Luck to wander down memory Lane
Singer and songwriter Jordan Luck says the success of The Exponents happened very quickly. It took eight months from their first booking at the Hillsborough Tavern as The Dance Exponents in October 1981, to being signed by musician and music manager Mike Chunn in May the following year.
‘‘We had all these songs up our sleeves, 16 of them, when we did the Hillsborough. Mike Chunn came down to see us in March
1982. Then we were signed up and recorded Victoria in June. Then we were touring with the Screaming Meemees. We just thought that was the way things happened.
‘‘I had been playing in a school band, Basement, in Timaru from
1976 to 1980. Me and guitarist Brian Jones knew Steve Cowan, the former guitarist from Splash Alley and he said to us, ‘move to Christchurch, look at Paul Scott from Pop Mechanix. They have taken off big in Australia’. Initially, Brian wasn’t mad keen on moving. He said Basement were doing well, but Brian and I moved and met Harry Harallambi and Dave Gent in Christchurch. Dave was from Oamaru, Harry from Nelson, so all of us were from the provinces.
‘‘With only about a week of rehearsals in a lounge on Woodham Rd, we were spotted by Pete Waller, who was Jim Wilson’s offsider. He said, ‘you are a great band and we book bands’.
‘‘We had a go at the Hillsborough and then The Star and Garter. It happened so quickly. We had Victoria as a hit single and supported David Bowie in November 1983 at Western Springs. The 1990s were big for us too, but only as big as it ever was in that first year.’’
Luck now lives in Banks Peninsula and regards all of Canterbury and Otago as part of his territory, although he regularly visits Christchurch. He loves visiting the cheesemongers at The Arts Centre and Penny Lane Records in Sydenham, and is singing at Penny Lane this Thursday for Welcome, the First Thursdays arts event for December.
Luck wrote the words for The Dance Exponents’ 1985 Christchurch In Cashel Street I Wait, a lyric that was innovative at the time because of its local content. It came seven years before Auckland band The Mutton Birds’ Dominion Road, which Don McGlashan penned, in part, to address the absence of any mention of the country’s cities and towns in popular music.
‘‘The music for Christchurch In Cashel Street I Wait was written by David and Brian, but I already had the lyric down. The songs just come, and generally it’s a melody. The lyrics are the hardest things nowadays, but I can do a melody from a phone book. I like Sam Hunt, Garry McCormick and Hone Tuwhare, and I was quoting poetry when I was about 14, but I wouldn’t call my lyrics poems. But, Victoria, I hope that song is around 20 years from now. When it came out, a couple of university stations played it, but now it is 40 (sic) years old and I hear it more.’’
Luck notes that his time in Christchurch when he arrived in 1981 was short. ‘‘We were hardly here. We were on the road and we moved to Auckland in about six months, but we were proud to say we were a Christchurch band, and connected to Canterbury and South Canterbury.’’
He also has an excellent memory for the city’s music scene from the early 1980s, singling out the The Wastrels and their lead singer Anton Jenner. ‘‘They were phenomenal. They wrote great songs and were great players with a real presence. Their records were also good.’’
Now, Luck’s Christchurch In Cashel Street I Wait has become a lyric about a memory of a city. His description of Christchurch and its environs as it is now is quite different – no longer a central city, but a place that extends well beyond its former boundaries.
‘‘I have met a lot of people who say this is not the place they used to like. I can only imagine the daily exasperation that people feel here. I am out at Little River and it is like a new city. There is this big ring road built around Christchurch for everyone who has moved out. If you have a good bakery or a pub and good produce to eat, that is where the community will be. People say, ‘where do you live now?’ and I say, ‘in New Zealand; Canterbury, Dunedin and Central Otago’.
And what will Luck be performing at Penny Lane? ‘‘I don’t do these gigs very often, but I did do one recently at Diamond Harbour. I do a ramble and I talk about the songs.’’