It’s upon us, Fringe Festival time.
I always love this time of year becuase you never quite know what might be happening around the corner. But you do know it’s a celebration of creativity that’s truly unique to our lovely Wellington.
Driving home today i saw art installations being installed, and i can’t wait to go visit them tomorrow
My cellphone sent ‘SECRET’ to 2343 along with my name and email so i could find out more about the Footnote Plus fuse secret production.
My ears and eyes are preparing for a 3D film plus octophonic sound at the Paramount courtesy of SpartacusR.
Do let us know what you’re looking forward to over the next few days and weeks!
This is in the vein of The Wellingtonista Bar Fly-les, but I thought I’d give it another name since it’s about food & coffee as well as drink.
So alone among the Wellingtonista, I have a terrible secret: apart from an early album from the Black Seeds, I have no current Wellington Music in my collection.
None.
Not even Fat Freddy’s Drop.
In my major period of buying music, Wellington music for me was a bit fringe and wacky, and worst of all, not on Flying Nun. There were occasional songs that caught my attention: Bill Direen & the Bilders’ Do the Alligator; that amusing Elephunk song; one or two songs from the Six Volts… and that’s about it. Wellington was full of arty jazzy stuff that frankly I despised.
Time has moved on – about 20 years in fact – and somehow Wellington’s musical renaissance has passed me by. This is not good.
So I need help!
What are the top five albums by Wellington bands in the last five years? Answers please: I must remove the shameful stain of my musical ignorance!
Some favourites:
The Avengers
For a time in the late sixties The Avengers were one of the highest profile rock bands on the New Zealand scene. Their song Waterpipe is one of the greatest songs to ever glorify the joys of using water in your bong. The 1968 debut LP Electric Recording has possibly my favourite album cover art ever — look how cool they are — as well as being a damn good record. They went to try their luck in Australia and broke up in ’69.
Bailter Space
Look — we have to let Christchurch have The Gordons, and The Skeptics were undoubtedly from Palmerston North, but I’m going to have to insist despite them beginning in Christchurch and ending up in New York, that Wellington be allowed to claim shoe-gazey atmospheric noise rockers Bailter Space as its own. They were an incredible live band, known for being one of the loudest of their era. Their gigs were few and far between, and many people still speak in hushed, reverential tones about the week in 1993 when there were TWO Bailter Space gigs. And their albums still stand up as being some of the best music to ever come out of New Zealand.
Birchville Cat Motel
a.k.a. Campbell Kneale. As Wikipedia sez,
although largely unknown in his home country, Kneale has toured many times throughout Asia, America, Europe, and Australia.
Daft name, and yet this one-man trancendental drone/noise act is surely the closest thing Wellington and New Zealand has ever had to a global music superstar.
Eight more, after this…
The genius minds behind Heavenly Burlesque are back again for the Fringe and this time it’s free. Gravity and other Myths is a spectacular outdoor new circus showcase inspired by the stars!
Vist Queen’s Wharf at night this week and you see some of the country’s best new circus, performing on a purpose-built outdoor circus rig, combined with pyrotechnics, spectacular lighting, sound and AV design.
I’ve been promised acts will use fire, trapeze, bungy, hula hoops, dance and object animation, all to the locally grown music of Rhian Sheehan, Module and more. This is proper circus people, not with evil clowns.
Plus here is your chance to run away with the circus in your lunchtime – Wellington Circus Trust are running introductory circus workshops at lunchtimes (12.30 – 1.30) on the days of the show performances.
Gravity and other Myths
Queen’s Wharf, (under the sails)
Wellington Waterfront @ 8.00pm
Thursday 1st – Sunday 4th & Wednesday 7th – Saturday 10th
March, 2007.
Entry by donation / Koha
and bring a cushion
It has been brought to my attention that “a common complaint … from native Aucklanders when they venture south, or even tourists, is that, after three days in Wellington there is nothing to do”. While the writer of that comment doesn’t agree, looking around the city at the moment, I can see that they may have a point.
Frey (aka Damian Stewart, aka Mr bleep) is putting together a reactive sound and light installation for next month’s Fringe Festival, and he wants your help. Specifically, if you know of any interesting sounds around Wellington that he can record and use in the installation, drop him a line.
I guess it’s the Fringe, or the Festival itself that brings these guys here, but this particular busker is well worth a look at. Today he was in Manner’s Mall. I could hear him a block or so away & the sound he was producing made me wonder if one of the theremins was in […]
As both WellUrban and Oddity 59 (and now us) point out in their blogs, so much is happening in Wellington at the moment that it’s hard to keep track. What with the International Arts Festival, accompanying Fringe Festival, so called ‘fun‘ runs, fairs, concerts, ocean races (come and gone) and the occasional game of footy […]
Buy, beg or steal a ticket as we have it on excellent notice that this guy (Al Murray) is the best comedian seen in many a year. A few of the Wellingtonistas are going … you should too. The Opera House: Thursday 30th June & Friday 1st July The low-down from the Ticketek site: All […]