Some New Zealand Songs I Like

Readers of my blog will know I like music quite a bit and in this post I thought I might recommend some songs.

My favourite bands are most usually Radiohead, Faith No More and Jeff Buckley (I know I date myself by picking these particulars) but there is no point me recommending any songs by these artists because everyone knows them already and what would be the purpose in recommending songs that everyone already knows? Being a New Zealander, I have grown up with Kiwi bands that were often excellent but failed to break into the European or American markets; these musicians deserve wider appreciation and so I thought I would mention a few in this post. Maybe some people in the Northern Hemisphere will want to have a listen. I won't be able to recommend every great Kiwi song from the last several decades, but I can suggest a short compilation tape. All of the following songs can be found on Youtube and I imagine on Spotify. Because these songs are relatively unknown outside Aotearoa, if you are interested in checking out these tunes, you should google not only the song's name but also the band.

I got into music when I was young by listening to vinyl records owned by my elder brother. One of the bands was The Doors. Another was the New Zealand band The Headless Chickens. This band is the first I want to talk about. The Headless Chickens can perhaps be described as Industrial Punk (I am no rock music critic and so don't know for sure if this is the best genre in which to place them). Forming in the mid 'eighties and dissolving for good in the mid 'nineties (I think), they dealt with very dark themes; unlike religious and morally-minded people who discuss social ills in terms of 'good' and 'evil', right and wrong, the social problems The Headless Chickens talked about they characterised in terms of 'health' and 'sickness'. I don't think the song-writers believed in free will and their music can often come across as nihilistic, something not uncommon during the period the band was extant. And yet there is a kind of mysticism to many of their songs, albeit a mysticism that is negative or maybe apophatic (if I can stretch the meaning of this word a little). When I was eight I would listen to their second album Stunt Clown over and over again, possibly unhelpfully considering how sinister the tunes often were. I found the album disturbing but was drawn back to it almost despite myself. Because this band was influential on me when I was young, I will recommend quite a few songs by them.

The first song I want to plug is the opening track of Stunt Clown, "Expecting to Fly". I had no idea what this song was about when I was eight but I think now that it probably describes what it was like to be involved in the gay community during the 'eighties. It's very dark indeed. I don't think any members of The Headless Chickens were gay themselves but they must have been familiar with this scene – and they approach the subject of suicidal ideation with considerable intelligence and the kind of compassion that can only come from a deep intuitive understanding of others' suffering and of evil, a capacity for empathy that may even have been painful. Like I say, I don't think any members of The Headless Chickens were gay but they were willing to gender bend a little, such as in the song "Mr Moon" (off the album Body Blow), perhaps the most beautiful song I know by them. This is another song I recommend.

Like many poems, songs by The Headless Chickens often don't completely make sense unless one has the key to unlock their meaning. The excellently slow-burning track "Gaskrankinstation" is narrated by a petrol-pump attendant who is being slowly poisoned by lead in car exhaust fumes but doesn't know it. I had no idea of this either when I was young, that people suspected a causal connection between lead ingestion and anti-social behaviour– but rumour that lead additives in petrol might cause brain damage must have been circulating in the underground even then in the early 'nineties, when the song was recorded, because it is definitely the subject of this song. "Railway Surfing", another tune which really demonstrates the lyrical chops of this band, concerns a recreational pastime enjoyed by delinquents, in London I think, in the era when it was written.

After the depressiveness of The Headless Chickens, it might be nice to recommend some lighter songs. "Heavenly Pop Hit" by The Chills is not as lyrically interesting as the songs I have already suggested but is a perfectly crafted little pop hit. The tune "Not Given Lightly" by Chris Knox is noteworthy partly because its title is lifted from a lyric in "Venus in Furs" by The Velvet Underground; this song is considered a Kiwi classic (although the title of Backup National Anthem goes to "Loyal" by Dave Dobbyn).

Another fine tune, "Jesus I Was Evil", can be credited to Darcy Clay. Darcy was widely considered the next big thing in New Zealand music on the basis of his first and only EP – but died before recording anything else. I was at his last concert. He played warm-up for Blur in 1998 or 1999 and performed solo a strange countrified cover of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind"; right after that performance, he went back to his girlfriend's house and shot himself. I confess I am unsure if Darcy's suicide followed so closely after the show I saw but I am fairly confident it did.

An institution in the New Zealand music scene is the band Shihad. I have seen them play several times and can attest to their absolute awesomeness live. In the early 2000s, Shihad attempted to break into the American market, signing up with a record label in Los Angeles, changing their name to Pacifier (this being shortly after the September 11th attacks and Shihad sounding too much like Jihad) and recording an album – but without commercial success. The record company was very controlling, forcing them to change their sound, perhaps in the hope they could turn Shihad into a Nickelback soundalike, but it didn't work, the band didn't like the company's interference and they came home a little while after, utterly disillusioned, and several years later changed their name back to the original moniker. Songs like "La La Land" and "My Mind Sedate" were written about their bad experience of America. The band hated their time there. Here in New Zealand, Shihad is considered the group that most everyone most wanted to succeed internationally, the group most deserving of it, the band which most should have made it – but didn't. The song I most want to recommend by them is not any of the ones I have mentioned above, though, but "Bitter" from their first album.

Sometimes New Zealand bands do make it overseas. Lorde is an obvious example, as arguably is The Naked and The Famous. Savage and Kimbra have also had some success in the States. If we go back to the 'eighties and 'nineties New Zealand successfully exported Crowded House – although we need to regard Neil Finn's band as in a way trans-Tasman, having had mainly Australians and currently an American in the line-up. (Crowded House was recently inducted into Australian Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.) It is hard for New Zealand bands to break into the global market and it seems that when one does, it results more from good luck than as a reward for musical quality. This is not to say that the ones that make it are bad, but that many don't that deserve to. The songs I have picked in this post are a little random I admit. There are many other great New Zealand songs and bands I could have suggested but haven't. Really this post was mainly an excuse to talk about The Headless Chickens, even though their greatest triumph, topping the New Zealand music charts with "George", happened over twenty years ago. It seems to me that the 'eighties and early 'nineties were the best periods in popular music generally, not just in New Zealand but around the world, even though the music then was much darker than what passes for pop music now. And yet all this fantastic music emerged from a Western society that was arguably physically sick.  It seems ironic somehow, that perhaps the best music is written in the worst times. Just to tidy up a little, I'll finish this post by saying one last thing: in writing it I have relied on memory and haven't fact-checked anything, so minor details might not be wholly correct. I have got into a bad habit of doing this in recent months, of relying on memory. But in future posts I promise I shall make more of an effort to research and cite sources.