New Zealand is awash in terrific little rock bands. Trouble is, they don`t get around much.
Most of these groups-the Verlaines, the Chills, the Clean, Tall Dwarfs, Straitjacket Fits and dozens of others-have been around for nearly a decade, making fine records that had little to do with what was trendy in pop at the moment, but which nonetheless found a discriminating audience around the world.
Like most of their contemporaries, the Verlaines begun playing in the early `80s, but only now are getting around to exploring the possibilities of a ”career” in rock.
The trio recently showcased tunes from its first major-label album,
”Ready to Fly” (Slash), at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas.
Hours before the show, singer-songwriter Graeme Downes didn`t seem particularly anxious about beginning the band`s first extensive tour of America at a major record-industry event (the group will headline April 10 at Lounge Ax, 2438 N. Lincoln Ave.).
”We knew the music we were making, without a shadow of a doubt, was as good as any being made anywhere else in the world at the time, though we probably couldn`t play it that well,” Downes says of the Verlaines` early days. ”The object, the likelihood, of getting a record deal was in the realm of fantasy.”
Then the Flying Nun Records label was formed, and New Zealand`s burgeoning underground scene finally had an outlet.
Instead of touring regularly, the members of the Verlaines put out four records while attending the University of Otago in Dunedin. Until this year, their only tour outside New Zealand and Australia was a brief U.S. jaunt in 1989.
”The records did all the walking, and created a platform for us,”
Downes says. ”It`s definitely been more like a tortoise than a hare arrangement.”
While at the university, Downes received a doctorate in classical music, and he considers his songs a bridge between the worlds of Beethoven and the Beatles.
”I had intended on continuing to play the oboe professionally, but then I discovered the guitar,” he says of his teenage years.
”The ability to write words as well as compose music made rock more attractive, whereas classical musicians generally must play the notes put in front of them. The creative side of being in a rock band appealed to me.”
What he found lacking in pop was the depth and breadth of ideas advanced by the classical composers, and that`s why he decided to study the masters in college.
”A lot of rock tends toward riffing and repetition, so on some of my songs, like `War in My Head,` the first 40-odd bars are one big, continuous sweep, a big melodic arc, without any repetition,” Downes says. ”It`s a big musical concept, yet there are only three people playing.”
Downes` approach contrasts with that of many other rock artists fascinated with classical music, especially progressive rockers such as Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer, who specialized in 20-minute suites.
”One of the great things I`ve learned about writing is how a good composer controls his musical ideas really tightly,” the guitarist says. ”He uses the first bit of music he creates as a basis to draw all the rest from. Keeping it concise is what I like to do. Running off for 20 minutes does not make a good piece of music.”
”Ready to Fly” is loaded with brisk three- to five-minute songs, in which Mike Stoodley`s bass and Gregg Cairns` drums provide a springboard for Downes` ferocious guitar strumming and keening vocals.
To Downes, rock`s guitar-bass-drums format is timeless, even as samplers and drum machines threaten to usurp it. ”Go back 600 years and you`ll find people making music by playing a lute and some kind of bass instrument and somebody else tapping along,” he says. ”Guitar-bass-drums is the same idea, and I suspect it`ll be around in 600 years from now in some form or another.” – Put together a Tejano-playing accordionist, a Hispanic country singer, and two rock `n` roll hippies from the `60s and what do you get?
”Confusion,” says Augie Meyers, one of the long-hairs in the roots-rock all-star group the Texas Tornados.
Meyers remembers the first night he and Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez and Freddy Fender first played together, at a blues bar in San Francisco in 1989. ”Freddy was more confused than any of us; he just didn`t know what was going on,” Meyers says. ”Me and Flaco and Doug had done gigs before here and there, but never with Freddy.
”It was chaotic, but a fun chaotic. We didn`t know who was going to do the next song. If we have 15 songs on the set list, we do the first two and then it`s, `Well, here we go!` That night, Freddy brought his own band. But afterward, he said, `This is different, I like it.` So he let his band go and came with us.”
Each of the Tornados has an impressive past. Fender`s tenor soared on such country weepers as ”Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” and ”Before the Next Teardrop Falls.” Jimenez`s blend of Norteno music, polkas and waltzes on his 1986 album ”Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio” earned him a Grammy Award.
Meyers and Sahm, pals since high school in San Antonio, formed the Sir Douglas Quintet in the mid-`60s.
The group initially masqueraded as a British Invasion band, a type that was hot at the time, ”except we had three Spanish guys, so it was a hard thing to pull off,” Meyers says with a laugh.
But the group had a string of hits nonetheless, with Meyers` distinctive, reverb-drenched Vox organ driving the likes of ”She`s About Mover” and
”Mendocino.”
He learned to play keyboards as a bedridden youngster, stricken by polio. ”I remember lying in bed one afternoon when I was 9 looking out the window and seeing this country band drinking beer, laughing and singing, and then they`d hop in a bus and go play somewhere,” Meyers says.
”Then they`d come home at 1 or 2 in the morning and they were still laughing and singing. I said, `Man, that`s what I want to do.` ”
The latest version of the Sir Douglas Quintet, which includes Sahm, Meyers and former Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford, will perform Friday at Fitzgerald`s in Berywn. Then the Texas Tornados will help break in the new Oak Theatre, at Armitage and Western Avenues, on April 10.
