Music interviews, live performances, behind the scenes, industry issues, profiles, back catalogue, undiscovered, greatest hits, tall tales and true... all from a New Zealand/Aotearoa perspective.
12:26 p.m. Yusuf / Cat Stevens on the 2020 re-recording of Tea For The Tillerman (24’59”)
Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam has praised New Zealand for its humanity after the March 15 mosuqe attacks.
He was speaking to Music 101's Charlotte Ryan about re-recording his classic 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman, to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
When Yusuf heard about the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks he was so moved he felt he had to do something.
"I had friends over there - Bruce Lynch [the bass player who plays on the new album], Suzanne Lynch, and we wanted to do something."
Yusuf ended up performing at the memorial service in Hagley Park a week after the attacks that killed 51 people.
"They opened the door for us to come along and share this moment ... New Zealand showed some of the greatest humanity that we've seen in the world.
"As far as leadership is concerned, I really wish there were more leaders like you have now in charge of the great powers of the world. That's one of the big problems that we've got.
"We just wanted to share that moment of humanity with everybody from New Zealand."
He said he loves Aotearoa and will never forget standing in the hills above Christchurch and "breathing that air".
The British musician has recently re-recorded his 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman, which includes iconic songs such as 'Wild World', 'Miles from Nowhere' and 'Where do the Children Play?'.
Despite its age, the record is still relevant to what's going on in the world today.
"This album probably represents the most profound thoughts and concerns I have - and which we all really share, about this world and out position in it," Yusuf says.
Yusuf was just 22 when he composed Tea For The Tillerman, but says he still relates to the lyrics: "There's one constant, which is honesty. I've always tried to be honest in my lyrics.
"[This honesty meant] I had to change the lyric of 'I'm Looking for a Hard Headed Woman' because I found one!" he says referring to his wife of 40 years, Fauzia Mubarak Ali.
For his track 'Longer Boats', which he says was "probably inspired by some weird dream I had in my youth about flying saucers and aliens coming to Earth", he ended up almost lampooing it.
"I've taken it a little bit further into the extreme. I've actually turned it into a really funky song where you can almost see James Brown pulling off his cloak. I just wanted to make a light moment out of that one."
But, he says, there's also a reality to 'Longer Boats'. The song, which talks about people coming on boats and "taking the key from the door", resonates with the concerns some people have about immigration.
"And yet the whole of human history is to do with migration. We never ever stood still, we never did."
Yusuf says he's always carried an "inner security" with him, which is reflected in songs such as 'Moon Shadow'.
"It's an optimistic song, because it means no matter what conditions I find myself in, I'm still content with what I've got
"I think contentment of the soul is not improved by having lots more things ... What I've learned is that you really don't need that much. I mean even a billionaire can only eat three meals a day. You can only wear one suit, you can only sleep in one bed. You can only walk in one pair of shoes."
"One of the things I've learnt is, don't separate yourself from the needy. Always try to help people, that's what's going to make your life more valuable because people are relying on you and that's very important."
Before the Covid-19 pandemic struck Yusuf had been planning on taking Tea For The Tillerman on a world tour.
"It's the wild world hitting us in the face and saying,'Well this is what it is today,' and you get used to it and that's what we're doing.
"We hope we'll be able to travel again and fulfill that objective which we set ourselves - which was to go out and perform this again live."
Tea For The Tillerman 2 is out on September 18.
12:53 p.m. Under Cover with Liz Stokes of The Beths and Chelsea Jade
Under Cover is a multi-episode web series where two musicians talk with one another about their music, their lives, and how Covid-19 has affected them. Each episode includes two musical performances where the musicians cover one another’s songs.
Chelsea Jade performs The Beths’ ‘Great No One’ from 2018’s Future Me Hates Me
Liz Stokes performs Chelsea Jade’s ‘Laugh It Off’ from her 2018 debut Personal Best
Liz Stokes of The Beths and alt-pop artist Chelsea Jade reminisce about busking together, discuss what advice they’d give to their 15-year-old selves, and perform beautiful covers of one another’s songs.
Chelsea Jade Metcalf and Liz Stokes of The Beths are old mates. The pair started making music together when they were 15, eventually teaming up with their friend Talita Setyady to form folk trio Teacups.
Liz is now based in Auckland working as frontwoman and principal songwriter for power pop quartet The Beths. Chelsea is hunkering down in her adopted home of Los Angeles.
