We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Wellington ain’t dead.
Sure, the weather this summer has been slightly questionable, and the wind clearly isn’t going anywhere but nonetheless the city is as alive as ever.
The summer brings out the best is us all, and sometimes even allows us to bask in the cities cultural ambience.
As the city changes and our street poster network evolves, we’re always looking for ways to increase our engagement within the cities we inhabit, whether thats supporting cultural movements, celebrating art or ensuring that our in house team evolves with the times.
So…
We’re also extremely stoked to announce that we have a new account manager on the ground in Wellington. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re glad we waited.
Ruby O’Neill joins us with a wealth of experience in fashion, retail and as a celebrated artist to continue to grow our footprint in Wellington.
As Ruby is an artist, she had this interview published a while ago, and we feel its a perfect summary of exactly why we wanted her as an account manager in Wellington.
A glimpse into the mindset she will be bringing to the capital city.
Get to know Ruby below, or reach out to her directly at ruby@0800phantom.co.nz.
My daughter, Hope, passed away two years ago on February 3rd.
I have two marvellous grandchildren.
What Hope did in the last months of her life was to package up presents for her boys, Isaiah (13) and Jaya(11), for each birthday and Christmas up until they reach the age of 21. Each present comes with a special card.
Not everyone has it in them to do something like this and I think it’s really special.
For this Xmas Isaiah and Jaya received a Volkswagen model each. They had to put them together like they were jigsaw puzzles. This brought them a lot of joy because it was like they were touching their mother and listening to her as she told them how much she loved them. They could hear Hope laugh, she had a very special laugh. She laughed often, even as she was dying. Hope reached over to add something to the puzzle and the warmth of her permeated the room. The boys were born lucky.
Hope did love her boys, she was a very loving and sincere woman.
I can remember one time walking along George Street in Dunedin with my mother. I must have been four or five years old. My mother was wearing a long luxurious coat with a fur collar. I was holding her hand, it was very warm. The air was filled with her special smell and I felt like a little prince or even a King. It was a very special feeling of closeness and safety. Though the street was very busy, I paid little attention to it. All that really mattered was the feeling between my mother and myself. We got a taxi home, a Mark 2 Zephyr, and it went in a special way, much different from the cars we had at home. We had “old bombs” and the Zephyr was luxurious, much like the day. The taxi driver was wearing some kind of sweet smelling aftershave and he was friendly and well-spoken. He even opened the door for my mother. My mother wasn’t used to this type of thing. In that instant she became even more beautiful. She glowed.
These things are what love is about. This rhythm moves backwards and forwards between people. This rhythm is encouraging and nurturing, it takes away the loneliness of everyday life. There is not a machine on earth that can convey the same feeling. Love is slow and it is beautiful, it casts aside time. My grandsons were incredibly lucky to have Hope and it was very cruel that this love was shattered when she died. But they are still in touch, still holding each other. It’s a love that lasts forever. Blessed people know that, they breathe it.
True love is hard to find. When it is discovered it saves us. We go from a bitter world to one of softness. When we have that love when we are little nothing fazes us. Life becomes easy as it goes along. We are always surrounded by the softness of our mothers. It is bliss.
And now for the fish and chips.
In true love everything tastes better. When I was at Arthur Street primary school in Dunedin I’d often walk down that huge hill down to Rattray Street and buy fish and chips at lunchtime. I forget how much they cost but they were wrapped up in newspaper and the idea was that you’d rip a hole across the top and eat them as you walked back to school, up past Speights Brewery, then past Otago Girls High School and on to Arthur Street.
Fish and Chips never tasted better. I have been unable to secure that taste since those days.
I was very lucky to have tasted those sincere Fish and Chips.
Have a good year everyone. If you like my blog please put a recommendation on the Phantom Billstickers page. Our idea, which is a sincere one, is to take New Zealand Arts, Music and Literature out to the world.
Murray was one of my very best friends for such a long time.
He died around five years ago. He had some kind of aneurysm at a traffic light in Melbourne. He was working delivering Heroin for one of the gangs. They didn’t offer health insurance as part of the plan.
