Tour de Farce

1. Dot Comedy of Errors

The D*tc*m saga seems destined to channel surf through the popular culture possibilities, from the Keystone Cops to SWAT. Now, it’s Austin Powers. Scriptwriters would turn away in horror from such a polyglot set up, in which a government (led by Mr Magoo) chases fruitlessly after a baddie who looks like a Teletubby. So perhaps it is time to acknowledge the professionalism of someone who is more used to dealing in this spooky territory. Nicky Hager’s 2011 book Other People’s Wars (Craig Potton Publishing) is remarkably readable, considering the obfuscating jargon beloved by its characters: defence departments and spy agencies. Hager has taken an enormous amount of fresh research and built a compelling case out of unpromising material. Military acronyms and bureaucratic phrasemaking don’t trip up the narrative. Much of the material comes from reluctant, obstructive, leaked or anonymous internal sources, but Hager’s cross-checking and referencing is exemplary. Much of the criticism has been personal or politically driven, dismissing Hager rather than addressing his points. Hager was courageous to take on this topic, not just personally but to achieve some clarity out of the material. His strengths as a researcher are well-known, but his abilities as story teller and scene setter kept me captivated, against the odds. Other People’s Wars addresses issues of lasting importance to the community: how governments treat the truth, how bureaucrats and the military abuse language, and a relationship between the military and its politicians can veer between loyalty and manipulation.

2. Citizen Pope

In just 74 years, Jeremy Pope achieved an enormous amount: for New Zealand, and internationally. A lawyer, he spent much of his life campaigning for human rights and the environment, and against corruption. At Te Ara’s Signposts blog, Jock Phillips has posted a tribute that details much of it: his work on the Save Manapouri campaign, as a legal adviser to the 1975 Maori land march, and editing – with his wife Diana – the hugely successful Mobil travel guides to the North and South Islands, which ran to several updated editions. Pope left New Zealand in about 1981, one of many refugees from the reign of Muldoon (he had been involved with the “Citizens for Rowling” lobby). New Zealand’s temporary loss was the world’s gain: Pope co-founded the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International. A 2009 interview with him can be heard at Radio New Zealand below.

 

3. Hang on a Minute

I can’t imagine two more different characters stuck in a hut together than bushman-writer Barry Crump, and Alex Fry, an elegant if irascible essayist for the New Zealand Listener for over 30 years. While Crump acknowledged poet Kevin Ireland for encouraging him to start writing, it was Fry who knocked his manuscript into shape. Crump’s debut story collection A Good Keen Man went on to become one of New Zealand’s best-selling books ever. Fry was recruited by Reed’s editor Ray Richards after at least two other publishers had rejected the manuscript, which Richards described as arriving “grubby and single spaced but with a ‘magic’ about it”. After the book’s massive success, Fry was rewarded with a percentage of the royalties – and a punch in the nose from Crump. Victoria University’s Electronic Text Centre has a fascinating annotated index of material about A Good Keen Man’s publishing history. The bibliography reminded me of the cold sweat experienced when reading the chilling 1962 story ‘That Way’ (later published in Crump’s Warm Beer and Other Stories). James K Baxter described it as “a story by Barry Crump far more hard-hitting than anything he has turned out for money”.

4. Publish and Be Damned

An email arrives from Oxford American magazine in Alabama, saying its new editor is a Brooklyn, New York-based ex-editor of Harpers who grew up in Texas. I noted his trimmed beard, and wondered what happened to the founding editor Marc Smirnoff: for over 20 years he was the driving force behind the always troubled, occasionally pretentious, but deep-hearted and lively quarterly. Besides its generous website, the magazine’s award-winning annual music issue features a savvy CD compilation, alongside often inspirational editing, design and writing (except for the pieces that were all about the author rather than the music). Smirnoff could be verbose himself, and had a predilection for too much memoir-as-fiction from creative writing grads; it was also noticeable that the mag seemed to employ lots of interns with good teeth.  The Oxford American’s latest rescuer was new to publishing, and his puff pieces read like tone-deaf mission statements from an aspirant Republican candidate. Googling Smirnoff’s name, the computer instantly filled in another word": "Fired". An hour was quickly lost reading the results: sexual harrassment is alleged, and Smirnoff and his life/work partner – the magazine’s managing editor – were both sacked. Smirnoff has responded with a new website which features a massive document responding passionately to his accusers and employers, the OA board. Publishing this was perhaps unwise; calling the site Editors in Love certainly is. Perhaps this was a board waiting for its moment. Still there must be some other opportunities out there for experienced editors who are musically minded.