Both Chelsea and Liz have new music on the way, and both have had their touring plans disrupted by Covid-19 .
Under Cover is co-presented by The Spinoff and RNZ Music | A Banished Music Production | Thanks to Creative New Zealand
1:17 p.m. The Sampler: The Phoenix Foundation
Nick Bollinger reviews the tenth-anniversary reissue of a classic album by The Phoenix Foundation.
Buffalo: the 10th Anniversary Edition by The Phoenix Foundation
It is a fact that this country doesn’t do enough to celebrate its artists, but luckily the artists will sometimes take matters into their own hands and celebrate themselves.
It’s ten years since the Phoenix Foundation released Buffalo, their magnificent fourth album, and to celebrate they have reissued it in a new blue vinyl edition, augmented with a swag of unheard songs left over from the original sessions.
Other than being a little shocked that an entire decade has slipped by since I first heard this record, it’s great to have an excuse to listen to it all over again. And it really does sound magnificent.
I’ve have debates over which is the best of the Phoenix Foundation’s albums and I’ve heard good arguments for Pegasus and Happy Ending, and even their most recent, Give Up Your Dreams. But in the end I always lean towards this one. It covers the full range of what they can do, from the motorik grandeur of the title track to the lyrical grace of ‘Flock of Hearts’. And then there is the majestic, dreamlike finale, ‘Golden Ship’.
Buffalo also has some of their driest, funniest observational songs, and Luke Buda and Sam Scott show that they are a couple of the smartest and most self-aware lyricists in the country.
When all of the squats
Have been turned into gallery spaces
And the punks out on the corner
What's that look on their faces?
It says, "What do we do
Now that all of the yuppies replaced us?"
Don't worry my brother there's just one world
But many, many, many places... (‘Bitte Bitte’)
Added to this tenth anniversary reissue, are the contents of the Do Son EP, only ever released digitally at the time, plus a swag of out-takes; songs that were completed yet for whatever reason left off the album. My guess is that too many of them defaulted to the same middle tempo. But while the album didn’t really need them, the Phoenix Foundation’s cast-offs are better than most bands’ A-listers. Try ‘Easter’ or the brooding 9-minuter ‘Danzig Bro’, with its slow-building and faintly ominous riff.
Ten years old now, Buffalo presents a slightly different Phoenix Foundation from the one that continues to this day. Since Buffalo they have acquired both a new drummer and bass player, and both have arguably brought more subtlety and flexibility, which has deepened the playing of the whole band. And yet in a funny way they haven’t became a better band because they were always as good as a band can be. There’s a chemistry between the three founders, Luke Buda, Conrad Wedde and Samuel Flynn Scott, of that rare kind that distinguishes all great bands; a meeting of hearts and minds that makes it more than just a bunch of musicians playing somebody’s songs. And it’s hard to think of any other New Zealand group that, having found they had that chemistry, have managed to sustain it for this long; six albums and counting. Split Enz perhaps?
Buffalo is now ten years old and next year will be the twentieth anniversary of China Cove, their first EP. But while there’s the potential for an endless stream of anniversary celebrations, I gather The Phoenix Foundation have got a brand new album coming, and that’s something to celebrate even more. In the meantime, though, I’ll happily listen to this all over again.
1:48 p.m. Flor de Toloache: the NYC women making mariachi music (12’32”)
Flor De Toloache is an all women mariachi group from New York City that's bucking tradition and playing a style of music usually performed by men. The Grammy-award winning group spoke to Trevor Reekie about how their instrumental prowess and vocal harmonies have been the key to winning over international audiences.
1:34 p.m. The fascinating story behind 'Who Let The Dogs Out?' (8’41”)
New documentary Who Let the Dogs Out tells the fascinating story behind the Baha Men's chart-topping 2000 hit. Tony Stamp spoke to the film's director Brent Hodge ahead of its screening at the Doc Edge Festival.
Director Brent Hodge says 'Who Let the Dogs Out', is a great example of something that happens a lot in the music industry - a song that rockets to the top of the charts, but no-one really knows where it came from.
"That's what's exciting about 'Who Let The Dogs Out' - kids know it, your grandma knows it, Canada knows it, New Zealand knows it, America knows it. It's all over the world and nobody really knows the story behind it," he said.
The story behind 'Who Let the Dogs Out' is a fascinating one that began more than 15 years before the Baha Men released it.