I called Murray up in the hospital. He was semi-conscious but recognised me straight away even though we hadn’t talked for more than a decade.
He spoke in the soothing way he always did: “James…..”
He asked me if I knew when the nurses would be bringing him his Methadone.
It was touch and go.
His wife arrived from the middle east where she had been nursing within a couple of days. Murray pointed her in the direction of the Heroin in his flat.
She overdosed and died.
Murray died too.
Sadness, grief and loss is part of the daily diet of a drug addict, as is ecstasy and joy.
No one really knows what particular bundle will arrive and at what time. Nothing is secure.
Last week in the papers it was reported that a 61 year old psychiatrist was seeking to have a driving conviction pardoned after 40 years or so. He was a notable sort of bloke and had spent time motivating the All Blacks.
But the gig was that every time he travelled to the USA he had to have a “waiver of ineligibility” to enter and when he travelled to Australia he had to declare his conviction which, no doubt, held him up in the line.
“When I do right no one remembers, when I do wrong no one forgets.”
-Paparua Prison Tattoo.
When you have been painted black by part of the government apparatus then you stay black and life becomes difficult at the oddest of times.
The psychiatrist’s appeal for a pardon was not allowed.
We are living in the time of the Orange Jesus where if you have political ‘clout’ you can get away with anything. The old saying is true, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
I don’t expect to be pardoned for my sins. I have a waiver of ineligibility to enter the USA but everytime I go there I am referred to “Secondary” (a second interview) and I must wait sometimes hours to face a grim faced officer who is usually in a sour mood and who watches Clint Eastwood movies over and over in his downtime.
I always get the feeling that what the officer really wants is for me to lose my temper. I feel prodded and pushed and spoken down to. I feel taunted and harassed. It doesn’t matter how old my convictions are (my last one was more than thirty years ago) or how kind I’ve been, nor how successful I have been in business.
I am a bad guy. I don’t know Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. I am just a bad guy.
But I have people who love me even if the bureaucrats don’t. Junkies often love each other in a very deep way. They face common enemies. Sometimes they laugh and they cry together. Murray and I did that. We loved each other.
In light of the fact that The Little Street Art Festival is happening RIGHT NOW, we caught up with Reuben Woods, creative mastermind behind the festy to share some golden insight into the creative scene in Christchurch and just what makes The Little Street Art Festival so epic.
Dive right in.
So, we’re here to talk about the Little Street Art Festival, but for those of us who don’t know, why don’t you give us a bit of background about yourself?
I am the creative director of Watch This Space, we are an Ōtautahi-based urban arts trust – our mission is to champion and celebrate the impact of art on streets by connecting artists and audiences with opportunities to make and experience street art. Personally, I am also a writer and curator, specialising in urban art – in 2023 I curated SHIFT: Urban Art Takeover at Canterbury Museum, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
And where does Little Street Art fit into that / Where did the idea come from?
I love large-scale murals and they have transformed the landscape in cities around the world, but they are also only one aspect of street art’s lineage – many artists add colour to the streets at smaller scales and using different approaches. The Little Street Art Festival is a way to platform those types of expressions – a great accompaniment to mural festivals. We see the Little Street Art Festival as an invitation to look closer, to see art in different ways and to explore how it can become an embedded part of our experience – providing whimsy, wonder, humour, subversion and lots more…
What’s the creative/arts scene feeling like in Christchurch at the moment?
I feel it is in a good place, there is a small community, which makes collaboration and cross-pollination easier. There also seems to be a lot of initiatives to build the infrastructure around the arts, recognising the wider ecosystem. From the urban art perspective, it is really positive – the Council have invested funding into a multi-year programme for street art, which we are lucky enough to be collaborating on with the Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival, this is a really massive gesture that acknowledges the impact street continues to have here…
What are you most excited about for this years festival?
