Archive for October, 2002

Fashion Parade

Published
by
Robyn
on October 27, 2002
in Events
. 0 Comments

It was the last day of the 2002 New Zealand Fashion Week. It was also laundry day for me so all my cool clothes were in the process of being washed and dried. I managed to score tickets to the big public event, “Style On Stage”. I considered asking one of my manfriends to go along with me, but as most of them are going through gay/not gay sexuality crises, I decided being asked to fashion show probably wouldn’t be the best thing for them, so I just showed up on my own.

I’d never been to a real fashion show before. I had attended to a fund-raising high school fashion show, where nervous teens modelled old lady fashions from the frock salon down the road. There was one of those mall shows where local part-time models showed off the latest season’s tracksuits and t-shirts. And then there was the department store lingerie show where the mainly male audience had showed up to see the supermodel walking around in her undies. But no, I’ve never been to a real fashion show.

I showed up to the Auckland Town Hall and was surrounded by a whole lot of people - mostly women; mostly what my Dad would call “well dressed”. Then there were the people who were wearing stuff like purple zebra skin pants with a mustard yellow geometrical peasant blouse and a giant triangle of fuzzy red fabric thrown over the shoulder. And then there was me, wearing my laundry-day finest. It was skanky old t-shirt and bad-fitting jeans time.

I took my seat and the show started. When models are on the runway, they don’t act like a regular person does. The female models have a particular kind of walk. Rather than walking with the legs a little bit apart, runway models put each leg right in front of the other, so it’s like their long thin legs are coming hurtling down the runway. To balance this, they pull their pelvis back and are kind of leaning back their upper body. When I got home I tried walking like that. It takes effort.

And yeah, just like all the pop culture cliches, the models all had a look of utter boredom on their faces. It was almost like they were so bored with the runway work their minds had left their bodies, leaving their faces blank and expressionless. It was a really creep voodoo zombie thing.

I enjoyed the music most of all. There was a lot of early ’90s hip-hop. It was funny watching the blank-faced models strutting in time to LL Cool J yelling, “Mama said knock you out! I’m gonna knock you out!” But my favourite moment came when “Bonita Applebum” by A Tribe Called Quest was playing. A model came walking down the runway. Q-Tip rapped, “Satisfaction, I have the right tactics.” She reached the end and paused. The beats cut out and Q-Tip’s lone voice rang out: “And if you need ‘em I got crazy prophylactics.” I think I was the only one laughing.

The show was highlighting a number of New Zealand fashion designers who’d had stuff in Fashion Week. The clothing ranged from ordinary clothes that anyone could wear down the street, to the freaky conceptual stuff that needs to be diluted before it can be fit for public consumption. There were no deliberately visible nipples, but there was one poor lass who twice was stuck with wearing a low cut jacket with nothing underneath and quickly had to grab it to stop her boobs from popping out.

Despite all the cool music and little oddities that were distracting me, I was paying attention to the clothing being paraded. The thing I liked the best was skirts and trousers that had belts slung in low diagonal lines. I could declare that the must-have accessory of the now, but I know I’d probably never wear a skirt with a low-riding belt. Unless, of course, it was laundry day and I had nothing else to wear.

Lessons

Published
by
Robyn
on October 27, 2002
in Biography
. 0 Comments

Growing up, things were ok. Then when I was about nine years old, my parents decided that I needed some extracurricular activities. Instead of asking me what I wanted to do, they decided for me, and I found myself being dragged along to do a bunch of stuff I wasn’t particularly interested in.

It seems that there was some sort of informal plan for me to be bred into a polite, well-mannered, cultured young lady. Sadly it didn’t turn out that way. But here’s what happened in the process.

Piano Lessons

I started with Old Lady #1 who taught using the Suzuki method. I’m not sure what exactly the Suzuki method was, but I remember that I had to bow to her at the start of every lesson.

I was taught from a book of easy piano tunes. They were all boring, childish songs. One I remember playing a lot was “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, but each note had to be hit to a certain rhythm that fit the pattern of “I-am-ve-ry-hap-py”. But I wasn’t happy; I was miserable.

Next I went on to Old Lady #2 who taught using a more conventional method. I remember her slagging off the Suzuki method as being really only suitable for highly disciplined Japanese children who start playing the piano when they were three years old.

I still didn’t enjoy playing the piano and the songs didn’t get any better. At one stage I remember having to regurgitate some tune at an old people’s home, and another time I had to play something for my grandmother and was rewarded with a chocolate bar.

Eventually my mother realised that when I said I didn’t like piano lessons that, yeah, I actually didn’t like them. She said that I didn’t have to go anymore, but she reckoned that in years to come I’d look back and regret it. Well, it’s over 15 years later and I don’t particularly regret it. No one has sing-alongs around the piano these days.

Speech and Drama Lessons

I’m not sure why I had to go to speech and drama lessons, but once a week for about two years I went off to see a lady called Doris.

I learned how to read poems and passages from books. I did improvisational drama skills. I learned all those techniques about how to project my voice and stuff. I passed level one and two of the New Zealand Speech Board exams. I’ve not yet included that on my CV.

I had mixed feelings about taking speech lessons. It was fun, but also kind of uncool. I think in the end of got really bored with it and kept pestering my mum to let me stop doing. Eventually she relented.

