Modern front and centre, which must have been a shock to large portions of the public, but was so warranted considering the live phenomenon they'd become. Though they pulled pretty great numbers for a local band, it wasn't about the numbers at the shows. In terms of transforming an audience and actually getting Aucklanders to dance, they seemed unstoppable. They weren't alone in starting to peak. Cut Off Your Hands and Collapsing Cities became NME darlings, Bachelorette signed to Drag City, Diasteradio would tour the world. On the second edition it was the same thing, Street Chant had a four track demo as Mean Street (shot to the compilers for hearing a great song under the tape hiss and thin sound), it featured Princess Chelsea before she became a YouTube sensation, there was High Stakes - who had a #1 dancehall single in Jamaca, and AFII was the first place a lot of people heard The Naked and Famous before they had a record breaking #1 NZ single and turned heads the world over. Here's former Real Groove editor Duncan Grieve talking about the comp after the jump.

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It's hard to say exactly what hindsight will shine favourably on. One of the reasons I wanted to do some posts around local compilations of the last decade is because that time seemed like an explosion in local music. I'm not saying they're on the same level, but as the Gluepot scene or various Flying Nun bands were canonised, maybe time will look fondly on Eden's Bar and some of its luminaries.

Go With The Movers represents some figures from the Auckland/Hamilton/Wellington axis of that time. It's not exhaustive by any means - as Sam Walsh explains, it's a compilation built around degrees of separation. Pick three bands from the tracklist and it looks like a typical show that you might have seen Mole Music put on at Auckland's Eden's, Wellington's Bodega or Hamilton's Ward Lane in the mid 2000s. Also, many of the acts shared members, which goes to reinforce the idea that there's very few degrees of separation in New Zealand bands. Even if it seems really short at 12 tracks, the brevity helps maintain the cohesiveness and unity (despite the difference in sounds) the tracklist holds.

It's hard/impossible for me to be objective about this. Go With The Movers came out around a formative time in my musical life when I was young and idealistic and very excited about watching skinny dudes yell into microphones. But I think it holds up well. Probably better than any other compilation of the time it captures the sorta post-hardcore current that existed in the music scene at the time (I remember a Joe Nunweek article half-joking that perhaps so many Auckland bands were shouters/screamers due to the sorry state of the Eden's PA), and the sound of that blending with rock and roll bands as they shared bills.


The Vacants

There's The Blunts and The Popes of Del Ray playing Hamilton rock and roll straight and true, Amy Racecar and Connan and the Mockasins dialling down their energy for some warped ballads, The Vacants doing their grunge via Fugazi meets Joy Division kinda thing, Nova Echo's (most of who went on to form Cut Off Your Hands) post-punk blur of a track Cvision, This Night Creeps' daunting musical ability and The Batstorm channelling Blood Brothers styled hardcore.

At the time some of these bands seemed like the best in the world - which I guess they weren't, but the point was that they were here and you could see them. Watching shows as an idealistic young man I swear most of these bands were destined for really big things. Some have done some big things and others have have broken up or disappeared from view, and this snapshot is just a small piece of the picture of what was happening, but maybe we'll look back on what was happening and realise that there was a turning point taking place.


This Night Creeps as seen on the great Cheese On Toast TV show Something On TV

Here's Mole Music's Sam Walsh talking about putting together Go With The Movers.
Listening back to this compilation, what do you like about it?
I like how weird it is and because it was the first release I ever did it kind of holds this strange sort of sentimental value to me. I also like that my dad still plays it sometimes and knows most of the songs off by heart, its super cute. 

"We started meeting all these super rad people who were just as hyper as us about what they were trying to do and so there was this really lovely connectedness and kinship."

Compilations document a certain musical moment. Can you paint a picture for me - what was happening in music at that time? And what did you want to preserve from that time?
It was made over a time when the bands I was playing in and the bands my friends were playing in were touring and putting on crazy amounts of shows. From that I/we started meeting all these super rad people who were just as hyper as us about what they were trying to do and so there was this really lovely connectedness and kinship. It was a really fun time in my life and I think for a lot of the other people involved too. Its pretty old now but I'm still friends with most of the people on the compilation and I think that kinda sums it up in a way.

