Reta Le Quesne: “Snort are influenced by heavy metal and 60s garage mainly, which results in a crossover of the two creating a heavy trash amalgam. The material Snort write about ranges from love songs to songs about psychotics running over Elvis impersonators, songs about the Devil, fast cars, and of course how to scare men.”
The four-piece rehearsed at Into the Void‘s High Street practice space, coming up with the name Snort just before their first live gig – a house party in spring 1993. The group immediately gelled as a group of strong wāhine with a fervent interest in music, plus each member of the original line-up were the mothers of young children. They played all around Christchurch at venues including His Lordships, The Subway, Dux de Lux, Quadrophenia, and Warners, and toured up and down the country.
Sharon Billesdon: “I think we were always a four-piece, travelling in cars or utes. We were always our own roadies, nobody really supported us then. Posters went up, we got the gear together, the PA and mixer … used to have to hire the PA and babysitters.”
Joanne Billesdon: “So true, don’t know how we did that when I look back. My car was always breaking down on the way to a gig.”
“MUSIC SEEMED TO BE A MALE-DOMINATED SPORT AT THE TIME” – JOANNE BILLESON
“At the time I don’t think any of us had really heard about riot grrl. It was harder to find similar music from overseas. I think it was just a natural progression for me as a feminist and young mother. Every woman who played in Snort was obsessed with music, all kinds from country to death metal. All with unique taste, knowledge and opinions about what made good music. It was refreshing to have women to talk to about music, guitars and vintage clothes, as it seemed to be a male-dominated sport at the time.
Reta Le Quesne: “We all had punk roots I guess and strong social justice influences [and] backgrounds in the form of protest, unemployed rights, union parents, etc. I felt we had more to be angry about than men, or at least needed to express that, which wasn’t really done so much by women in New Zealand music at that particular time. I wanted to lean into harder musical expression from garage to metal. I guess we came under the grunge moniker. We slowly started finding out about the riot grrl and grunge all-girl groups like L7, so it was just in the air.”
The group played with (male-dominated) great local and touring groups such Squirm, Ape Management (the Ape’s Rob Haakman drew the distinctive cover of their ‘Hey Creep’ 7" single), King Loser, Pumpkinhead, Loves Ugly Children, Space Dust, Solid Gold Hell, Hoover, Into the Void, Future Stupid, plus a variety of choice international support slots – Dead Moon, The 5.6.7.8’s, and Jello Biafra’s spoken word tour.
Reta Le Quesne: “Snort at its core was reactive. It was a response to the male-dominated music world (I don’t want to say industry because there wasn’t much of that in Christchurch at the time). We had great experiences with the other bands we shared stages with, but it really was hard to find any women who played harder music in Christchurch or wider Aotearoa at the time. I was drawn to the energy of the mosh pit but being surrounded by men, with men on the stage playing aggressive music, I felt like the music wasn’t made for me, like I wasn’t really supposed to be there. With Snort we set the tone and reflected women’s experience and anger. Our mosh-pits were predominantly made up of women.”
With Walden leaving the group to have her second child, Le Quesne switched to guitar and Ninakaye Taane-Tinorau (sister of Tiki Taane) stepped in on bass. Eventually she introduced her friend Carla Potter to the group.
Lisa Preston: “Carla was a shit-hot drummer and could play metal drums which was where Snort was headed so I switched to the old Electone [electronic organ] til I got a bit bored and left.”
“Our mosh pits were predominantly made up of women.” – Reta Le Quesne
When Ninakaye left the group, Joanne’s twin sister (and the group’s third ex-Stepford 5 member) Sharon Billesdon was brought in on bass to complete their final line-up. Throughout their handful of line-up changes, the group were always well received.
“We always did well, thanks to lots of friends all over the country. Wellington was great, we had already played in Auckland with The Stepford 5 and we played at the Nile River Festival with Sticky Filth. Shihad were babies; we were next to each other in a motel, well you can imagine!
“We played in Palmerston North and New Plymouth. [New Plymouth music scene stalwart and founder of Ima Hitt Records] Brian Wafer was really good to us. We had some crazy times on that tour up North.
Joanne Billesdon: “We won the battle of the bands in Dunedin after that North Island tour, the organisers were peeved we won.”
Their prize was a recording session and album paid for by the label, which they recorded in Dunedin with Brendon Hoffman at Volt Studios. However when it came to release the album, Festival delayed and delayed its release, and though they recorded a New Zealand On Air-funded music video for the single ‘Poison’, it was apparently “lost” before it could be sent out.
Reta le Quesne: “It was salvaged when my old housemate went to work for Festival and she found it and sent it back to us, but by then all the music channels (okay, maybe just one) had closed down so we didn’t have much of a use for it by then.
“I moved to Wellington 1995, Snort toured our Festival release ‘Hell Hath No Fury’ while I was there but we found it was unsustainable to keep going from different cities. So I ended up playing in The Hell City Slickers, The Long Collars, Flamejob (RIP Marty Emond was the singer), Five Car Pile Up, Thee Royal Family and The Wrong Doings.”
Fleur later surfaced with her band The Dialtones and has recently located to Wellington where she fronts The O’Rollers. Lisa (who now resides in rural Oamaru and was a member of Cuticles until recently), Joanne and Sharon formed the excellent Lo-Liners with Rustle Covini on drums, along with playing in many other groups such as Dark Matter and Outsiders. Reta le Quesne now resides in Melbourne after her prolific period in Wellington – she performed with ex-Hi-tone Destroyer Matt Johnstone’s Melbourne group Levitating Churches.
Carla Potter made waves locally in band management and promotion, eventually compiling and organising the Brat compilations which featured songs by various local groups; she has since moved to London and is doing really well in the music industry. Ninakaye has had a brilliant career in the music industry (as Tiki Taane’s manager since 2007, and as a board member for multiple music organisations), as well as being an activist, a harmful sexual behaviour therapist, and a mentor to young Māori.
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This profile originally appeared at Christchurch music website The Big City, and is published here with permission.
