All entries for Monday 28 May 2007

The New Zealand Scene

Writing about web page http://www.nzmusicmonth.co.nz

May 2007 was New Zealand’s Music Month, and although I did notice that there was a week of bands playing on campus in the Quad, it never seemed to catch the imagination, or even attention of a lot of people I talked to.

Maybe I was talking to the wrong people (I mean, engineers entertainment is usually in alcoholic liquid form), but maybe it wasn’t all that good? In the last fortnight or so, I set out about gathering some tracks from NZ bands in the attempt to gauge what was going on, and if there was a ‘scene’ at all…

If I asked you to name a New Zealand band, I suspect a lot of people would go ‘uh?’, I’d mention Crowded House and you’d go ‘really?’, or The Datsuns and you’d go ‘who?’, or maybe even mention some Australian bands that probably get mixed up now and again. I mean the accent’s the same, right? Wrong.

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to educate you about what I’ve found about NZ music. So…

Motocade, who I went to see last week live and who have been getting a lot of good blog hype (for good reason), one of the national music magazines, Real Groove, which conveniently had a showcase of NZ bands on its cover CD, and of course the local university band scene, of which I have also been to see a few bands and ‘obtained’ a compilation CD. If I have time, you may also get a post about some of the more the mainstream NZ music, the Australian/NZ crossover, the dub influence and a reminisce about Drum ‘n Bass clubbing in Dunedin (or maybe not).

And in answer to the question of a scene… here’s the opening couplet from Motocade’s My Friends

Let’s pretend to be part of the scene,
They can show you, what fucked really is… oh!

James Riley : 28 May 2007 10:00 |  Tags: Indie Motocade Music New Zealand Rock |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem