Talking Lightly

Rip It Up, Issue 145, 1 August 1989, Page 8

Talking Lightly

Another Chris Knox Inverview

Chris Knox sings, draws and writes. He’s a prolific worker with agood sense ofhumour and a chapterall to himself (and Toy Love) in Stranded In Paradise, not that the latter interestshimmuch. :

- He edits Jesus On A Stick, one of - the brightest comic compilationsin the country (Mark One have gotitin - stock, whip down and buy a copy. - Check out The Story Confinues He Love and has since been in the Tall Dwarfs More recently toured America and Europe with the re-formed Clean, and saved Homish HamishKilgour from being swindled out of all hismoney insome Manhatian - side-stree. Hamish sounds ikehe has all the symptoms of a gambler, and ifthe city fathers& mothersever do furn the Auckland Centraltrainsfationintoacasino - thenthe Cleancankisstheir backroyaliiesgoadbye. - “Ifound New Yorkreally friendly, Chrisremembers. Notatallthe evil vicious nasty V"endcr@wflfi place it made outfo be. Extremely vibrant. beaufythere was extraordinary, theamountof beautiful people there amazing all these tall slim black peoplewith : - amazing features, most of whom - - would make Grace Jones look quite ordinary and TINK TINK TINK TINK TINKTINK TINK TINK TINK TINK . TINK TINK TINK TINK -~ - TINK andthat'sthesound oftea - beingstirred ..." - - o - Must remember to move my ™= - Walkman. iamahe & “We played oncein New Yorkat .- CBGB's. The crowd seemed to have - agood time — we certainly did. And itwas just like you'd picture it, totally encrusted with graffiti from the last 20years. cleaned since the Ramones first played there. . ltwas dark and long and narrow, and the stupid bastards had chairs and -

tables right up fo the front of the stage.” Is that the legacy of the early 705%.. _ lowhenitwosajozzchublSothat wosstupidthoydhavepeole dusterngaroundthesidesofthe. - stage, whereyoucangetupand stand about two deep. Bostonwas | really nice; it was like TV sit-comland.

to asit-com, all the corny stuff that you thought they must have made up because it's a bittoo clean and ordered—it's all there. The audience and the radio stafions there were good.” Roger Shepherd said that the student radio stations were all too eagerto play the Flying Nun catalogue. “Yeah, they've been doingita long time, so they're a bitmore settled than Campus Radio—and I Campusßadio'’s really good. Boston has been doing it that much longer,

and they've got that much more comfortable, | suppose. There were a couple of ancienttype people

wandering round who'd obviously been there since the dawn of time, but most of the staff are young, very clued up, intelligent people.” We hear only good news from overseas; everyone loves NZ, we're flavour of the month, we're hip, efc. How is the Flying Nun catalogue

selling over there? “| stayed for a while with Gerard of Homestead and he operates out of a tiny wee room, lives in another tiny ~weefoom, and has exactly the same Buthe has much stronger links witha _ much better distribution service, _ sympathetic fo the recordings they're _ doing. They put out aboutfive Flying _ Nunalbums, including Tall Dwarfs andthe Clecn, o he was happy o _ more throughout the United States of any given record than we would sell “inNew Zealand.

. “Ifsvery, very smalltime,and he - finds it difficult to make people aware ofthe music when the bands aren't there. There are hundreds of

stutt but the fanzines only get read by afiny number of people —who also readthousands of other reviews that rave about Dutch bands, Finnish

bands, and so on. Andit's not quite as hip nowtolike New Zealand music asitwasawhileago, 50...” - Despite that, are Flying Nun getting afoot-hold in America? “They're doing well, slowly building. And, as things stand at the moment, there’s more future to selling Flying Nun records overseas than there is selling themin New

Zealand. There's a bigger population basis there—o.oo3 of the populationin the States s a lot more thanitis here.” -

Export seems to be the big push at the moment.

“Roger’s just come back fromthe New Music seminar, with a few nibbles that I'm not at liberty to

discuss.”

It's fair to say that Chris Knox s a natural on stage. As David Lange says goodbye to the office of Prime Minister, he must surely take with him fond memories of Chris's support slot forßilly Bragg atthe Powerstation in 1987; the flaying guitar of a man with two good chords and one running shoe, his other (bare) foot squeezing the effects pedal. Yes, the highlight of a political career. In 2003, Lange will strike a Seddon-like pose in front of documentary cameras and reveal that he brought Songs For Cleaning Guppiesand practised the bar-E for many happy hours afterwards. Lasttime | saw the Tall Dwarfs there were four or five of them on stage and they were very loud and busy. How did touring with the Clean asasolo performer work out? “It's easier really. As the tour went on, | got better at playing my one chord at different positions on the neck and even started fo learn some ofthe words, so some songs | only had to look at my lyrics on the wee music stand only four or five imes duringthe song—ratherthanbe constantly fixing my gaze on them. _ “Iplayed the occasional Tall Dwarfs song, and ‘Mother’ by John Lennon, but otherwise it was all new material to the audiences. But even the Dutch and German audiences seemed to get allthe jokes and the stupidity between— andin—the song. There was a lot of bemusement butthey eventually caught on—-

betterthan New Zealand audiences do! I haven'tgotthe history over there of being an obnoxious bastard.” '

