A few days ago I was listening to my iPod on shuffle on the way home from work when Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” came on. It’s a cool song. It was released in 1980 and is a feel-good tribute to Bob Marley, with the classic forget-your-worries-and-have-a-good-time theme.

But then the second verse came along and Stevie sang of one of his reasons to be jammin’:

Peace has come to Zimbabwe
Third World’s right on the one
Now’s the time for celebration
‘Cause we’ve only just begun

Oh no.

It’s hard to hear that lyric now without feeling sad. Back when that song was written, Zimbabwe had just won independence from the British and Mugabe was going to usher in a new era of strength, hope and, uh, peace.

Things weren’t supposed to go in totally the opposite direction.

Plastic Fan-frickin’-Tastic

I was in at Salvation Army shop in Naenae, when I found a tape called “We Carry The Cup” - the official EP soundtrack for the 1986 America’s Cup campaign. It features the #1 smash hit song “Sailing Away”, which is probably the worst song ever in the history of anything ever. Ever.

I realised that someone born after, say, 1983, would have no memory of the magical time prior to 1986 when New Zealanders did not generally care about boat racing. They probably have no memory of cassette tapes either.

I showed various people the tape and one of the first things a lot of them said was, “Do you have tape player?” Yeah, I have a double cassette deck in my stereo (high-speed dubbing!). As totally obvious as it is, I didn’t realise that ordinary stereos don’t have tape players any more. They’re about as archaic now as a cathode-ray television. My stereo seems so old I feel like it should have doily on top of it.

Photos? Oh, why not!

Jesus of Naenae was such a staunch Housemartins fan, he shaved a cross into the side of his head.

“It’s a giant moth - a moth as big as Godzilla. If only there was some word we could use that would evoke both the scary sci-fi of a Godzilla-like creature and general mothiness. Oh, I know - Mothzilla!!!!”

What, you mean your local copy shop doesn’t do laminating? Get with it!

Fortunately, most of the letters were able to be delivered to their intended recipients, but one particular package containing a manuscript of an apparent romantic novel, was so badly damaged that not only was the entire envelope destroyed, but most of the pages too.

What follows are the last remaining words from the few undamaged pages. It is hoped that the original author can be found.

Page 1:

“Here, I want you to have this,” Auntie Nola said, passing Veronica a small folder. “It’s a ticket for a week-long cruise on the SS Good Times. I won it at the church gala, of all places! I’m too old for a cruise ship, but you, my dear, well, it might be just what you need. Might finally find a fellow!”

Page 15:

“What do you mean it’s a virgin pina colada? What, pineapple juice and coconut cream? That’s not a cocktail - that’s a detox, and I didn’t come here to detox!” Veronica was outraged.

Isaiah the bartender shrugged and passed the yellow drink to her. “Sorry, ma’am - there is no alcohol onboard this ship - captain’s orders.”

Veronica took the drink and mooched over to a deck chair on the Lido deck. What sort of ship didn’t have rum? And would she ever find love aboard the increasingly bizarre SS Good Times?

Page 38:

“I’m sorry, miss. The buffet has been closed due to a norovirus outbreak. But we have some packets of chips if you’re hungry.”

Page 82:

“This is only a bikini! How is this offensive?! I demand to see the captain!” Veronica was furious.

Page 85:

“Ah, I think I see where the confusion has arisen,” said the captain. “This is actually the SS God Times. We are a floating mission ship, bringing the word of the Lord to the South Seas.”

“Oh, you’re kidding me.” Veronica was outraged and furious. “Well, what am I supposed to do for the rest of the week? Pray?”

“Perhaps you would like to visit our Christian bookstore,” the captain suggested. “It’s the largest floating bookstore in the southern hemisphere. We have a large section for Christian singles.”

“Oh, Captain,” Veronica purred. “My bikini seems to have come loose. Could you be a dear and tie me up?”

“Uh, no. I’m… happily… married…”

Page 257:

“I’m your captain now, you bad bad boy,” she screamed.

“Shiver me timbers,” the captain moaned.

Page 258:

“Look, uh, this is kind of awkward. I don’t even want to see you again, let alone marry you. I was just bored. I mean, stuck on a ship for a week with no booze, not even shuffleboard… I was just looking for some good times.”

Veronica couldn’t find her bra, but it didn’t matter. The gangplank had been lowered. The real world awaited.

“But I think I’m going to check out that Christian singles website you recommended. Bye, captain. Thanks for the rum.”