Brent got his first inkling of the complexities surrounding the song when he attended a talk by Brooklyn artist Ben Sisto, who'd put ten years of research into trying to find out who originally wrote it.
"I approached him after and said I think we need to turn your presentation into a movie, it's all there, we've got to visualise it and add a few hooks and turns," he said.
"I didn't know that as we were doing the film there'd be more and more story to be uncovered."
Ben's research only went back to 1994, which was when two kids in Jacksonville, Florida, claimed to have created the song before the Baha Men released it six years later.
However, during filming they discovered the track had originally been a college football chant - a fact Ben himself was unaware of.
The pair have continued to receive messages from people claiming they wrote the song.
"We've left it at, 'If you have video evidence, if you have the song, then we believe you. If you just have a photo with you in a dog costume, that doesn't count.'"
Brent managed to find evidence of the chant dating back to 1985. He'd heard a few claims that go back to 1980, but with no direct evidence.
"The ultimate question of who let the dogs out is the question we ask in this movie," he said.
"It's really up for interpretation, because you could say it's the college team that started the chant, but I think it's the managers, the guys that represented the Baha Men and Hanson and these big pop bands of the '90s," Brent says.
Steve Greenberg managed the Baha Men and was also instrumental in the success of Hanson's 1997 hit 'MMMBop'.
"Without those guys, a song like this wouldn't have a story."
"Steve Greenberg really believed that these guys were the ones that could make this song work and they knew it was a cover, that's what I think is so amazing," Brent said.
He started the film off by interviewing the Baha Men and was expecting their response to be "a little sour", due to the questions around the song - but he discovered it was the opposite.
"They know it's a cover, they know they didn't make it up. They were happy to show me around the Bahamas.
There's legal battles over 'Who Let The Dogs Out' and Brett doesn't think it's over yet.
"I do think when they got the Grammy, there's a lot of names on that song, but some of them aren't on there. I think that's ultimately the conversation that's still open. But this conversation is for a lot of songs, if you think about it.
"There's tonnes of songs that go to court and steal a hook from here or a sample from there. It's really up for debate whether you think that's right or wrong."
2:06 p.m. Live Concert Series: Adam Hattaway and the Haunters
Based in Christchurch, Adam Hattaway and the Haunters are known for their electrifying live performances. Today they perform tracks from their latest album, Crying Lessons, a collection of soul-tinged rock 'n' roll tracks with a nostalgic feel.
2:29 p.m. The Sampler: D.C. Cross
Nick Bollinger reviews the fretboard explorations of Sydney guitarist D.C. Cross.
Terabithian, by D.C. Cross
There’s an infinite number of ways you can tune a guitar, but most people default to the tuning that’s commonly called ‘standard’. If you can escape the tyranny of standard tuning, though, you’ll find whole new harmonic worlds opening up.
D.C. Cross is a Sydney-based guitarist who, over the past couple of decades, has recorded in various different settings. When I last heard him he was in a band called Gerling, a thoroughly eclectic outfit who combined live drums and dance beats, electronica and electric guitars, had a brief stint on Flying Nun and if I remember rightly, recorded something with Kylie Minogue. Since then he’s worked on film soundtracks and been half of a folk-noir duo. But somewhere along the line he started experimenting with different ways of tuning his guitar, and that’s formed the basis of his new solo album.
There’s a precedent for this kind of thing, which Cross is obviously well aware of. In the 60s people like John Fahey and Leo Kottke explored similar combinations of open chords and fast fingerpicking styles, which more recent exponents like William Tyler and Ryley Walker have taken to ever more rarefied levels. But Cross has certainly been putting in the hours. His picking is deft and driving, and the patterns he make are pretty, and can be mesmerising.
Some of these tunes draw on Americana; they might have had their beginnings in old John Hurt or Carter Family tunes. At other times he leans more towards Asian modes and you might hear hints of a raga.
The risk with this kind of thing is that it can sound like an exercise, and there are moments where I do feel like I’m observing a demonstration of technique. But his technique is good, and the more Cross stretches out, the more it seems to become a journey of discovery for both listener and musician. And tracks like ‘Black Horse Friend’ one explore places perhaps neither has been before.
Though the whole album is essentially solo guitar, there are moments where Cross harks back to his Gerling days, using electronics to colour the sonic landscapes. That might be no more than dropping a recording of rain behind his solo guitar; at other times he applies electronic treatments such as reverbs and delays to the guitar itself. These become more prominent as the album goes on. Listen to ‘International Folk Cell Tower Ping’; it hardly sounds like a guitar at all, with more delays on it than the southern motorway.
