Film, Music and Theatre : NZ Music

ISBN: 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

ISBN: 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

ISBN: 9781776561087
Title: Finding Language: the Massey University Composer Addresses
Author: BROWN MICHAEL MEEHAN NORMAN & HOSKINS ROBERT EDS

From 1995 to 2006, eight New Zealand composers were invited to give an annual public address at Massey University: John Ritchie,
Edwin Carr, David Farquhar, Jack Body, Lyell Cresswell, John Cousins, John Rimmer and Chris Cree Brown. The music of the
‘father of New Zealand composition’, Douglas Lilburn, formed the subject of a ninth address by pianist Margaret Nielsen.
Finding Language collects together all the Massey Composer Addresses for the first time. The addresses show some of our most
prominent musical practitioners reflecting, in their own words, upon their creative practices, formative influences, the role of
composers in New Zealand society, and other concerns close to their hearts. The results are a fascinating compendium of views on
New Zealand art composition in the twentieth century and beyond.
Included in Finding Language: The Massey Composer Addresses are the original overviews of each composer’s work by series convenor
Robert Hoskins, together with new afterwords, bibliographic resources, and an introduction. An essential sourcebook for all students
and aficionados of New Zealand art music, as well as those interested in the development of the arts in this country.
Michael Brown works as Curator, Music at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. He has written on various aspects of New
Zealand music and culture. In 2015, he collaborated with artist Mat Tait on the graphic fiction The Heading Dog Who Split in Half:
Legends and Tall Tales from New Zealand (Potton & Burton, 2015).
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, Serious
Fun: The Life and Music of Mike Nock and New Zealand Jazz Life.
Robert Hoskins is a retired academic. He is the series editor of a number of musical projects and has published on colonial balladry,
eighteenth-century English music, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific writings. His most recent book is Memories of Early Years:
Douglas Lilburn (Steele Roberts, 2015).


Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00

ISBN: 9780958250962
Title: How to Listen to Pop Music (#3 Ginger Series)
Author: BOLLINGER NICK

This comprehensive and illuminating guide explores the entire spectrum of pop music, from Beatlemania and the long-playing record to Eminem and the iPod.

Format: Paperback
Price: $26.00

ISBN: 9781775540892
Title: In Love With These Times: The Flying Nun Story
Author: SHEPHERD ROGER

The inside story of New Zealand's iconic independent record label by the man who made it happen. I wanted to be more than just an observer. I wanted to be a part of what was going on. I had told someone and the word was out, and now I had to actually do this thing. Start a record label. I must have been drunk. Roger Shepherd was working in a Christchurch record shop when he realised the local bands he loved needed someone to make their records. Flying Nun was born. Those records and the bands that created them them - The Chills, The Clean, Chris Knox and the Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings, The Bats, Straitjacket Fits and many more - went on to define an era and create what became known as "the Dunedin Sound". In truth it was less a unified sound than a spirit of adventure and independence that characterised the Flying Nun ethos. In this long-awaited memoir, label founder Roger Shepherd describes the idealism and passion that drove the project in the first place, the hard realities of the music industry, and the constant tension between art and commerce. Filled with revealing anecdote and insight, this is the definitive insider history of the one of the most innovative and original record labels of the modern era. "Surely the label with the highest quality output per capita in pop history." - Guardian UK. "Something inexplicably special happened in the Southern Hemisphere a quarter of a century or so ago, the ripples still rumbling, and without it, all the music you love today would sound ever so slightly, and indefinably, different." - British comedian Stewart Lee.

Format: Trade paperback
Price: $37.00

ISBN: 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

ISBN: 9780473411602
Title: Organs & Organists: Their Inside Stories
Author: SETCHELL JENNY

"Organs and Organists: Their Inside Stories" is a light-hearted and unique look behind the façade of pipe organs. See in pictures and diagrams how they work, and read what organists from around the world confess are their most embarrassing and hilarious stories from their musical lives. See close-up some of the most famous pipe organs in the world and learn what makes them the King of Instruments. More than 470 full-colour photos, and cartoons by Al Nisbet, illustrate a volume which is not just for musicians but anyone with an interest in pipe organs.

Format: Paperback
Price: $39.00

ISBN: 9780473336790
Title: Right Note: an Insight into Tauranga’s Historic Music Scene
Author: CLARK GRAHAM

The live music history of Tauranga from the late
40s through to the 1990s, which includes a few
bands and artists from the greater Bay of Plenty
and Waikato, plus a number of nationally renowned
artists who began their careers in Tauranga or who
were influential on the Tauranga music scene.
The history of the Tauranga Wurlitzer organ
The conception of the Tauranga Jazz festival
The influence of local radio
Radio Hauraki and the pirates
Nambassa and Ngaruawahia rock festivals
The association of Tauranga musicians with some
international artists - and much more
Packed with historical and never before seen
photographs.

Format: Hardback
Price: $173.00

ISBN: 822601400610
Title: Small Holes in the Silence Cd
Author: MEEHAN NORMAN GRIFFEN HANNAH & CHISHOLM HAYDEN

Following the popular and critically acclaimed Buddhist Rain and Making Baby Float, Norman Meehan and Hannah Griffin teamed up with saxophonist Hayden Chisholm for this third instalment in their New Zealand poetry series. The relaxed serendipitous style of Norman and Hannah fits Hayden like a glove. A musician of remarkably understated confidence and sensitivity, Hayden's wonderfully nuanced phrases float effortlessly around the restrained sensitivity of Norman and Hannah.

This is music born of years of dedication to craft and commitment to musical integrity. As Norman and Hannah proved with their previous releases, and as Bill Manhire points out in his perceptive liner notes, it takes great skill and humility to ensure that the original poetry can freely speak when it would be easy to overwhelm it with music. Instead, these three fine musicians have created a framework in which sound and text enjoy a harmonious artistic partnership.

"There I was last week going through a few stray CDs and I found one of the Norman Meehan/Hannah Griffin albums where they've turned Bill Manhire's poems into songs. I was lucky enough to write the liner notes for one of their projects, so thrilled was I when I saw them perform these pieces live. So I was looking back through that, and listening again to the magic they summon and I was hoping that it wouldn't be long before this magical pairing serves up new music from old poems. Well, Meehan and Griffin (along with Hayden Chisholm) have created Small Holes In The Silence which features a few more Manhire poems, but also works from Hone Tuwhare, James K. Baxter, Alistair Campbell, David Mitchell and Eileen Duggan. It's an amazing album - the Meehan/Griffin partnership has created some wonderful treatments already but this is the one I think - the must-hear/must-have offering. Chisholm's playing is a crucial part of the puzzle here, the missing piece previously." - Simon Sweetman, Stuff.co.nz

Format: Compact Disc
Price: $33.00

ISBN: 9781771612371
Title: Time Flowing Backwards: A Memoir
Author: JEFFERIES GRAEME

This memoir is the fascinating and revealing story of Graeme Jefferies--one of the most inventive and influential musicians to emerge from New Zealand's vibrant independent music scene in the 1980s. Time Flowing Backwards spans over three decades of Jefferies career spent with bands Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, and The Cakekitchen as well as a solo artist. In a candid and in-depth style, Jefferies recounts his recording and songwriting process along with riveting tales from incident-filled tours with the likes of Pavement, Cat Power and the Mountain Goats. This truly original and inimitable inside story highlights intense collaboration and DIY innovation, records made in hallways and houses rather than plush studios and a dedication to produce challenging and remarkable songs.

Format: Paperback
Price: $45.00