Tour diary part 1
Hi all,
I?ll keep you up to date after each leg of the tour. We kicked off in Dunedin at the Main Common room at the University Union here in Dunedin on Saturday night. This was the venue of the Verlaines first public gig in 1980 (haven?t been able to pin the date down exactly but I?m pretty sure it was 1980?close enough to a 30 year anniversary). I?ll let Simon and Tono document their reaction on their sites but needless to say they were excellent from my perspective. The Verlaines set was pretty fabulous (or so people said and in my estimation it was pretty good). Tom Healy (of The Low Spark and also Simon Comber?s bassist for this tour) joined us on lead guitar for five songs, which made a very big difference.
He?d been practicing remotely in Auckland. We had an hour?s rehearsal Saturday morning with a virtual Darren (he was working, so computer generated drums). The five of us ran through the songs as a band at sound check. This was a fly by the seat of your pants performance, the first time we?d played ?Paraphrasing Hitler? and ?Wanting? as a live band, period, let alone as a makeshift five-piece. The fact that we pulled it off (OK, we came a little unstuck in the final bars of Wanting, but otherwise) was pretty satisfying. ?PH? was as monstrous as those it portrays. ?Paratai Drive? was a revelation in this 5-piece format, for we had sufficient personnel on stage to generate three-part counterpoint, which really helped the song communicate the layered up chaos of the recording. Some pictures by Roger Grauwmeijer at . . .
https://rokpx.com
(Creative Commons rules apply to his work)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/nz/legalcode
My overall impression of the night was a superfluity of great songs, a sense that there was a fundamental richness to the entire bill. It was great that Robbie Yeats and Jane Dodd were at the gig too (we?re all living in the same city again for the first time in yonks).
Sunday morning, a bit knackered, lounged around reading Nietzsche. He?s a bit difficult at times unless you have his reading background (and I don?t) but worth persevering with for the gems he comes up with. With the gig and ?Paratai Drive? in particular still reverberating in my mind I stumbled across the following in ?The Gay Science? book three.
257
?From experience. ? Some do not know how rich they are until they experience what kinds of rich people will steal from them.?
LOL, you gotta love eternal recurrence.
Bring on Auckland and Hamilton next week.
I?ll keep you up to date after each leg of the tour. We kicked off in Dunedin at the Main Common room at the University Union here in Dunedin on Saturday night. This was the venue of the Verlaines first public gig in 1980 (haven?t been able to pin the date down exactly but I?m pretty sure it was 1980?close enough to a 30 year anniversary). I?ll let Simon and Tono document their reaction on their sites but needless to say they were excellent from my perspective. The Verlaines set was pretty fabulous (or so people said and in my estimation it was pretty good). Tom Healy (of The Low Spark and also Simon Comber?s bassist for this tour) joined us on lead guitar for five songs, which made a very big difference.
He?d been practicing remotely in Auckland. We had an hour?s rehearsal Saturday morning with a virtual Darren (he was working, so computer generated drums). The five of us ran through the songs as a band at sound check. This was a fly by the seat of your pants performance, the first time we?d played ?Paraphrasing Hitler? and ?Wanting? as a live band, period, let alone as a makeshift five-piece. The fact that we pulled it off (OK, we came a little unstuck in the final bars of Wanting, but otherwise) was pretty satisfying. ?PH? was as monstrous as those it portrays. ?Paratai Drive? was a revelation in this 5-piece format, for we had sufficient personnel on stage to generate three-part counterpoint, which really helped the song communicate the layered up chaos of the recording. Some pictures by Roger Grauwmeijer at . . .
https://rokpx.com
(Creative Commons rules apply to his work)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/nz/legalcode
My overall impression of the night was a superfluity of great songs, a sense that there was a fundamental richness to the entire bill. It was great that Robbie Yeats and Jane Dodd were at the gig too (we?re all living in the same city again for the first time in yonks).
Sunday morning, a bit knackered, lounged around reading Nietzsche. He?s a bit difficult at times unless you have his reading background (and I don?t) but worth persevering with for the gems he comes up with. With the gig and ?Paratai Drive? in particular still reverberating in my mind I stumbled across the following in ?The Gay Science? book three.
257
?From experience. ? Some do not know how rich they are until they experience what kinds of rich people will steal from them.?
LOL, you gotta love eternal recurrence.
Bring on Auckland and Hamilton next week.
