- Backstage Passes: The Untold Story of NZ's Live Music Venues 1960-1990ISBN: 9781869664879
Title: Backstage Passes: The Untold Story of NZ's Live Music Venues 1960-1990
Author: MATHERS JOANNA
New Zealand music was made on beer-stained stages, in grimy toilets and smoky back rooms. Backstage Passes charts the stories of the countries most celebrated live music venues. Hookers, heroin, cocaine, killings, sex in alleyways, punch-ups on dance floors - live music was the nexus around which a cultural history happened.
Backstage Passes has the inside story on what it was like to be part of a vibrant scene when New Zealand was a rural backwater. First-hand accounts from muscicians, fans and bar owners bring each chapter to life.
The beating heart of the book is the music and the spaces within which the music was played. Rock, pop, reggae, punk and hip-hop, every genre has its heroes and villians, it's successes and casualties. Backstage Passes is a tribute to all the characters whom sizzled up the stage, worked the doors, poured the beers and danced to the beat.
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - Canons Complete Lyrics 2015-2020 Nadia ReidISBN: 9780473521363
Title: Canons Complete Lyrics 2015-2020 Nadia Reid
Author: REID NADIA
New Zealand musician Nadia Reid has been widely celebrated for her intelligent, arresting and startlingly honest lyrics. Canons contains the entire catalogue of lyrics from Reid’s first three albums, Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs (2015), Preservation (2017) and Out of My Province (2020).
Nadia Reid is a musician from Port Chalmers, New Zealand, who gained breakout acclaim with her 2015 debut album Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs. Her subsequent two albums, Preservation (2017) and Out of My Province (2020) have continued a widely celebrated career, accompanied by multiple world tours and appearances on Later... with Jools Holland, BBC Radio 6 Music and Radio New Zealand.
Format: Paperback
Price: $27.00$27.00 - Dunedin Sound: Some Disenchanted EveningISBN: 9781869538958
Title: Dunedin Sound: Some Disenchanted Evening
Author: CHAPMAN IAN
Within the colourful, cut-throat, ever-evolving world of popular music, New Zealand's southern-most university city, Dunedin, achieved what numerous other music-rich locations around the globe could only dream of: international recognition of its own sound. Like the Mersey Beat, the Nashville Sound or the Seattle Sound, the Dunedin Sound is known and respected the world over.
Equally revered are the bands involved, such as The Clean, The Chills, The Verlaines and may others you will encounter in this salute to Dunedin's finest. Kicked off by the inimitable punk-infused force that was The Enemy in the late 1970s, and carried to the world throughout the 1980s and beyond in true seat-of-the-pants style by the Flying Nun record label, nobody could have foreseen the huge impact and lasting legacy that a pool of young songwriters and musicians from unfashionable Dunedin would create. Within these pages their extraordinary feat is revisited with the stories and select discographies of an array of bands, and critiques and reminiscences from band members, fans and those in the music scene. The Dunedin Sound is celebrated with a veritable feast of photographs and memorabilia, many of which have never been seen before.
Format: Hardback
Price: $50.00$50.00 - From AK79 to The Class of 81ISBN: 9780473565145
Title: From AK79 to The Class of 81
Author: PHELPS ANTHONY
In 1978 a young man began to take photographs of the bands that visited his school, playing lunchtime concerts.
From there, Anthony Phelps followed the bands to the other venues they were playing and over the next
five years, he visually documented one of the most exciting eras in Auckland’s rock and roll history, the punk
and post-punk years.
They were heady years, as punk created an explosion in new music in New Zealand with dozens of new venues
and literally hundreds of new bands, plus a nascent New Zealand indie recording industry that survives
today. Names like Toy Love, The Scavengers, Pop Mechanix, The Terrorways, The Spelling Mistakes and The
Screaming Meemees are all part of our musical history and Anthony photographed them all and many more.
Some of his images have become iconic in the decades since, images like the AK79 album cover which must
exist in thousands of New Zealand homes and homes around the world.
Format: Paperback
Price: $85.00$85.00 - Impossible: My StoryISBN: 9781775541479
Title: Impossible: My Story
Author: WALKER STAN
Format: Trade paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - Let's Talk About Me - The Songs of Andrew LondonISBN: 9780473537913
Title: Let's Talk About Me - The Songs of Andrew London
Author: LONDON ANDREW
A compilation of over 70 songs composed, performed and recorded by Andrew London with Hot Club Sandwich, The Cattlestops, Too Many Chiefs and his own Andrew London Trio between the years 2000 and 2020. Gently satirical and playfully witty, they collectively constitute an occasionally cynical social commentary on present-day New Zealand society. Comparisons have been made to Tom Lehrer, John Clarke, Tim Minchin - even Noel Coward. A Radio NZ technician once quipped ‘you’re like Flight of The Conchords for Rest Homes’.