Quid Pro Quo

Mark Ellen, editor and/or co-founder of Mojo, Q, Smash Hits and now his own (independent) The Word, writes in the latest issue:

I'll never forget being taken for lunch by the new MD of all the titles I was involved with at EMAP [publishing behemoth], a tiny little man who looked like Mr Burns from The Simpsons.

“Why are there so few five-star reviews in Q magazine?” he enquired.

Because there are so few five-star records.

“So five-star reviews have enormous value?”

They do indeed.

“Why don’t we sell them then? If people want five stars, they can pay for them.”

It was going to be a long lunch. And the starters hadn’t even arrived.

Cultural Crusader

The history of music magazines in New Zealand goes back to colonial times, and of course became more complex from the late 1970s. Triad’s connection with Rip It Up is provided by Charles Baeyertz’s grandson Simon, who was a key supporter while at Festival Records, and a Cha-Cha contributor; his brother Paul briefly played keyboards in Space Waltz and taught me acoustics at university.

FACING THE MUSIC: Charles Baeyertz and the Triad, by Joanna Woods (Otago University Press, Dunedin: 2008)

Charles Baeyertz was New Zealand’s critic-at-large, and larger than life. As founder and editor of the Triad, for more than 30 years he championed and excoriated New Zealand culture like a megalomaniacal polymath. He was a crusader for the arts, indefatigably travelling the country in pursuit of excellence. If he found it, no practitioner could have a more enthusiastic advocate. But if his standards weren’t met – especially by professionals – he wasted no breath on politesse in his disapproval. His criticism was delivered with a swashbuckling relish. Late-Victorian New Zealand is usually portrayed as being dominated by pragmatic pioneers and philistines, and a small society in which feelings and reputations could so easily be bruised that discretion was a synonym for discourse. Publish and be damned could have been his motto: he did, and he often was.

Caution was never likely. Baeyertz was born in Melbourne in 1866 to parents who had alienated their families: his father for marrying a Jewish bride, his mother for marrying a non-Jew. Charles senior was the bank manager in a rural settlement, quickly becoming a big man in a small town. But at the age of 28 he died in a hunting accident; his widow Emilia had little family support to raise two children under five. Having half-heartedly converted to Christianity on her marriage, the grieving widow now embraced her new faith with a dramatic intensity. Putting the precocious Charles into boarding school, she became internationally renowned as an evangelical preacher.

In a biography of scrupulous accuracy, Joanna Woods only alludes to the paternal influence on Baeyertz. With little evidence as to his father’s character, Woods makes no more than a suggestion that he may have inherited his father’s risk-taking and flamboyance. Discussing the influence of Baeyertz’s mother, however, she is on more certain ground:

[The] lasting impact of Emilia’s intensity, and the extent to which Charles followed her example, are demonstrated by the ‘Apostolic fire’ which imbued his cultural mission to New Zealand and prompted him to found his critical magazine, the Triad. Strains of his mother’s evangelism resound through its pages, not only in his exacting musical and literary reviews, but also in this many pronouncements on the moral dangers of ‘a prevalence of bad English’ and his dire warnings on the evils of faulty diction. (pp21-22)

Friends say that Baeyertz was ‘maddeningly good at everything’. He had a formidable memory, vast expertise in music and was conversant in many languages. Boarding school is where he made his debut as a journalist and publisher, in a style to which his followers would become accustomed.

Baeyertz launched a school magazine, the Collegian Herald, and edited it with ‘a ready wit and scant regard for the feelings of others.’ In a parody of a court report he mocked the school’s German master, especially for his lapses in hygiene. The headmaster responded with wisdom: the idea of a school magazine was worthwhile, but it would be produced by the school (which it is to this day).

Largely self-educated, but with a sense of humour that owed little to his earnest upbringing, Baeyertz had few career ambitions other than a desire to be involved in music. His German name helped, and he became a church choirmaster and organist. He was lucky to be a young adult in the 1880s, when Melbourne was at a cultural peak and booming economically. Many overseas performers were visiting, and there was a wide variety of light opera, theatre and vaudeville on offer; Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were especially popular.

