| Jeff
Rowe of Wellington writes..
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. |
