NEW PLYMOUTH ROCKS

Rip It Up, Issue 180, 1 July 1992, Page 8

NEW PLYMOUTH ROCKS

Before I left for New Plymouth, everybody I spoke to had a dire tale to tell of someone he knew getting beat up in that town. I imagined streets crawling with people with 666 tattooed across their foreheads, poisonous punks and redneck local yokels.

Well, times must've changed, or maybe in some situations you just get treated better if you're a girl, 'cos everyone I met down there was friendly and the vibe was helpful, funny, straight-up, no bull. I found out that this conservative magic mountain town conceals a thriving underground music scene whose denizens are gonna keep on doing what they do whether anyone in Auckland or the rest of the world takes any notice or not. Me and photographer Mairi

Gunn pulled into town at 7pm on Friday night after a fivehour drive. Brian Wafer, owner of Ima Hitt Records, had booked us into the White Hart Hotel, a clean, cheap period piece taking up one entire block in the centre of town. It's also the leading rock 'n' roll venue and the scene, tonight, of a marathon seven-band gig jacked up by Brian to present the local talent.

The show was due to start any time now and we hadn't even had a chance to freshen up. I was still trying to decide what to wear when I heard the first band strike some vicious opening chords. So much for giving them a miss, they sounded raw and rude. "Come on bitch suck my cock" were the words I heard over an evilsounding riff. I had to check this poet out. I go downstairs to the Blue Room (a long, low, dark bar with a small stage near the door) to find Nefarious in full throttle, currently a three piece while two members do a spell in the slammer. Ex-Toxic Avengers Nigel (vocals/ guitar) and Mark (drums), plus Sticky Filth's Craig standing in for the missing member on bass. Nigel braced behind his guitar looking a mean 18. Songs with titles like 'Rectum Radio': hard, fast and dirty rock 'n' roll. I wouldn't be surprised if these boys like Motorhead. It's a shame they’re on so early because the crowd is still arriving. Tonight is definitely an event, judging by the number of hip-looking girls who've turned up — so much for this being a hick town. In fact, the crowd is one of the night's eyeopeners. Obviously all social factions mix together in such a small town, so we have punks, skins, lots of long-haired dudes and dudesses, representatives from the local biker "club" the Magogs (who also do security at the White Hart and break up the evening's only scuffle), heavy metal fans and only one or two dweeby alternative types in pony-tails who would've looked more at home in Auckland.

Big Surprise, Sticky Filth don't have tattooed necks. Chris has long hair in a pony tail and a white sweat shirt, drummer Paul is a long hair in a Public Enemy T-shirt, only bass player/ lead vocalist Craig looks like a punk in a jumper. He singslike a man who's been burned: bitter, maybe, but not twisted. Head held back, arm raised before he strikes another sonic bass chord, he sneers when he sings and he comes up afterwards and shouts unprintable things at me, the Auckland hack, but that's okay. Chris and his girlfriend Belinda are beaming and in about five minutes so is Craig and an interview is arranged. Tonight the Filth suf-

fer from a muddy mix, which Chris says is just as well be cause he was too pissed to play properly. There's more musical complexity and melody going on here than fans of the Filth of yore would expect. Nowadays, cries for 'Weep Woman Weep' are routinely ignored. The Filth have moved on, but they are still dogged by the "tasteless lyrics" controversy generated by two of the songs on their 1988 LP. Which doesn't seem fair when every second rock song there's ever been is basically

