At Phantom, we’ve been thinking hard about our carbon footprint. The climate crisis isn’t going away and, if nothing else, building owners are facing some real risks with insurance premiums. So what does Phantom offer as a responsible business partner and wannabe good corporate citizen?
One answer is: Hit the off switch.
That’s why last month we began switching off our digital posters between the hours of midnight and 5am. This single action reduces a site’s energy usage by 20% at a stroke, while having almost no effect on viewership (i.e. what our clients are paying for).
Here are some other things we’ve learned in our mission to decarbonise our business.
Step 1. You can only manage what you measure
We’ve talked before about the importance of having an accurate gauge of the actual carbon impact of your busines. That’s why Phantom worked with Toitū to audit our operations in 2020 and 2021.
Having analysed our carbon impact down to the last Uber ride, we were able to target reductions and achieve Net Carbon Zero status.
This process is ongoing. We’re currently in the process of repeating our Toitū audit to make sure we stay on track. In essence, we’re continuing to reduce our carbon footprint year on year, with no end in sight.
Step 2. Go hard on all fronts
There’s a bit of a tendency in society to look for a one-stop solution. Offsetting carbon emissions by sponsoring tree planting is one example.
We think this is the wrong framework for delivering change.
By all means plant trees, but every organisation should also be taking a hard look at the specific impacts of its operations, and coming up with better solutions.
So as well as switching off outdoor screens during the wee small hours, Phantom has committed to using sustainable inputs, such as Greenguard inks that do not emit harmful chemicals. All Phantom’s poster frames are made from plantation-grown pine, and we’re progressively converting our vehicle fleet to EVs.
And since we’re one of the country’s largest printers, with 6,500 poster frames to fill every week, we guarantee that all our posters are printed on paper from sustainably managed plantations. Finally, all our poster campaigns are recycled once they’ve had their time in Phantom’s frames.
Step 3. Work together
There are encouraging signs that industry groups and global bodies are looking to cooperate more to reduce the impact of their operations. It can’t just be left to governments and individual families.
In our corner of the business – the outdoor media sector – we think we’ve got a great story to tell. But we need to get better at helping advertisers understand the implications of what we’re selling them.
Sustainability needs to be baked into all measurement methodology. This is not just a nice-to-have; it needs to be measured with the same ferocious intent that delivers ROI. The gold standard would be a carbon calculator included on every media schedule.
On the topic of measurement, thanks to global best-practice guidelines introduced in 2022, there is a burgeoning marketplace of off-the-shelf measurement solutions. It’s great to see that by creating common standards the market is starting to deliver innovative and sustainable measurement
So how does this affect our business partners?
Apart from us all being on the same planet, facing the same systemic challenge of climate change, we think that property owners benefit from having a proactive partner like Phantom.
One with a long-term view.
We want to see street posters standing proud on walls for years to come – earning revenue for all our partners.
For that to happen, we need our business model to be fit for the 21st century, with buy-in from city councils and the general public whose consent we all ultimately rely on.
Switching off our digital screens at midnight, changing our fleet to EVs, and continuing to reduce our carbon footprint every year are all part of the process.
It’s not about darkness. It’s about the light at the end of the tunnel.
The traffic-stopping special build for Amazon Prime’s season 3 launch of The Boys has won global recognition at the 2023 World Out Of Home (WOOH) awards.
The creative, which featured a giant visage of Karl Urban shooting ‘laser beams’ from his eyes into a strategically placed car wreck on Newton Road, garnered coverage around the world. It has now made it onto the six-strong WOOH shortlist for best Creative Classic OOH campaign.
The creative was a collaboration between Phantom Billstickers and Mediabrands Content Studio, along with media agencies Billie Media and Rufus powered by Initiative.
As well as reaching tens of thousands of viewers passing by the site each day, The Boys campaign ignited attention around the world. Fans organically shared content to the global Reddit thread r/TheBoys (545K members), and the site was digitally recreated within the world of Grand Theft Auto: Online in Brazil.
WOOH CMO Richard Saturley says: “We have had more entries than ever for the Digital and Classic Creative Awards and the quality has never been higher. Especially pleasing is that entries came from all over the world and that’s reflected in the two excellent shortlists.”
Phantom CEO Robin McDonnell says the company is “quietly thrilled” by the way a bold client and some no-holds-barred brainstorming led to a world-class solution.
“The Boys launch shows what’s possible when everything comes together,” McDonnell says. “New Zealand agencies and marketers have shown themselves unafraid to stretch the possibility of the medium.”
“Challenge us! We’ve got a passion for posters and the practical capability to deliver off-the-wall ideas – right down to sourcing and placing a wrecked car.
