Dunedin - Where it's at

Dunedin’s music scene has had its genuine ups and downs over the 17 year life of NZ Musician magazine. Industry and media focus has come and gone, and so too have many musicians, shifting inexorably northwards and away from our sunny coastal village.

However, the smallest of New Zealand’s main centres retains an energy and vibrancy that makes it a unique environment for producing and consuming music.

One man who has seen it all is Roi Colbert, owner of Dunedin’s iconic Records Records and occasional NZM contributor. He easily recalls the glory days of the late ‘80s when huge crowds would turn out to see local bands play at the Oriental

"It was just what everybody did. Flying Nun music was very fashionable for a while back then - you’d have local bands headlining Orientation. First year students would come down here knowing they had to revere bands like The Verlaines."

Nowadays, as Roi observes, "the crowds are smaller... but at least you know everyone who turns up is really a fan".

Experimental musician and scene commentator Rory Storm agrees. "There’s a close-knit core of people going to gigs, mostly other musicians and friends... we get pretty intelligent audiences in Dunedin, which is great when it comes to getting feedback. If you play a rubbish show, you’ll hear about it."

Despite the significantly reduced output Storm believes Dunedin’s music scene still punches above its weight.

"Compare us to, say, Hamilton which is roughly the same size. There’s so much more going on here."

And so there is. Despite the steady trickle of artists moving north to prop up other cities’ music industries like so many Mexican migrant workers, a lot of very talented musicians choose to stay on in Dunedin, and it’s quite possible to spot a few legends in the supermarket.

David Kilgour in particular continues to go from strength to strength, basing himself in Dunedin while touring the US once or twice a year. If you’re lucky, you might also catch a show by Alastair Galbraith, Bob Scott, Jay Clarkson, The Chills, The Puddle, The Renderers, The Dead C or even The Verlaines. Dr Graeme Downes’ rock degree course at Otago University has added a new element to the campus rock scene, with rock degree bands playing regularly at the student bar re:Fuel.

Among Dunedin’s new bands, Roi Colbert picks chaotic retro-futurist assault squadron The Futurians and local sex symbols Gestalt Switch as two "good bands, really good bands," definitely worth a mention. Rory also gives props to the Futurians, along with a roll-call of local talent including Dick the Phone, The International Telepaths, St. Leonards Rock’n’roll Club. "... There’s also some really talented singer-songwriters around at the moment, like Anji Sami, Pamela Poppins, Simon Comber and Hannah Howes. Kahu [Tristan Dingemands from HDU] is great, the Irie Eyes are great and there’s some fantastic punk going on, like Ritalin and the DDTs."

Whew. Other notable Dunedin noise-makers include Onanon, Yule and the Thundercats, and the formidable Operation Rolling Thunder. Dunedin’s "small but vital" experimental music community boasts talent like Eye, 3 Forks, and of course the phenomenal Rory Storm and the Invaders.

Despite what you might have seen in Scarfies, Dunedin bands very rarely play at the Captain Cook Tavern anymore. Gone also are fondly-remembered venues like the Oriental, the Empire and the Burgundy Bar. However, Dunedin is still a drinkin’ town, and there’s no shortage of venues. The main players are re:Fuel (ever popular with the kids), Arc Cafe (chugging along nicely, despite what you might have heard), The Crown (a hub of the local punk scene) and Bath St. (the South Island’s finest discotheque, and home to DJ Shan’s famous Thursday hip hop nights). On top of this, legendary venue Sammy’s is set to re-open this April with a rave, followed on May 7 by Radio One’s 21st birthday party featuring the Straitjacket Fits! Boy howdy.

Radio One itself, like all bNet stations, continues to do a stellar job piping local music out to the salivating masses (not to mention providing washed-up musicians with jobs). However, with the recent demise of Arclife Records, the outlook for a new band wanting to sign to a locally-based record label here in Dunedin can only be described as bleak.

The lack of industry presence could be viewed as a problem, but it does have a silver lining in the kind of creativity that only comes from people doing their own thing. Most of the artists mentioned in this article are releasing their own music, either on friends’ labels or their own. The absence of creative interference and general parasitism, along with the still-relatively-cheap rents and availability of practice spaces, result in an atmosphere of unfettered creativity in our fair city.

The music being made in Dunedin at the moment is far too diverse to be labelled as any kind of ‘sound’, no matter how useful such a label may be as a marketing tool, and we like to think this kind of independent spirit will always prevail.