If you’ll forgive me using a reference to the local music scene – particularly one from such a long time ago – the difference between the motor racing scenes in the North and South Island (or more specifically, Auckland & Christchurch) is like the difference between the bands Dance Exponents and The Screaming Mee Mees!
You don’t need to take it from me either, there’s a cool little ‘made-for-TV’ docu-drama on the subject of charismatic lead singer and song-writer Jordan Luck and ‘his’ band, Dance Exponents and – again specifically – the night they took on and soundly beat the ‘Mee Mees – languishing in the dusty cyber archives of TNNZ (which you can see HERE).
And I know this how? Simple. Because I was there!
Which is going to take some explaining. So, buckle up and prepare for a ride – or rather a read about – one of the earliest ‘rides of my life.’
The year was 1982 and having – with the help of motorcycle media entrepreneur Ian Miles – managed to blag one of 14 places on media ‘man-about-town’ Brian Priestley’s Post-Graduate journalism course at Canterbury University I loaded up my recently acquired VW Beetle to its gunnels and headed north to see what all the fuss was about ‘the South Island’s biggest city.’
Having only recently finished a four-year stint ‘just down the road’ at Otago University in Dunedin you could be excused for thinking that the move would have been a seamless one.
Seriously though I felt like a real ‘fish-out-of-water’ for the first month at least. And it was really only my passion at the time for live music that saved me from spiralling down into – what today would be recognised as – a period of profound depression but back then would have simply been brushed off as ‘homesickness.’
As it turned out Christchurch had a vibrant and diverse music scene, the like of which I had never been exposed to before. In Dunedin, for instance ‘Auckland’ bands like ‘The Dudes,’ the aforementioned Screaming Mee Mees and/or the Newmatics might make the looooog trek down to play at an Orientation week gig but that would be it for the year, one of the reasons the locals started picking up guitars and putting up ads in (the late) Roy Colbert’s second-hand record shop in upper Stuart St for ‘Drummer. Must have own drum-kit,’ or ‘Wanted. Bass guitarist….no experience necc. …………… and created a scene of their own.
In stark contrast, there were weeks, in Christchurch, just a year later, when I would spend every night ‘out.’
It was on one of these ‘bender’ weeks I first ‘caught’ the distinctively dressed (‘like a cross between a punk and a pixie,’ was how one wag described him at the time) Jordan Luck and his band ‘The Dance Exponents.’
The venue was The Aranui, an otherwise featureless booze barn of a pub moored loosely (or so it seemed to me at the time) in the suburban wastes of eastern Christchurch somewhere between the city and the insipid surf of New Brighton beach.
“You should come out tonight and see them,” said fellow journalism student and long-time Aranui bar tender Phil Taylor, one (I think it was a Wednesday) afternoon.
Whether I went that night or the next or even the one after that is immaterial. All I remember are the songs – big , bold, almost orchestral affairs, some funny, others sad, but all belted out with gusto and at breakneck speed by a bloke – that would be Jordan Luck – who I realised I knew by sight; having seen him many a time walking through ‘town’ and idly wondered whenever I did, how the bugger could see where he was going on account of his eyes being completely hidden behind an extravagantly combed forward and down curtain of a fringe!
He certainly could write and sing a great pop song, though, and I remember heading to the altogether newer, flasher Hillsborough pub venue not that long afterwards – this time with a veritable entourage of (I think) my girlfriend at the time, her best friend and perhaps one other) when ‘The Dance Exponents were ‘supporting’ visiting Auckland band the Screaming Mee Mees.
This was the night that – it might have been Mike Chun of Mushroom Records – some ‘big-time producer from Auckland’ anyway, had flown down to see and hear for himself what all the fuss was about ‘this local band led by a charismatic frontman who writes all his own songs.’
Please don’t expect my now 61-year-old memory to re-call chapter-and-verse how the night panned out. What I most remember from that night all – what? – 39 years ago, now, however, is just how different the two performances were.
On the one hand you had the ‘Mee Mees, the pros ‘from Auckland,’ the headline act, with a video of their infectious single – ‘See Me Go’ – already on high rotate on TV music show, Radio with Pictures, and a bright future in ‘the music business’ already – apparently – mapped out.
All they needed to do was go through the motions – which is exactly what they did.
On any other night in Christchurch and/or at any other venue in the city that might – just might, mind – have been enough.