“Phantom has some of Aotearoa’s top sites, just waiting for you to populate them with the next global award-winning idea.”
The WOOH award winners will be named during the organisation’s annual Congress, to be held at Lisbon on 7-9 June 2023.
You’ve probably heard that the New Zealand economy is not looking too crash-hot right now. The Covid spend-up is over. The IMF predicts we’ll have one of the lowest GDP growth rates in Asia-Pacific over the next year or so.
Yeah, it sucks. At Phantom Billstickers, we’re not immune from market realities. Neither are the landlords and property companies we partner with.
But with that downbeat news out of the way, we’d like to focus on some positive stuff.
So here’s the good-ish news for Phantom’s partners.
1. We’re not going anywhere
Phantom Billstickers has been around since 1982.This is not our first rodeo.
We’ve ridden the waves of boom and bust in the New Zealand economy many times over the last 41 years. Our business model has been tested and found to be resilient. By serving a very broad market – from A3 posters for local bands to billboards for major brands – we’ve been able to build a loyal and diverse client base who know that street posters work.
There’s even some evidence that traditional media, such as posters, have an advantage in the current climate.
This helps underpin our business…and yours.
2. In fact, we’re growing
We currently have over 6,500 poster frames in 16 towns and cities across the country. It’s New Zealand’s biggest street poster network – and we’re in the process of making it even bigger.
In Taupo, we’re looking to bring Phantom frames to town for the first time. We’re also looking to sign up more sites in thriving Tauranga.
Do you own property in either of these locations? Do you know anyone in Tauranga or Taupo with a property that might be suitable? We should talk.
One of the nicest things about hosting Phantom Billstickers frames is that they create value from nothing. A Phantom contract turns bare walls into valuable real estate. The result is revenue you can rely on.
It gets better. Our billstickers maintain your wall space by removing tagging and keeping things tidy. Sometimes we install lighting. And every week, there’s a fresh set of posters to enliven the scene and attract eyeballs. (Flora for the Concrete Jungle.)
Passive income is a beautiful thing. The economic cycle may peak or plummet, but our business partners know they can rely on their Phantom revenue during good times and bad.
4. No risk, no hassle, no headaches
Every business that hosts Phantom frames gets a contract to provide certainty. No ‘handshake deals.’ While these might sound easy, in practice they create grey areas, and we want to make sure you’ve got everything in writing.
Good contracts create good partnerships, and ours have been crafted to make sure our partners share in the value we’re creating from the street posters they host. It’s a win/win/win scenario for our business, our landlords and our advertisers.
When it’s time to renew contracts, we’re always ready to work with property owners to reach a mutually beneficial outcome. We will share data and explain our thinking. It’s all about creating long-term value.
And that applies whether the economy if racing ahead or going through a patch of (hopefully short-term) turbulence.
Got a question about your Phantom contract renewal? Our Commercial Manager Yoannah is always ready to clear things up. Email her on Yoannah@0800phantom.co.nz
This is an excerpt from Richard Langston’s new book, Pull Down The Shades published by Hozac Books of Chicago and available on pre-order through Flying Nun.
Christchurch’s Roy Montgomery has earned an international reputation in the underground rock world since his early days with The Pin Group and his nearly 30 years of making solo records, from the lo-fi, to the cinematic, and to the experimental. In recent years he’s been prolific, releasing albums at a dizzying rate on Grapefruit Records in the USA. He’s about to tour Europe with the Dead C. He spoke to Richard Langston.
I got a surprise listening to the opening track on one of your recent albums…the song ”Audioramble” on Audiotherapy (2022)…the surprising levity of it…you seem to be sending yourself up…or some character who might resemble you?
I have wanted to do something like this from the first time I heard the third Velvet Underground LP. Something kind of light but still deliberate.
It’s a great vocal too by the way…I know you can be critical of your singing…the song’s almost got a pop feel to it…those backing singers and their line of …’bah bup bah bah ‘..like something off Loaded…
Loaded or the 3rd LP…
The song’s a reminder that there was often a dark humour in the Christchurch scene from its earliest days…
There was a lot of black humour around in those days which some people missed. I think there was a seriousness but also a sense of perspective. Pipe dreams and big-headedness belonged to other music scenes.
I recently discovered on the inside of the fly cover of my Pin Group single… someone had written ’Pin Group This is Shit’ – which I believe was Ronnie van Hout ..showing his sense of humour …as he was screen printing those 300 covers…or whatever number it was…
I am pretty sure it was Ross Humphries who added that liner note and others. The screen printing was a collective effort but still quite tedious, so it was bound to lead to such waggish behaviour.
