Book out today!

Cover photo of Pitch Black - Tony Nyberg. Design - Peter McLennan

I BELIEVE YOU ARE A STAR

(202 pages, official publication date May 20, RRP $19.95 from Slowboat Records, RPM Music (Wgtn), Conch Records, Real Groovy (Akl), FlyingOut mailorder (NZ) and amazon.com. More outlets soon. Also available on Kindle. 

I BELIEVE YOU ARE A STAR is a collection of magazine interviews written between 1992 and 2003 by Peter McLennan. He talked to locals just starting their recording careers (P-Money, Stellar, SJD, Black Seeds), through to established artists (Salmonella Dub, Shayne Carter, Bailter Space). They are fascinating insights of where these artists were at, and provide a look into their creative process.

The book launch will be held at Conch Records, 115a Ponsonby Rd from 3pm, Saturday May 25th, with special all-NZ vinyl DJ set from Dylan C, and complimentary beer  from the good folk at Hallertau. Books on sale on the day - first 25 copies come with a free mix CD of recordings mentioned in the book. Read about the artists and listen to them at the same time!

Before starting his blog Dubdotdash in 2003, Peter was a freelance magazine journalist for a handful of magazines, including Real Groove, North and South, NZ Musician, Rip It Up, Pavement, Selector, Planet, Lava and Stamp. This collection of interviews draws together some of the articles he wrote and is focussed on local musicians, DJs and artists.

There's some interesting threads in these interviews, like Stellar discussing their sizeable album budget and comparing it to what Straitjacket Fits or JPSE got, then Fiona McDonald having a similar conversation round her album budget, citing JPSE and Stellar.

There's Tigilau Ness (Che Fu’s dad) talking about how he got sent to prison after the 1981 Springbok tour protests, which is a pretty heavy story. Tigilau got chucked out of school for refusing to cut his afro, how staunch is that?

Or Shayne Carter, explaining why he didn’t want to send out advance copies of his debut album as Dimmer (after making me sit with him in the Sony boardroom and listen to the album in its entirety), and me suggesting that if I’d had the album before the interview, I could've written some pertinent questions. To which Shayne replied with words to the effect of “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

Peter says “I got to meet some fascinating people writing these pieces. I feel very lucky to have met them - that’s part of the reason why I got into magazine writing. I wanted to meet these creative people and find out their process, and they turned out to be people I’d want to meet anyway.”

Other interviews include... SJD, Pitch Black, Sola Rosa, HDU, Darcy Clay, Graffiti art in Aotearoa: DLT, Otis Frizzell & Dan Tippett, Roger Perry, Dawn Raid, Kog Transmissions, Subliminals, Solid Gold Hell, Weta, Hinewehi Mohi, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Phase 5, Jakob, DJ Sir-Vere and the ITF DJ champs  PLUS: articles on the Aotearoa Hiphop Summit 2001 (and a NZ hiphop timeline), and the state of NZ music videos in 1992, and 1999.

The book is published independently by Dunbar Noon Publishing, thru the print on demand service, Createspace. Book and cover design by Peter McLennan.

Interview chatter

Photo by Trevor Reekie

I did a fun radio interview with Radio NZ's Trevor Reekie recently about my book (out May 20), you can catch it tomorrow...

"RADIO NZ ; Sat May 4th 2013 – MUSIC 101 – just after 2 pm.
Two well respected Auckland-based musicians are releasing their self published books soon via Amazon's Createspace as a book and e-book … think of it as Bandcamp for authors. . - now anyone can publish a book

Peter McLennan (ex Hallelujah Picasso, DJ, Dub Asylum, video maker and journalist) who has curated his book “I Believe you are a star” and Gareth Shute (musician, award winning author, academic and one of the main men in the L’il Chief label) about his book ‘Concept Albums’ talk to us about how the age of the rejection letter is changing - just like the recording bizz."

ADDED you can listen to the interview here....

Darcy Clay

Today marks 15 years since Darcy Clay died. I was lucky enough to meet him a handful of times - firstly to talk about directing a music video for him. Trevor Reekie (Antenna Recordings  his label) put me onto him, as Darcy had got an NZ On Air music video grant. He had some great ideas - doing a big song and dance number down Queen st - but eventually decided he'd rather work on some recording instead and ditched the music video. Later I got to interview him for Pavement magazine, see below. The following interview will be included in my book I Believe You Are A Star, out May.


Darcy Clay: He’s evil?!

Published in Pavement, August/September 1997

Having already conquered the pop charts, twisted Auckland musician Darcy Clay now has his sights set further afield.

"I wouldn't mind going to Africa and spending some time with the lions," he intones. "I'd like to travel. Music is not the greatest thing in the world. It's one of them but it's not the only one, as far as I'm concerned. I want to get into Pavement magazine and I want to be on the cover of Time." Well, he's halfway there then.

Darcy Clay has taken the airwaves by storm. His infectious pop ditty Jesus I Was Evil has been all over student radio for a while and now, with the release of his six song CD of the same name, he's set to become a household name. Maybe that sounds a tad optimistic for a song recorded at home on a four-track but the CD is already cutting through the NZ top 20, debuting at number 18 and rising to number 5.