This is the second album D.C. Cross has made in this vein. He’s called it Terabithian, after Bridge To Terabithia I guess, the teenage novel about grief and escape. That suggests some possible uses for the music, but you don’t need big drama in your life to enjoy it.
2:42 p.m. The Service: Anthonie Tonnon on making spy music (11’22”)
Charlotte Ryan talks to local musician Anthonie Tonnan about writing music to accompany podcasts - specifically new RNZ spy podcast, The Service.
RNZ's new podcast series The Service is co-hosted by author and presenter John Daniell - whose mother was a spy, and RNZ journalist Guyon Espiner. The pair delve into SIS secrets during the Cold War.
John and Anthonie are old friends. They'd spent an evening together "ranting on and on about podcasts", discussing ones they liked and things they thought could be done better.
A year later, Anthonie got a call from John asking him to contribute music for his new podcast series about SIS secrets during the Cold War.
The music had to sound like spies and intrigue, childhood and family, and with the sound of the 1980s woven through it.
It was a specific brief, but "weirdly, and uncannily" Anthonie was working on an album that contained many of those themes and sounds.
"Particularly one song which is called 'Peacetime Orders', that song is where the theme music for The Service comes from. It's a weird song that has this really minor key grungy synthesiser end."
So he had the theme song, next was to figure out how to score the rest of the hour-long episodes.
Anthonie got out his Deluge - a portable synthesizer, sampler and sequencer - and started playing along to each episode.
For the series' second episode, Anthonie used a piece of music he'd recorded for a different song featuring a string arrangement by Matthew Bodman, performed by a string quartet led by violinist Charmian Keay.
Everything else is Anthonie playing a drum machine, a low bass synthesizer and a high synth sound.
He'd listened to a lot of podcasts ahead of creating the score for The Service and noticed they mostly used music as texture - often beautiful, but disjointed, with nothing linking the different pieces of music together.
"As a songwriter I'm all about the idea that each piece of music needs to relate to the next, or a new piece of music needs to somehow link back to something you've heard before. That's how you make things song-like and coherent.
"Because The Service has such a strong story to it and it's very personal and human, I thought it needed a song-like treatment.
"So most of the podcast is at the same tempo, it's in the same key and the musical motifs return or they come back flipped over, played in reverse. So at its best, that does give it a song-like quality to help lift that underlying story.
Anthonie is working on arranging a huge tour of at least 20 shows in late October and November. He's looking forward to seeing his other musician friends putting on shows, and was pleased Nadia Reid went ahead with a show last week.
3:13 p.m. Introducing: Joe Sampson (7’12”)
Christchurch musician Joe Sampson is best known for playing in garage rock bands T54 and the Salad Boys, but over lockdown he changed his tune, and picked up a microKORG to create an album’s worth of synth-driven instrumentals.
3:30 p.m. The Sampler: Kiwi Animals
Kiwi Animals: Future/Primitive Aotearoa 82-91
These days it’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell whether a recording began its life in a bedsit or a million dollar studio. Some of the biggest blockbusters are produced on laptops. Back in the 80s, though, the gulf between musicians with a big studio budget and, basically everyone else, was a very audible one.
But it gave rise to some great feats of ingenuity. In this country, Exhibit A is usually given as the proliferation of guitar bands, mostly from Dunedin, who circumvented the production values of the day and got their DIY music out to the world via the Flying Nun label. But there was another bunch of independent music makers who had no interest in that kind of music. And that point is made by a singular, surprising and strangely entertaining new release.
The Kiwi Animal was a duo or sometimes trio, whose lo-tech music and confronting presentation gave them a unique and surprisingly visible place for a while around the local music traps. ‘Man and Woman Have Balance’ first appeared on their 1985 album Mercy, but it’s revisited on this, compilation named partly in honour of this very individual group. Kiwi Animals is comprised of eleven tracks by eleven different acts, linked together by - well, what exactly? Perhaps hearing a few of them will help you figure that out.
From roughly the same period, there’s Stiff Herbert: performing name of German immigrant, Stefan Wolf, and his faintly tinny yet invitingly danceable ‘I Could Hit The Ceiling’ was one of many he recorded with just his guitar, drum machine and some sort of cheap electronic keyboard in his flat in Christchurch.