It’s insane the money those first two singles sell for these days second hand…a minimum of a $1000…and up to $4000… I guess Ronnie’s artful covers has added lustre and attraction…what are your thoughts about that?
I was taken aback when I first started seeing some high sales prices or was told about them but now I think such objects become totems at a certain point. Plus, as you allude to, these are handmade pieces in terms of sleeve art. There was a sense of making collector’s editions of posters and sleeve art at the time. That was the Warhol influence I think. Not just visually but in terms of the commodity that is never an exact reproduction.
It’s good the singles were reissued on vinyl by US label Superior Viaduct so people could afford them…I thought that album of songs Flying Nun reissued in 2011 was particularly good as it contains a CD of live stuff…performances by a band many have heard of but few saw live…or as Bruce Russell says in the liner notes about the band…”their genius had existed right beneath our noses – and we’d missed them”…
I’m too close to that material to pass judgement on how good the Pin Group stuff is intrinsically but I think it’s good that people can experience what we were trying to do in the studio and on stage. We barely had time to evolve.
Matt Goody’s meticulously researched book, Needles & Plastic, where he’s teased out so many stories behind the records and little-known facts…is a great achievement …and no doubt also jogging a few memories…and it opens the music up to a new generation of listeners…
As everyone is remarking this was the book about Flying Nun that needed to be written. It steers a very straight course through the period where the label really mattered.
I remember 1981 as politically a dark time…the Springbok tour…on the flip side it was an extremely exciting time for music…the Gladstone …performances by The Clean, The Pin Group and many others…how do you remember it?
Dark, edgy and sometimes physically dangerous because there was still a lot of hostility towards the short-haired punk/post-punk generation. By the same token I think we felt very connected to outsiders everywhere and to the garage band scene of the 1960s. The Nuggets and Pebbles comps were hugely influential in Christchurch, for example, and it gave things a certain edge to think that you could be making comparable things together in an otherwise very conservative and knee-jerk environment.
How supportive of each other were you in that Christchurch community? I know in Dunedin there was real support among the bands but also a sense of competition to write the best or better songs…
I think it was very much the same and just as incestuous. I think it has to be that way with young people going through rites of passage. Most commentaries, including the recent one by Matt Goody, steer clear of the more visceral and complicated nature of personal relationships in, say, Dunedin and Christchurch.
You worked in the EMI shop near Cathedral Square – it had import records – at a time when it was hard to source a lot of records. That must have been a real boon for you as a songwriter to be exposed to all that post punk music coming out of England…
EMI NZ was conservative when it came to importing what was available on its own label and other imports. We had to lobby hard for any label to bring things in from the UK or Europe. The University Bookshop at Ilam was the oracle in terms of imports because they had their own import license and (manager) Tony Peake took full advantage of it. And even then this only covered LPs. I got most of my exposure to post-punk music through ordering 45s directly from the UK at great expense via a label and mail order outlet called Small Wonder, and later Rough Trade. Tony Green and other friends did the same and we coordinated our orders so that we didn’t double up unnecessarily.
Who were some of the bands at that time you took a liking to and who possibly opened you up to the more experimental side of music and song-writing?
The Fall, Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, The Mekons, Gang of Four, early Scritti Politti, Rema Rema, Alternative TV, The Raincoats, Comsat Angels, A Certain Ration, The Durutti Column, The Residents, Tuxedomoon, Throbbing Gristle, various artists on Mute Records and other more electronic labels.
I think you went to England in early 80s…your mother is English so was that a combination of OE and connecting with your English roots…or going to see the bands?
I had little family left in the UK so it wasn’t that. I just wanted to see bands in their natural habitat, buy records, see films, see art and buy books that I could not access in Aotearoa New Zealand. It was a kind of anti-sabbatical for someone who had dropped out of university.
Didn’t you spend some time with Mark E Smith of The Fall?
Yes, my good friend Chris Owens had helped host the Fall in Christchurch in 1982 while I was overseas. When Chris came over to Liverpool, where I was staying, he said “I have Kay (Carroll) and Mark’s phone number. They said to call if I was over their way.” So we did. After working out that our Chris was not Chris Knox Mark said come and visit. We took the train from Liverpool to Manchester and went and hung out with Mark and Kay in Prestwich for a couple of days. They were very hospitable. Even when I told MES that his favourite brew tasted like used sump oil from a Morris Minor.
Your father is German and I wonder how that’s influenced your work?
I think it did indirectly. I spent the first four years of my life in Cologne, home of Can.