On this particular night, however, Jordan Luck, and his Dance Exponents, were peerless, throwing everything – and more – into a live performance of such magnitude it literally blew the ‘Mee Mees off the stage, – or at least- off their stride.
Good things, as it turns out, regularly come out of Christchurch – though by the time many of us cotton on to the fact – Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney even London, Paris, New York, or Los Angeles have claimed them as their own.
Musically, the Dance Exponents were followed, for instance, by bands as well as individual singer/songwriters like The Feelers, Bic Runga and Anika Moa, Shape Shifter and (hip hop lyricist extraordinaire) Scribe.
The city appears to work best as a musical incubator, a supportive environment in which you can – within reason – come up with your very own sound and/or show, confident that if it is good enough and you are prepared to put your heart and soul into it there will be – just enough people to sustain you aa you prepare to ‘go national’ like The Feelers and ShapeShifter.
Which is all very well if this were a website about music and the local gigging scene, but what about cars, motorcycles, karts and the drivers, mechanics etc. etc. the stuff – you know – of one of your usual columns Mr MacKay?
No problem, in fact, I’m glad you reminded me because it was all the time, I spent watching the Livestream of KartSport NZ’s National Sprint Championships meeting from Christchurch over the Easter weekend which gave me the idea for this column.
For a start, you see, Christchurch can rightly claim to be the birthplace of motorised sport in NZ – the first organised motor racing meeting taking place on Boxing Day 1905 at what we know of today as the Addington trotting (horse racing) track.
New Brighton beach also played host to some of the Dominion’s first car and motorcycle races (see main picture) – long before those up (and down) Auckland’s Muriwai Beach, and in 1949 the inaugural NZ Championship Road Race was held on a temporary circuit set up at the Wigram Air Force base in the city’s gritty light industrial/suburban south east.
If anything, too, speedway motorcycle racing was even more popular in the south than 4-wheel Midget racing ‘up north’ thanks in large part to NZ’s original ‘trio at the top’; Ronnie Moore, Barry Briggs, and Ivan Mauger. So strong was the competition locally that Moore, Briggs and Mauger were able to transition seamlessly from racing at home to the top British and Eastern European leagues then onto the annual Speedway World Championship meetings where all three were multiple titleholders.
Christchurch was also where motorcycle road racing boomed in the 1970s and early 1980s, with riders like Dale Wylie, The Boote brothers, John and Gary, and Paul MacLachlan and Stu Avant pushing each other to the point where they were leading figures in the country’s annual international Marlboro Series. John Boote was even extended the rare privilege by the Yamaha factory of giving its all-new transverse 4-cylinder 2-stroke engine TZ700 (here in NZ as well) F1 bike its world debut at around of the local series.
Speaking of motorcycles and the so-called Garden City no mention of the two could be complete without namechecking arguably Christchurch’s most famous son, John Kenton Britten – and his greatest legacy, the Britten V-1000 motorcycle.
Back to four wheels (and engines) and entrepreneurs, and who could forget the work both in front of and behind the scenes by the man behind local firm Plastic Diecasting Ltd (aka PDL), Sir Robertson Stewart.
From the original PDL Mini to my personal favourite, the brutish and sadly short-lived, Clyde Collins built and driven PDL Ford XW Falcon GT to the ultimate version of PDL Mustang 1 (promo slogan ‘electric blue and 180-mph’) then perhaps the ultimate NZ Tin-top, the Torro Toys sponsored (Fox-bodied) Mustang 2, Sir Robertson towered over the New Zealand motor racing scene like a colossus.
Then there are some of the innovations which have come out of the Garden City over the years like – let’s see – the Open Saloon Car Association (or OSCA), the Country Gentlemen’s (classic car racing) movement and CAMS (classic motorcycle racing register), Pre-65 racing, the original (Series 1) Mazda RX7 racing category and the long-running South Island Formula Ford Association.
Where would some of us be, as well, without specialty businesses like Mike Pero Motorsport Park-based Motorsport Solutions Ltd, a company which can breathe new life into even the most basket case of cars; and even create true facsimile or tribute cars like the rear engine V16 Auto Union of local (mad) man Phil Mauger.
And I could go on and on and on…
Like their counterparts on the still very vibrant music scene, there is obviously something in the air, the water or the at times bracing local climate which encourages creativity, and which leaves locals deeply unsatisfied with going through the motions or – God forbid it – preserving the status quo!
And more power to them I say.
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