Can you tell us about the moment when you decided this was something worth doing, and what was your initial concept for the compilation?
When we started working on Go With The Movers I guess we were trying to capture some fragments of that hyperness and energy. I wanted to start a label and thought that a compilation would be a good first step. Me and Adam (McKay - My Business Bro at the time) talked about it on a tour once and I think and he came up with the name way before we even figured out how we'd do it.

What did these artists have in common that made them belong on a compilation together?
I've always liked doing projects that mix genre and audience and have always tried to do that with shows so it was basically the same sort of thinking. A mix of bands from different cities playing different styles of music but who had played shows together or were friends and stuff. I hadn't toured down South then so it's all North Island bands which is a shame but at the time that was really all I knew. The kinda concept for it was four bands from Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton, each representing a different sort of "genre" (i don't like that word but I can't think of a better one) of music from their city. It was based around the idea of "degrees of separation" and trying to showcase the "connectedness" of what was going on. I guess part of the mixed genre thing was to appeal to a larger audience and also to make it a bit more interesting as a "collection" if that makes any sense.

Did it seem to springboard anything for any of the artists involved?
I'm not sure about springboard and I didn't have a clue about how to promote or sell a record so it kinda just got made then floated around but I like looking back at it and seeing that most of the bands are still making music in some form or another and many of them have gone on to do some pretty rad things.

Tell us about your favourite track on the compilation.
Without sounding like a total butt-head I honestly really like all the songs on it.

Not counting this one - what's your favourite compilation?
I haven't listened to them in awhile but I was pretty obsessed with all the Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph compilations that came out in the early 2000's. Like the Punk O Rama's and Fat Music For Fat People and stuff.

Is there anything else interesting that you can tell me about the compilation and its creation?
I wrote this super dorky manifesto-esque piece about music and the compilation inside the sleeve which is probably really silly sounding now. I also spelt "Moccasins" wrong which has bummed me out for ages. 

Who did the artwork and where can we find their stuff?
[This Night Creeps vocalist/graphic designer] Luke McPake did the artwork. It was one of our first ever collaborations together and he got super conceptual on it which was really rad. He made all the bands take a photo of themselves in a bathroom, in front of a mirror holding a flower in one hand, closing their eyes and there was some soap or something and I think it had a door in it and then he morphed all the pictures together. You can find his video stuff on Vimeo here.

Tell me about the FIRST compilation you ever owned? I think mine was Rhythm Volume 16 and I wish I still had it. 
The first compilation I ever owned was a chunky double disk of 50's and 60's hits that my uncle gave me for no real reason. I was only like six or seven so I can't remember the name of it but it was this mental bright pink colour and every now and then I try and find it again if I got to a record store but know I never will. My favourite song on it was Leader Of The Pack by The Shangri La's which I still think is one of the greatest songs ever written. I would play it over and over again and dance around to it and it got super scratched and worn out but never skipped or died. I have this really vivid memory of the girl who used to babysit us putting it on and laughing at me and my brother as we sang the lyrics and jumped around the lounge to Great Balls of Fire. I don't know what happened to it, I guess my mum threw it away to save herself from the mayhem it caused.

If your interest is piqued it's well worth tracking down a second hand copy of Go With The Movers at Real Groovy or borrowing the Auckland Libraries copy from here.

The explosion of local music that happened in the 2000s is something we probably won't fully appreciate until we look back at it with a bit more retrospect. Bands stew over releases until they hate them, re-record, break up or fade out and sometimes a short run of compilations is all that's left. While the medium gets a bad rap from major label curated, vaguely themed showcases for their artists and whatever number Now That's What I Call Music is up to, a really great compilation can be as good as any single album. At its best, a compilation can act as a snapshot of a moment, locale or musical scene.