There’re German references in your work…whether it be their philosophers (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hildegard von Bingen) or their musicians (Florian Fricke of Popul Vah)…
And Kafka. I guess I come from that intellectual tradition but whether it is genetic or learned I don’t know. When I was at high school Camus made a bigger impact on me than the German writers, but I found my way there in a fumbling working class manner later on, sometime through reading the impossibly esoteric articles in NME in the late 1970s.
You’ve also written a song to another famous German, Nico. Did anything in particular inspire that?
Again, she had a connection with Cologne and when I wrote the song was still being written off as a talent. I was very pissed off that Desertshore was so unknown to most people even in the mid 1990s. I also share her preference for minor keys.
America too is obviously a place with imagery and art that appeals to you – from their classic cars …to the wide open spaces…and writers (Sam Shepard)…
Yes, that kind of speaks for itself. Sam Neill makes a comment in the documentary Cinema of Unease about how influential Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop was on filmmakers (along with some other film I have forgotten). I saw that film on the big screen in 1972 when I was 13. Game changing. Also, I grew up on Westerns on TV. The Virginian and Gunsmoke coloured my world as a kid. When I got my driver’s license at 15 I proceeded to find out just how empty the back country of the South Island was.
I suppose the album that most obvious says you are from New Zealand is one of my favourites…Scenes from the South Island ….which you recorded mostly in New York…I guess I being thousands of miles away from what you were imaging and writing about must’ve given you a new perspective…
Yes, the privilege, rather than the tyranny, of distance.
You are obviously interested in many artforms but was music the form of expression you were always going to create in? I am working class so yes. There was no alternative. The other stuff came as I defected from my class roots.
What are your earliest memories of music? Did you have lessons?
British Forces Network radio station in Cologne. My mother was secretary at the station. She brought home 45s and we listened to that station at home. Basically, all UK and American R and B, jazz and pop music. I have never had lessons and it shows.
Who are some of the songwriters/guitarists who continue to inspire you?
Sandy Bull. Kevin Fellows. Nico. John Cale. Adrian Franklin. Adrian Borland. Colin Newman. Alex Chilton. Steven R Smith. Liz Harris. Hound Dog Taylor. Veronique Chalot. Nick Drake. Bruce Langhorne. Tom Verlaine. Richard Lloyd. James Williamson. Sarah Davachi. Birds of Passage. Martha Skye Murphy. Sterling Morrison. Jack Rose. Mary Lattimore. Meg Baird. Phil Judd. Ed Kuepper. Alec Bathgate.
You’ve been particularly productive in recent years…it’s hard to keep up with the number of albums you’ve recorded or issued since 2016…what do you put that down to?
Lack of quality control. Fear of imminent death.
We are now at an age where we are losing friends or contemporaries we’ve known or admired …you recorded ‘Six Guitar Salute to Peter Gutteridge’….did you know Peter or was that inspired by his music?
I knew Peter as someone with whom I often had the following conversation on the intermittent occasions when we met:
Peter: “Roy!”
Roy: “Peter!”
Peter: “Do you want to jam?”
Roy: “What? Now?”
Peter: “Yeah. Why not?”
And I always found an excuse to demur, mainly because he was too out of it for me to see anything coming of it right then. My bad. He was very gifted; I liked his sound and ideas and I should not have been so sceptical…
Sadly your latest double album Camera Melancholia is a tribute to the life of your partner, Kerry McCarthy (1967-2021)…I imagine that was such a natural response for you to write music to and for her …was it a difficult record to write and record?
No. Living without her and watching her children having to live without their mother is difficult.
Did you have a set idea or did it evolve as you recorded it?
Kerry’s work as a curator of the pictorial collection at Canterbury Museum involved more work with photographs than prints or art works because museums have tended to accumulate photographs from people of all walks of life. She was particularly interested in them as objects in themselves, not as representations of reality or historical curiosities, and we used to discuss the status of photography as an art form a lot. Kerry used the theorising about photographs by Roland Barthes in his Camera Lucida for her PhD on Antarctic photography. Barthes appears to have interpreted the meaning of photographs, much like W.G. Sebald, in a subjectively melancholy way. When Kerry died I thought that rather than select actual photographs of her spread across her life it would be better to imagine such photographs in my mind and then match them with music. I hope the pieces and titles allow people to make their own mental photographs in whatever forms come to them. But I knew it would be a melancholy exercise – hence the title.