THE END

• When the night’s getting on and your voice is starting to get a little hoarse (pony!!!), go for the punk. Singing “Anarchy In The UK” or “Lust For Life” is much easier to sing than anything with one of those melody things.
• But don’t try to match your hoarse voice with “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Yeah, Bonnie Tyler sounds like she gargles gravel, but she can sang, yo. You’ll get about 25%, if you’re lucky. The rest will sound like you have throat cancer.
• Don’t pick a song because it’s the theme tune to your favourite James Bond movie (”Live and Let Die”) and because there’s a cool jazzy version of it in the movie. Cos the karaoke machine will, of course, have the Paul McCartney and Wings version, which is an overwrought crapstravaganza. And what sort of lyric is “If this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry…”?
• If you got attitude, it don’t matter if you can’t sing, man. Pick a song that you like and belt it out. If the karaoke machine is half-decent, it’ll add some subtle effects that’ll help even out the crap.
• If the Deftones “Shove It (My Own Summer)” is on the list, and if you have a pal that you can sing it with, don’t. Cos even though it’s really fun to scream your arse off, your audience will hate you very quickly.
• If someone picks “Under Pressure”, everyone will think it’s SingStar time and start rapping “Ice Ice Baby”. Bonus points to anyone who can rap the whole thing.
• Don’t do “Wannabe”. The rapping bit is really fast and the singing is high. The Spice Girls make it look far too easy. (Wot, you mean you actually have to be able to sing properly to be a Spice Girl, etc.)
• Avoid songs with long instrumental breaks (re “Live and Let Die”). Cos while the soundalike karaoke track is going off on the instrumental, you’ll just end up standing there with the microphone. All attempts to dance will make you look like a dad.
• Make sure you actually know the song before you attempt to sing it. Nothing is quite as lolz-inducing to your fellow karaokers as you rewriting the first verse as “Rising up, back on the street… Um, I don’t actually know how this bit goes. Uh…”
• It’s quite fun to do Nsync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me”, cos you get to do all the me’s as “maaaay”. You can flush out all the closeted Nsync fans who’ll be secretly singing along.

Photo courtesy of beguilejapan’s Flickr stream.

I was sad that I couldn’t be part of F:Rad 2008, but apparently I am credited as an excellence consultant, which would probably be the “Hey, you can do serious! Go for it!” phone call with the director on the Friday night of competition weekend.

I’m really happy for Dylan, Andy and James - who’ve been the core of Fracture Radius right from the first year in 2003, when they made the appallingly bad “F.I.T” - and for the rest of the team, both amateurs and professionals, who no doubt worked hard and had much fun on 48Hours weekend.

But now my loyalties are torn! “The End” will be in the national finals, but then so will the Wellington winner, Smashing Pants’ “Darlene”, which I also have tons of cinematic love for. Ugh - does this mean I’ll have to support the Gisborne winner instead?

Auckland’s got a scenic photo of the city at night, with the sort of orange sky you’d normally only get if there’d been a volcanic eruption in the Philippines or something. The Sky Tower looks so bright and white, it’s as if they took a 1995 photo of the city and photoshopped a contemporary, daytime image of the Sky Tower into it. It’s all "Look at me! I am slick and urban! I am a world-class city - just like Sydney and Melbourne!!!!"

Whereas the Wellington card has a detail from some Para Matchett’s sculptures on the City To Sea bridge. He’s one of my favourite New Zealand sculptors (did you guess that aready from my Flickr icon?) so I’m happy to have that in my wallet.

I was planning on writing something earlier, but I got all sensitive artist about where I was going to write. I realised Virginia Woolf was right about needing a room of one’s own to write. And it took a while to get the interwebs connected.

I flew down on a rainy Auckland afternoon. Now the awful rainy weather has been seared in my memory as “Auckland”, alternating with a blissful, tropical summary image that somehow has palm trees and white sand around Queen Street.

For the first three weeks I stayed with Jo and Stephen, who were kind and lovely and let me use their spare room, which is really all one needs. I shall give a naive 1990s R&B/pop-album-note-style shout to them: “Yo, peace! Thanks for the spare room. Say no 2 drugz!”

Then I found a flat, centrally located, and have managed to figure out where the nearest awesome coffee place is (Schoc, 11 Tory Street).

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting the move and settling in to be like, but it’s turned out to be surprisingly easier than it seems it should. It hasn’t been without a few hassles or emo interludes, but it’s gone rather well for the whole ‘moving to another city and starting a new job’ thing.

