Turn up the Volume

Is Kiwi music really ready to become a museumpiece? Jack van Beynen and photographer Lawrence Smith track down some of the artefacts that showcase classic tunes and memorable musos.

They called it ‘‘cultural cringe’’. The way the LPs in their colourful sleeves were stacked together in record shops – Split Enz, Flying Nun alt-rock, Herbs reggae, a Poi E single, Howard Morrison hymns and DD Smash albums. They leaned against each other in a section labelled ‘‘New Zealand’’.

But that was in the 1980s. Back then, not much linked the records living in the same shelves apart from where they were made. Perhaps the record store owners thought Kiwi music couldn’t foot it with the rest of the world, so our songs had a special category — lumped together. That’s no longer the case. Lorde is sweeping up at the Grammy Awards, Savage is selling millions of records in the United States, Marlon Williams is appearing on Conan O’Brien. When Neil Finn asks, Mick Fleetwood will make a surprise appearance on the drums for his son’s band.

The innovation and hard work of Kiwi musicians have put them on the world map. They have started their own record labels, funded their own tours, sold their own records and made their own merchandise.

Kiwis are no longer cringing. They’re buying into the success.

Behind each success are the objects that showcase the musicians’ path to stardom – the guitars and records and amplifiers; the posters, costumes, set lists and merchandise.

And, once again, they’re all stacked on shelves, leaning on each other in a concrete bunker. But, instead of lumping them together again as a single genre of music, Auckland Museum is displaying more than 200 of these artefacts in its Volume exhibition. Cleaned and mounted, they trace the country’s musical history from the 1950s to today.

Most of the the items were loaned to the museum by the people who made that history: the musicians. Here are some of their stories.

TAMI NEILSON: FINDING FAMILY

The book’s cover has come off and it’s yellowed and mouldy, but Tami Neilson’s just pleased it has survived.

‘‘Do you know how hard it is to hold onto something when you have kids?’’ she says. ‘‘It’s in two pieces, but even that is a win.’’

The book is Loretta Lynn: Coal

Miner’s Daughter ,an autobiography by the American country music legend.

Neilson bought it when she was 15, from a second-hand book store somewhere in the United States. At the time she was touring fulltime with her family band in a 40-foot motorhome. Space was tight on the bus, and her mum’s rule was ‘‘you either have to wear it, or eat it’’.

Lynn, though, was special. Neilson bought the book after watching Coal Miner’s

Daughter – the movie that ignited her love affair with country music.

Neilson remembers a scene where Lynn sat playing guitar with five babies around her. Lynn was, famously, married at 15 and a grandmother by the time she was 29.

‘‘I remember thinking, God, if she can sit there on a porch with five babies around her feet and write songs, then I can,’’ Neilson says.

Lynn was the first country artist outside her family to inspire Neilson – and especially to inspire her to pick up a guitar.

‘‘I grew up in a family band, so my dad played, my brothers played, I didn’t feel I needed to learn to play an instrument. I was lazy. When I watched the Coal

Miner’s Daughter movie, and read the book, I thought, ‘Gosh if she can hack out three chords and write hit songs, I can do that’.

‘‘So she’s really the one, more so than even my own family members who all played, who influenced me to pick up a guitar and form my own identity as an artist.’’

When she was 18 or 19, Neilson got to meet her idol when her family opened for Lynn at a festival. ‘‘I just remember meeting her and handing over that tattered book, and her commenting something like, ‘Oh, this is an old copy’. She signed the first page for me, and I’ve managed to hold on to that for the better part of 20 years. ‘‘It’s really precious to me, and it’s something that I’ll still revisit and re-read over and over because as a female artist in the music industry, she broke a lot of ground for females in the 60s and 70s.’’ That the book survived Neilson’s years in the motorhome, houses in Canada, a shift to New Zealand and now two children shows how much she values it. Her move to a new country was a ‘‘huge adjustment’’. It meant leaving behind the family she’d spent so much of her life, and her musical career, with, and starting over. It wasn’t until she toured with two other emerging Kiwi country artists that she really found her feet. The tour was the Grand Ole Hayride in 2013, and the other musicians were Marlon Williams and Delaney Davidson. It was a success – the musicians’ combined resources and fan bases sold out shows. It was also the start of a relationship that would basically come to define modern New Zealand country music. ‘‘It was part of laying a foundation for what country music has become, kind of in this next wave. They had the big wave in 70s and 80s, mostly covers of American country songs. Whereas I think this current kind of groundswell for country music in New Zealand is original artists writing original country music that is the music of this country, by the artists here writing about things they know and that Kiwis know as well,’’ Neilson says. ‘‘When I toured with those boys, I kind of felt like I’d found my Kiwi musical family. I consider them like my Kiwi musical brothers.’’

