Auckland's Music Venue Puzzle

Friday witnessed the re-launch of the Big Day Out music festival at Auckland’s Western Springs Stadium, and by all accounts the event was an overwhelming success on the most part. The staging of this annual music festival at one of Auckland’s premier outdoor music venues, if not the premier venue got me thinking on the issue of music venues in New Zealand’s biggest city, an issue which never seems to go away and is seemingly raised on an annual basis. Although within the scheme of things, music venues is not a number one priority for the powers that be, and this is fair enough when there are far more important issues which need urgent attention. However, I still believe that the issue of the state of Auckland’s music venues is an important issue which has become more of a problem than one realises.

The fact is that Auckland is in a bit of a pickle when it comes to the venues that host major oversees touring acts. This pickle as I call it, I hesitate to use the word crisis, from my eyes involves three separate things, what venues are being used, what venues are not being used, and the quality of some of the venues that are being used to host the big oversees stars that come here. Leaving aside the smaller venues in Auckland which are perfectly acceptable and not an issue, most oversees acts play at either Vector Arena, or Mount Smart Stadium, both of which have their own faults. Vector has had sound problems since it opened in 2007 of which some visiting artists have complained about, while Mount Smart for a 21^st century outdoor concert venue is in desperate need of an upgrade and that’s without even considering how hard it is to get to as a venue. It pains me to think that these are the two “premier” music venues in Auckland for most big oversees acts, when there are other venues that are either not considered for concerts, or don’t get enough of a look in. Why Eden Park cannot host concerts is beyond me, it is the biggest stadium in the country, cost a fortune to build and is hardly ever used for big outdoor events. If you count up all the sports game that are played there annually it would probably only get used around 25 days in the year. With this in mind the re-development of Eden Park seems like a waste of money and effort when you think it would be a perfect venue for concerts if allowed to be. Then there is North Harbour Stadium, a venue which hosted quite a few concerts in the mid-2000s but in recent years seems to have gone out of favour. This is another good outdoor venue which is under-utilised.

This then brings me to the jewel in the crown The St James Theatre on Queen Street. I walk past this theatre quite a bit and every time I do it saddens me to see it just sitting there unused and deteriorating year after year. In its glory days The St James hosted some amazing indoor gigs and was a perfect venue for smaller concerts. The fact that it has been such a struggle to get any sort of ball rolling on a possible restoration project since its closure in 2007 has been nothing short of outrageous, as this decision should be a no-brainer when you consider how good this venue is as a place for live music. Hopefully common sense will prevail in the near future and we can soon again see live music back at the St James.

In the mean time it is good to see music back at Western Springs, a fantastic outdoor venue, while the fact that the Laneway Festival is utilising a good space down at Wynyard Quarter is great also. There are many good small venues around Auckland which continue to host live music and long may that continue, but the larger venues and in particular where the big oversees acts will play in the future continues to be a puzzling situation and an area which in my mind needs some serious attention and possibly some compromise.

 

Sam

 

Neil Young - Live at the Cellar Door (2013)

Live at the Cellar Door is the latest release in the Neil Young Archive Series, a series of releases which similarly to the highly successful Bob Dylan Bootleg Series features a mixture of already released, as well as unreleased remastered studio and live recordings. This latest offering is a live recording containing performances from the six concerts Young performed in 1970 at Washington DCs. Cellar Door.

On here Young treats the smallish audience to some acoustic performances of tracks off his then just released album “After the Gold Rush”, mixed in with some old Crazy Horse and Buffalo Springfield favourites, as well as some earlier renditions of songs which he had yet released namely “Old Man” and “See the Sky About to Rain”. The performances on this album feature just Young by himself playing acoustic guitar and occasionally piano, giving the audience present an unplugged minimalist interpretation of his country and folk rock compositions. This in itself works well as his early-70s output was mainly made up of acoustic folk tracks meant for smaller live settings like the Cellar Door club. It is also very interesting to hear laidback acoustic versions of songs such as “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down by the River” of which the original recordings done with Crazy Horse were exercises in heavily distorted guitar madness.