I always love getting to talk with artists about their ideas and projects – the nature of this festival means it is more low-key logistically (no scissor lifts or traffic plans), so it really is about the art projects and how to engage the audience. We have Smeagol Doesart subverting the expectations of the historical Arts Centre with his sculptural pieces, Sofiya R is creating a beautiful zine and poster installation on one of the Phantom bollards – which is a perfect synthesis! We have a public comic book by Jay ‘Daken’ Skelton, that unfolds as you follow its path along Manchester Street. Klaudia Bartos is creating some incredible sculptural pieces that will surprise people when they come face-to-face with them, and Razor Taser Laser is completing a series of paintings that playfully riff on our evolving use of language in the digital age. They each have their own unique qualities and I’m excited for them all!
What can the audience expect?
The unexpected! We pride the Little Street Art Festival on engaging with the audience in a variety of ways, including those who don’t know anything about it! We love the way it reminds people to take in your surrounding environment and to see it as a site of potential – to that end we also have walking tours, workshops and an artist panel, as well as a heap of giveaways that will encourage people to get out and about…
Lastly, the good people of Christchurch may have seen your posters dotted around the city, what is it about street posters that works as part of your marketing plan for Little Street?
I think the best thing about street posters is that they exist in the real world – they don’t exist in a digital vacuum – they are tactile and present in our urban landscape – which is the same as our installations – in both cases, we want people to get outside and explore! We really want to shout out the Phantom team for all the support – we see a fantastic kinship between our roots and Phantom’s!
Any final thoughts?
Follow us on socials @thelittlestreetartfestival (Insta and Meta) for more information – all our events and activations are free and accessible (some require bookings, so head to Humanitix) – we love seeing people get inspired, so join in!
Peter Jefferies life in music is the subject of a new biography, The Other Side of Reason, by post-punk historian and writer Andrew Schmidt. It was a book nearly a decade in the making for the pair who were both from small towns – Stratford and Paeroa – which gave them some common ground from the outset. Peter Jefferies spoke to Richard Langston.
Richard: Andrew describes you both as creative country boys from small North Island service towns who found a life in music and art that allowed you to step outside of yourselves…
Peter: Yeah, some of Andrew’s observations have been really interesting for me to read. It sounds weird to say it but in a way Andrew knows more about me that I do. It’s so accurately drawn that I’m interested in it, that’s why I’m glad it’s a biography cos the things I read most are biographies about musicians or artists or actors, basicially people who do creative shit. I like them more than autobiographies because there’s an overview. You’ve got to be really lucky for someone to be that interested in you, and also to have a good enough knowledge of what you do. Andrew’s got that. He wrote a big piece about me for AudioCulture. I love that he’s written the broader picture of the times, and all the stuff that is happening around me.
How did the idea of the book come about?
Mike Wolf from the De Stijl label in the USA had written a blurb to go with Last Great Challenge when they issued it (in 2013) and he said in that no one had written a book about me, and Andrew and I were joking about on Facebook or something, and he made some comment and I said well if you want a book about it, why don’t you write one, and he gets back to me about 10 minutes later and says all right I will. From that point on he took it seriously. The point at which I realised he was the right guy to write the book was when he said Closed Circuit was my best album. Only me and my mum thought that and I don’t think anyone else in the entire world thought that. That’s the best one, and if you want my trilogy it’s that and Electricity and Last Great Challenge.
Andrew’s a thorough researcher and he paints the picture of you growing up in Stratford, and there at primary school with you is Ross Hollands, later of Bird Nest Roys, and a fellow traveller that you meet very early on…
Yes, and I’m still friends with Ross now.
I love the fact that here you are in this small town and one of the first records you buy is the Velvet Underground’s White Light White heat for 99 cents at the Farmers Co-op…
Yeah, absolutely brilliant. They had those stand-up racks that revolve and you can stuff five or six records in each rack and they twirl round. We were in the agriculture section heading towards the bedding section and there was one of those racks and I went and had a look and there was this Velvet Underground record with blobby writing and loud colours, bright purple writing and the Coke bottle mouth on it. I thought it was a compilation; it took a while for me to realise what it was.