Property speculation was also rife, and when the bust occurred, Baeyertz was an early victim. With a young wife and three children, he decided to start again in Dunedin, a city enjoying the cultural after-effects of the 1889-1890 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition. He was determined to establish himself in a career that would make use of his love and knowledge of music. Although his talents – in an era when much social interaction revolved around music – were not exceptional, and he had no formal qualifications, he had a profound understanding of music, especially the technical aspects of performance.

Dunedin had a surfeit of music teachers, however, and Baeyertz didn’t have the gravitas to suit the university, so he decided to promote himself through music journalism. A series of wide-ranging, well-informed articles for the Otago Witness led to his appointment as a music and theatre critic of the Otago Daily Times. He quickly picked a fight with a prominent columnist, showing off his superior technical knowledge of music.

Baeyertz saw a gap in the market for an arts magazine, concentrating especially on music. His timing was good: New Zealand was enjoying a period of prosperity under the Liberals, and was about to receive many visits from international opera companies and musicians. His only competition was the ‘dignified’ New Zealand Music Monthly published out of Balclutha, which concentrated on brass bands – and failed after three years.

He may have had worthy aspirations for improving the quality of the arts in New Zealand, but in contrast to many others driven by their passion, Baeyertz was a businessman: above all, he wanted his magazine to sell. Unlike the recent, short-lived, Zealandia – or Australia’s successful Bulletin ­– Baeyertz didn’t pander to the nationalistic sentiments of his readers. His magazine would be international in its outlook, and to this end he quoted liberally from overseas magazines.

Launched in 1893, the Triad was an arts magazine, not a literary journal, with an emphasis on music in particular. Baeyertz was a critic interested mostly in lifting standards, rather than promoting cultural nationalism in a fledgling colony. He enjoyed being a judge, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the amateur speech and music competitions beginning to flourish on both sides of the Tasman. Being an adjudicator was the perfect secondary career: he could reward effort, promote standards – and himself – and people were forced to listen. When it came to professional performers, even international stars such as Nellie Melba, Baeyertz took delight in socialising with them but didn’t pull his punches when the time came to cast judgement. His manifesto shared his mother’ crusading spirit:

The critic who [n]ever expresses outright satisfaction with anything but the best in art fails in his duty to himself, to the artist and the art concerned, and to the public ... The highest standards are the only true criteria of intelligent and honest criticism. The critic should judge always as though he heard the artist for the first time in his life, in some city in which he was a stranger. It is not for him to inquire who Mr Noodle’s relatives are, or who taught Miss Shrill to make such offensive noises. He is to judge the artist, as a craftsman judges a machine, by comparison with the best of its kind. (p86)

Baeyertz was proud that he (almost) never accepted reviewer’s tickets to a concert. That way, his freedom of speech was uncompromised. He especially enjoyed deflating the pompous and over-hyped, a famous example being the 1908 tour by the statuesque Australian contralto Clara Butt. She came supported – financially and on the stage – by her wealthy jeweller husband, the baritone Kennerly Rumford. Baeyertz was offended by their commercialism and exploitation of the family angle, and ranted as if confronted by Posh and Becks singing ‘Nessun Dorma’: ‘The masses, the philistine, the satiated bourgeois were prepared: and for them everything was arranged. No feeling of disgust was awakened by this display of home and family life, exhibited as a draw for the populace, not even when the latest baby was put on the placards’ (p123). If the pre-publicity was repellent, the actual music turned him almost apoplectic:

The whole programme was a concession to the bourgeois. A snack of Schumann, a gout of Gluck, and happy handful of Handel [... and then] the joy-filled audience paddled in the shallow water of English drawing-room songs. [...] Mrs Rumford owns a big voice, organ-like in quality, but inferiorly played. There is a bad break in the voice. Her notes are coarse and lack polish and roundness. There is no continuous flow of sound [...] she makes mincemeat of a song. (p124)

The uproar that followed saw the Triad’s sales boom, but inevitably a policy of outspokenness would bring trouble. The magazine’s most famous day in court was in 1913 after the singer and vaudeville promoter John Fuller was accused of having a voice like a ‘pig’s whistle’. The courtroom scene could have been from Gilbert and Sullivan: Fuller appeared in the witness box with a tuning fork and some sheet music. Observing was the complete cast of Pink Dandies, and the room ‘rocked with laughter’ for three hours. Baeyertz’s main defence – that a ‘pig’s whistle’ was defined as merely meaning ‘a low whisper’ – won him the case, and the Triad received wonderful publicity.