Oh, but I know what you’re thinking. “Robyn, tell us, wot r some of the differences between Auckland and Wellington that you have noticed so far plz?”

All right, here you go:

Weather
I never had to pay attention to the weather in Auckland. It was usually grey and overcast, sometime a bit more sunny, other times a bit more rainy. But in Wellington, I’ve started reading the weather report. I know now what a southerly feels like. I’ve also had the unusual experience of coming indoors after some extremely windy weather and discovering that the wind appeared to have opened a wormhole to 1987 and brought back my hairstyle from when I was 12 years old.

Public Transport
I used buses quite a bit in Auckland, and I noticed that most of my fellow bus-goers were students or people in lower socio-economic groups. In other words, they were taking the bus because it was cheap. Whereas in Wellington, I see business people taking buses and trains to work. They look like they could easily afford to drive to work but choose not to.

Trains
I’m living in Wellington but working in the Hutt Valley. The quickest way to work is the train. Trains are still a novelty for me - it’s all a bit Thomas the Tank Engine, wahey, toot-toot, etc. I’m lucky that I’m travelling against the rush hour so I can enjoy the luxury of near empty carriages. When the full trains pull into the station in the morning, I don’t envy the sardine-like commuters.

Foods
It boils down to this: more Malaysian satay, fewer Chinese and Middle Eastern. More Japanese restaurants, but hardly any takeaway sushi places. And cafes are more likely to have affogato on their espresso menu, which is just fine with me. Also, I highly recommend the Kiallas Greek cafe in Newtown - especially their pancakes.

48Hours Film Competition
I sadly couldn’t take part this year with Fractured Radius, my old team in Auckland (not that they needed me: they just went ahead and make a totally brilliant serious film - serious! - that’s scored them a place in the Auckland finals!), so I volunteered to help out with Wellington. This involved handing out ping-pong balls on kick-off night, marking off completed films on the Sunday night, and helping with the judging process. As always, hard work but tons of fun.

The main difference between Auckland and Wellington 48Hours films is that the landscape seems to play a greater part in Wellington films. It’s harder to pretend that Lambton Quay is downtown Chicago, or that Lower Hutt is Central Park. Auckland is dirty streets, Wellington is hills and flats and harbour and sharp shadows.

By the way, the Wellington final is on Wednesday at the Embassy theatre. You should come. It’s going to be good.

Closeness - Things
Everything is close in Wellington. I like that I can walk places and go to things without having to work out some sort of elaborate transport plan. If it’s not a little walk away, it’s a pleasant stroll away.

Closeness - People
I’ve lost count, but it seems that about half my workmates know someone who I also know. I’ve already had the experience of walking down the street and running into people I know. This might seem ordinary, but it barely happened to me in Auckland, and only seemed to happened frequently to hugely social people.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to figure out how to unpack three rooms worth of stuff into one room without it looking like the abode of a crazy Trade Me lady.

I was a bit worried I might be late and miss my flight, or at least my check-in time, but the driver assured me he’d get me there on time.

After negotiating through the back streets of Onehunga, which were also chocker with traffic, we finally got on to the motorway. The accident had just been cleared and the city-bound lanes were slowly starting to move again. There was no logical reason for the airport-bound lanes to be slow. I can only conclude that it was a result of lookie-loos.

And true to his word, the driver got me to the airport in time for my flight.

But while I was ready to board my plane, it wasn’t ready for me. Thick fog had closed Auckland Airport to morning flights. The check-in area was full of people, laden with bags, wondering what they were going to do.

Ah, the fog. I’d noticed Mount Eden had been rendered invisible by it yesterday, and I hoped it wouldn’t cause trouble today. Cos everyone knows that delayed or cancelled flights cause trouble. People get angry and yell and throw stuff, right?

Well, here’s the great thing - everyone was cool about it. The Air New Zealand staff kept everyone informed, handed out snacks and water. Passengers figured out where they were supposed to go. I saw no one conforming to the stereotype of the angry, yelling passenger.

Some of the earlier flights had been canceled, but my lazy-ass 9am flight wasn’t and eventually it was called for boarding. I arrived in Wellington a couple of hours later than planned, but still where I needed to be.

Well, this inspired Stacezilla to check out was what playing on his company’s phone system. He writes…

Ugh I just checked ours and lo and behold Natures Best indeedy..

You have a unique opportunity to now submit what it SHOULD be replaced by as I am the power that be in our particular Govt Dept.