Then you were brave enough to put it on at parties…
Yeah (laughs). As it says in the book, you might get through side one if you put it on at the right time. I’d hardly ever make my favourite moment, the second guitar break on “I Heard Her Call My Name’ cos it was normally taken off by the first one y’know. People are saying put on ‘Dreams’ By Fleetwood Mac (laughs).
And your last act at Stratford High School is to play a cover of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’ in the school band…
I only went back to school for my last year because my art teacher, Roger Taberner, was so cool. That year changed me life; he literally taught me how to think. I learned how to make something from nothing, and once you could do it it didn’t matter whether it was music or art or whatever. He knew I was going to pass, not because I was a good artist, but because my ideas were good and I could explain them, I could say why that bunch of photos I’d taken meant something or why that picture of a tap dripping that I’d just drawn had some relevance. At the end of year assembly the headmaster is saying we like to think ahead at Stratford High and I’m thinking what a load of bollocks, you’ve given me nothing but grief over taking art. When the band got up to play they thought we were going to do something from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, that sort of dribble. They didn’t even bother to ask what we were going to play (laughs). We played ‘God Save the Queen’ and it caused mayhem. The kids just went off, the kids are up in their seats pumping the air; the parents were up in the aisles outraged, seriously music could still affect people that much in those days. One of the singers got down to his undies. The deputy principal was purple with rage. That’s how I left school, brilliant (laughs).
Sometimes things could turn nasty, and you nearly got your beans when you played the Lion Tavern in New Plymouth with one of your first bands, Pink Noise…
There were some people the new owner didn’t want in his bar and he wanted us to tell them. Any time there was a difficult job in that band, it was always handed to me. Gordon Rutherford handled the job when the brakes went out on the truck but apart from that, it was always my fucking job. This one guy had just got out of prison and he’d been in as accessory to murder, a serious guy. I had to tell him and his mates the owner wanted them out of the bar, and he said, ‘I’m going to do you’, and he would’ve. I thought he was going to bottle me, but I was lucky he was someone who listened when I met him later. He gave me a chance to explain what had happened, and I told him the owner said you guys are always causing a problem and it was my job to tell you. If you want to thump me go ahead but I’m just the guy who gets stuck with those sorts of jobs all the time. My brother Graeme got the guitar safely out and he’s across the road!
The book outlines how important certain places become to you and one of the first is Dunedin…I know you went to Auckland to art school but you seem to be in sympatico with Dunedin…
I wouldn’t say I ever felt at home in Auckland, I liked it and it was exciting and I met plenty of good people and I had good friends to flat with, Graeme, Brett Jones, Johnny Pierce and Chris Matthews and Andrew Frengley, and Nocturnal Projections did some great shows in Auckland. People like Paul Rose really helped us. In Dunedin I did feel at home; I was part of a community and had a home base. I never thought I’d leave.
One of the real strengths of the book is that it details the Xpressway story …how it happened and how it worked…
Xpressway was an amazing thing to do and yet I almost didn’t realise how amazing it was until it was a damn near over. Starting a cassette label when you’ve been used to making records didn’t seem like it was going to be that big a deal when Bruce Russell first suggested it. But the compilation Pile-Up that was a real door-opener. We couldn’t have made that without each other, Bruce was the public face of us and the networker and and he was brilliant at it, he learnt the lingo really quick.
Xpressway connected you to this international network of like-minded labels and muscians…
Incredible wasn’t it. Pile-Up got us to Europe, and the stuff before that was already getting noticed by magazines like Forced Exposure, and Tim Adams from the Ajax label was making the Dead C releases, This Kind of Punishment, Wreck Small Speakers and Alastair Galbraith. It’s really interesting to see where the Dead C arrived at, I knew Bruce before he was in the band and Michael Morley was in Wreck Small Speakers, and Alastair was in The Rip. Bruce didn’t really have that much ability with technical equipment at that point, that’s what he needed me for to master and do all this stuff. It was already lo-fi so you needed every little bit extra you could drag out of this stuff. It was all going onto a cassette which would blunt it down again. I had a nice McLaren EQer. Peter Gutteridge had the master of Pure and he would put it through my stuff and had it come out the other end.
