The Thousands

There’s something strange about Kiwi guitar pop. The looseness, the nebulous charm, the lofty lack of ambition. And that ‘watery’ ’80s Dunedin guitar sound (as Stephen Malkmus once put it) is infectious as ever, even in its mere echoes which, these days, seem more ubiquitous in Australia than anywhere.

None of us are complaining though. Flying Nun have more to celebrate than just their 30th anniversary; the label helped shape an entire canon. Still, there’s more to the story than The Clean and The Chills and Dunedin. And luckily for us youngsters who came down in the last shower of second or third generation ‘indie’ rock (and for whom the word ‘protest’ evokes a whinging Bono), the plot keeps thickening.

US label Siltbreeze is reissuing lost Kiwi classics like they’re going out of style, and Christchurch avant-rockers Axemen – whose ‘Big Cheap Motel’ (1984) and ‘Three Virgins’ (1985) are key parts of the puzzle – are touring Australia this month for the first time ever. Mark Hewitt gets a history lesson from founding members Stu Kawowski and Steve McCabe.

 

Mark Hewitt: So this is the first Australian tour for Axemen?

Steve McCabe: Yeah, it’s ours, but actually, William (Daymond, bassist) is over there at the moment, playing in his other band. He’s been over there a couple of times.

 

MH: What’s his other band?

SM: One of his other bands – he’s playing with an Aussie at the moment – is called Terror of the Deep.

 

MH: Do you guys keep up with much Australian music?

SM: Oh, a little bit.

Stu Kawowski: Actually, Sam (Miers, Australian tour manager) sent me a big list and said, “Who would you like to play with?” and I looked down this list and just went, “Shit, I’ve never heard of any of them,” (laughs).

SM: We did play with xNoBBQx here.

SK: Oh yeah, true. But I went and Googled (the bands), had a look on Myspace and all that, and I was quite impressed with what was going on over there. So I just chose a few bands I like and sent the list to Steve, and basically I chose the bands I thought were the craziest ones that were on there. There was some good stuff. I really liked Cock Safari. I thought they were outrageous. Looking forward to seeing that.

 

MH: What can we expect from the ‘recording workshop’ scheduled before the show at The Gasometer in Melbourne?

SM: Well, originally it looked like we were going to have a free day there, so I thought that would be a good thing to do. But as it happens we’re going to do it before the show. It’s pretty loose, but what I was thinking was we’ll just open up a couple of hours earlier and set up some stuff and do a bit of recording. There’s a lot of stuff that’s on cassette at the moment, and records. But there’s a lot of new stuff coming out for iPods, like 4-track recorders. And also I’ve got some really nice freeware stuff that I’ve used. So I was going to have a bit of a whizz through those. And if anyone else has got anything interesting…

SK: You were talking about chucking some apps on discs and burning them and giving them out.

SM: Yeah. I’ve got a Linux thing as well.

 

MH: So the band pretty much embraced digital recording it when it came along?

SM: Kind of (laughs).

SK: When we started off there was no such thing.

SM: I’ve got this 4-track cassette (recorder) here which I was going to bring, but it’s actually too big to bring. It’s one of those Tascam ones with the built-in mixing desk, which is quite good.

SK: But you’ve got an iPod with basically the same thing in it, hey.

SM: Yeah, more or less. Back in the day we did everything on cassette. We pretty much recorded everything we did every rehearsal, every gig, every time anything happened and then we’d go through them and listen to them and choose the ones we liked. We didn’t have any means of overdubbing, so Steve actually devised this technique where you put a bit of cardboard over the erase head on the cassette machine, so you could record over the top of the signal that was already on the tape. So we did a wee bit of that. And we just jammed, kind of edited songs together, and put out tapes.

 

MH: Is that how you did the overdubs on the ‘Three Virgins’ LP?

SK: No, that was all 4-track stuff. That was all different.

SM: That was actually reel-to-reel, that one.

SK: Oh yeah, reel-to-reel.

SM: I ended up getting this Tascam Porta One ministudio in like, 1986. Have you seen those Tascam ones? I had the little one that takes the ten size C batteries, or you can plug it in. We ended up wearing the head out on that. We actually used it so much that it wore out and started coming out muffled.

SK: (laughs). More muffled.

SM: Oh, it was actually pretty sharp to start with. But at the moment I’ve got a Tascam 424 MK-II which I’ve got for legacy stuff.

 

MH: So by ‘legacy stuff’ you just mean old tapes?

SK: Yeah. From the ’80s. Do you remember the ’80s? (laughs)

 

MH: Do I?

SK: I’m just being cheeky.

 

MH: I was born in 1984.

SM: Whoa!

 

MH: I was one year old when ‘Three Virgins’ was being recorded (all laugh).

SM: William is the same. He wasn’t born when we formed.

SK: It’s kind of scary, hey.

 

MH: Where did Axemen fit into the Flying Nun scene in the ’80s? Did you feel like you were part of a community, playing with a lot of the same bands, or just out there doing your own thing?

SK: You wouldn’t say we were mainstream Flying Nun. But everybody knew everybody, and there were a lot more bands playing than just Flying Nun ones. Even though we were on Flying Nun, we weren’t ever really part of the chosen few, or whatever.