I’m not convinced by “More Nature” as the idea of purposely subjecting others to any of the following is not my idea of kindness.

“Harmonic Generator” - The Datsuns
“Welcome Home” - Dave Dobbyn
“Clav Dub” - Rhombus
“I Got” - Fast Crew

Ours is run off an ipod hooked into the PABX (don’t ask about format shifting) so it needn’t necessarily be an album, it can be a megamix from a stack of albums we’ll go out and buy.

So really, come up with a list of NZ music with a focus on post 05 (maybe a few classics). Open it to more people\comments if you want.

Join the Panel of Selectors….

So I had a think about this. So far I reckon “Hitchcock” by the Phoenix Foundation would be really good hold music, and maybe something by SJD. I’m not even much of an SJD fan, but his music just seems like it would be nice to listen to while on hold. Hmm.

I was talking ’bout this with my friend Mike, and he suggested some drum ‘n’ bass, but I get the feeling that listening to Concord Dawn while waiting on hold might not work well.

So, given this chance to decide the hold music that gets played on real phone system, what good, recent New Zealand music do you think should be on the list?

It was interesting listening to it, because it sounds like things changed quite dramatically around the time I left Hamilton.

Back in my Hamilton gig-going days (1993 to 1996), there were two main venues - the Wailing Bongo at Waikato University, and the Exchange Tavern on Victoria Street.

The Bong’ could comfortably accommodate popular touring bands (Supergroove, Shihad, various Flying Nun artists), but also worked for local bands. For example, Mobile Stud Unit’s Superstar Extravaganza packed out the Bongo bar with all local bands in 1995.

The Exchange was a much smaller venue, decorated in ye olde Hamiltonia style. It suited local bands more, but I remember Garageland packing the place out in 1995.

There are other venues like the Hillcrest Tavern (more mainstream) and the Downunder Bar (bogans) and Governor’s Tavern. And the vile Outback Inn was rumoured to host bands, but the only music I ever heard there was cheesy European dance music. And Kenny Rodgers’ “The Gambler”.

Anyway, according to the people interviewed on the Inside Track doco, the Waikato Student Union was taken over by a group of right-wingers who promptly sold off the Wailing Bongo and student radio Contact FM. Without a venue and a means of promotion, the scene took a few blows.

But despite this, there are still a whole lot of really good bands coming from Hamilton. In the documentary, Geoff from the Shrugs says that because Hamilton is so small and everyone knows everyone, you can’t be a rock star - everyone will see through it all - so the only thing left is to be a musician.

Another thing that comes up in the documentary is the feeling that some people look back at the live scene in the mide ’90s as a golden age, and wish things were like that now.

But back then, there weren’t always good bands playing. Sometimes all there’d be to see was some lame bogan rock covers band. Sometimes staying at home was a better option than going out.

My main complaint with growing up in or near Hamilton was that it was so boring. There was nothing to do. But the good thing about this is that rather than relying on some vibrant arts and culture scene to entertain me, I had to learn to make my own fun.

I think this is situation is still around in Hamilton, and it’s still one of the reasons people get together and form bands and create music. Because it’s Saturday and there’s nothing better to do.

It was then it dawned on me. This wasn’t just any old selection of New Zealand music. This was the first “Nature’s Best” CD - the 2002 two-disc compilation of classic Kiwi tunes - being played on random.

In order to make the wait a little less tedious, I went to Wikipedia, pasted the track list into a document and was going through it, ticking off the songs as they played. As the tracks were being played in a random order, it was a special surprise as to what would come up next. Would I be treated to “She Speeds”? How about some Chills? Or maybe Darcy Clay’s “Jesus, I Was Evil.”

Sadly the next couple of tunes were “Whaling” and a bit of “April Sun in Cuba” before my call was finally answered.

I’ve been put on hold to “Nature’s Best” at many New Zealand government departments and corporations. I guess it’s an easy, relatively inoffensive choice for hold music that lets the company feel good about “supporting New Zealand music”.

It could be worse - last week I found myself trying not to hang up while some grunt-infested Nickleback song played. The trouble with “Nature’s Best” is that there’s no music on it from this decade. It’s all neo golden oldies, and it’s about time that the corporations and government departments of Aotearoa start thinking about supporting contemporary New Zealand music (the “More Nature” compilation covers music from 2000 to 2005) instead of mindlessly defaulting to “Nature’s Best” as their hold music. Otherwise that Nickleback’s going to start sounding really good.