The writer of the ‘pig’s whistle’ line was Frank Morton, a hard-drinking, Australian womaniser who happened to craft stylish prose. Baeyertz first came across Morton criticising the Triad, and saw the possibility of ‘a splendid enemy’. Soon, Morton would become the magazine’s star writer, boosting circulation just as Baeyertz’s energy was flagging. Morton was prolific, versatile and outrageous. He brought a more literary quality to the magazine, in his writing and the topics he chose to cover. Women readers in particular loved the persona portrayed by Morton (and his many pseudonyms), and he wasn’t shy of using his fame.

Understandably, Woods has concentrated on the Baeyertz that emerges from the Triad, which is where he left a paper trail. His vigorous, unfettered writing displays his passions, but little about the man himself. But thanks to Woods’s determined research, Baeyertz the person is shown to be as colourful as his prose: tragedy, drama and romance were all set to a grandiose soundtrack, though destructive to his family. Woods writes with wry humour, though her discretion occasionally undersells the narrative. An example is when Baeyertz, his first marriage over, sets off on a voyage to the United States with the love of his life. The year is 1919, the influenza pandemic has just peaked. Although he and Mildred Carey-Wallace never married – and scandalously had a child out of wedlock – the trip was to be like an extended honeymoon. It was also an opportunity for Baeyertz, like Charles Foster Kane, to further his de facto wife’s musical career. They would have been in high spirits, writes Woods ...

Their feelings, however, are not recorded. Instead, all that remains is a terse entry in Charles’s diary in which he noted, without comment, the sequence of devastating events that followed:

4.6.1919 Left for America. Sonoma.

9.6.1919 Mildred died. 11.45pm.

10.6.1919 Mildred buried. Pango Pango. (p186)

Undoubtedly Baeyertz was devastated; certainly, the reader is stunned. He ‘carried on doggedly with his programme,’ his feelings only being reflected in his jaundiced reports for the Triad. With his journalism as the sole available source, Woods sensibly avoids speculation or melodrama, but it is not the only occasion when a climax could support a more emphatic cadence.

What legacy did Baeyertz leave behind in New Zealand culture? Directly, not much, especially when compared to another largely forgotten, autocratic cultural gatekeeper, James Shelley of the National Broadcasting Service. The amateur string orchestras would have kept scratching away without Baeyertz, but Shelley gave them a goal in the National Orchestra. The musty editions of the Triad reveal its era to have a cultural excitement which is rarely portrayed. Perhaps the magazine’s lasting influence was literary: both Katherine Mansfield and bookish newspaperman Pat Lawlor admired Frank Morton, and Robin Hyde was a dedicated reader.

Alan Mulgan described Baeyertz walking the streets ‘with the standing and authority of an institution.’ In the last 40 years, essayists such as Monte Holcroft, Hamish Keith and John M Thomson have celebrated Baeyertz and the Triad but such a colourful character deserves more widespread notoriety. Now that Woods has dedicatedly sifted the archives for an engrossing biography, a television costume drama is in order (and pigs will whistle). The pitch could be ‘The Governor meets My Fair Lady’.

(First published in JNZL: Journal of New Zealand Literature, #26, 2008)