I like that you’ve responded to different stages of Kerry’s life – the titles give the listener a foothold into the pieces – and the later songs are elegiac but also suggest the great mystery…the unknowable element that follows death…
I needed to respond while things were still raw rather than wait years which is what happened when my partner Jo died in 1992. This album is more direct. Kerry was present in the world for twice the length of time that Jo was present so there were more stages of life for me to know about and experience with her. I wanted the album to conjure something of Kerry for those that knew her and for those that did not and to allow a little intimacy without becoming too sentimental. The aura pieces happened all at once without my really knowing they would. I was testing out a second hand Tascam DP24 I had just bought and I plugged in a Roland RS-50 I had borrowed off my son because I thought there might be some effects I could use on pieces for an album about Kerry. Through trial and error I found some settings that became the pieces themselves not embellishments. I felt transported to somewhere between this world and another and it was still a way of channelling grief, albeit quietly.
And again, Ronnie van Hout, has collaborated with you by producing the cover art…
He loved Kerry very much and knew her independently of me so it took little or no deliberation.
It’s being released by the USA label Grapefruit records…how did your relationship with that label come about?
I think Bruce Russell had a lot to do with it.
Like so many of the musicians who released material on Flying Nun during those early days, you are a ‘lifer’ …and I imagine you’ll make music for as long as you are able to…
Yes and no. Maybe. If you look at my discography there are long periods of no output. At those times I haven’t thought about music that much. That said, while the brain and the hands keep functioning I consider myself a lucky man.
In an exclusive interview commissioned by Phantom Billstickers, John Halvorsen talks to Richard Langston. Enjoy.
John Halvorsen founded the Christchurch band, The Gordons, and immediately co-opted fellow musicians Alister Parker and Brent McLachlan. This was in 1980 when the trio were barely out of their teens. They made an EP Future Shock and a debut album that have sounded through the ages. They went on to further their international reputation with Bailterspace, and John also became a key member of The Skeptics. He has a new band called Vorsen. He talked to Richard Langston about the willingness of The Gordons to tour again, a book on The Gordons, the release of live recordings and the wealth of the songs he has for Vorsen. And when he first started making music.
When did you first pick up a guitar? That was early. Maybe about 1968, I wanted a guitar first, but I ended up with a ukulele (laughs) then I talked my father into buying me an acoustic guitar. I had lessons in Ashburton. Then I got an electric guitar.
How old were you? I was ten and I had a band called The Diplomats which was myself and David Armstrong, we both played guitar, neither of us really knew what a bass was, and Paul McNab – he was the drummer, an incredible drummer. Paul was maybe 8 years old or something. He would pummel those things, we were kind of a surf band playing ‘Wipeout’ and things and a few originals, maybe Kinks, just a few current songs of the time.
As you developed what sort of music were you attracted by? At that time the garage sound was big in New Zealand. I really liked Larry Morris and the Rebels and the La De Da’s. My father had motels and every year the Joe Brown show would come through and you’d get the whole of C’mon 68 and C’mon 69 which later turned in Happen Inn staying in our motel, and I’d get all their signatures, The Chicks and Mr Lee Grant, Ray Woolf, Ray Columbus.
I would set up my electric guitar, my amp and my microphone on the veranda of the old homestead that we lived in which was facing the motels and do a little solo thing so that they knew there was a musician around, and then I’d go and knock on the door and get their signatures and introduce myself (laughs). I guess I started off as a real fan. I liked pop and the other side of it if it sounded good.
It’s a hell of a leap to get to the first Gordons record…which was from another space…alien…out of its time…ahead of its time…
That’s one thing people don’t necessarily understand, musicians aren’t necessarily influenced by what they listen to, in fact I’ve always tried not to be. These days I’m careful not to listen to too much music because it does go in, things get mixed up in your own thoughts.
The Gordons did come from nowhere, we weren’t like anything else that was around although at the time I was listening to a lot of Iggy Pop, there was a certain amount of Raw Power in the original Gordons, later it turned into a more melodic thing. Punk had happened a few years early, going back it had happened a lot earlier in America 1973/75 and in the UK in 1977, and in New Zealand it slowly filtered through, and it was in my art school days and I’d buy all the records.
I think of the intensity of that Gordons’ record and the fierce metallic sound and think of bands like Wire and Gang of Four…were you listening to them? I love both those bands, but I didn’t get to hear Gang of Four until after the Gordons had started when we were on our first tour. That was more of a parallel universe sort of thing. I related to them immediately.
They were challenging bands as The Gordons were, but you all had something that was immediately appealing… Especially Wire, and they remain appealing to this day.