Live at the Cellar Door all and all has much the same feel as the 2007 released “Live at Massey Hall 1971”, just not as good. “Massey Hall” had an intimacy and a performer-audience connection which I think is lacking a bit on this album. This seems to have something to do with the production on “Cellar Door”, with the songs themselves sounding as if Young could have been sitting in a studio booth playing to himself, with some overdubbed audience applause thrown in for good measure to make it appear like it’s live. That’s not to say that all of the tracks on here are bad performances, or are lacking in quality. There are gorgeous versions of the Buffalo Springfield song “I Am A Child” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” from “After the Gold Rush” among other gems dotted across the album, it’s just that if you liked “Live at Massey Hall” which was a brilliant live album recorded around the same time, you won’t really be missing out if you don’t hear this one. Live at Cellar Door is probably best left for Neil Young fanatics and album collectors, or those into historical and archival recordings.

 

B

 

- Sam

Television - Marquee Moon (1977)

Marquee Moon was the debut album by American post-punk/art-punk band Television. Released in 1977, it has since gone on to be considered a pivotal album in the development of post-punk in the late-70s and early-80s, not to mention it having a lasting influence on indie, garage and alternative rock.

Marquee Moon was quite a unique album for a punk oriented group at the time and had a very different sound to the other music which was being made on the punk scene. The sound on the album is very much based on the twin lead guitar sound of Tom Verlaine, who was also the band’s lead singer and Richard Lloyd, with the two producing a heavily layered and lick laden guitar wall of sound. This dual guitar style was very much based on classic rock from the 70s and involved plenty of inter-play between the two, with one usually taking the rhythm part as the other took the lead, with both often swapping roles from rhythm to lead within songs as well. Gone were the power chords and heavy riffage of traditional punk rock, which were replaced with melodic guitar lines, counter-melodies and carefully constructed rhythmic sequences. This was more complex musically than punk and I guess allowed for more musical ideas to be explored within songs, while allowing for what I would describe as non-punk influences to be brought in such as progressive rock and jazz, influences which you can clearly hear throughout the album.

The songs themselves are incredibly catchy and very melodic but not in a way that you would normally associate with a good song, such as having a catchy chorus, or pop hook. The catchiness and listenable qualities of the songs on Marquee Moon are found more in the sound of the hook-laden and melodic guitar lines which come to dominate all the songs on the album, and help to form the organic base of which these songs are built. Songs such as opening track “See No Evil” and “Friction” are a classic example of the twin lead guitar attack and contain some amazing dueling guitar sequences complete with competing melodies and backed by a stellar rhythm section. Title track “Marquee Moon” is the album’s centrepiece and most out there track and at times tends to resemble a prog rock track, or in this instance a prog punk masterpiece. Coming in at over ten minutes something that would have been inconceivable for anyone with an ounce of punk in their music at the time, “Marquee Moon” brings in the prog and jazz influences that I mentioned earlier, especially in terms of the complex technicality of the guitar playing, the song structure, as well as the free jamming and extended guitar solo duels that are dottered throughout the song. This is quite simply prog punk at its finest and forms as a reminder of what could have been had the punk rockers not turned their noses up so much at progressive rock. Other tracks on the album that are worth a mention include “Elevation” which has a Beatles feel to it with some amazing psychedelic guitar melodies, “Guiding Light” which is a slower track that could also be described as the ballad of the album and gets dangerously close to being mid-70s corporate guitar rock but in a good way, and finally “Prove It” which brings in some jangly guitar and some thumping R&B influenced bass playing by bass player Fred Smith.

Although Marquee Moon was not a commercial success at the time, its reputation has grown tremendously over the years, while it has influenced most of the guitar music that has followed its release. It has been sighted by many critics as being one of the greatest albums of the 70s American punk rock movement and by Rolling Stones as the 128 greatest album of all time, high praise for an art-punk band who released an album that went against the grain of many of their contemporaries of the time. Marquee Moon is a truly amazing sounding album and showed a punk rock band could actually get down and dirty with some serious playing of the highest complexity and skill, but yet still retain their punk essence. This is definitely one of the best guitar albums ever recorded and contains some of the most melodically beautiful and clean guitar playing you are ever likely to hear. Well worth a listen for all guitar heads, punk worshipers, while progressive rock enthusiasts might just even dig this one to.

 

A

 

- Sam