Youseemedto have agoodtime a few months back atthe Clean’s

Auckland reunion gig. “| probably was. Butatthe beginning of the tour with the Clean | gotreally pissed offin Dunedin.” Why? ~ “Justbecause ... Dunedin brings out the worstin me, generally. There's a lot of complacency there, and a lot of being cool, or atleast what | saw as these things— it probably wasn't, it was probably just me. Justthe fact that this place was absolutely full of

eight or nine hundred people, yet everybody down the frontwas sitting onthe floor like fucking hippies or something; itwas horrible— like being at a Split Ends— with a “D" — concertin 1971.50 I tried fo getthem up and standing around so the people atthe back would have more room, butthey didn't really do that, they didntwarmto me, | got cold to them and rubbished shit out of them. Then | agonised onthe bustrip up to Christchurch aboutwhat assilly wanker | was, and decided to be more positive about thingsin the future. :

“Which | was — by my standards — right up till the very last gig of the Europeantour, when | got pissed of with the Dutch for not responding! (laughs) They were stoned to the gills, I think. But | think | am maturing (grins) and realising that although abusing the audience works on one level, it’s ..gefting a bit tiring." Do you think you're handicapped inNew Zealand by people’simage of you asthe father-figure of the Flying Nun sef2 “Is'pose so, yeah. | think I'm handicapped more by my reputation as an obnoxious twit. Which | have to agree with— often | am.lwouldn't - mind getting around that. : “Butin every audience there are always going to be people who can see why 'mbeing obnoxious—-

there's an awful lot of satire involved inthis “stage” business. You're trying to make everyone in the audience realise thatthey're every bit as

important as the person'on the stage Sometimes that works, but I'm realising that it works better with

humour, more positive humour.” Whenyoutitled the Ego : Gratification Album, it was as if you were getting the knifeinbefore anyone else could. “Definitely! {laughs) That wasn't conceived as an album; that was just messingroundon afour-track, learning how fo use the machine. Doug Hood said, you should putit out. And Roger said, Uh, yeah yeah .. Sol did! It was very self-indulgent but yes, it's good to write the reviews on

the record before it gefsinto the hands of the reviewers.” Chris Knox records come outata swiftrate, don’tthey? “Yes, butthat one (to tape recorder:) He's holding ‘Guppy Plus’, the flip side of ‘Not Given Lightly’, the 12-inchssingle (to me:)is done very simply, sloppily, quickly, without recourse fo much modern technology. Butl'mplanningon having an 8-track by Christmas. And “amixer, even.” : Whythe technological leap? “The four track’s slowly falling to pieces. I'shad a pretty healthy life. Sol'mgonnatryand getafree eight-track off somebody! | rang up the Northern Regional Arts Council and asked them if there was anything inthe Composer's Grant that | could use to get equipment, specifically an eight-track recorder, but the woman said, ‘No no, | don't think so, but there's someone here fromthe QE2, I'l askthem.’ So she asked them and said, ‘No, no, nothing of that sort I'm afraid ... but Farmers has got a sale on atthe moment.’ And | said, no, this is for an eight track recorder. And she said, ‘Ooh! You'd be surprised what they've got up there, I was just there the other day’. Quite sweet, really.” : : T Knox's new albumis Not Given Lightly,and consists ofl 5 songs that “I've been performing live overthe lastthree years." It was mostly recorded at Mascot on 16 track, recorded and mixed in 14 hours “which I'm very proud of ‘cos | did everything, rhythms, guitars, vocals.” Two more tracks were done at Lab. “And I'm bored shitless with it because everything's been on tape since February. But if's still good, and yourreaders, I'd like to think (grinning) will be in a position to listen toitwithfreshears.” ‘ Now Knox is busy with other things, muttering about the burden of his Max Mediia comic strip which he himselflampooned in Stamp. Max was originally conceived asa | commentatoronhismedia P>

Ghostl

B> namesake, but Chrisis cheerfully ignoring the media at the moment and Max has become a burden. Max started off cheerfully roasting CVbut “not watching CVanymore makes it difficultto have any fun with that.l'm not listening to much music or watching much TV. What am | doing with my time2 Working. Doing Max Media, ha ha! And my Listener columns. Did a poster for Massey University, working on the animation forthe second Funny Business series, - starfingwork on akids’ b00k..." Can|see the book? “Um, ljust started that last night, so ..ifyou must. It was occasioned by a publisher writing o me and saying, 'l saw your name, do you want fo write abook?’ Andl've gotanew Toy Love albumto putout; a - collection of demos and bits and - pieces. lfllinclude two tracks off AK 79butwith much better cutsthan they goton AK 79, a much superior version of ‘Frogs’, and another song . thatnever came out on record. I sa pretty short album, buti's good.” When Toy Love terminated their contract with Deluxe they still had debts, so all the royalties go straight backinto paying the label. Members still get “a drip-feed from songwriting - royalties. | gotthis huge wad of ~ computer print-outwith all our songs onitfrom Chappell in Australia, and it amounted to something like $2.75, with a note saying we don't pay out for anything less than $5, so we'll just additto next year's earnings.” MrKnox is also “tryingto get involved with my kids’ school, what with this Picot thing. Very important. We had a meeting the other night andweretoldthatwe coulddo anything that we liked with the school charter aslong as it followed the official guidelines. But as yet no-one’s even glimpsed the official guidelines. “Because of the whole Picot thing I'm getting the courage to go along to school.” Chris Knox looks happy. “I'mactually starting to feel - comfortable at my kids's school. It's rather nice.” :

CHADTAYLOR