S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M
 
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Mike's Pith & Wind (cont.)
 
 
..A Hard Day’s Night.
My brother and I also participated in the Canterbury University (or Varsity) ‘procesh’* on an Art School float where we rather unimaginatively masqueraded as the Fab Four miming to songs from the first Beatles album. I’m pretty sure we weren’t the only ones.
Perhaps I should start with The Beatles then? Or do I have to go back even further? Really? Nothing to see here – move along please. No, seriously, there is so little of dramatic substance I’m almost embarrassed to think about those early days. Cosy middle class lives played out in more-English-than-England Christchurch, in the sense that England had moved on and we antipodean colonials were playing out a vision of society that had been abandoned for decades in the home country.
To continue with the digression, things have changed now, of course. Today New Zealand is very much part of the loose collection of Western Democracies from which it’s so geographically removed. Silicon Valley retirees have been quietly buying chunks of the country to build lavish homes on, (occasionally complete with bunkers) reasoning that Aotearoa is far enough away from the inevitable Northern Hemisphere military collisions to survive a nuclear holocaust and so they can therefore live out their dreamy lives in some obscene comfort in a temperate paradise.
Yes, things have changed since I was a lad. (You can’t stop me now). These days you can actually buy real coffee in Christchurch. Coffee was only a rumour at a couple of European coffee houses in Christchurch when I was at Art School and I felt quite the adult sipping the odd cup of plunger coffee at the Stagedoor where my band the Chants had a two year residency.
New Zealand’s focus was entirely on England in those days and our middle-class cars were imported all the way from the UK, that is when we’d accrued enough ‘overseas’ funds. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that the family car was a reasonably posh Wolseley 6/90 and that the first car that my brother Richard and I invested in was (at £30) much more modest than that, more modest than just about any car that you could conceive of, in fact. We were incredibly lucky to be given a Mini by our doting Grandmother when we both used her home as our base when we started Art School together.
Or did she? Is that just a figment of my imagination? What happened to the Mini? It seems I shall have to ask my brother about that as well as a number of other things from that blurry era. Not that would guarantee anything - my memory is so hazy and I find that my brother and I remember particular incidents so differently that it’s hard to establish any sort of objective truth. (I got there in the end!)
I found the same with Bill. Bill was a great story teller, but inevitably his and my versions of his most famous stories about the band differed in a number of essential details, mostly the location. Like with this story.
Spectrum was playing with/supporting Lobby Loyde’s Coloured Balls at the Frankston Mechanics Institute Hall. I can’t remember where Bill thought it was, but he was adamant it wasn’t in Frankston. Are you sure I haven’t told you this one before? Well, quickly then.
I can’t remember if it was Spectrum or The Indelible Murtceps but in any case it was when Ray Arnott was drumming with us so it would’ve been the early ‘70s. I always found Ray a bit of an enigma but he was partial to the odd prank and he decided we should play a trick on Lobby, out front of the Coloured Balls as was his wont, fag hanging off his bottom lip, dourly dispensing solo after interminable solo at maximum wattage from his biggest-of-the-range custom made Strauss amp with two enormous columns of 12” speakers.
The problem for me was that Ray’s prank required Bill’s and my participation and I’ve never been partial to pranks, probably because I know that I’m extremely gullible myself.
Ray was brooking no pikers however and asked if he could ‘borrow’ a couple of cigarettes and a light from Bill. Slightly mystified Bill supplied the requested items and we watched with mounting dread as Ray installed himself behind Lobby’s amp, lit up both cigarettes and began puffing up clouds of smoke.
Then it was our turn. As instructed Bill and I tried to gain Lobby’s attention by yelling as loudly as we could and pointing excitedly at his amp.
The music was loud and Lobby was in the zone and so he took a lot rousing, but eventually he turned around to see his amp apparently on fire.
The cigarette dropped from his bottom lip as he charged back wide-eyed to his precious amp and turned it off to prevent total conflagration.
Bill and I ran away and it was many years before I could look Lobby in the eye I felt so ashamed. I wish we’d had a camera though.
The late-ish Jim Keays told me that early on in writing his memoirs he consulted with former members of the band about certain incidents, but the heat generated establishing a consensus about the details of the stories put him off and he ended up just relating what he remembered without bothering to check with the others.
Anyway, I know that there will be numerous people reading this (dream on) who will be saying to their partners or imaginary friends, ‘I told that Mike Rudd he absolutely had to write a book about his life and times and now it looks like he’s finally going to do just that! Well, about time too!’
I’ll remind those same people that there are many things I could’ve and should’ve done over the years and some things that I said I’d definitely do that were even published in print that have proved to be just Ruddy thought bubbles. I’ll also remind them that one should never totally discount somebody’s negative assessment of themselves and it’s more than likely no book will eventuate. But it’s nice to have something to talk about isn’t it?

* 'Procesh’ Te Ara NZ encyclopedia
Processions as part of university graduation ceremonies began at Canterbury College in 1899 and were quickly adopted by other colleges. The ‘procesh’ was an opportunity for students to engage in high jinks and bawdiness. It generally consisted of a series of floats satirising politics, current events, and public figures. Students wore fancy dress and engaged in stunts.
The ‘essential elements’ of the procesh were ‘topical satire, drunkenness, transvestism, the exchange of missiles with onlookers (from flour bombs to sausage strings) and displays on sexual and scatological themes’.1 In 1912 Auckland students acquired police uniforms. They held up trams, inspected shops, and made mock arrests.
In the early 1970s student interest in the procesh faded. In many university towns it was replaced by a formal street parade of graduands.
 
 
 
 
 
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