I understand there was a stack of four cassette machines to make copies of the tapes…
During the day Bruce would be at work and I’d run the copiers, every half hour you’d go in and turn them over.
The Xpressway activity leads to you and Alastair Galbraith and Sandra Bell going to the States for the first time in 1993..you met the writers and label people who’re so enthused by the music….
It was surreal, I’d never been out of the country. This was my introduction to the big wide world, and you can see what a geek I am in the Head in The Clouds documentary that was made about that tour. What a dork! But through all my amazement I still managed to play good shows that make me look like I know what’s going on. We were babes in the woods; there’s America going by at 90 miles an hour and we’re going 30 miles an hour trying to catch up. But we weren’t behind with our sound, they were catching up to us. We were ahead of the game, and I reckon perception of New Zealand music changed. It was the Xpressway and Flying Nun bands who changed it. The only people I reckon from the mainstream who did it were Neil Finn and Don McGlashan cos he went out and did it.
Music has given you great highs and lows, but you couldn’t have taken any other course in life could you?
I was gonna take art until art school fucked it up for me and put me off completely. I was a bit like Syd Barrett. Andrew says I keep comparing myself to Syd. Do I? Maybe I do cos I have all these weird similiarities, he was the same, he wanted to be a painter and ended up doing music. I don’t know if I’ve got the right personality to be a musician in some ways. I ended up fronting a band but I was a Karen Carpenter type; I wanted to hide behind the drums. I didn’t want to front a band, but I had to. I would much rather have been a painter, that’s why I’m enjoying not playing live much and don’t have to be a teacher and I don’t have to run to anybody’s schedule. The first time that’s been the case since I was 17. I’m Mister Lazy now.
One thing that surprised me in the book was that when you lived in Canada in 1997 for a brief period you spent six weeks on the streets in Vancouver…
Yeah, that sucked. I didn’t really know my way around downtown Vancouver that well ; I knew my little part of it, and I didn’t really have the means to sort it out and to stay alive. We went to the Air New Zealand office and they got me home; I’ve always been grateful to the national airline for that.
There were some moments that made me laugh; when you and your mother bet on a horse and it financed the release of a record…a particularly New Zealand moment!
Yes, the Catapult/Fate of the Human Carbine single. My mother Gwen was really good at tactical betting. She had this one horse Sharzamarni she’d taken with the entire field. Sharzamarni won and this other horse, a 96 to 1 outsider, came in second. We got the quinella and it paid $420 and we had $2’s worth, and we had Sharzamarni for a win and it was paying about $8. We might have also had it for a place. We won close to a thousand dollars.
The book also shows how your mother was central to you life…
Absolutely. All the way through. And some people can go ‘oh, you’re a mumma’s boy’, well bugger off! She had an on-going connection with us. We could always lean on her, when our health fucked-out it was back to mum’s, girlfriend went overseas it was back to mum’s, and she sent me $500 to get home when I was on the streets in Vancouver. Not only that she listened to the freakin’ albums and had an opinion about them.
You also took magic mushrooms with her!
Yeah, Gwen had her wild period from her late forties into her early fifties when she started to take some illicit substances. She’d had to dampen it down all the time being married, and then bringing up kids. She’d had to play it straight for so long and she wanted some fun for a change.
I know there was a long period when you gave music away, but you seem to be active again…are you still writing and recording?
My partner Victoria and I are meant to be finishing an album which has been on the go for three years, and there’s a single that I’m doing with a guy called Joey Worton but he’s hurt his hand and can’t play guitar. He’s from Manchester and mates with Peter Hook and all that. That single’s sort of in limbo. The album will go to Grapefruit label if they like it, certainly they get first dibs on it cos they did the album Closed Curcuit. We’ve had to write 17 or 18 songs to get 11 that we think are good enough and even then Victoria wants to do things to one of them. We will get it done. To follow up Closed Circuit it better be good or we better not put it out.
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