Blog Archives
Dead People I Have Known Shayne Carter Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781776562213 Rock odysseys can start in obscure places. Shayne Carter’s began in Brockville, a state-housing suburb of Dunedin, a city at the southern end of a country that…
Good-bye Maoriland: The Songs and Sounds of New Zealand’s Great War Chris Bourke Auckland University Press, $60.00, ISBN 978869408718 For both civilians and the soldiers alike on active service during WWI, music proved a significant and enduring element of New…
New Zealand Jazz Life Norman Meehan (Tony Whincup photographer) Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781776560929 In the 1984 “mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap, the fictional rock band was positive about its declining fan base. “We are more selective about our…
In Love with these Times: My Life with Flying Nun Records Roger Shepherd HarperCollins, $37.00, ISBN 9781775540892 A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis Karl Du Fresne Bateman, $40.00, ISBN 9781869359382 Flying Nun Records, the small…
Peter Godfrey: Father of New Zealand Choral Music Elizabeth Salmon Mākaro Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780994106582 On the book’s cover a young boy stands a little uncertainly before the camera. He’s wearing the Eton suit of a King’s College chorister, complete…
Douglas Lilburn, Memories of Early Years and Other Writings Robert Hoskins (ed) Steele Roberts, $40.00, ISBN 9781927242476 This is the Lilburn centenary year. Concerts are being branded with a special logo – a way of marking the pivotal contribution that…
Gutter Black Dave McArtney HarperCollins ISBN 9781775540397 Hello Sailor were New Zealand’s most convincing rock stars. They acted like pirates, and managed to look menacing and foppish at the same time. It wasn’t a pose; it was a lifestyle. They…
How to Hear Classical Music Davinia Caddy Awa Press, $26.00, ISBN 9781877551000 At the end of June this year in Wellington, Michael Houstoun presented the centrepiece of his Beethoven Recycled series of piano recitals, in which he was playing the…
On Song: Stories behind New Zealand’s Pop Classics Simon Sweetman Penguin Books, $65.00, ISBN 9780143568162 Any anthology is a work of exclusion, constructed to emphasise or establish a particular narrative. In the case of anthologist Simon Sweetman’s On Song: Stories…
Piano Forte: Stories and Soundscapes from Colonial New Zealand Kirstine Moffat Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 978187737797 What a welcome book this is. Music has been neglected shamefully for far too long in our historiography, either because most of our…