Arts Festival Music

Rip It Up, Issue 5, 1 October 1977, Page 4

Arts Festival Music

Bruce Belsham.

It was a bit like a dumbell: weighty at both ends, with a thin stretch in the middle.

The music programme of the National Festival of the Arts opened with Jazz. Colin Hemmingsen held the fort for two hours, in workshop, persuading his audience that Jazz is not dead, that it is alive and well and living with a funky drummer. The audience for the Jazz concert that night took the Jazz-lives message to heart, and they stamped and they cheered and they whistled for more. The Golden Horn Big Band co-operated by playing with full enthusiasm. It’s good to see an entire horn section jiving, clicking fingers, swaying hips and mouthing rhythms. Showbiz razzamatazz, but kind of exciting. The 1860 Band appear by contrast a little timeworn, but with the aid

of Hemmingsen’salto, they too worked up a good lather. However the highlight of the Jazz concert came as an utter surprise,

with Palmerston North band Earthborn. An intriguing collection of people, including farm boy bass player, Turkish drummer and eccentric pianist, Earthborn are asexciting a N.Z. prospect as I’ve heard in a long while. I only hope that they, and their tasteful and inventive repertoire, get more exposure in the future. With the exception of Hello Sailor, who played at times brilliantly to unappreciative audiences, and Living Force, the middle of the week sagged. I suppose that with both these bands bringing albums out soon, prospects on the local market are buoyant. What is more disturbing, particularly in relation to Hello Sailor’s reception was New Zealand rock’n’roll’s green eyed monster: regionalism. There is just too much division between Auckland’s and Wellington’s music scenes, let alone between the North and South Islands’. At the tail end of festivities were scheduled the big names. The Bert Jansch John Martyn concert was filled to the point of mass suffocation. Bert Jansch came on sporting an alcoholic barrier between the coordinating parts of brain and hands. So much for an erstwhile folk-guitar hero. Martyn on the other hand, downed a third of a large bottle of rum on stage, smoked half a joint, and thereby oiled his components nicely. Martyn is a captivating performer, whether he plays his role as the world’s only heavy metal acoustic guitarist, or whether he sings the blues. Drunkard, stand up comic, musician extraordinaire, John Martyn executes things in style and that was a nice way to round off.