Format: Paperback
Price: $30.00$30.00 - Necessity for Consolation: John Cousins SpeaksISBN: 9781776562169
Title: Necessity for Consolation: John Cousins Speaks
Author: HOSKINS ROBERT & MEEHAN NORMAN
John Psathas has said that, of all New Zealand composers, John Cousins has ‘thrown the spear furthest’, meaning he is one of our most original artists, going beyond the edge. Provocative and penetrating and fundamentally true, Cousins remains absorbed and energised in and by creative work.
On the conversations, talks and reflections gathered in this volume, John Cousins speaks of landscape, family, himself, and shares a musical vision of consolation and hope.
John Cousins was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1943. He received training as a musician, graduating with an honours degree in music from the University of Canterbury in 1965, and taught there from 1967 to 2004. Over the years his work has evolved from conventional musical composition to sculptural performance, mixed-media and sonic art, and has been performed, broadcast and exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Europe, Russia and the USA.
Robert Hoskins is a writer on music and the series editor of a number of musical projects. His specialised areas of research include eighteenth-century English music, colonial balladry, aspects of New Zealand music, and Robert Louis Stevenson; his most recent book is Douglas Lilburn: Memories of Early Years and Other Writings (Steele Roberts, 2014).
Norman Meehan, a pianist and composer, has collaborated extensively with New Zealand poet Bill Manhire. He is also the author of the books Serious Fun: The Life and Music of Mike Nock (VUP, 2010) and New Zealand Jazz Life (VUP, 2016).
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - NZ Jazz LifeISBN: 9781776560929
Title: NZ Jazz Life
Author: MEEHAN NORMAN & WHINCUP TONY
Drawing on 39 interviews with leading New Zealand jazz musicians, New Zealand Jazz Life is a ground-breaking survey of the vibrant local scene. In best jazz style, eight solos – first-person portraits of major musicians – alternate with ensemble passages that enlarge on the key themes:
• discovering jazz
• learning to play
• starting a career
• living and working as a musician overseas
• what it means to play black American music in New Zealand
• the emergence of a New Zealand sound
• the state of jazz in contemporary New Zealand
• what jazz in New Zealand needs to go forward
New Zealand Jazz Life is essential and inspiring reading for musicians and fans, and a fascinating insight into the opportunities and
predicaments encountered by practitioners of any art form in New Zealand.
Norman Meehan is a Wellington-based composer, pianist, writer and teacher. His many releases include five collaborations with
the vocalist Hannah Griffin and Bill Manhire and other poets. He is the author of Time Will Tell: Conversations with Paul Bley and
Serious Fun: The Life and Music of Mike Nock.
Tony Whincup (1944–2015) was a leading New Zealand photographer whose longterm relationship with Kiribati and its people led
to several award-winning books.
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - Searches for Tradition: Past & Present in NZ MusicISBN: 9781776561773
Title: Searches for Tradition: Past & Present in NZ Music
Author: BROWN MICHAEL & OWENS SAMANTHA (EDS)
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - Where's My Room: The Neil & Liam Finn Summer 2018 Tour of AotearoaISBN: 9780473456399
Title: Where's My Room: The Neil & Liam Finn Summer 2018 Tour of Aotearoa
Author: JORGENSEN IAN
In the summer of 2018 Neil & Liam Finn teamed up with A Low Hum for a tour that took them to spots even the most ardent of Kiwi nomads would be hard-placed to point out on a map - communities such as Purekireki, Tauhei, Tirohanga, Himatangi Beach and Absurdistan. It was a way to connect with audiences often neglected by touring musicians combined with an epic summer road-trip.
Format: Paperback
Price: $50.00$50.00 - Wired for Sound: The Stebbing History of NZ MusicISBN: 9781988538112
Title: Wired for Sound: The Stebbing History of NZ Music
Author: GILLANDERS GRANT
For the first time ever, discover the story behind the Stebbing recording legacy. From pioneering violins and 78 records, to the singers, songwriters, engineers and producers who have graced Stebbing’s famous three recording studios. Come inside the mid-1960s Galaxie nightclub, the evolution of the Zodiac record label and the Stebbing family’s fearless response to industry politics, changing technologies and financial risk.
This is the untold Stebbing story of resilience, enterprise and an ancestral restless spirit has underpinned the Stebbing family’s generational legacy, from the pioneering days of recording in New Zealand to the digital age. Against a backdrop of New Zealand’s vibrant social history, this 75-year-long story is about the bands, the artists, the singers, the songwriters, the engineers and the technical know-how that is uniquely Stebbings.
Richly-told and lavishly illustrated, this warts-and-all nostalgic read is told through the artists, the musicians, the bands, the songwriters, the engineers and the wider Stebbing family itself.
Format: Hardback
Price: $90.00$90.00