April '1
| Some
Chants' fans reminisce.. |
These
quotes were sent to me by Chris Grosz, who says "Here's
Midge quoted in August 1966 at the time of the Chants Wellington
shows under a 'Wild, Man...' subhead." Midge: "No
one dances, everyone just stands and takes it in. They really
had me wrapped. They jumped up and down on their instruments.
They kicked them.They threw them."
Maureen
Jensen was the Chants' fan club secretary as I recall and wrote
a piece for Teen
Beat
after the band left for Melbourne in 1966. |
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| The
Breakaways' Midge Marsden
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"Chants?
We used to see them heaps in Christchurch live. We played with
them several times. We tried to gig up with them as many times
as we could. They came and stayed with us in Wellington, in
our house at Seatoun. Wild times. It was the same time as Pretty
Things. They had access to material we didn't have - that John
Mayall stuff and Van Morrison things - 'Mystic Eyes' and stuff.
Must have had a good contact. 'I'm Your Witchdoctor' still stands
as one of the greatest things recorded here. Powerful. They
were like wild live."
check out the Bari
& The Breakaways
website for Midge Marsden background |
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| 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. |
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| Alan
Hill of Broadway, New South Wales writes.. |
I was on
holiday in Christchurch recently and did the proverbial double
takewhen I saw Social End Product on sale in a High St newsagents.
I remembered that Chants picture immediately, despite not having
seen it for almost 30 years.The feature on the Chants was brilliantly
done and brought back a lot of memories for this ex-pat 40-something.
It's inspired me to order the Chants CD and listen to them once
again, my copies of their singles being long gone. They were
shoplifted from the old Robert Francis store in Columbo St.
I was at Mairehau High School from 964 to 1967, the same school
that Trevor Courtney went to although he was a couple of years
ahead of me and my mates. In the early years of high school,
I never went to the King Bee or the Stage Door, the parents
of the era having more influence than they do now (the club
had a "bad reputation"). But the apprentice mods of
Mairehau were very proud to have the Chants' drummer at our
school.
Trevor Courtney was the star when the school had an exhibition
night in 1964. The school orchestra, in which I played the clarinet,
did its stuff in one of the classrooms, but we were totally
upstaged by an instrumental trio of John Clinton (guitar), Chris
Bailey (guitar) and Trevor (drums). They started out with Irving
Berlin's 'Blue Skies' (seriously), followed with 'Wipe Out'
- drums in the spotlight - and finished with 'God Save The Queen'
(the traditional version, although rarely played like this).
We started going to the Stage Door in 1966, about the time Max
Kelly/Matt Croke left and Tim Piper came in. The volume in that
cramped cellar was truly awesome, but that was a large part
of the appeal. Parent's warnings about hearing damage were laughed
off; they turned out to be right, but it's too late now. The
Pretty Things were a great influence on the Christchurch "mods"
of the era, and the Chants used to do a great version of 'Get
The Picture'.
Everyone bought or stole the Chants' singles when they came
out on the Action label. The production was pretty terrible.
Sound was also a problem when the Chants appeared on local TV
just before they left for Australia. I was surprised how cool
the straight looking host was when he interviewed them: I was
utterly amazed that my mother liked their music (they did 'I'm
Your Witchdoctor').
The Chants were followed into the Stage Door, later the Ram
Jam, by Our Generation, later just the Generation. John Clinton,
playing drums by now, was in that band so the Mairehau High
School connection was maintained. Bob Heinz was on guitar; he's
now a leading light in the Christchurch jazz scene.
It's all a long time ago, but memories are vivid. In 1966, someone
at school had some publicity pics of the Chants Mk 4. Tim Piper,
for some reason, had his head turned away from the camera. Later,
in Australia, I saw Trevor Courtney on TV playing a commercial
band, presumably the Vibrants. I also saw Mike Rudd at Big Festivals
such as Wallacia playing with Spectrum, and later still, Ariel.
Elsewhere in the magazine, memories good and bad, mostly bad,
were stirred by the piece on the death of Les Thomas. I was
away working at Waipori Falls when that happened, but the aftermath
was heavy. Going into town on Friday night out of school uniform
wasn't worth the trouble: one night in mod-influenced mufti
I was chased by three rockers all the way down Colombo Street
from the Square to Moorhouse Ave. It took months for all that
to settle down. Incidentally, most of the graffiti I saw said,
"Mods Killed Les" rather than "Mods Killed Lightning".
This from Tom Thumb's Rick White - "Ken Cooper (Wellington
promoter) had a venue in Christchurch where Chants R & B
were doing well at the Stage Door. He sent two or three bouncers
down there on an aeroplane with a sign saying"house full',
that he'd made. They set it up outside the Stage Door and they
stood there and made sure no-one went in. That happened three
weekends in a row. That's how the guy operated."