"suck my dick" in fancier language. Sticky Filth epitomise the New Plymouth sound in that they deliver with a kind of angry passion and they bring a "don't fuck with me" directness to their doings. More of them later. Warp Spasm are on now, young dudes doing a death-metal rock thing. Again, grunty, raw, the death bit coming mainly from the under-the-floorboards vocal style of 17-year-old Brooke Ardell and the chugga-chugga guitar chords. They listen to Primus, Pestilence, Coroner and Body Count and formed Warp Spasm from the ashes of Epitaph in order to head in a different musical direction. One of the youngest bands in town, their first gig was the Mushroom Ball a few months ago. Some of their songs are a pisstake on cheesy Satanic lyrics. 'Satan's Pussy', for example, is about an evil cat that does vindictive things. Warp Spasm are named after a character in 2000 AD and they hate petrol heads. One of the rockingest bands of the night is the Nod, selfbilled speed rock metal who have just recorded an album called Thirsty Work. All four of them manage to sing in unision and they work up quite a sweat. Frontman Darren looks like a good-humoured bully boy (he used to be in a band called the Fascist Bully Boys From Hell), but he's sweet-voiced as hell when he wants to be. On record the Nod are a strange mixture of Megadeth meets Bon Jovi (well, drummer Pete is a Rush fan), but tonight they're fullfrontal thrash metal attack and fun to watch.

There's no time to pause for breath in this tightly run show. I retire to the back of the bar with the bikers (well, not exactly with the bikers, but that's where they're standing) and gaze drunkenly at the crowd milling about to the sound of Body Count. There's a lot of body scanning going on tonight, the atmosphere is thick and sultry and it's great not knowing anyone. I pretty much sit out Burt Real, who are acknowledged as sole local proponents of the Flying Nun style, ie they look like they went to university instead of tech and they sound sensitive and lowkey.

They are very good at what they do, but tonight I'm just not in the mood for overtly intelligent music. I weave my way back on to the dance floor to take in Tension, the locals who are going to suppport Sepultura. The stage looks crowded with two guitarists (Kelly and Chris from Sticky Filth) and three brothers: SF drummer Paul, Alastair on vocals and Jason on bass. Tension are raucous, loud and deliber-

ately rough around the edges, but they're not just another dumb metal band. I later learn Alastair writes a serious vein of lyric about subjects like suicide and physical abuse from a woman's point of view. Like Sticky Filth, he's suffered from negative press that's stuck due to one youthful indiscretion when his band went under the name Das Unter Mensh. Maximum Rock and Roll branded them homophobic because they wrote "no thanx to fags" on their single. He admits now that it was a pretty immature thing to say, but the reaction it caused has made him think about the implications of his words. Put it down to youthful naivety, rather than wilful prejudice. Finally, last act for the night, Hideously Disfigured, who take the stage wearing paper bags over their heads. New Plymouth's answer to the Residents? I don't think so. These guys used to be Nod roadies, their thing is rap metal and they're pretty funny. I don't know where I was when they started throwing G-strings at the audience during 'Look At Her Undies' (some of them worked as roadies on a recent male stripper show and scored a bunch of promo packs), but I'm front of stage for the other highlight of their set, a metallic KO version of Ice-T's 'The Girl Tried To Kill Me'.

Yep, quite an introduction to hardcase New Plymouth hard-core. The next day I'm round at Brian Wafer's shop, admiring his collection of sec-ond-hand singles (lots of early NZ ones) and asking him for some background info on the New Plymouth "scene".

Brian's been at the helm of Ima Hitt Records for about eight years. He was just another record collector selling off a few items to make a quick buck, but one thing led to another and now he has this shop and a label that does releases when he can afford it. So far Sticky Filth have been the main international sellers, having sold 400 albums in Germany and Australia. Harry Death and TAB have also released stuff on IMA Hitt.

Brian (an amiable bearded dude in a Mushroom Ball sweatshirt) books all the bands at the White Hart, so his finger is on the proverbial pulse and his shop is a mecca for people wanting to find out what's happening in the wild world of rock 'n' roll.

How would you describe the New Plymouth sound? "Loud guitars and drums. It doesn't come from things like the Stooges, because half the people haven't heard of the Stooges."

Local live music fans are fanatical, but they're not all rock archivists.