Grooving With Moog

When Rip It Up celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1987, publisher Murray Cammick suggested that we run a story about New Zealand’s earlier rock magazines. I interviewed Des Dubbelt, then in his 60s, and Roger Jarrett, in his mid-30s. Both had sharp, curious minds, more interested in the present than the past. Their homes suited their lifestyles. Dubbelt’s house in West Auckland was full of books and his Bechstein piano had a Bach prelude ready to play; he had a free-flowing garden that was a work of art, and a source of food. Jarrett, a keen surfer, was renting a flat on Takapuna Beach; his workroom was neatly cluttered with graphic art in progress, while the latest Prince record played. Sadly, both erudite men – who contributed so much to New Zealand music and journalism – are now dead.
Grooving With Moog: New Zealand’s Music Press
By Chris Bourke (Rip It Up, July 1987)
Two things were different about going to a movie in the 1960s. First, you were obliged to stand up for ‘God Save the Queen.’ And at half-time, there were advertisements for Playdate, only 2/- at the Nibble Nook bar.
Owned by Kerridge Odeon, Playdate developed out of their house organ Cinema in 1960. Very similar to Shake! in format and content, its coverage extended to music and other youth topics. Playdate is New Zealand’s most successful young person’s magazine ever. The magazine lasted 12 years, and in its heyday had a circulation of 75,000 copies, with a readership of four or five times that number.
Although Playdate was the idea of Cinema’s editor Sid Bevan, he left shortly after the magazine started, and for most of its life Des Dubbelt (right) was the editor. “I felt that to go anywhere, the magazine had to shed the feel of a handout, it had to have a consumer feel,” he says. Dubbelt describes his employer Sir Robert Kerridge as “a true impresario, not an accountant” – so the magazine was not limited to KO films, but also covered Amalgamated’s releases and television stories, with genuine criticism, not just publicity. “Kerridge saw you’ve got to go with the flow. If you’re in show business, it doesn’t make sense to ignore your competition.”
The magazine was aimed equally at males and females, though the healthy advertising (some issues nearly reached 200 pages!) was mainly cosmetics and clothes (Slimryte Rolls! Bri-Nylon!) for the young Slenderella. “We followed our own interests a lot,” says Dubbelt. “We thought if it interested us, it would interest our readers. There were no readers’ surveys. We were enthusiasts.”
With Dubbelt at Playdate was Tom McWilliams as assistant editor (later executive chief sub-editor at the Listener), and young reporter Sally (who later worked for the Beatles at Apple in London).
Reflecting the explosion of the decade, music became a major part of the magazine. “It was a natural progression,” says Dubbelt. “The pop films started happening. Cliff Richard and so on, bolstered by personal visits. When the Beatles arrived, it was like the millennium.” Dubbelt remembers taking Gene Pitney to Kerridge’s Pakatoa Island resort for a story, and accompanying Tom Jones to a nightclub after his Town Hall concert – and Tommy Adderley singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’ as Jones entered.
The burgeoning local music scene was covered, particularly the summer package tours. “Mr Lee Grant was mobbed in a way comparable with any visiting big name.” Shows such as C’mon made New Zealanders pop stars. “Any TV show wouldn’t have done it,” says Dubbelt. “Kevan Moore was a brilliant producer – those shows were excellent.”
As any magazine should, Playdate’s layout reflects the design of the era. The change from hot metal to offset printing meant some radical layouts were possible: white type on black, photos bled to the edge. “We were dealing with a visual market: movies, fashion, rock, and this technology meant we could look different from the things the Woman’s Weekly were doing. The readers saw this – they didn’t want something that reminded them of their mother’s magazine.”
The innovations of Playdate meant the magazine attracted work from the “young, adventurous” photographers of the day, such as Max Thomson, Rodney Charteris, and Roger Donaldson. “We couldn’t have afforded them, but they liked the type of layouts we used, and to see their work well presented.” While they were using Mondrian grid layouts and plenty of white space, Dubbelt and McWilliams looked with envy at overseas magazines – the San Francisco Oracle even had psychedelic inks!
But the times eventually caught up with Playdate. By the early 1970s music and movies had got more permissive, and the magazine could reflect that in its illustrations – to a point. “It was just the way things were going. Take Woodstock. It was a pretty raunchy film, with a permissive attitude towards drugs and lifestyle. Tom and I felt we couldn’t cover the way the rock scene was going.
“That was about the time Rolling Stone came on the scene. They seemed to have no ‘no-nos,’ with star writers such as Hunter Thompson who seemed to be doing all the drugs, too. The youth market had diversified into heavy rock, with the accompanying drug scene, and teenybopper pop. We couldn’t and didn’t want to go into those areas.”
Playdate’s circulation was still healthy when the magazine was sold to the Auckland Star in 1972, but six months later the new owners decided to close the magazine down. Ironically, on the day Rip It Up interviewed Des Dubbelt, the Star’s parent company New Zealand Newspapers announced the closure of their 1980s teen magazine, Dolly.

