- Backstage Passes: The Untold Story of NZ's Live Music Venues 1960-1990
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$40.00 - Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of NZ Popular Music 1918-1964
ISBN: 9781869404550
Title: Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of NZ Popular Music 1918-1964
Author: BOURKE CHRIS
Bringing to life the musical worlds of New Zealanders both at home and out on the town, this history chronicles the evolution of popular music in New Zealand during the 20th century. From the kiwi concert parties during World War I and the arrival of jazz to the rise of swing, country, the Hawaiian sound, and then rock'n'roll, this musical investigation brings to life the people, places, and sounds of a world that has disappeared and uncovers how music from the rest of the world was shaped by Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders into a melody, rhythm, and voice that made sense on these islands. The accompanying audio CD wonderfully brings to life the engaging text, underscoring seminal moments in New Zealand's musical history.
Format: Trade paperback
Price: $60.00$60.00 - Canons Complete Lyrics 2015-2020 Nadia Reid
ISBN: 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 - Dead People I Have KnownISBN: 9781776562213
Title: Dead People I Have Known
Author: CARTER SHAYNE
Best known for his bands Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer, Carter takes us deep behind the scenes and songs of these major bands, recounts life with his riotous teenage bands Bored Games and the Doublehappys, and traces an intimate history of the Dunedin Sound and the record label Flying Nun. His story follows the pop culture of the 70s, 80s and 90s and the broader culture of New Zealand through this period, especially the bleak and violent aspects of Dunedin that shaped his early life. The story ends in 2018, back in Dunedin, where Carter lives now.
In Dead People I Have Known Carter also writes of the other major force in his life: sport. He describes his love for harness racing, wrestling, basketball and football in rich and often very funny detail, finding a similar solace in these pursuits as he does in music.
Editor Ashleigh Young described the book as ‘a brilliant portrait of the people, places and social forces that are so tightly woven with Carter’s life in music. Carter is a gifted storyteller.’
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - In Love With These Times: The Flying Nun Story
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$37.00 - Kiwi Pacific Records Story
ISBN: 9780947493226
Title: Kiwi Pacific Records Story
Author: VERCOE TONY
These interviews trace Kiwi Pacific Records from its beginnings as a division of publishers AH & AW Reed Ltd to its independence as Kiwi Pacific Records, all under the direction of Tony Vercoe.
Format: Paperback
Price: $30.00$30.00 - Made in Australia & Aotearoa/NZ: Studies In Popular Music
ISBN: 9781138195691
Title: Made in Australia & Aotearoa/NZ: Studies In Popular Music
Author: BRUNT SHELLEY & STAHL GEOFF (EDS)
Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth-century popular music of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The volume consists of chapters by leading scholars of Australian and Aotearoan/New Zealand music, and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Each chapter provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Australian or Aotearoan/New Zealand popular music. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in these countries, followed by chapters that are organized into thematic sections: Place-Making and Music-Making; Rethinking the Musical Event; Musical Transformations: Decline and Renewal; and Global Sounds, Local Identity.
Format: Trade paperback
Price: $63.00$63.00 - Mozart: The Man Behind The Music
ISBN: 9781988516196
Title: Mozart: The Man Behind The Music
Author: BIXLEY DONOVAN
Child prodigy, genius, freak, a man who lived frivolously and died a pauper... The myths surrounding Mozart, composer of some of the world's most sublime music, have long overtaken the known facts of his life. Now, in this charming and very personal tribute, artist Donovan Bixley offers a portrait of the composer that will forever change the way he is viewed. In nearly 100 original drawings and paintings, accompanied by text based on the many letters that he wrote during his life, beginning with the delightful, if misspelt, letters he wrote as a thirteen-year-old boy travelling in Italy with his father. Like his successful "Much Ado About Shakespeare", Bixley brings Mozart to life with humour but also reflects the turmoil of the times in which he lived. This is a newly rendered version of the book successfully published in 2006.
Format: Paperback
Price: $35.00$35.00 - Necessity for Consolation: John Cousins Speaks
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$40.00 - NZ Jazz Life
ISBN: 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 Music
ISBN: 9781776561773
Title: Searches for Tradition: Past & Present in NZ Music
Author: BROWN MICHAEL & OWENS SAMANTHA (EDS)
Format: Paperback
Price: $40.00$40.00 - Sharp Left Turn: Notes on a Life in Music, from Split Enz to Play It Strange
ISBN: 9781988547138
Title: Sharp Left Turn: Notes on a Life in Music, from Split Enz to Play It Strange
Author: CHUNN MIKE
A rollicking yarn about the early days of ground-breaking band Split Enz, but also the powerful story of how Mike Chunn dealt with a crippling mental health issue and went on to become one of our most influential music identities.
This is a gripping read that works on several levels:
It's the sliding-door story of someone who might have become a world-famous pop star had he not suffered from agoraphobia.
It's the story of a group of very young musicians trying to find their feet as a band in the late 70s and early 80s, and the associated euphoria and craziness of that life.
It's Mike's story of finding out what agoraphobia is, learning how to cope with it and eventually finding a way through and going on to make a huge contribution to the New Zealand music industry.
Told in Mike's own words, this is also a loving evocation of a 50s and 60s New Zealand childhood, and a beautifully written memoir that will resonate with many.
Author bio:
Mike Chunn was a founding member of Split Enz and then in Citizen Band. He suffered from high levels of anxiety, which he later found out was in fact agoraphobia, and had to stop playing in bands because he couldn't travel outside Auckland. He then worked for a record label and for APRA before starting an organisation called Play It Strange, a very successful and highly respected organisation that encourages school students in their song-writing ambitions.
Format: Hardback
Price: $45.00$45.00 - Where's My Room: The Neil & Liam Finn Summer 2018 Tour of Aotearoa
ISBN: 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 Music
ISBN: 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
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