"It's a real lifestyle thing," continues Brian, "but the people who go to gigs aren't record collectors, they're not the real enthusiasts. We've had heaps of people coming in here saying what are the Nod like, what are Sticky Filth. They don't know anything about local bands, but they know their Black Sabbath, Uriah Heap, Metallica, Bon Jovi." Do local bands feel they're languishing in a backwater? "There's not necessarily more opportunities in Auckland. Bands like the Warners can't get on a record label and if any band in Auckland deserves

to have vinyl and CDs happening all the time it's the Warners, they're the hardest working guys there are. The good thing about the Warners, and it's the same with the bands here, they're playing what they like and they're not dictated to by any fashion, whether it be mainstream or alternative. They just do their own thing. I don't know what visions people in the bands have got, whether they just want to get pissed and party, or whether they want to take it further."

Do locals feel overlooked by the rest of the country? "Nobody has to write about it. It survives, the people doing things here carry on doing them whether or not they get exposure. People aren't influenced by what's cool in Auckland. A lot of the Auckland bands who I thought were really interesting are now like they've gone through the import bins of some record store and picked up on what to imitate. That's their choice, but at the same time I like it to be a more honest thing, just doing what you feel. The bands down here do." And how do the conservative locals feel about the heinous rock scene bubbling under the ground in their town?

"There's other things happening. There's a whole community of folk musicians out there too, there's all sorts of

things. There's no anti the New Plymouth rock thing now. If the police are onto anything it's individuals who fuck up, basically, otherwise they don't give a damn." This is later corraborated by Craig, who tells me about the punk rock file the police used to keep, how they'd bust in on people's parties looking for trouble until they realised the criminal element wasn't necessarily being harboured by the punks. Nor is the annual Mushroom Ball (officially known as the Under The Mountain Ball) a cause for police concern. Five years on, it's a huge annual

event attracting a star line-up of bands from around the country and hundreds of people prepared to party for days.

As for partying now, it's late Saturday afternoon and we bump into Chris collecting his equipment from the White Hart. He invites us to a party that night, arranging to come and get us at 6pm, the plan being that we follow him in our car. Unfortunately we lose the plot by deciding to partake of one of the hotel's $5 roast dinners and are hidden in the dining room so he can't find us. Thus I spend Saturday night in what could be the North Island's wildest town reading an old copy of Taranaki Underground to the light of a single bar heater. Rock and roll.

We meet up with Nefarious the next afternoon (in a vacant lot down an alley off the town's main street) and they confirm that we did indeed miss some good parties last night. In fact, it seems Nigel hasn't slept since Friday night. I begin by asking the bleary-eyed local GG Allin fan what Nefarious means. "Wicked to the extreme." That must be hard to live up to. "Not really, not in this town." Nefarious have just recorded a blistering version of 'Mustang Sally' as their first single at a funny old 16-track studio in

Kaponga, 30 miles away. "Raw as fuck in the middle of nowhere," as Nigel puts it. Are Nefarious punk or hardcore?

"I'd say that we were total hellcore sleaze rock. It's hardcore."

So far, Nigel's come up with the lyrics and the bones of the songs, but everyone contributes their bits in the practice room. It should be borne in mind that not only is the original bassist temporarily out of action with Craig from Sticky Ei]th just filling in, Nefarious are also missing their lead guitarist (due back one day). Ideally, Nigel would be free to do more stuff on stage as lead singer unconstrained by guitar. As it is, he manages to come over pretty intense. "Yeah, well, that's what we're into, a total energy thing. Once we had a whole lot of pigs heads and chopped them up with axes, me and the other bass player. I was gonna do it the other night, but the pig's head was too frozen and the crate it was on broke. It's only a gimmick. We want to go in People magazine." Do you wanna shock people?

"We just do it and people respond. I'd always play whatever I wanted, I don't care if there's a 100 people there or 10. It gets me off. I get off putting a fucking guitar on. .Maybe it's because my dick's too small, I don't know, but to me that's like a total wicked masturbation toy, I put a guitar on and that's me, man. I don't know how to play the fucking thing, I just get into it." What are you singing about? "We've got a song called 'Rectum Radio' which is about anal penetration. It started out as a pisstake, but I dunno, it's quite a serious song. I like taking the piss and I like to do it really obnoxiously and sick, too many people take their music too seriously and we don't." So you're not necessarily angry about stuff? "Nah, but I get pissed off. It is an aggression thing, but it's an andrenalin thing as well, it all works in together, that's what makes it Nefarious."