At All Things Musical we thought it was worth revisiting some relatively recent local compilations. One of these is Underground Resistance. Compiled by Joel Pinkham and Matt Barnes (he of the local punk site and messageboard Punkas.com), it's a great cross section of local punk bands circa 2003. As Matt explains, it captures a variety of loosely 'punk' related bands: there's the old school punk vibes of the legendary Missing Teeth, the melodic sound of Dunedin stalwarts Ritalin, an early Bleeders track, The Rabble before they become hilarious and the spazzy post-hardcore of This Night Creeps.

Here's Matt answering a few questions about Underground Resistance, and if your interest is piqued, it's well worth scouring the second hand bin at Real Groovy for it, or borrowing Auckland Libraries' copy of it here.


Listening back to this compilation, what do you like about it?
I like the consistency of the compilation. A lot of tracks were hand-picked, but there were a few where it was the band that was chosen and they submitted a track of their choice. And yet, I think it holds up pretty well. It feels like a good cross-section of stuff that was going on at the time.

Compilations document a certain musical moment. Can you paint a picture for me - what was happening in music at that time? And what did you want to preserve from that time?New Zealand music has always been influenced by overseas movements and I don't think punk is any different. So, while the US saw a boom in the mid- to late-90s in the genre, it was more like the late-90s and early-00s here. More by accident than by design, Underground Resistance came out pretty much at the peak of that, before the likes of post-hardcore and metalcore and the like replaced punk and pop-punk in popularity in this country.

Can you tell us about the moment when you decided this was something worth doing, and what was your initial concept for the compilation?
Actually, it was Joel Pinkham's idea. He was a young guy in a band who liked also booking shows for other bands and just really wanted to help the scene out. He'd never put out a CD before and so came to me and I was also able to get to a lot more bands through my web site at PunkAs.com. It came together really very quickly - but even then, punk being punk, a couple of bands still managed to break up before the CD actually got out there!

What did these artists have in common that made them belong on a compilation together?
They were loosely 'punk' related bands that I or Joel liked. There really was no more thinking behind it than that. I did want to try to cover a bit of geographic ground, I didn't want it to be just say an Auckland/Wellington compilation. But that was really the only deliberate choice in there.

Did it seem to springboard anything for any of the artists involved?
I have no idea, but I doubt it. It sold pretty well, though, so maybe the bands had an extra few people at shows? I wouldn't know.

Tell us about your favourite track on the compilation...
Ah, that's tough. I love Missing Teeth, and their shout-along Brydon Utd was always one of their best. Same with Wellington band Dirk Drent and their wah-heavy Tailbone Terror. But possibly my favourite was My Two Cents' track Memories. They were unusual in that they had broken up while we were putting the compilation together, but we made an exception to put them on there - in fact, there is also a track (find the mp3 here courtesy of 1157 Records) on there by the band they formed subsequently, This Night Creeps.

Not counting this one - what's your favourite compilation?
I liked the two Puppykiller Records compilations - Pick of the Litter 1 & 2. They were very much Auckland-oriented, but there was lots of great stuff on those and they were much more focused in terms of sound.

Is there anything else interesting that you can tell me about the compilation and its creation?
It was really simple to get together. We had a couple of release shows and that was about it for promotion, but it sold out within a couple of months - possibly because we sold it pretty much at cost. I think it was nominated for a couple of awards, too? (Underground Resistance was nominated for Compilation of the Year at the 2004 bNet Awards)

Who did the artwork?
The artwork was by me, riffing on the logo from the Japanese movie Battle Royale, which has as its central conceit a Government initiative to repress youth rebellion by having the kill each other. There's something in that metaphor and punk rock that appealed to me. The liner notes were then loaded with a million in-jokes from the PunkAs web site forums.

Tell me about the first compilation you ever owned? Mine was The Rhythm Volume 16 (I think?) and I wish I still had it.  
I never really bought compilations growing up. I do remember getting one called Faster & Louder: Hardcore Punk Volume 1 and I'm pretty sure there was never a Volume 2. It had so many great bands on there like Mission of Burma and Bad Brains, plus one of my all-time favourite songs in Dead Kennedys' Holiday in Cambodia. I thrashed it to death and got so used to that version that I was thrown when I finally got the Dead Kennedys album it's off (Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables) and found it was a slightly different arrangement.