Looney Tours – The Chills. The Double Happys. Children’s Hour. The Expendables – Guru's, Waikato University, Hamilton - 10 March 1984.
The first great package tour of the Flying Nun era was a surprise when it came. None of the bands had released more than a handful of songs by early 1984. Aside from their timeless psych-pop tracks on the Dunedin Double compilation of 1982, The Chills had just one single out - Rolling Moon - backed with the burning psychedelic instrumental Flamethrower and as-punk-as-they-got Bite. A Top Thirty single in December 1982. Brooding Auckland Birthday Party boys' Children’s Hour (the future Headless Chickens) and Christchurch art rockers' The Expendables (as They Were Expendable) had one EP apiece – Flesh and Big Strain. Dunedin punk-pop brats The Double Happys none. It was potential that drew us. The rising excitement.
The audience at Waikato University’s Guru's was small, but that didn’t deter The Double Happys’ Shayne Carter and Wayne Elsey baiting the rugby head crowd by playing an ad-hoc piss-take version of the theme music to Sunday soccer show, The Big Match, before banging into the same ten song set they’d been destroying audiences with up the island.
The Chills were slick. No sign of psychedelic or punk excess here. Martin Kean had replaced Terry Moore on bass. Peter Allison provided competent but subdued keyboards while Alan Haig demonstrated why he is one of the great Kiwi drummers. Children’s Hour came on all dark and angry. A huge pregnant scowl of a band with sound to match. The Expendables were just that.
The bands retired afterwards to our four bedroom toilet opposite the Claudelands Showgrounds in Hamilton East. We had drugs, bags of it, courtesy of a benevolent cousin of Phil’s who would be busted in our driveway a few weeks later.
Gonzo and I rolled joints into the early hours with Shayne Carter and Wayne Elsey as Phil distributed them in a singlet and nylon shorts. In the tiny lounge The Chills’ Martin Phillipps strummed the soon-to-be recorded Pink Frost on an acoustic guitar. Heaven.
We followed the tour that weekend to Auckland crashing into Chris Knox and Doug Hood’s Sumner St, Ponsonby home unannounced. Doug Hood was there as was Knox who’d just become a father. They’d seen us outside debating who would knock on the door. Thought it was the cops. Doug disappeared looking for spliff leaving Knox to roll out the sarcy one liners as he inked the dates on a pile of Netherworld Dancing Toys posters.
The Double Happys, who’d been recording in town that day, appeared with genial Children’s Hour bassist Grant Fell, who remembered us from Hamilton. They had a mix of the first Double Happys recordings. They were superb, capturing Elsey’s whooping slide and world weary words, and Carter’s chattering rhythm and peerless rock sneer.
The first great package tour of the Flying Nun era was a surprise when it came. None of the bands had released more than a handful of songs by early 1984. Aside from their timeless psych-pop tracks on the Dunedin Double compilation of 1982, The Chills had just one single out - Rolling Moon - backed with the burning psychedelic instrumental Flamethrower and as-punk-as-they-got Bite. A Top Thirty single in December 1982. Brooding Auckland Birthday Party boys' Children’s Hour (the future Headless Chickens) and Christchurch art rockers' The Expendables (as They Were Expendable) had one EP apiece – Flesh and Big Strain. Dunedin punk-pop brats The Double Happys none. It was potential that drew us. The rising excitement.
The audience at Waikato University’s Guru's was small, but that didn’t deter The Double Happys’ Shayne Carter and Wayne Elsey baiting the rugby head crowd by playing an ad-hoc piss-take version of the theme music to Sunday soccer show, The Big Match, before banging into the same ten song set they’d been destroying audiences with up the island.
The Chills were slick. No sign of psychedelic or punk excess here. Martin Kean had replaced Terry Moore on bass. Peter Allison provided competent but subdued keyboards while Alan Haig demonstrated why he is one of the great Kiwi drummers. Children’s Hour came on all dark and angry. A huge pregnant scowl of a band with sound to match. The Expendables were just that.
The bands retired afterwards to our four bedroom toilet opposite the Claudelands Showgrounds in Hamilton East. We had drugs, bags of it, courtesy of a benevolent cousin of Phil’s who would be busted in our driveway a few weeks later.
Gonzo and I rolled joints into the early hours with Shayne Carter and Wayne Elsey as Phil distributed them in a singlet and nylon shorts. In the tiny lounge The Chills’ Martin Phillipps strummed the soon-to-be recorded Pink Frost on an acoustic guitar. Heaven.
We followed the tour that weekend to Auckland crashing into Chris Knox and Doug Hood’s Sumner St, Ponsonby home unannounced. Doug Hood was there as was Knox who’d just become a father. They’d seen us outside debating who would knock on the door. Thought it was the cops. Doug disappeared looking for spliff leaving Knox to roll out the sarcy one liners as he inked the dates on a pile of Netherworld Dancing Toys posters.
The Double Happys, who’d been recording in town that day, appeared with genial Children’s Hour bassist Grant Fell, who remembered us from Hamilton. They had a mix of the first Double Happys recordings. They were superb, capturing Elsey’s whooping slide and world weary words, and Carter’s chattering rhythm and peerless rock sneer.
The Chills - Night Of Chill Blue - Windsor Castle, Auckland - 1985
2 comments:
Please correct me if I'm wrong (I was only 9 in 1984!) but my memory is that that venue didn't take the name The Wailing Bongo until the early '90s. Prior to that it was called Guru's.
Thanks Robyn. Yes, you're right. Apparently it's first name was Mother Zambesi's Greasy Spoon Cafe, but that was deemed politically unsound. I'm not sure what they call it now as a previous student union sold it.
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