The Gordons always seemed to have lots of ideas, were you a big reader? I like to be but as soon as The Gordons started we ended up on tour, we left everything behind, our records our books, sold all my books straight away. I used to have a beautiful collection of books. It was mainly art books because I’d just come out of art school. In terms of what would be related to The Gordons I guess Brave New World…
Maybe George Orwell… Yeah, I think I was influenced by that whole future dystopian thing. A lot of it is very relevant to today, and it was relevant to the first period of The Gordons when we were playing live, songs like ‘Quality Control’…which is speaking about that kind of thing…’we are quality controlled…we watch every move’. Our live set then was completely different to that first album, most people don’t realise that.
We attempted to record some of those early songs at Sausage studio in Wellington. I think it was a four track, maybe eight track. I think due probably to a lack of communication and understanding on our part we didn’t know how long a reel of tape was. We just went in played our set and of course he didn’t manage to capture our whole set. It was a real shame because we thought we’d recorded a great album.
How many songs were there? We played about 8 or 10 songs. A few of the songs were recorded but they don’t exist anymore. We came home with a cassette of maybe 3 songs, and I don’t know where that is. Whereas a lot of songs on that second Gordons’ album were an attempt to recapture what was missed but unfortunately that album didn’t work out so great because for one Brent used electronic drums instead of his Ludwigs, so it didn’t have the feel that he’d normally have, and I think we played it a bit too fast. Unfortunately, it didn’t become as classic as what it could have been.
There’s talk amongst us and 1972 Records of putting out a live Gordons tape as an album. Brent sent me a tape which he was excited about, but I didn’t think it was quite up to it and they’re waiting on me – I have a box of Gordons’ cassettes right from our first shows and our first practices. The first show was recorded on a Neumman binaural recording set invented in the early ‘50s I think – it’s 3D – on a reel to reel. The actual microphones are in a skull right where the eardrums would be, the sound moves around the same way it would a human head and goes into ears the same way it would go into human ears. We hear in 3-D so when you hear a binaural recording your brain puts it together as 3-D. Throbbing Gristle might have had a binaural recording or two.
That’s one of the potential ones I could dig out. They’re dying to get it off me; I need to transfer these things carefully, they’re very old cassettes now. So that’s a possibility, there maybe one of the potential things…a live Gordons’ album of the original material as we were in that first 18 months of playing live not the later studio version which was really quite a leap in a different direction.
What was the difference between those two incarnations? The early Gordons was a lot harder, more dystopian, the vocal delivery, the intention…everything about it was different.
Who was doing the most singing at that point? Initially I was the singer, but Alister more and more sang and after a few months it was probably about 50/50 and the same with guitar. I would generally start the first half of the set and then Alister would do the second half.
How did you write your songs? At the very beginning I was writing the songs before Alister and Brent were there because Jim Wilson (promoter) had given me a booking when I didn’t have a band (laughs). That day I wrote ‘Quality Control’, ‘Identity’, ‘Photo Eye’, ‘Adults and Children’ and about three or four other songs. The next day I was at a practice room and my flatmate Dave had a band and he was running around looking for some equipment and he came to the studio with Brent because Brent had a drum kit. Wow, there he was.
Initially Rob Mayes from Failsafe Records came along with his bass and it was us three and that was pretty good. It would’ve been interesting to know how that would’ve turned out but then two hours later when I was about to head home an old friend Dave Peterson who became my soundman arrived with Alister and his gear. I was looking for a bass player and he had guitar gear. He played some guitar and like wow! pretty good, and he really liked what I was doing. It was exciting: that was The Gordons right there.
We had a few days practising together which I would say was more like songwriting together and we immediately had rapport. We all listened to each other carefully and created as a three piece. It just worked. You don’t want to mess with that. We seldom had to discuss anything; it was all done with our ears. It was like an organic monster all on its own.
Do you read and write music? When I had lessons I did, I learnt to play the piano a bit and read and write music, but I didn’t really want to carry on in that way. One thing we never really did was practice, we would just write songs. We would write them once and only half-write them and then we’d play them live. We weren’t big on jamming; it was often just something as simple as two chords to start with that would suggest a rhythm or the other way around if you have a couple of lyrics and one line will give you four lines and before you know it a song just unfolds. We believed practising killed so many bands where they over practised, by the time they got on stage all the rough corners and edges had been knocked off and it wasn’t exciting anymore whereas The Gordons were flying by the seat of our pants.