New Zealand’s first rock paper of significance started in October 1967 – a month before Rolling Stone. Called Groove, it was edited in Wellington by Dene Kellaway for the publishers Lucas Print. He’d been the editor of Teenbeat, which had closed down the month before.
Efforts to trace Kellaway (left) didn’t succeed, but in 1968 an interview with him appeared in another short-lived New Zealand music magazine Third Stream (a curious mix of mainly classical music, plus folk and pop; it lasted four issues). Its headline read, “EDITOR RELUCTANTLY GIVES UP GROOVE.” Kellaway’s reasons were pure 1960s: his own pop career was getting off the ground … and he’d been drafted.
While Dene did his 14 weeks of national service at Waiouru, the magazine appears to have gone into recess. What happened to his pop career (NZBC didn’t buy his first single, ‘I’m Going Nowhere,’ reported Groove) is also a mystery.
When Groove reappeared in August 1968, it continued its hip coverage of the overseas and local pop and rock scenes. Although the Monkees were on the first cover, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd were also cover stories in the magazine’s first year – using illustrations drawn by readers.
For their 10 cents each fortnight, each Groove reader got a 16-page tabloid with plenty of pix and pinups, reviews and news, of pop stars and movies. Except for the paper’s news from Sydney – where Dalvanius was their correspondent – most of its overseas coverage was taken from press releases, or syndicated from other music mags. But what’s remarkable is the paper’s coverage of local music. As the nostalgists keep reminding us, then we had pop stars: Simple Image (“will they keep ‘Spinning Spinning Spinning’ till 1968’s Loxene Golden Disc?”), the Avengers, the Fourmyula, the Underdogs, Hi-Revving Tongues, Ray Columbus, John Rowles, and especially Mr Lee Grant (who wore suede boots laced at the side to an interview!).
Radio DJs were also stars, and one of Groove’s bandwagons was pirate station Radio Hauraki, with their “good guys.” When the bill legalising private radio was passed in 1968, Kellaway wrote: “Groove is very pleased about the new bill and will be giving full support to any new stations that start up. In the long run it is going to be a good thing, and with the heavy competition it will bring the standard of our local productions will improve and more local talent will local talent will be uncovered and given a good fighting chance.”
But interviewed on the way to Waiouru, Kellaway talked of giving up Groove, as his contract with Apollo Records required him to be free to travel around the world. He was going to cut singles with his band the Vibrons while on weekend leave.
“I ran Groove alone, and did most of the writing myself. I did all the record reviews too, so it was a bit hectic,” he said. “I was doing Groove for the love of the work. I wasn’t drawing a wage off it; I had another part-time job on which I was living. Because I had been trying to sing for so long, I realised just how difficult it is, and how important, for the groups to get recognition in this country. I was plugging that side, trying to help the New Zealand scene. It wasn’t really a paying proposition. It could be, but I had gone as far as I could as a one-man band; it was a 24-hour-a-day job. I had about two days a week to myself.”
In August 1969, Kellaway moved on to concentrate on his recording career. The paper’s blues columnist Barry Francis Jones took over as editor, but that’s where RIU’s collection of Groove ends.
One year after the imported Rolling Stone magazine contributed to Playdate’s demise, New Zealand had its own edition of the San Francisco mag. Published by Alister Taylor of Little Red Schoolbook fame, the NZ RS lasted six issues in 1973.
But in February 1974 an all New Zealand owned rock magazine arrived. It had the delightfully 1970s name Hot Licks.
Hot Licks was started by Aucklanders Kerry Thomas, of Direction Records, and Radio Hauraki co-founder David Gapes. They asked graphic designer Roger Jarrett to edit the paper. “They thought of the idea of a free music mag, thinking it would be in their interest to promote music,” says Jarrett (right). “They said, ‘go for it’ – the first couple of issues I virtually wrote myself, then I found other writers. It was a different industry then for music. As far as marketing went, it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated.”
The magazine featured the best of 1970s music, from Bowie and Lou Reed to Little Feat and Joni Mitchell. “It was an enthusiast’s not a journalist’s magazine: a lot of the critical writing was blatantly biased towards favourite acts. But occasionally you got people who could actually write, such as Tim Blanx, who went off to England with Roxy Music. He was into the pre-punk music of the mid-70s, like Roxy, the Velvets and the New York Dolls, whereas I liked the more country influenced American music, and dance music.”
Split Enz were the first local cover story, followed by Mark Williams and Waves. But local music was difficult to cover, says Jarrett, “because we never had any journalists employed, so the only person who could go out and do interviews was me, and there wasn’t the time. There’s far more consciousness about a New Zealand identity now.”
Because of Jarrett’s background, the graphics were a crucial part of Hot Licks. As photographs didn’t reproduce well on newsprint, covers were done by illustrators such as Frank Womble, Dick Frizzell and Colin Wilson, and the page layout was extremely complex. Although the magazine quickly had a weighty masthead of contributing writers, Jarrett found himself doing everything else: subbing, proofing, paste-up, “the whole shebang. It was very time-consuming, and visitors would come in constantly. Very soon people thought I was an authority.”
Advertising was slow in the early months. “For a start, the record companies had to have their arms twisted to advertise.” They thought [the record store] Taste and Radio Hauraki were calling the shots. “There was a lot of politics involved,” says Jarrett. “Far too much. The whole record industry’s like that. But after six issues, they realised it wasn’t going to go away.”
Hot Licks lasted 27 issues, “quite an achievement, with no budget,” says Jarrett. But towards the end the magazine charged 40 cents an issue. That was a mistake, really, but not the reason it folded. It was still all down to me to do everything, and I was exhausted by the whole process. Plus I had family commitments.”
The circulation reached 8000, distributed through record stores around the country, though in Auckland, through Direction shops only. “It was a bit of a political football, between the purchase of records in the stores, and the amount of publicity in the mag, and advertising. Also, Direction became a distributor of overseas labels like Virgin, Casablanca, ECM – that got right up the noses of the record companies. It became too political – that’s where I lost interest.”
With the management of Direction and Hauraki having changed, there also wasn’t the commitment from above, the returns being difficult to evaluate.
“The only thing about Hot Licks that I believe is of value is that it’s an accurate reflection of its age, and what people thought about at the time,” says Jarrett. “I hate nostalgia. I’m not nostalgic about the magazine at all. It was good self-expression, and I really enjoyed it, but I really like being now, being current.”
© Chris Bourke 1987
Russell Brown writes a detailed tribute to Des Dubbelt and Playdate here. Quotes and information from the above article have appeared elsewhere without attribution (once by a senior academic who should have known better). Feel free to use it, with acknowledgement of the original source.

