Interview: Gareth Shute Talks About New Book 'Songs From The Shaky Isles'

Montana New Zealand Book Award winner Gareth Shute's new book Songs From The Shaky Isles is out today via Bateman Books, subtitled 'A Short History of Popular Music in New Zealand'. Launching with an event this Friday 8th August at Tāmaki Makaurau's Time Out Bookstore, featuring a performance by Rodney Fisher (Goodshirt), there'll also be a book release gig at Flying Out on Saturday afternoon, starring Shute's own group Thee Golden Geese, playing some classic kiwi tracks. Shute generously chatted with Chris Cudby about the sky high scope of Songs From The Shaky Isles, packed full of gorgeous colour photos and artwork, spanning a century of Aotearoa popular music...

Songs From the Shaky Isles
A Short History of Popular Music in New Zealand
by Gareth Shute — free launch events

Friday 8th August - Time Out Bookstore, Auckland with Rodney Fisher (Goodshirt), 6.30pm
Saturday 9th August - Flying Out, Auckland with Thee Golden Geese, 2pm

Chris Cudby: What's on the cover?

Gareth Shute: That is a photo by Ian Jorgensen of Boh Runga (Stellar*). I decided that I didn't want something that was too obvious, in terms of what the book was about inside. I wanted something a little bit broad, so the atmospheric nature of the photo suited the book. Also of course, Stellar* were part of that wave that really broke New Zealand music commercially in the late '90s, they sold seventy five thousand albums.

Wow, would that mainly be locally?

That would have been almost all locally. They had a little bit of impact in Australia. Them and The Feelers would vie for the most played New Zealand single of the year. They did beat The Feelers one year.

A short history of popular music in New Zealand, is that the brief for the book?

Yeah, I wanted it to be high level enough where you could see the course of history over time, without getting too bogged down in tiny details. Because I feel like there's so many books now that are so focused on a particular time or group of artists, that you can't really see the overall changes that took place... Going sky high allows you to see, alcohol laws had this big impact, technology had this big impact. Oh, Flying Nun's impact was on inspiring people to go overseas, as much as anything else.

When and / or how do you think that today's concept of popular music took shape in New Zealand? Did we have a pre-pop music, and then there's a period where it's apparent what our idea of what pop music is today, emerged into reality?

I think our idea (of popular music) today is a recorded song that anyone has access to. But I did start the first chapter before that, to try and define what popular music was and give a sense of how it emerged. Originally people would just go to their local hall and they'd all sing a song each and whether you're good or bad, you'd probably be asked up to perform. Because people wouldn't want to ride a horse all the way into the city or something. Then there was sheet music that came, but that reached a limited audience. New Zealand did have an amazing amount of pianos at that time.

Obviously every iwi had their own set of waiata and often they would just stay in a region. But some like the 'Ka Mate' haka, in a way you can see that is popular music, because that spread right throughout the country, everyone knows that now. Then there was radio that reached into every home for a while. But really what we're thinking about in the modern world is recorded music. That was those first few recordings, Ana Hato and Deane Waretini being recorded in a hall, doing modern and traditional waiata, which was pressed overseas. Then the 'Blue Smoke' single, which was written, recorded and pressed here in New Zealand.

How long did the book take to come together? What criteria did you use to select which artists to showcase, or frame each chapter?

It took a very long time. I started out thinking that I almost didn't want to do another book. I was thinking of doing it as a run of stories for AudioCulture, or doing a BWB Text, or doing some smaller version. But as I started researching and writing little bits, I started to realise this needs to be a proper book. And I got some funding, which allowed me to pursue that a little bit more.

To narrow it down to such a short, novel-length book, that would be readable by any interested person, my two main criteria are probably acts that wrote original music. I always emphasise them slightly over the covers acts, even though doing covers was the main business in the '60s of a lot of live groups. The other one was success overseas. Someone like Dinah Lee, who did mostly do covers but was massive in Australia, appeared on TV shows in the US. She was someone that I had felt needed to be highlighted in that way. There was Mavis Rivers and certain other people over time.

This instantly makes me want to hit the index and see if OMC and Lorde are in there.

All those big people in there, yeah, but there's definitely a cut off. As you get close to the present, it's brutal, because it's so many bands and every band has a little bit of success overseas now. Where you draw the line is a tough call. In a way, I was probably harsher with bands that I was friends with, because I didn't want to be biased.

It's very fascinating to see how recent (Aotearoa music) history is re-written. What makes the cut and what doesn't make the cut as things go along.

I'm sure even in five years, there'll be some act where they're active right now, and they're really buzzy, but I decided that they don't quite justify being in there. Then in five years time, it'd be so obvious that I totally missed the boat on that one [laughs].

In the course of researching Songs From The Shaky Isles, did any specific artists' journeys surprise you?

Because I've been writing about music for 20 years and a music historian for probably 10 years, I knew the names and I knew the top level stories. But it's always the case when you dig a little deeper it becomes more surprising. Someone like Jay Epae, who wrote 'Tumbling Down', he wrote the hit for Maria Dallas here. I always knew he had this career in the US and a massive hit in Sweden called 'Putti Putti'. Just sort of filed that away as a rarity, not thinking it was so big that it would still be active now. Then to look him up on Spotify and see that that song has like a million streams and it's still being put on compilations of great hits of that country now, it's just like, "Ah, it's weird." It's the interpolation of an old waiata with these rock and roll lyrics added to it. It's the oddest song to be a hit on the other side of the world. That people still care about it is a funny thing to realise.