I just wanted something that was new and fresh. I had a lot of confidence as an artist as a painter, a designer… an aesthetic. I hadn’t played music for a long time…I hadn’t had a band…oh there was a band I was playing around with just before The Gordons which was an art school band, but we never really played live. We had a jamming thing at an art gallery, and we were called The Perfect Strangers which was me, Bill Vosburgh and Richard Uti. That was just for a week or two. I hadn’t really been playing I’d just been concentrating as a painter and graphic designer. I’d just bought a 1964 Telecaster and I’d say that was very influential. That guitar wrote songs for me. I’d pick it up and it had a certain kind of sound. Unfortunately, it was stolen from me back in 1983. I’ve got a hollow-bodied Tele lying around somewhere, one that I’ve built.
You’ve made a lot of guitars haven’t you? Yes, it’s often when I make a guitar as soon as I put it together and I’ll just be plucking the strings a few times just to see how it’s going and it will suddenly give me a sound that I’ve never heard, a simple chord and it suddenly works and it will immediately suggest the next chord, before you know it I’ve got four lines and there’s a chorus and they come complete. Sometimes songs just drop from the sky. I made a guitar in the first week of The Gordons, an aluminium-necked guitar which had a neck that went all the way through the body. A lot of the guitars in this room are handmade.
You also created that Gordons’ image of the figure in a diving or radiation suit with the diver’s bell helmet and the guitar…what were you thinking when you created it? In a sci-fi way, a futurist vision. I knew I wanted it to be black and white. I did the artwork quickly; I think it was the day of our first practice when David came around with Brent and Alister and we were a band. We needed to put some posters up, so they came around to my place and I did the artwork right before their eyes. I did it about the size of a cigarette packet, it was partly collage partly a thumb print. You could tell by the time it got blown up large it was quite organic looking. Half an hour after I made it we were at the bromide bureau where I blew it up extremely large and there it was. It was printed that day.
It’s a striking image…marrying that diver in the bell jar to a guitar… It was part-man part-machine, a machine whose arm is a guitar and the other arm sits on top of that guitar, a steel arm and only has the limited action of being able…it’s an impossible looking image, it’s very awkward looking, I don’t know… is it an underwater diver? is it a space diver? It’s hard to say. I wanted an ominous black and white image.
It looks how The Gordons sound…. Yes, very much especially the early live Gordons.
A few years I was driving in the Mackenzie Country looking at those huge pivot irrigators that are there and ‘Machine Song’ came on my car stereo and I thought how perfectly it mirrored what I was looking at … human intrusion into the landscape on an industrial scale… That makes sense to me. Industrial steel things like pylons that you see out in the countryside has always struck me, and all the early Gordons’ songs have a machine theme about them. That was one of the earliest songs, Alister came along with that guitar tuning, about our third practice or something, just new immediately that it was a great song. The three of us started playing it and it was right in there, it cemented Alister as being a serious songwriter. At that point it was sharing duties.
When the first album was re-released by 1972 Records two years ago…did you give yourself a moment to think…wow, we did that…I mean it’s mentioned by the likes of Sonic Youth…it’s taken its place in history…and you were how old? I was 20, I think Alister was maybe 19 and Brent was 18 or 17. I know that the bass player in Sonic Youth Kim Gordon bought a bunch of Future Shock a year later when they were in New Zealand, and she took them back and gave us our first review in America and mentioned that it was a great record to do the vacuuming to. That really helped us in America. When I first heard Sonic Youth I thought there’s something on the other side of the world…they had a similar thing to what we were like as a live band. There was something familiar about it. We weren’t trying to be like other things at the time, it hasn’t dated because it didn’t belong to that time, it belonged to any other time in a way. It still seems fresh.
How supportive was Christchurch at that time? It seemed perfect for us to start out as a band at the time. There is an Ashburton element to us, but we were fully a Christchurch band. It was fortunate to know Jim Wilson who I was working for at the time doing a few music newspaper ads as an art school student. He gave me the booking for the Hillsborough opening for the Whizz Kids which was fantastic because it was a huge venue, and they came down to Christchurch from Auckland and we got to play to their audience. That put us on the map because people were immediately talking about it, the posters had already got peoples’ interest. Some people assumed we were an international band because they were very different posters and we drove around and covered Christchurch with them and little Gordons stickers and big Gordons stickers everywhere.
The Whizz Kids liked us and asked us to play our set twice because they missed the first half of our set …it was a short set. I think with them travelling around and going back to Auckland they helped put the word out about us. We were known in Auckland straight away.
I think the myth was you needed to play the songs twice as you didn’t have many… No, we only had intended to do a half hour set and we had more than ample for that. We only had to play them twice because the wanted to hear us. They said please can you play again, and I guess they weren’t ready to go on.
