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I was a regular attender at the Stage Door
during most of the period they played there, and although
never one of their inner circle, my life for a while centred
on them and the music they played.
I first came across them at the Battle of the Bands at the
Addington Show Grounds when they were playing early Stones
material - 'King Bee', 'Little Red Rooster' and the like.
The music was nearly as impressive as their organisation.
They had friends throughout the crowd making sure people had
voting papers and that they were voting for the right group.This
sort of activity was repeated when the first single was released.
At the time the Listener carried voting forms for the New
Zealand Top Twenty and there were plenty of those forms at
the Stage Door so that the rest of the country could be enlightened
as to the great music being produced. I don't recall it did
any good however.
(The Chants' performance on TV on Town and Around) certainly
created a stir around Christchurch at the time, not so much
for the music as for the look. The clothes and hair were regarded
as pretty extraordinary for the time. I'm sure Borries' never
got wider exposure.
Although I was a regular at the Folk Music Sunday night sessions
that Phil Garland ran, my memory is that they were almost
invariably at the Plainsman rather than the Stage Door. The
latter venue, I think, was only used when the Plainsman was
for some reason unavailable. On one such night I recall Tony
Brittenden (the one with the psychedelic Austin 7) giving
a demonstration of African drumming using Trevor's kit, which
was still set up from the afternoon session. Theatrically,
I don't remember the Stage Door either. The one performance
I remember was by a Welshman who was touring New Zealand with
Hello Dolly. He did a one-man performance aided by a tape
recorder of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, which worked brilliantly
at that venue.
For me, at the end of the day, the clothes were great, so
was the hair, but it was the music that was important. The
clean image of Britpop was just as boring as some of the bland
American music that had gone before. To discover that there
was something else shimmering away under there that was exciting
and dynamic was a revelation. To discover Blues through the
Chants via John Mayall et al sent me down a track I have never
regretted. That the music was played as well as it was, was
a bonus. |
