Shayne P. Carter is one New Zealand’s greatest musical identities. He has constantly pushed and developed his art, but always maintained an uncompromising integrity. He has produced a large and important body of work that is not always fully comprehended due to the fragmented way it has been presented over the years. Bored Games, Doublehappys, Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer were all recognisably fine bands but the common dominant creative force in each of them is not always clearly perceived as Shayne P Carter. The two upcoming live dates and souvenir CD compilation* we are making for the shows will hopefully help start to redress that clouded reality.
Bored Games were Shayne’s first band, who reconvened to record a posthumous EP for Flying Nun in 1982 and it was around this time that we met. He was an intelligent, charismatic, ambitious and delightfully snotty teenager who wanted to make music and make that his career. I think he could have been an equally fine broadcaster. But stroppy probably worked better at Flying Nun than at TVNZ at the time and he was later a perfect receptionist for us at our Queen Street offices.
What the current live show represents is the development of Shayne as a songwriter, singer and guitar player. From the basic “Joe 90” (that puppet never had a chance) through to raucous Doublehappy mayhem to Straitjacket Fits anthemic guitar mastery to the mature sophistications of Dimmer. He loved rock and roll, wanted to make it and over time developed his skills and sensibilities. These performances track that development.
Shayne P. Carter. Photo by Leila George.
But no man is an island (not even Stewart Middle North) and Shayne has always been a rock guy who plays with a real band which is something that Elvis always understood but Cliff Richard didn’t. Helping him crank it out is one of New Zealands greatest stickmen Gary Sullivan (JPSE, Dimmer etc) and renowned but fortunately reformed classical composer Vaughan Williams (who is surely far too old for this caper but knows his chords inside and out) on bass.
Shayne Carter is going to play his classic repertoire and all these songs work in their own unique special way. Some of us will kind of do a muted pogo (because of our age) along to any Bored Games numbers. We will get misty eyed and nostalgic about our long gone student flat days and attempt to sing along when he belts out “She Speeds” and “Dialling a Prayer”. There will be sadness and reflection during “Randolph’s Going Home”. Dimmers “Seed” will get us tranced and head bobbing in sync. And “Crystallator”, a song that might be about renewal and rebirth, is what I like to hear first up where Shayne puts his foot down (on a pedal perhaps or some poor hecklers throat), lets rip and tells us all; “this is what I do, come along for the ride, it’s going to be great night”.
Dimmer – ‘Crystalator’ Live at Bodega, Wellington 18.07.09
- Roger Shepherd
*UPDATE: Track Listing for the Shayne P. Carter – Last Train To Brockville compilation CD:
“Done” – Straitjacket Fits
“Needles and Plastic” – Doublehappys
“Dialling a Prayer” – Straitjacket Fits
“She Speeds” – Straitjacket Fits
“Big Fat Elvis” – Doublehappys
“Seed”– Dimmer
“Joe 90″ – Bored Games
“If I Were You” – Straitjacket Fits
“Crystalator” – Dimmer
“APS” – Straitjacket Fits
“Dawn’s Coming In” – Dimmer
“Life In One Chord” – Straitjacket Fits
“Randolph’s Going Home” – Shayne Carter And Peter Jefferies
“Some Fantasy” – Doublehappys
Please please please come to Christchurch. This show sounds amazing. I was at the SJ Fits “reunion” gig some years ago, and it was truly memorable. Can’t put into words how good that was. I realise this will be a different concert, but Shane is my altime fav NZ musician. So…when are you taking this concert to the South Island? C’mon, Chch needs a gig like this right now!
By the way, there will be a limited number of copies of the compilation CD for sale one the website later in May for those who can’t make the show. Cheers.
The CD track listing has been announced: http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/more/NID/3428/Tracklist-For-Shayne-Carters-Retrospective-Compilation-and-Show-Revealed.utr
Aaargh!! “Straitjacket” – no “gh” and “Randolph” not “Randolf” .
errr. duly noted – sometimes these things don’t register for no particular reason
Re: “We will get misty eyed and nostalgic about our long gone student flat days and attempt to sing along when he belts out “She Speeds” ”
– I vividly recall coming home from a late shift to an especially dodgy WN flat to find various flatties had crawled through a wee hatch from the living room into the space under the house. They were holed up in there, listening to ‘She Speeds’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ back-to-back, over and over and over… apparently it’d aleady been going on for hours, and lasted until the sun did finally arrive.
I won’t speculate on what else had been consumed except to say they were beyond sharing.
Good times.
And going back further in time but equally misty eyed and nostalgic, I still remember the DoubleHappys’ debut in Chch one hot November afternoon at the Gladstone in 1983 with Herbie F*@kface on drums, rather the drum machine!
Anyone who wasn’t on the receiving end of Shayne Carter’s caustic delivery that day sure got it in spades at later Chch gigs! One I recall in particular was at the short-lived Zanzibar in Lincoln Rd, a place more suited to late era disco (e.g. New Order’s Blue Monday which was huge at the time) and the clientele that drew in – who were not in anyway anticipating the venom and (to quote Roger ‘raucous mayhem’ that was the DoubleHappys! Shayne saying at one point: ‘…here’s a song for all those “fat c$#ts in studded belts”‘, which are as it happens, well I reckon anyway, the opening line to the fab Needles and Plastic.
Complation looks great but please bring that last train to Chch sometime soon!
Read my review please.
At http://gaskranken.blogspot.com/
chur chur PK