JUDY HINDMAN: LEAVING THE NEST

Once upon a time there lived two sisters called Judy and Sue Donaldson. They grew up on a farm near Auckland in the 60s, and loved to sing and dance and listen to The Beatles.

One day in West Auckland, when Judy was 15 and Sue was 13, they heard someone playing a guitar at a neighbour’s house. They crept through the bushes with some of their friends to see who it was.

The guitar player was none other than Peter Posa, the guitarist behind hit White Rabbit, and he was playing to a group that included his manager at Viking Records, Ron Dalton.

Hiding in the bushes, the girls were star-struck. ‘‘Go and ask him for his autograph,’’ one said.

Judy and Sue were too shy, but one of their bolder friends crawled out of the shrubs and approached Posa. She pointed to Judy and Sue as they sneaked out from the undergrowth and said, ‘‘You should hear these girls sing, they’re great.’’

‘‘Give us a song, then,’’ Posa said.

He backed Judy and Sue on guitar as they sang, I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party and Tobacco Road.

Poser’s manager, Ron Dalton, was impressed. He asked Judy and Sue if they would like to come for an audition at the Viking studios.

A few weeks later they were offered a record contract, becoming girl group The Chicks. Their first double-sided single, Heart Of Stone / I Want You To Be My Boy, was released in 1965.

‘‘It’s a real fairy tale, because Mum and Dad said, ‘You’ll never hear from them again’,’’ Judy says.

Judy Donaldson is now Judy Hindman, and she lives with her husband Ross, who enjoyed musical success of his own with

The Rumour, on Auckland’s North Shore.

The Chicks broke up in 1969 after recording 13 singles, three EPs and six albums.

Hindman often thinks of her days as a professional musician. Photographs and browning newspaper clippings from the era are given pride of place on the walls of her home.

She’s also kept some of the colourful outfits The Chicks wore, including the two patterned jerseys and a satin romper she’s lending the museum for Volume.

Hindman and her sister wore the knitwear – branded ‘‘Chick jumpers’’ – on the cover of their first album, The Sound of The Chicks. They had matching triangular patterns – Judy’s was orange while Sue’s was blue – and they wore them with tights and tall boots.

In a kind of homegrown precursor to modern teen pop sensations like Selena Gomez and One Direction, The Chicks’ manager, Dalton, called most of the shots and made many of the creative decisions, including what the girls wore.

‘‘He had this image in his head of what he thought The Chicks should look like,’’ Hindman says.

And that meant buying the Chick jumpers from Sonny Knitwear in Auckland and getting their hair cut like his wife’s – something Judy and Sue were not keen on.

‘‘We didn’t enjoy having our hair cut at all,’’ Hindman remembers.

‘‘Every time we sang we had to go to the hairdresser’s first to get it done, and get it set coming over the front. It was all highly lacquered, nothing would move.’’

The Chick jumpers came with the sisters on tour, and they wore them on stage when touring as supporting acts for some of New Zealand’s biggest names.

Judy was 16 and Sue just 131⁄2 when in August 1965, they supported a nationwide tour featuring Sandi Shaw, the Pretty Things and Eden Kane. Their mother – ‘‘Mum Chick’’ to all the other entertainers – came with them as chaperone.

‘‘The Pretty Things, who were wild – just drunk every night – they just loved mum,’’ Hindman says. One of the band members snatched the pill box hat off her mother’s head and wore it for the whole tour.

In the years to come there were more records and more tours. The Chicks made their Australian TV debut, built up more than 1000 members in their fan club, for which Mum Chick typed up a newsletter under a nom de plume and posted it out to all the fans.

In 1967 the Chicks joined C’mon, a popular music television show, where they sang three songs a week. Two years later, the Chick jumpers retired as the band, under new management, tried out a more grown-up cabaret singer image. It wasn’t a hit and that year the sisters called time on the Chicks.

Since then Hindman has become a wife and mother – her own happily ever after.

MAKING TRACKS

Victoria Travers says she curated Volume at Auckland Museum as a way to give the audience a sense of how New Zealand music is made.

And what better way to show generations of music fans than to let them make it themselves?

Volume will feature a number of interactive exhibits that will allow museum visitors to make their own tracks.

There is a 70s pub set where you can play along to a Dragon song with real instruments; a replica set from 60s television show C’mon where visitors can simulate performing on TV; a DJ booth where you can mix your own tracks; and a replica 1980s record store.

Travers’ job is to make sure visitors to the exhibition have fun as well as learn, and these interactive exhibits are a big part of that. ‘‘It’s very hands-on, it’s very ears-on,’’ she says.

‘‘We know that a way to connect with content and stories is to use more of your body than just your mind.

‘‘With an exhibition on music it would be crazy if we didn’t give visitors a chance to actually make their own music and play with music and explore music.’’

Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa opens at Auckland Museum on Friday.