Auckland band Great North (or more specifically - their singer Hayden Donnell) are massive Bruce Springsteen fans. Having yet to be shoulder tapped by The Boss himself, they've taken it upon themselves to get the attention of him/his management or the tour promoter in another way. They're collecting signatures for a petition. Here's the lowdown via their petition site..

Great North frontman Hayden Donnell is a Springsteen fan. He yells the words to Thunder Road at traffic lights as fellow commuters stare, weeps on the couch to The Rising, feels unironic joy at the sound of a sax solo. Once, in a fit of madness, he bought plane tickets to see a Springsteen show in Hamilton, Canada. Please get behind Great North's bid for the second support slot for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at their Auckland show on March 1, 2014. Note: We don't want to replace Jimmy Barnes, just play before him. Or work out some harmonies to Working Class Man and play with him. Anything.

David Parker, Great North producer at Little Monster Studio, enemy: 7:17pm:
"One time I told Hayden I didn't really like Bruce Springsteen's music that much and so he put on a Springsteen album at full volume while trapping me in a corner and dancing up against me while I cowered on the floor. I am still traumatised by this event." 9:45pm: "I do not support this campaign, Hayden is a narcissist and you're all encouraging him."

Rachel, Great North band member, wife: Hayden has openly admitted that, while our relationship is fairly solid, he would likely leave me if Bruce Springsteen became available. I'm okay with this. Hayden deserves it.

Check out the petition right here and do consider signing it. They're a great band with a dream to open for their hero.

About to release a follow-up to their highly successful record Passive Me, Aggressive You, The Naked and Famous have released a single from the forthcoming In Rolling Ways. After releasing a series of EPs (and first appearing on Awesome Feeling - see our post on the 2007 compilation here), the band made it big in 2010, with their youth anthem Young Blood hitting #1 on the NZ singles chart and going on to chart in various places worldwide.

Hearts Like Ours isn't the immediate rush of Young Blood, but that would be asking a lot. It's still a dreamy, cinematic track that oozes youthful nostalgia. Pre-orders of the album are available on iTunes and the song was premiered by Zane Lowe at BBC Radio 1 in the UK last night. Check it out via the Soundcloud widget below.




Via Under The Radar

Check out Unknown Mortal Orchestra's flawless cover of (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay. The band is on tour this month and the Auckland show is reportedly just a few tickets away from selling out, so get in quick and grab tickets at Under The Radar.

Thursday July 18 - ReFuel, Dunedin
Friday July 19 - Kings Arms, Auckland
Saturday July 20th – Bodega, Wellington

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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If you're like us and can't wait for the very impending release of Kanye West's new album Yeezus, here's some tidbits to tide you over.

As one of our favourite blogs The Corner writes, some of his new material is being projected and played at locations all over the world. Here are the times and locations for the projections happening in Auckland tonight.

The New York Times did an interview with Yeezy for their blog. It's fascinating stuff. He's as confident as ever, comparing himself to Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan and gets into talking about the minimal construction of Yeezus. Check it out here. It's filled with other must read material like him regretting ever apologising to Taylor Swift with quotes like this:

But has that instinct led you astray? Like the Taylor Swift interruption at the MTV Video Music Awards, things like that. It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is.

And over at the Wall Street Journal, they've got an interview with Rick Rubin about the process and how Kanye promised to "score 40 points in the 4th quarter" to finish Yeezus in time for release.

And with the news that the album's leaked, there's also a number of reviews popping up online as various music reviewers try to figure out their feelings for an undoubtedly complex album while itching to yell "FIRST". Naturally most of this writing is terrible. Do the right thing - buy it in a few days and make up your own mind at the kind pace a good record deserves.

Someone once compared basketball to jazz - looking to draw a parallel between the improvisations of each medium. But you'd have a hard job selling that to a lot of latter day fans. With LeBron James and the Miami Heat currently playing in their third straight NBA finals appearance, now is the perfect time to listen to the always excellent PNC and David Dallas on their collaboration Kobe & LeBron (hit play on the widget above courtesy of TheAudience.co.nz).

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At the beginning of the month, I wrote about plans to raid our awesome music collection and listen to a New Zealand CD every day throughout Music Month. Much, much music later, here are four favourites from the month's exploration, and some clips to brighten the leaden-skied Queen's Birthday gloom out there. Check them out after the jump.

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Panther and The Zoo live at the Central Library

So it's the end of May - and that means the end of our scheduled run of Friday night concerts at the Central Library. Across the month we had Space Ventura, who recently featured on the latest edition of Awesome Feeling, we had Tui Award winners Great North, we had the charming Panther and The Zoo and we had the lonesome, folksy sounds of newcomers The Bonnie C.

It's been really great to see people turning out for these magical little shows in a place where perhaps you normally wouldn't expect to hear music...

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We dusted off the blanket fort again, Great North played in the library and it was really great. The wonderful Amanda Radcliffe from amandashootsbands.com showed up to document the night and here's one of her shots of a beautiful audience enjoying the band.

Massive thanks to Hayden, Rachel and Dale from Great North for making the time to play this show. You should really consider checking out their Tui award winning record Halves at the Great North bandcamp site where it's available to download at the very modest price of $10 or $25 as a CD. It's a pretty fantastic alt-country record and if you like anything in the realm of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Okkervil River, Dr Dog or Ryan Adams it's well worth your time.

If you missed it then check out this video below of part of their library performance for the next best thing, or come along to see Panther and The Zoo performing in the library this Friday.

 Space Ventura playing in a blanket fort next to the music section at Central Library

Now more than ever, libraries are more than just books - they have to be. At Auckland Central Library we've been very lucky to have the support of local musicians during May now and in years past.

This year our Music Month program at Central includes a series of unique, special performances every Friday at 6pm from the rising talent of Auckland's music scene. Our first guest, this Friday just been, was the very excellent Space Ventura (you'll see them above).

Tomorrow May 10 we'll be dusting off the blanket fort at 6pm again and we're very honoured to host Tui Best Folk Album award winners Great North.


And on May 17 we'll be continuing things in a folky vein with Panther and The Zoo. Fronted by the charming Graham Panther (yes, that's actually his real name), they offer crooned, wry observations on life and memorable hooks. The performance may serve as something of a farewell for Panther as he's heading off to Australia very soon. Here's a recent video for their song Everything, Everyone.



Friday May 10, 6-7pm at the Central Library: Great North
Friday May 17, 6-7pm at the Central Library: Panther and The Zoo
All performances free and all ages.

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.