I wonder if it was used in an ad or something like that.

You never know how these things come back. I thought 'Don't Dream It's Over' might fade when YouTube first started, because I could see that Lorde and Princess Chelsea and people like that had way more streams at that time, say 2011 or something. But it's been covered by so many acts. It's come back in this weird way through massive pop stars who grew up with it as a child doing it live.

Was there anyone, or entire areas, that you were particularly interested in covering, that was a bit outside the brief, or you found that you didn't have space?

I do cover a lot of electronic artists, but don't really get into DJ culture. Obviously most DJs play records from overseas but they have still really effected the course of popular music. In the '90s, there were these dance parties that took place at The St. James and Auckland Town Hall here that were massive. But that's not original music, so it's hard to squeeze that into this book and I kind of had to draw the line somewhere, but I realised that's something that I wish someone would cover.

I found some old Planet magazines at the Central Flea market recently, that was exactly that. There'll be large print page flyers for parties like Gotham City, which I've never heard of.

The Brain, Oonst, these sorts of parties they were massive. But I'm aware writing this book, that it's not the same as when I wrote the NZ Rock (1987-2007) book. Where I almost felt like I have to put every name of every person in every band, because I don't want them to be ignored. With this book I just know if someone takes an interest in a band, they can just jump on the internet and find out all that extraneous information. I'm just telling a top level story that's better if it's coherent, so that people can sit down and read through it. Then anything that comes out that they want to dig deeper into, they can go to AudioCulture and dig into extremely minute detail if they want.

It provides pointers to research further, I'll definitely be examining the Head Music section for clues. These chapters, they're like Venn diagrams of different zones of activity right?

You can't really go chronologically and you need to tell a story, so you need to group artists. It's also awkward when an act doesn't fit within any particular scene... I'm sure that's why musicians hate music journalists, but that's just par for the course. You have to make a story that people can read. Especially with a book like this, where I want people who are maybe just interested in New Zealand history not even music history, to be able to read it and say, "Oh right, that's the path over time."

Did you observe any significant shifts or ruptures over the course of the last century of New Zealand popular music? Or is that actually the entirety of the book, is it a book of shifts and ruptures?

Yeah it's a book of shifts and ruptures. Some you would expect, like digital technology. Some you might not expect, like changing alcohol laws and the removal of six o'clock closing. Which suddenly meant people could get a drink and watch a band legally past six o'clock at night. Otherwise, they used to go to nightclubs where they wouldn't legally be able to drink and just be sneaking them in. Or there'd be some way the owner had found people to get alcohol.

In the '50s / '60s there'd be two varying types of music. Because there were the rock and roll clubs, which were actually for teenagers and people in their early twenties. That was kind of a lightweight bubblegum, early evening scene. But there was a late night scene, that was all cabaret and floor shows that took place at midnight. Those photos, you can definitely see bottles of wine on the table and the police are like, "These are grown ups, we'll leave them alone."

The book's been described as "a visual feast." What work was involved in sourcing these images?

When I first thought about doing it, I thought I'd do it in black and white and do a very grungy book like my previous ones. Because all my photos from the early 2000s were on black and white film. But through discussions with the publisher, we decided it should be colour and vibrant. So that set me the challenge of finding colour photos of the deep history.

Everything's high resolution as well.

Trying to find photos that are high enough resolution they can take up a whole page. So it can really be a coffee table book, but one that's a size where you can read it on a Sunday morning on your lap. So just begging local photographers for their good photos and being harsh on myself about whether my photo of an artist is really as good as someone else's.

I find when bands are doing a reunion, it can actually be a real challenge. Because the only photos, images available of them are from 12 or 15 years ago, they'll be like 300 pixels by 240 pixels or something.

The early internet photos are the worst resolution. There's heaps, but they're all terrible. And then in the '60s, there's hardly any, but they're all on film so they're super high res.

For those wishing to pursue a career in music writing, what's a typical week for Gareth Shute?

It's just constantly juggling different projects. At the same time you're writing or doing one set of jobs, you're pitching for a whole set of other jobs. So it is not relaxing, but you're always doing something different. I don't know if you could survive solely on writing. My one thing I would like to see is more communities developing. Because a lot of music writers now seem to have Substacks, that's just the popular thing, they're all individual ones. One in the old days, I remember when we did The Corner for no money, because me and Hussein (Moses) worked together at the library, it really felt like we were making a community. All these people who comment on the blogs are part of the conversation. All the people who put their hand up and want to go to a gig for free and want to review it are part of the community.

I'm really surprised that the blog format hasn't fully come back yet. We used to have blog aggregators, which would collect a bunch of blogs together.

Overseas, influencers on social media create groups. You'll have a group of Minecraft creators on YouTube, or you'll have people and with different expertise getting together and creating a little community and appearing on each other's content. The reality and the horror of the new world, but that's probably where that community might happen. The more community the better I always say.

There's going to be two launch events for the book?

Yeah, there's a quieter one. If you live near Mount Eden come along 6.30pm on August 8th. Rodney Fisher from Goodshirt is going to play a couple of songs and you can say hello to me and maybe get the book signed, if that's your thing. The next day is more of a open event at Flying Out, where there is my band, Thee Golden Geese is going to play some classic kiwi tracks

Any clues as to what you might play?

We're going to play the easiest ones. Even one of the ones we were originally going to do was a little too hard [laughs]. I love these songs though. I'm very happy with the final list.