SM: Also, we were based around Christchurch; we mostly played in Christchurch and a lot of that Flying Nun stuff was really happening in Dunedin. We’d play in Dunedin, and Bob (ex-Axemen member) sort of transited between Christchurch and Dunedin quite a bit, so we played the twin cities regularly, and knew all those guys, but we didn’t really interact with the Flying Nun guys that much, apart from those peripheral ones like The Terminals, and Scorched Earth Policy, and the other sort of ‘second-tier’ Flying Nun and Onset Offset guys like us… the McGoohans, Drowning Is Easy, Ritchie Venus & The Blue Beetles, The Connoisseurs…

SK: Bill Direen.

 

MH: Who were your favourite bands from that time, who was doing the most interesting stuff?

SM: The And Band.

SK: Yeah, The And Band. And Perfect Strangers, Gordons, The Skeptics, Foetus Productions. Foetus Productions spent a bit of time in Sydney actually. They’re playing with us in Auckland, on December 7, so that’ll be good.

 

MH: What about The Connoisseurs?

SK: They were kissing cousins.

SM: I don’t think they every really released anything but they were like a country and western band.

SK: They played really drunk (laughs).

SM: We used to busk with them on Friday nights in town, in Christchurch. They got a government grant for six months to form a band and do some recording and play. They actually went and played at places like the (Christchurch) Women’s Prison, and they got a few gigs at old people’s homes and stuff.

SK: They were real hardcore, in the way of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash kind of country music. It was awesome.

 

MH: Was there a political bent to what they were doing?

SK: I don’t know about that. But they used to drink a lot.

SM: They were slightly subversive but not overtly political.

SK: Not soap-box or anything. But we would sometimes play with them, Steve would pay the piano or guitar. Sometimes the drummer Simon, he started writing really good songs. So he would play guitar and I would play the snare drum occasionally. They were really a bunch of close friends as well.

SM: All those guys were on that ‘Three Virgins’ record too. If you have a look at the Axemen Wikipedia page, it’s got pretty much a full list of everyone who’s played with us.

 

MH: Yeah, I’ve seen that. It‚Äôs a bit like looking at a list of past members of The Fall, or Guided By Voices.

SK: (laughs)

 

MH: Were you guys always welcoming people into the band over the years, or did that just happen on its own?

SK: We were for a while. Then, at a certain point, the band got to about ten people. A lot of people would join. They’d go out and buy an instrument, and then join us to learn it.

SK: We had basically a whole brass section, and all kinds of percussion. It was great. But at a certain point we all kind of looked at each other – me, Steve and Bob – and went, “Let’s go back to just three.” (laughs).

SM: Those people sort of came and went. It was quite interesting.

SK: It was largely because of that busking thing. We busked every Friday night in Christchurch, and people would just come along and join in. And then we’d do a live gig, and they’d just come to the live gig.

 

MH: And get on stage.

SK: Yeah. One guy, Peter Hall-Jones, suggested that we march around town. So we started marching down the streets. Everybody had straps for the drums and all that. We’d march in a line, down the street and around the corner, playing it. We weren’t playing marching music, we were playing whatever, but we walked through the malls and everything. It was crazy.

SM: Peter Hall Jones was a communist too, so he was really into that kind of interaction.

 

MH: To be honest, I never would have picked Axemen as having any kind of political or protest element in what they do. The music seemed so out-there when I first heard it. I remember being surprised to read that the band actually formed in protest of the South African Springbok rugby team touring New Zealand in 1981. And then ‘Big Cheap Motel’ in 1984 was all against Big M advertising at the (Summertimes) festival in Christchurch?

SK: Yeah, with the Big M thing, I went along (to the venue) the week before we were due to play, just to check out what it was like. They had these huge billboards up, advertising Big M. They were almost overpowering the stage. And I just thought, “Oh, fuck. We have to play in front of that.” So I went back and told Steve and Bob. In a matter of a week they wrote that whole album. And we played it at the concert. We recorded all the rehearsals, and some of the tracks on the album are from sessions at Peterborough Studios, our little place we used to play at. And the rest of them were live tracks. We basically played all these songs that Steve and Bob had written, dissing the council and Big M and all that, at the concert.

 

MH: How many people got the message?

SM: The promoters got it.

SK: And the people there really dug it. Everyone was clapping and cheering. It was awesome. It was quite subversive, really.

 

MH: Are there any plans for a new Axemen album?

SK: I’d say it’s quite likely, yeah.

SM: We’ll be recording some stuff on the tour, you know, just stuff from the gigs, but also I’m pretty keen to do some recording in the van, on the iPod. Because there’s quite a lot of travelling.

SK: The first drive we do is 12 hours from Sydney to Brisbane. So we could probably do an album in that.

SM: (laughs)

 

MH: Crank it out. I want to hear it. Getting back to ‘Three Virgins’ for a second. How did you get the artwork to look like that? Especially with the wobbly typewriter text, and…

SM: It was 1985, man! It was a real typewriter (all laugh).

 

MH: But it looks crazy, I’m curious to know how it was done. It’s pretty intricate.

SK: I have to say, when we handed in the artwork, and Flying Nun sent it off to the plate makers and all that, and we hadn’t really sent it in print-ready per se, like on the back cover a guy had to spend quite a bit of time doing stuff like cutting it out and reversing bits and stuff. And when they got the bill for the actual film work and the plates and the printing of the covers, poor old Roger (Shepherd, Flying Nun boss) just about died, he nearly had a heart attack. It was the most expensive cover they’d done. And I don’t think they probably even covered it with the sales of the record (laughs). But we said to them, “If you want to do our record, it’s got to be a double album, and that’s the artwork, and that’s that. Take it or leave it.” So they took it.