The Clean hold the title as the last New Zealand band to make the charts with a DIY four-track recording back in the early-'80s. But what's behind the enigmatic man who came up with the great auto-racing couplet: "I used to crash parties and Maseratis. Jesus I was evil!" I ventured out to deepest Grey Lynn, the cutting edge of home recording (Chris Knox, come on down!) to find out.

When I arrive, Darcy is standing in front of his piano pounding away, playing along intently to a tune on his Walkman. We adjourn to his front porch for a quick chat in the face of a damn crisp early evening.

Why avoid the traditional recording studio route and record at home? "It's good. You can record at any time of the day. It's cheap. There's no pressure. And you're alone. I like that. You don't have to talk to anybody, just suit yourself."

What's it like being famous now?

"I don't know. I'm not famous. John Lennon's famous. I guess being known, it makes it easier. People are more willing to lend you gear."

Clay is planning to record some new songs soon too. "I'm going to do about five or six songs at home and release them, then do an album in a proper studio. I don't care where, as long as it's with a good engineer."

And then there's that trip to Africa...



Watch: Dylan Taite interviewing Darcy, 1997. Taite: "It's like nothing you've heard before, but in fact, it's like everything you've heard."

Tiki in Dubai

Here's an excerpt from my book I believe you are a star - part of an interview I did with Tiki Taane, back when he was in Salmonella Dub. He got into a bit of strife on tour, while, in Dubai. Seems tattoos get a different reception there...

Platitudes: Salmonella Dub 

Published in Pavement, August/September 2001

If you have been wondering what happened to Salmonella Dub, two words offer an answer: global domination.

The last 12 months have been an exciting time for Salmonella Dub. Following the commercial and critical success of their last album Killervision, they launched themselves out into the big world, touring to Australia, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East, after securing release of the album in these countries. In between all this travel, they started laying down the foundations for their fourth album, Inside The Dubplates. Soundman and vocalist Tiki says its been a year of exciting new places and strange adventures.

"I got in trouble in Dubai," he recalls, relaxing in the record company boardroom in Auckland, a long way from the political hotspots of the Middle East. "It was so hot, I went out in shorts and a t-shirt, and people would cross the road, freaking out at me, big time. I couldn't understand why. People were stopping their cars and watching me.

“I spent the whole day walking round, just going 'why are these people freaking out at me?' I went back to the hotel and the reception guy was totally freaking out, going 'oh my god, you didn't go out like that did you?' I said 'what do you mean, like that?'

“And he said, 'oh, you should cover yourself up'. I said 'why?', and it was something to do with the tattoos, the moko and the dreads, it meant they thought I was the devil, basically. When you're born, I think they believe that you should die as you were born, without any markings or anything. If you do mark yourself then you are going to spend the rest of your life on earth in eternal damnation! And then I understood.

“The cool thing was, I had a bunch of kids running up and touching me, checking me out, going 'where are you from?' I got talking to them, and they were saying you just don't get bands here, it's really hard to get exposed to anything else that's happening in the world. The kids there are really starved for Western culture. That made me realise how lucky we are. Even though we're from the South Pacific, these guys were way closer to the rest of the world than what we are, but they're still so isolated."

What's this book about, then?

Here's the front cover of my book - the photo of Pitch Black is shot by Tony Nyberg, cover design by me.

Before starting my blog Dubdotdash in 2003, I'd been a freelance journalist for a handful of magazines, including Real Groove, North and South, NZ Musician,  Rip It Up, and going back to Planet, Pavement, Lava and Stamp. Over the past year I've been working on pulling together a collection of articles I wrote during that time, scanning and converting the text, and will be publishing them via Amazon's Createspace as a book/e-book.

There's some interesting threads in there, like Stellar discussing their sizeable album budget, comparing it to SJF or JPSE, then Fiona McDonald having a similar conversation round her album budget, citing JPSE and Stellar. There's an early interview with P-Money (before he'd even released any of his own recordings), which he later told me his Dad liked cos it was the first interview that actually sounded like him!

Or Bailterspace talking about going to the beach, but the UV index being so high they had to stay in the car with the windows up. Or Shayne Carter making me sit in the Sony boardroom and listen to the first album by his band Dimmer in its entirety, as he didn't want to send out any advance promo copies.

Other interviews featured include Darcy Clay, Salmonella Dub, Sola Rosa, Dean Hapeta (Upper Hutt Posse), Kog Transmissions, HDU, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Tigi Ness, Black Seeds, Jakob, Pitch Black, JPSE, and more. Interviews done between 1992 and 2003.

Official publication date is 20 May, 2013. Book launch at Conch Records, Saturday May 25, 3pm, with Dylan C DJing all-NZ vinyl set, books for sale on the day, with the author signing 'em. Published by Dunbar Noon Publishing.

You can buy the book (RRP $19.95) at Conch Records, Real Groovy (Akl), Slowboat Records, RPM Music (Wgtn) FlyingOut mailorder (NZ) and online from Amazon.com, and also on Kindle here.