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| Pam
Bittle gets in touch |
7.5.10.
- It was a couple
of years ago now I got this rather breathless message from Pam
Bittle - she used to be Pam Newton - and
I've finally got round to putting up the pics she sent
me. There are a couple of names that elude me still, but someone
might help me track 'em down.
I've also heard from Noddy (pic 3 below) and
he fills us in as to his life story after the Chants left Christchurch.
It begins after the notorious event at my flat in Cashel St..
Hey Mike...Stubbled across your site. I was one of
the girls at the StageDoor, OH SO many years ago......I have
so many pictures of you and the guys and myslef. Wow can't believe
I found this site. I'd love to send you some of these old pictures
of us all... I used to call u MIKE CRUD.. LOL. I come home downunder
every year, I live near San Francisco now. Hope to hear from
u whenever u have time. Wow brings back so many wonderful memories
of those days...
Cheers Pam |
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| The
Pam Bittle photo album |
1)
Pam and Mike who's being perfectly silly 2) Pam has a
word to Chants' guitarist Tim Piper 3)
Noddy and
Pam discuss Noddy's blindness
4)
Pam with the supercilious Paul Fisher 5)
Martin and his Epiphone 6) Celia Bolt thinks this is Owen
7) Pam and Celia are still thinking.. |
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| Noddy's
post-Chants tale |
Noddy looks winsome |
After
the Chants left town a few of us from the Stagedoor fled
north to Nelson cos of the demolition party at your old
flat in Cashel St. I did an audition with a
band, Sounds Unlimited, who had lost their drummer to
compulsory military training and had been sent to Nelson
from Wellington to reform. I played with them till their
drummer returned. After that, I returned to ChCh and joined
a group, Next Move. After Next Move broke up I gigged
around in other local bands and when Les Inwood had quit
Chapta we started a trio named Libra. By this time I had
upgraded drum kit to 2 bass drums and was the 1st drummer
in NZ to play a dble kit. We went to Nelson to play at
the newly opened hotel, The Rutherford, for 2wks and ended
up there for 3mths. It was good gig, as such ppl that
passed thru hotel on tours stayed there; Peddlers, Kenny
Rogers and the 1st edition, Glenn Campbell and his band.
After Nelson, we toured thru the Nth Island,
When I left the band I returned to Nelson
where I ended up helping Promoter that ran the Nelson
scene for a year. Packed up and moved to Auckland. That
was 1974. Got a job with a music shop, Lewis Eady, as
truck driver moving Grand Pianos round different venues
such as TV studios and concert venues. I started a group
called Nodalfredon, which was the 1st name of band members
and played at the Railway Hotel. Good gig but
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| no
ppl. Band broke up and I started another called Noddy's
Noodles and spent the next 4yrs travelling extensivly
round the country backing singers, Bunny Walters, Craig
Scott, Yandell Sisters, Brent Brodie, Ray Woolfe and whoever
else After the Chants left town a few of us from the Stagedoor
fled north to Nelson cos of the demolition party at your
old flat in Cashel St. I did an audition with
a band, Sounds Unlimited, who had lost their drummer to
compulsory military training and had been sent to Nelson
from Wellington to reform. I played with them till their
drummer returned. After that, I returned to ChCh and joined
a group, Next Move. After Next Move broke up I gigged
around in other local bands and when Les Inwood had quit
Chapta we started a trio named Libra. By this time I had
upgraded drum kit to 2 bass drums and was the 1st drummer
in NZ to play a dble kit. We went to Nelson to play at
the newly opened hotel, The Rutherford, for 2wks and ended
up there for 3mths. It was good gig, as such ppl that
passed thru hotel on tours stayed there; Peddlers, Kenny
Rogers and the 1st edition, Glenn Campbell and his band.
After Nelson, we toured thru the Nth Island, When I left
the band I returned to Nelson where I ended up helping
Promoter that ran the Nelson scene for a year. Packed
up and moved to Auckland. That was 1974. Got a job with
a music shop, Lewis Eady, as truck driver moving Grand
Pianos round different venues such as TV studios and concert
venues. I started a group called Nodalfredon, which was
the 1st name of band members and played at the Railway
Hotel. Good gig but no ppl. Band broke up and I started
another called Noddy's Noodles and spent the next 4yrs
travelling extensivly round the country backing singers,
Bunny Walters, Craig Scott, Yandell Sisters, Brent Brodie,
Ray Woolfe and whoever else needed backing. In 1979 I
moved back to ChCh and in a week I was playing in a group
called Trinidad at the Blenheim Rd. Was there till 84.
After that the whole scene changed and drum machines were
dominant and I gave up drums and went back to keyboards.
That was the start of Midi and since 85 I have been sort
of hidden away and stuck in front of a computer. I've
got about 1500 --2000 songs in my computer so far and
don't think I'll be using them now. Must be age? |
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