Are you into Satanism, the Occult?

"I'm into the occult, but we don't really sing about it or anything. One song, the chorus goes 'I will slaughter the lambs of Christ' and basically that's because I didn't know what the fuck to say so I wrote that. So we don't project Satanism we project Nefariousism. We're trying to brainwash all of New Zealand to be Nefarious worshippers." . Do you have an initiation ceremony? "Depends how much money you've got and how good looking you are and how much drugs you got. Basically there's only a

few people that we'd consider followers, true bad dudes."

So how come New Plymouth has got such an ugly reputation? The boys mutter something about the wrong people doing the talking. Craig says the "sexist New Plymouth" tag was largely due to Sticky Filth's Weep Woman Weep, the cover art and the words to a couple of songs. I say that I'm a feminist but I don't find the Filth's songs offensive. The infamous 'Dig You Up' was just schlock-rock horror. Craig says he doesn't write songs to be funny but how anyone could take those lines seriously enough to take offense is beyond me. As for 'Weep Woman Weep' (a great song, now a staple of local covers bands), surely anyone can hear that the singer (in the character of the song) is hating himself as much as the woman who broke his heart. By now it's late afternoon and time for the interview to wind up if Mairi's going to get her photographs. We say our goodbyes. Nigel gives me some gothic band stickers and promises to send me a copy of Welcome To Ward Thirteen, the fanzine/ comic he's doing with some friends and I vow to remember the name Nefarious.

Fouryears down the track, Sticky Filth are tired of talking about Weep Woman Weep but f they oblige with some more history when we meet at Chris' flat later that afternoon. Chris tells me 'Dig You Up' prompted a letter from a group of three called People Against Pornography who threatened to take the song to the Human Rights Commission.

Says Chris, "We wrote back and told them what we thought about* it and that was that. We didn't hear anything else about it. "

Five years on their music is changing, still delivered with trademark Sticky Filth venom but, Chris suggests, maybe a bit more refined, with some slower songs in the set. With Paul on drums since last February, Sticky Filth are well pleased with their line-up and the musical changes going on. Craig is a little more forthcoming on the subject of his newer lyrics. "I don't really write my songs about relationships purposefully, because you live a life and you relate with people and of course songs are a bit about it unless you write a song a bout a tree or something. Sometimes I write a song like 'Vodka, The Devil and Me', that's a song about a story. Or 'Mother', that' s about mother earth and that's because I feel that way. I don't know what the others feel like, but it takes all three of us — when we make the music we feel happy about, it comes out in a good way." Sticky Filth are arguably the most popular band in the New Plymouth "scene". They fill venues whenever they headline and have sold out both Weep Woman Weep and Nectar of the Gods. The only thing they lack is a recording contract and with their track record they are understandably peeved that no local labels have expressed the slightest interest in their work.

"What's a record label trying to do? Get a band and sell records. We're a band and we sell records but they're not interested," says Craig. Not that this has stopped Sticky Filth from releasing product. Unfortunately their selffinanced release programme has temporarily ground to a halt and they're two albums behind thanks to a certain Australian pressing plant with underhand business tactics. The company took Sticky Filth's money and their master tapes and promptly went under, test pressings were

melted down, they never got Z their money back. So much for selling records in Australia to earn Australian dollars to get more pressed to bring back to New Zealand. Fortunately, their 1990 Australian tour proved more successful, the Filth played with the Hard Ons and filled pubs in their own right. "We need to go back to Australia," says Craig. "We need to get out of New Zealand. We beat the track around New Zealand all the time and it's just

the same thing. What you need to do is treat Sydney and Melbourne as part of your tour, every few months go to Auckland, then to Sydney for a few weeks, back to New Plymouth to get the band as high as it will go. You have to go and base yourselves in Sydney and from Sydney jump over to Europe. That's what happens with bands like the Hard Ons and Cosmic Psychos. Playing New Zealand, 0.9 per cent of the people that