Do the morris

1. A world without morris

Twenty-five years ago Rick Bryant said to me that the very mention of the curiously British activity "morris dancing" was guaranteed to make you laugh. He then started chortling, and kept chortling until he had to wipe tears from his eyes. You should try everything once, Edwardian conductor Thomas Beecham is credited with saying, "except morris dancing and incest."

Although still legal among consenting adults, morris dancing is under threat. The UK Morris Association says the practice is on the verge of extinction: "young people are too embarrassed to take part." While other exponents of centuries-old British folk traditions have managed to update their art while still reflecting the past - such as Eliza Carthy with Dreams of Breathing Underwater, which is my album of the year - morris dancing is now "carried out by an ever-dwindling stalwart band of enthusiasts".

I have never danced the morris. Nor have I forgotten Rick's line: the memory, and the activity, always brings a smile. But looking at this clip I think that without the gallant dancers of the morris, there would be no Monty Python. No knotted handkerchiefs shielding pink pates from the sun.

2. Cuppa tea, lie-downs

Also in today's Guardian, a report on the demise of another Anglo-Irish institution that could have a significant impact on New Zealand. After 250 years, the crystal and china company Waterford Wedgwood has gone "into administration," threatening 2700 jobs in the UK and Ireland. Among the brands produced by the company are Waterford crystal - which always seems to belong in the over-stuffed parlours of Dublin's elite, as portrayed by James Joyce in The Dead - Wedgwood porcelain and Royal Doulton bone china.

Let them eat cake, the callous might say, but the ramifications for New Zealand are significant. Irish tomato soup and media tycoon Anthony O'Reilly owns, with his brother-in-law, about 60 percent of the shares in Waterford Wedgwood and has poured about £375m into the company in recent years. O'Reilly may have to cash up his 39.1 percent investment in APN News & Media, the media company which owns the New Zealand Herald and the Listener, among other publications. These are more important to this country than the mere vessels produced by Waterford Wedgwood. Whatever one's opinion of APN's handling of these titles, and although O'Reilly has allegedly received offers for his stake, it's hard to conceive of a suitable - rather than just suited - investor able to front up, especially after the experience of US tycoon Sam Zell borrowing big to buy the Chicago Tribune.

