The Chills in Europe part 1: Dutch Courage and Dan Destiny
First published in Rip It Up, April 1987 I have a theory. It's been my belief for a while that reverie of a certain kind is a significant part of ...
Rock & Roll Rendezvous: Lorde
Eleanor Catton and Lorde For a brief moment, New Zealand was on top of the world thanks to a 16 year-old musician and a 28 year-old writer, rath...
Ebony Lamb – a musician's eye
Ebony Lamb – having experimented with and expressed herself through a variety of disciplines – might be described simply as an "artist”. She is bes...
AudioCulture Quiz
Welcome to the first weekly AudioCulture Quiz. Clue: answers are on the site or, for those in a hurry, at the link below. AudioCulture Quiz, May ...
Greg Johnson
So You Wanna Be A Music Photographer?
A step-by-step guide to making a prize-winning music photograph. Grab your camera Cameras aren't hard to come by these days, but there was a time...
Ronnie Sundin
Rock & Roll Rendezvous: Kevin Borich
Kevin Borich and Bo Diddley Jamming with Bo Diddley could have been death in Brunswick. West Auckland, late 1950s: a young Kevin Borich is int...
Harry Harrison
Pixie Williams
New Zealand Rare Record Prices: digging for gold
Long before New Zealand had record fairs and online auction houses, we had hundreds of cluttered, dark and dusty opportunity shops, affectionately ...
Kimbra
Lou Paul
The Chills in Europe part 2: Frostbite and Cold Sweat
First published in Rip It Up, May 1987 Having battled Goths, the Damned, and a rampant flying nun at the Milky Way (see part 1, 'Dutch Courage and...
Rock & Roll Rendezvous: Johnny Devlin
Johnny Devlin and Billy Graham When US evangelist Reverend Billy Graham visited New Zealand in April 1959 for an 11-day crusade, he was the bigg...
HMV in the 1960s: the Barry Clothier collection
Many of the best-known images of New Zealand pop bands and solo acts from the 1960s emerged from the camera of a Lower Hutt photographer and jazz b...
Dylan Down Under
Few songwriters have heard their music covered as widely as Bob Dylan, who turns 80 on 24 May 2021. When local Dylanologist Bill Hester set out to ...
Ginny Peters
The Plague (1970s)
Kiwi Music Convention, 1987
In the mid-1980s, the mainstream New Zealand music industry was in crisis, mostly caused by a lack of support for local music from radio stations –...
Tama Waipara
Christchurch Record Stores
Like some species of native bird, the extinction of the Christchurch record shop – known as "record bars” in the 1960s and 70s and then "record and...
Neill Pickard
Photography as performance art
Photography and pop music are natural bedfellows: show-offs need an audience, and the camera lens loves a show-off. Image is crucial; in any era, t...
Christchurch’s jazz school: legacy in action
Enterprise might begin with conviction, but it requires practicality, dogged determination and the art of gentle persuasion to turn an idea into re...
Toi Te Kupu, Toi Te Mana, Toi Te Whenua – Dalvanius: the Te Reo Manifesto
Winter, 1986 - Dalvanius Maui Prime insists a Rip It Up writer visits Hawera and Patea so he can explain his philosophy about te reo. It's anot...
Fane Flaws’ Underwatermelon Man
At age four Fane Flaws was given an illustrated storybook about a magic carpet that took its owner on fantastical journeys. The book vanished years...
The Bats
The extraordinary teenage eye and lens of Anthony Phelps
The number of regular live music photographers working around New Zealand in the pre-digital era was small. It was an exclusive club, not only beca...
Kevan Moore on early NZ music television
"When I was doing C'mon, the guy who was in charge of the Broadcasting Corporation, the Director General, was Gilbert Stringer – an old radio accou...
New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards
The first staging of the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards in Gore in 1974 was just hours old when it encountered a stumbling block. The country music...
Noisy Neighbour: Michael Gudinski and New Zealand music
When you look for key patrons of the Aotearoa music community, one loud Australian, Michael Gudinski, is a top contender. The founder of Mushroom R...
The North Shore Invasion part 1 – building bridges
In the early months of 1980, Auckland's inner city was invaded. It was an invasion that influenced the city musically for several years, filled the...
The North Shore Invasion part 2 – Class of 81
In 1980 I was managing Taste Records in High Street, had a new record label, Propeller, and a friendship with Rip It Up's Murray Cammick. My first ...
Miriam Clancy
Dawn Raid Entertainment in photos
These photographs capture some notable moments in the history of the Dawn Raid label over the decade following their first release in 2000. They ar...
Hollie Smith
Rockin’ the Tron: Hamilton in the 1980s
Music photography not only crystalises a moment in the history of a band's development, it captures a sense of time and place in relation to their ...
Concord Dawn
Radio With Pictures: history 5
Independent music video productions The previous part of this series on the history of Radio With Pictures covered music videos produced by TV...