are ever going to dig your music may work out to a thousand people. Go to Germany, you've got 0.9 of the population, but that's a million people." Craig says the Filth are going to do some new recording soon. You get the impression they're at a crossroads, they've done the ground work, they've got a healthy local fan base and some overseas interest, they've grown up in the last five years and they'd like more people to know where they're at now. Providing they can find a producer who suits them. "The second record didn't have the gutsy production of the first even though it was mixed by the same guy," opines Craig. "We find it hard to get someone who can produce our records. It would be good to get on a label, but they start telling you what to do and I'm real sceptical of people. I'm not giving anything away to some guy I don't even know."

Meanwhile, the Filth, like all the other bands I spoke to, are happy enough in New Plymouth, the general opinion being that it's a great place to live and play music. There's a high level of interconnection and mutual support between bands, people standing in for missing members or belonging to several bands at once, they party together and roadie for each other. No female presence in the bands, though, not even in the organisational/ lighting/ mixing capacities.

Monday afternoon and Mairi and I are due to leave town the next morning. I'm hanging aimlessly around the White Hart before we set out out to photograph Warp Spasm when Alastair from Tension turns up to give me a band bio. With half an hour to spare, we decide to have a drink. He gets my interest when he tells me that he likes to sit on Queen Street and do that head trip thing where you speculate that all the people walking by only exist for as long as you notice them, where do they go, who are they, who cares? This is the kind of dizzy thought I like, so the proverbial chord is struck.

Hard-core thrash metallers Tension formed four years ago, playing with Sticky Filth, Toxic Avengers and local boys made reasonably good in Sydney, Casualty. Although guitarist Kelly is totally into death metal, Alastair and his brother Paul are into rap and prefer the lyrics of bands like Public Enemy to the death metal inanities dished up by Deicide (the other members of Tension are third Tattersall brother Jason on bass and Chris from Sticky Filth on guitar). "It's really easy to write about shit, anybody can write about Satan in five minutes," says Alastair.

Thus 'Negative's Decay' is about media trivialisation of important issues and 'Grin And Bear It' — about abuse from a woman's point of view — was written with the help of a female friend.

Tension pull the same crowd as Sticky Filth and a lot of

punkers and skins are into them because they're loud and fast. Inevitably, there's a big hardcore/ metal cross-fertilisa-tion in New Plymouth, with differing factions co-existing in such close quarters. All this sounds very postive and Alastair is yet another band member who confirms that New Plymouth's nasty reputation is undeserved.

Maybe violence is cyclical and there just hasn't been any for a while, maybe the troublemakers have left town, maybe certain people have cooled down or grown up. Whatever, Alastair, like everyone else I spoke to, just wants to concentrate on perfecting his music and getting it out. As Das Unter Mensh, Tension sold 200 copies of their single 'Winning Hearts And Minds' within days of its release and they still get letters from fans in Brazil, Peru and Chilli. Now they want to put out an album. Their aim? To sound as heavy as possible. FOOTNOTE

We were sad to leave New Plymouth. We had a good time. So you can't get a cup of coffee on the main street on Saturday afternoon, so what? We did find a really cool second-hand clothes shop (oops, sorry guys, girl talk here) and while I'm on the subject, Leather and Lace, as well as being a tattoo parlour, sells a classy line in tight clothes with buckles and chains in all the right places. Surprise discovery? New Plymouth lives on a Monday night. Due to an organisational hiccup I missed out on the action (again!), but Mairi, Nigel and his friend Semp went on an eating and drinking binge that kept them busy all night. They ate pizza, they drank tequila (Burundi's), they cabbed around town until five o'clock in the friggin morning. To coin Brian Wafer's poster phrase: all is 'Not So Quiet On The New Plymouth Front.' Such was the success of Friday night's show he's thinking of making the multi-band local showcase an annual event. Meanwhile, catch Sticky filth on the 24th of this month at the Boardwalk Bar. DONNA YUZWALK