Book ’em Danno

1. Peter’s Pence
This 1977 book leapt off the shelf at the library during the week. A curious specimen, as it admits in the blurb, “not an easy book to classify. Some of it is fiction, set partly in the near future; there are also many exciting, factual episodes …” Adrian Hayter was ex-career Army, and an accomplished international yachtsman (I feel a conspiracy coming on), who ended up working at Outward Bound (very useful, when you’re outward bound).

A page falls open at random (honest). Deciphering it may be difficult. The scene: a National Party meeting, only about 15 elderly people out of the 800 party members in the valley. Someone takes the floor:

‘National has entered the competition with Labour of buying votes with the promise of material rewards, what they call free benefits. National still shouts about free enterprise and individual freedom, but in fact it has left us with neither a check on advancing socialism nor an alternative to it.’

Okay, let’s turn the page:

‘It would take too long to pass the one copy around,’ continued the president. ‘But I’ll read out the main items.’ The income from subscriptions and donations came to about $2200 (in modern jargon). ‘Expenditure,’ he continued, ‘goes under the usual heading of hire of halls, postage, travelling expenses of executive members, salaries, and a few casual items under sundries.’

The salary of the paid party organiser, which is was rumoured took most of the income, was not mentioned or requested. He was a touchy individual who always threatened to resign when annoyed, and no one else was prepared to take on his job.

‘How much under sundries?’ I asked. Immediately a party stalwart leapt to his feet. ‘Mr Chairman, I’m sure we have sufficient confidence in the executive to accept the accounts as read. Discussion can be endless on this subject …’

2. The Living Daylights
Writer’s block? Isn’t that something that happens when there are no distractions? The Independent has a piece this weekend asking various people if they’ve ever suffered from it. In 1977 Time magazine ran a humorous essay on this, and suggested that one of the cures was to bail out of the office and take yourself to a James Bond movie, they’re so full of mad ideas. James Bond at the time was played by teak-in-a-safari-suit, Roger Moore. The screenwriter who worked on the Bond flicks in the 1970s wrote back to Time and said, thanks for the compliment. But what do I do when I get blocked?

Here’s what war historian Anthony Beevor told the Independent, which seems recognisable:

It’s certainly different between historians and novelists. Novelists have an excuse, whereas historians don’t. There’s always other work to be getting on with. There are moments when structure, say, can present a problem, but you just have to get on with something else, and the solution will come to you in an alternative moment. There can be times when the material you’re working on seems so appalling that you become psychologically depressed, but when it’s going well you have to follow the winning streak, often working very late to make up for the times when it isn’t going so well.

3. Remainders
Publishing in the golden age, before they banned the long lunches … now it’s not so much Mad Men as Marketing Men (or women). In the New York Times Book Review Bruce Jay Friedman considers The Time of Their Lives, Al Silverman’s memoir of US publishing in the 1950s and ’60s. When WH Auden turned up at Random House in carpet slippers, manuscript in hand, and said, “I’d like to have my money right now.” When the founder of Doubleday suffered from flatulence, so none of the characters in Doubleday books were allowed to fart. When sexism ruled:

Jane Friedman, who became president of HarperCollins, began as an assistant at Random House in 1967. “Bennett Cerf . . . would come over and pull my ponytail,” she recalled. As a board member at Harper, Ursula Nordstrom, a noted children’s book editor, was asked at an all-male meeting to make coffee and said she didn’t know how. Despite the roadblocks, women made their mark. Judith Jones, a secretary at Doubleday’s Paris bureau, was asked to write rejection letters for a pile of manuscripts. One caught her attention. In tears, she mailed it off to Doubleday in Manhattan. The Diary of Anne Frank was published in 1952.

And there are also The Ones That Got Away:

In turning down The Godfather, all three editors at Atheneum concurred: “The Mafia is coming out of our ears.” What was Mike Bessie of Harper thinking when he found his interest “flagging” and rejected Lolita? Still, one feels some sympathy for New American Library’s Victor Weybright when he learns that he might lose the reprint rights to The Catcher in the Rye and “breaks into a cold sweat.”