Nun’s a hard habit to break
Drunk on decibels and wistful memories, I’m stuck in a deep, jangly groove...
Not content to simply wallow in nostalgia, I have spent this past week drowning in the stuff. I have been diving in deep, without the aid of snorkel, air tanks or flippers, into the deep well of wondrousness that is Flying Nun records.
During daylight hours when I probably should have been working, I’ve been dropping the needle on scratchy old platters by The Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings, Look Blue Go Purple, Bilders and the Able Tasmans.
I’ve rediscovered the cheap thrills available on the early recordings of Chris Knox, both solo and with Tall Dwarfs.
Drunk on decibels, awash with wistful memories, I’ve been losing myself in extended musical reveries, sitting in stupefied wonder before the stereo, letting this stuff flow over me and wash me clean.
How could I have forgotten about the controlled sonic explosions of Bailter Space? The wild guitar wig-outs of The 3Ds? That particular mix of sweetness and snarl that is Straitjacket Fits’ mighty Life In One Chord EP?
I’ve been playing old records by The Clean at such punishing volume, it made the fillings rattle in my teeth.
In the privacy of my own office, curtains drawn, I have danced a one-man hoedown to the indie folk-rock cracker that is The Bats’ 1987 debut album, Daddy’s Highway.
Just the other day, I scared the pants off a visiting courier who had the misfortune to walk past my open window just as I started hollaring the chorus (‘‘Fire in my brain! That you’d like to put out!’’) to homegrown biker anthem Buddy by Dunedin drone-rock pioneers, Snapper.
Last weekend was spent revisiting the back catalogue of Palmerston North band, Skeptics, whose sound Shihad’s Jon Toogood once memorably described as ‘‘like Motorhead, played on lots of mushrooms and acid by a Flying Nun band’’.
Certainly, this is a band worth playing to any cloth-eared bore who still dismisses Flying Nun as just a bunch of sound-alike southern guitar janglers.
Here instead is raw, challenging music that’s unafraid to pound and pulverise, with songs that sometimes make you want to curl up, suck your thumb and cry out for your mum.
Singer David D’Ath’s stentorian wail perches atop drum beats that snap like broken bones.
Synthesizers squeeze out gigantic blocks of cold, glistening sound that float past like icebergs, half-submerged in a sea of turbulent guitar feedback.
I’d forgotten just how good these guys were, so I played record after record at full tit, and fell in love all over again.
I sang along to the immortal ‘‘We pack meat!’’ chorus of AFFCO, a great 1987 song with an infamous film clip directed by Axemen drummer, Stuart Page.
Subsequently screened at video art festivals worldwide, this clip was banned from broadcast for many years here at home.
Why? Because it featured one of our nation’s primary industries looking not too flash, with shots of sheep being slaughtered in a South Auckland freezing works intercut with footage of D’Ath writhing around in blood-soaked cling-film in a Freeman’s Bay flat.
Ah, yes. Pop music. What’s not to love? And I deeply love this label, from its much lauded 80s classics to later signings such as HDU, Mint Chicks, Shocking Pinks and Die! Die! Die!
Consequently, I am chuffed that my own backyard is about to play host to a few of these buggers. Nun alumni Shayne Carter and The Chills are both playing at the Nelson Arts Festival, which launched this week.
And this Saturday I’ll be interviewing the Mother Superior himself, Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd, about his recent memoir, I’m In Love With These Times.
We will sit on stage and stroke our chins and jaw away merrily before a crowd about this fine, frisky and frequently fallible label: its triumphs, its bitter defeats, its many great records and its occasional stinkers.
And we will be doing so without a whole heap of sleep. Not content to simply talk about this music, I have foolishly organised an excuse to play it to people, too.
The night before our book talk, we will be playing a ‘‘Flying Nun disco’’ at a Nelson bar called Deville. The LPs and singles I’ve been caning this week will be tossed into a record crate and dragged downtown, and Shepherd and I will stand shoulder to puny shoulder behind a set of turntables, inflicting our favourite Nun tunes on a dancefloor full of fellow music fans at high volume.
Is is possible to dance to The Pin Group, Bailter Space and The Skeptics without causing serious injury to yourself or others? We shall soon see.