And then there’s performance poet Kim Blackburn. Accompanied only by a tom-tom drum, a rather comical cowbell and the sounds of nature basking, her poem/song/chant ‘Lizards In Love’ is primitive, ritualistic and, like the other tracks, oddly compelling.
And that oddness, that outsider quality, is one of things that holds this work of musical archeology together. Subtitled Future/Primitive Aotearoa 82-91, Kiwi Animals was compiled by Ben Stephens and is the result of his long fascination with New Zealand music of the 80s - specifically the stuff that happened in the cracks between the slick studio stuff and those much-publicised Flying Nun guitar bands. That’s a broad field, and while there are certain recurring characteristics, like those early drum machines and cheap electronic keyboards, there are no strict rules. We’ve already heard bedsit dance and neo-primitive poetics.
And then there’s ‘Soul Brothers’. Arguably the most outré track here, even as you can hear it grasping towards the mainstream, it is the work of Rupert, a banjo-playing busker who cut the song on a four-track with his four-stringed instrument and a bass organ, and saw it released on a cassette-only label before it began its rapid descent into an obscurity from which it has no been rescued. I’m not sure which rock Stephens found it under, or what Rupert might feel about it sitting among this collection of post-punk and electronica, but perhaps for the first time in its life, it has found a home. And that’s really the alchemy Stephens has achieved here. This collection doesn’t represent some pre-ordained genre, though there are recurring sonic themes. There are also a lot of references to animals - not just kiwi, but lizards, chickens, gazelles. More than that, though, what seems to be holding it all together is the way these tracks, meeting for the first time, acquaint themselves with each other. It’s like a party with a lot of awkward but interesting guests. Rupert, meet Norma O’Malley, ex Look Blue Go Purple, whose ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ is a hypnotic experiment in syllabification.
While a lot of care has gone into the programming of the set, the most obscure stuff is, interestingly, at the beginning, and as it runs on you’ll start to hear some voices that might be more familiar. There’s Chris Knox, recording on this occasion as ‘Roger’ Knox for a cassette-only Flying Nun anniversary release. And there are also early tracks here by groups that would go on to have high national profiles. Listening to ‘Respect’, an early track by Blam Blam Blam, I find myself imagining parallel universes. In one of them, Don McGlashan never writes anything more popular than that piece of fractured post-punk, based on a reprimand he once received from his school principal after making a joke about Rob Muldoon. I imagine the same for Headless Chickens, whose track here, ‘Throwback’ hovers in some adjacent yet separate zone from the one in which they would have hits like ‘George’ and ‘Cruise Control’. And I find myself wondering, if some of the other kiwi animals on this inspired collection had, at the right moment, taken just a slight step in a different direction might they have turned their outsider art into nationally-loved anthems?
3:42 p.m. Tangerine Dream: Dunedin's Mild Orange making waves overseas (9’49”)
Mild Orange formed in Dunedin in 2016, and have since released two albums independently - both of which have received international acclaim, and have clocked up millions of streams on YouTube and Spotify.
Their second, self-titled album came out at the end of May. Tony Stamp spoke to Josh Mehrtens, who plays guitar and sings in the band, and engineers and produces their albums.
3:53 p.m. Sound Check with Hollie Arrowsmith
The team at Re: News have been checking in with Kiwi musicians post-Covid. Today we hear from Christchurch Folk musician Holly Arrowsmith.
4:05 p.m. Mixtape: Tami and Jay Neilson (56’18”)
Tammy Neilson and her brother Jay are on today's RNZ Mixtape, trading stories about some of their favourite country music artists.
Songs played on this show:
12-1 p.m.
Nina Simone - Sinnerman
Chelsea Jade - Great No One (The Beths cover)
The Dali Lama - Compassion
1-2 p.m.
Prince - Sign 'O' the Times
Bullion - O Vermona
Jarv Is - Save The Whale
Mercury Rev - Holes
Orange Juice - Rip It Up
2-3 p.m.
The Breeders - Cannonball
Gerling - Phazer Kids In The Windy City
Racing - Flashbacks
Neil Young - Vacancy
King Sweeties - Lydia
3-4 p.m.
Here We Go Magic - Tunnelvision
Tricky - Fall Please
Courtney Barnett - Nobody Really Cares If You Go To The Party
The Stooges - No Fun
Garageland - Fingerpops
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/music101/20200613