I was contacted by Michael Canning a few years back who’s writing a book on the Gordons… All I know is he’s been writing it for some ten years now and it is coming out. I have no idea what it will be like, I’m terrified. I don’t know if we warrant a book, but I think it’s not only about The Gordons, but there’s also a certain amount about Bailterspace as well. He’s interviewed me a lot over the years.
Have you ever considered playing together again as The Gordons? In 1980 when we made Future Shock a guy from the ACME t-shirt company in Australia bought a bunch of our singles and distributed them in Australia and printed a great t-shirt as well and that put us on the map in Australia. He did quite well out of his company and two years ago he decided he wanted to hear The Gordons play, and he was going to put forward quite a nice amount of money. We thought we can do that, and we were going to do it but unfortunately it didn’t work out in the end but that was going to be an Australian and New Zealand tour. We were all happy to do and it was all go.
Then three months ago Brent called me up and he was keen to give it another shot at a Gordons’ tour of New Zealand and I said, ‘ok count me in’, and if that didn’t happen maybe a Bailterspace tour could happen. In the end neither of them could make It over here.
Your new band Vorsen is a three-piece, what is it about a trio that appeals to you? Three is just enough and one more might be one too many although it would be great to have another guitar at times. As a vocalist I’m trying to play rhythm and lead at the same time which keeps me busy. But I like three-piece bands, I always have, there’s enough space and it’s so much easier to tour. With three you can just get up and go. The Skeptics was more and that was fun but I prefer the three piece format.
How did your band come together, the drummer Steve Cochrane and bass player Hayden Ellis? I’ve had a lot of these songs a long time, I was writing and recording them in my private recording studio in Williamsburg, New York since about ’91. As an experiment in song writing, I would write and record two songs a day if I could, not every day but most days. I never really knew what I would do with them, I thought I’d make a record. Some of the songs I did give to Bailterspace but not the ones I’m using. There was a lot of down time when I wasn’t recording or touring with Bailterspace and I thought I could become a better recording technician and a better songwriter.
I’ve got at least 50 songs or 80 songs from that period, and a whole lot of new songs since I came back to New Zealand in 2003. I’d say that since I started Vorsen there’s probably another eight or so songs that I’ve written. I already have recordings of the songs, but I just wanted to play them live, and I had written them for a three piece. I bumped into Steve at the Island Bay fishing and chip shop, and he was practising with his new band at the time, The Uncools. I told him I was going to do something, and I had him in mind as a drummer. It was only two and a half years ago, and I thought, ‘I’d better do this’. We found Hayden four or five days before we went on tour. He was keen and I gave him a copy of a bunch of the recordings, and he came to my studio to I showed him the songs and he basically learned something like 18 songs. I was impressed. He’s got a good memory and I loved his openness and his keenness. They’re great guys I’m playing with and we’re going to carry on because they’re committed and that’s very rare these days.
Vorsen sounds like it could be the title of a Bailterspace song or album… Well good. It is the second half of my surname so it’s unmistakable, my full name is too long. I wanted people to know this thing is mine. I know I need to release something for this tour but I’m not sure I’m ready to release an album, it might be an EP I’d say halfway through the year. I just want to get the music out there.
I guess working with the others bands over the years The Gordons, Skeptics and Bailterspace I invested a lot of myself in those bands so it’s inevitable there’ll be certain bits where you’ll be able to pick all three of those bands but really it’s nothing like any of them but there’s a certain intensity that’s the same perhaps as The Gordons, there’s a certain amount of melody and drone that’s similar to Bailterspace…it’s not my intention to be like any of them, it’s actually brand new. Most of the songs we play live are more recent. It’s coming along, I’m happy. There’s plenty of room for us to grow and explore and we’re a new band and it’s quite exciting.
I think a lot of the material I’ve written prior to these difficult times we live in prior to covid and the war going on somehow my material does seem to cover all that even though I wrote it earlier. I’m always writing about social issues and the human condition.
You’ve called your tour ‘War on Fire’ tour certainly sounds of the moment… Exactly. I’m inclined to have double or triple entendre going on there, I’m speaking on the one hand environmentally also with the threat of a world literally being on fire, the danger we’re all in, in terms of a nuclear war. But also, the idea of setting the world on fire with maybe excitement, just igniting with sound, that song started out as a more a spiritual…it was called ‘Walking on Fire’ initially. It was a song of faith, not religious faith, but getting up every day is an act of faith and walking and every day is a new day. But the current state the world is, it became the zeitgeist and a world on fire. I do write happy songs. I have a new one called ‘Faster Than Light’ and it’s a song about the one-ness of all things, the feeling of being part of that oneness, and to me it’s a beautiful song. It’s a celebration of life, it’s not all dystopian.
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