TURNING UP THE NOISE

Idon’t remember all of the shows I’ve seen, but I’ve probably seen a few thousand bands play live. My generally slack approach to wearing earplugs is likely to lead to tinnitus. But it has been worth it.

I remember my first show well. I was 14 and I went to the Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape Tour show at the Wellington Town Hall. A then relatively-unknown band, Weta, opened. I was very young for the crowd and went by myself (though luckily I remember bumping into a friend from my music class, who was also there by himself and who also had trusting parents). There was a distinct smell in the air, and it wasn’t just expectation (while I was, in most respects, a naïve kid, I also lived next door to a tinny house). Everything sounded so loud and fresh and big. Because everything about that experience was so overwhelming, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the spectacle.

My next major concert, as a 16-year-old, had me hooked. Shihad and Fur Patrol played O-Week at the start of 2000. It was in the days when venues (in this case, the Town Hall again) adopted a casual approach to venue capacity. The amount of shared sweat I had on me now gives me the sweats in this Covid era. Fur Patrol were relatively new at the time, but the crowd was completely blown away by them. And Shihad, one of New Zealand’s great live bands, absolutely smashed it. I was an exhausted, joyous mess by the end of it, and to this day, I still rate that show by those two bands as one of the best concerts I’ve been to.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see artists all over the world, but one of New Zealand’s advantages is that we’re the last stop of a world tour. Bands are well and truly tight by the time they play here, and they usually want to go out with a final hurrah.

To be fair, on rare occasions they can be exhausted and break down in the middle of a performance, such as happened for those Wellingtonians who paid to see Oasis’ infamous show in 1998. I also think of Evan Dando dive-bombing into the crowd to punch someone in the front row for singing too exuberantly along.

Some of my fondest shows have been smaller, sparser shows. I saw Dunedin artist, i.e. crazy, play to about 20 people. They were undeterred by the small crowd, and utterly tore their set apart. It was astonishing.

The Mountain Goats played to a similarly small crowd the first time they toured, and frontperson John Darnielle seemed genuinely surprised that people had even heard of them (he was even stoked when someone yelled out that they’d borrowed a Mountain Goats’ album from the library).

Big live music fans probably have their “I was there” moments, when they saw artists at venues they would never play again.

It’s also great to see bands who are just starting out, and unlikely to make it big. Bands who just want to play on stage, and have some fun. Those sorts of bands form the bulk of the thousands that I’ve seen. And all of the big bands would have started out in the smaller venues.

From a music venue perspective however, Wellington is struggling. The smaller venues have either gone (RIP Bodega, Mighty Mighty, Caroline, house parties), or are eking out an existence. I was at Grecco Romank’s show recently at Valhalla. However, partway through the set of the supporting band Goya, noise control showed up and asked the venue to turn things down. At 9.30pm on a Friday night at one of the city’s last remaining bastions of independent music (particularly music of a noisier variety).

I guess I find it bizarre that people would want to move into the city, on the basis that the city has more life, and then they actively try to kill that life. It’s as if they think being “part of the city” is simply being able to walk out your front door and pay $10 for a croissant. I struggle to have much sympathy for the apartment dwellers if they refuse to share the space.

It’s probably an issue that cities will have to confront and manage (as this is not just a Wellington issue) – we want and need more people living close to the city. But the city doesn’t just exist for the ten-dollar croissanters. Communal spaces are critical for cities to build communities and scenes and energy.

If you kill off the smaller venues, then those places where bands can affordably start out, and / or get better, becomes harder and harder to find. No-one’s going to operate new venues if noise control is going to zealously stop music happening in the first place. We can’t simply have big venues for the international artists. I hope that teenagers now can have the same experiences I was able to have, when music was loud and fresh – and accessible.