Swimming Lessons

When I was at school I learned how to swim. I got all the stickers on my water safety card. If I went to the beach I could go in the water without freaking out. But this wasn’t enough. Apparently I had to learn to swim more, so off to swimming lessons I went.

Once a week I’d show up to this skanky old lady’s house. She had a big heated indoor pool built out the back where she taught classes of kids to swim.

The bit I hated the most was having to wear a rubber cap on my head. It pulled my hair and felt really uncomfortable. I learned all the techniques and tricks for swimming. I got right up to the advanced class, then the lady said that she had taught me all she knew.

I honestly think that since those lessons I’ve never, ever, done that proper, straight-line swimming, ever. I can’t even remember any of those techniques now. All the times that I’ve been in a pool or the ocean I’ve just floated around. It’s more fun.

Tennis Lessons

These were the shortest-lived lessons. I think I only went once, maybe twice.

I don’t know why I was dragged along to get tennis coaching. I’ve never liked tennis. It’s boring to watch, and I don’t like playing it either. Oh look, here comes a little green ball hurtling at me and I have to hit it with the racket. No, that’s not fun.

So I had my Saturday morning disrupted by this stupid tennis lesson. I decided that enough was enough and I wasn’t going to have another weekend ruined by something so unpleasant.

The next Saturday I barricaded myself in the bathroom. I took food and books, enough to keep me going at least until the lesson time was over.

My friend and her mother came to pick me up and my parents made her come and talk to me through the bathroom door. She couldn’t make me change my mind.

Eventually the reality of the situation dawned upon my parents. Yeah, I actually didn’t want to get tennis lessons. Since then no one has asked me to play tennis, and I don’t think I even know anyone who plays. Funny, that.

And then…

About ten years after the glut of lessons, I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar. I got a cheap guitar and taught myself a few chords, and then I got a nicer guitar and took lessons. I worked at it, and I enjoyed learning and playing. It was fun, and that’s the big difference.

Rock, and Roll

Published
by
Robyn
on October 17, 2002
in Music
. 0 Comments

On the corner of Bow Street and Wainui Road in Raglan, is the Tongue and Groove cafe. Inside, on the wall of the corridor next to the toilets, are posters advertising bands that have previously played there. Amongst all the posters is a hand-designed, photocopied A4 poster for a show that took place on 25 August, 2000, featuring Hamilton-based bands The Nerve and Trinket. They’d apparently made the hour-long drive over to Raglan to broaden their rock horizons. Admission was only $3.

Back when I lived in Hamilton I used to go out a lot to see bands play and kind of got involved with the scene. I had guitar lessons from the guy who was the lead singer and guitarist in the Nerve, and I remember at the battle of the bands in 1996 when two bands named Trinket entered (the other Trinket ended up changing their name, but neither of the Trinkets won that year).

I saw a lot of really good bands playing. Some only lasted a few months, others stuck around for years. There was always this feeling that eventually there had to be a band from Hamilton that would go on to greatness.

The problem was that Hamilton had this reputation as being full of bogan-rock metal bands. The last band from Hamilton that did anything big was Knightshade, rocking the charts in 1986 with their scorcher “Out for the count”. Cleverly using boxing as a metaphor for a bad relationship, they sealed Hamilton’s reputation as a bogan rock city.

I still had hopes. I wanted there to be a band coming along out of Hamilton that was so good that they’d blow away all preconceived notions of Hamilton rock and make people sit up and take notice.

For a while I had high hopes for Trucker. It was a bit of a Hamilton supergroup, with the guitarist from the Nerve, the bass player from Trinket, and a couple of other guys who’d done their time in other bands. Trucker were pretty good live, but by the time they got their stuff recorded it sounded a bit too processed. Their coolness hadn’t made it onto the CD.

Then an unexpected thing happened: a band from Hamilton got really big.

A few years earlier Trinket had changed the kind of music they played. They went for a harder, more rock and less pop sound. They also changed their name to suit. They were now known as The Datsuns.

After years of electronic music dominating what was cool, suddenly rock ‘n’ roll came back into fashion - really, massively into fashion. Not only was rock ‘n’ roll the new rock ‘n’ roll, but it was also the new black. The Datsuns were getting out there and playing and were getting noticed in Britain. They played big music festivals, were signed to Richard Branson’s V2 label, did a session for John Peel’s show, made it onto the cover of the NME and - holy shit - played on Top of the Pops.

They even made it into The Face magazine’s “40 messed up new bands” special where Dolf told it like it is with the quote, “I’ve heard Hamilton referred to as a ‘cultural wasteland’. It took us years to find people who appreciate what we do.”

But here’s the kicker, the kind of freaky little twist the follows the “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it” line: I don’t really like the Datsuns’ music.

I interviewed them once and they are really nice guys. They’ve worked really hard and put so much effort into their music. They seem pretty smart and I think they’re really enjoying what they’re doing, but I just don’t connect with their music.

I saw them play a few months ago at the King’s Arms and while most of the capacity crowd was just freaking out and having a rockin’ ol’ time, I was standing at the back kind of digging it, but just not really having much fun. It just felt like I was just standing in dark, smoky room listening to a band play than experiencing some sort of divine rock ‘n’ roll experience.

I still like going out and seeing bands play and I’ve seen some live stuff lately that has excited me and blown me away, but I just can’t get into the Datsuns. I’m not going to force it or fake it. I’m just going to keep listening to bands that I really like. Maybe there’s something good on this weekend at the Tongue and Groove.