May #01
Kia ora and welcome to our first, and May, edition of Waikato draft.
In a country full of summers, Kirikiriroa is an autumn. When the leaves start to fall, suddenly it matters much less that we lack the beaches that all other NZ cities boast. Autumn means fog, hot air balloons, stacking firewood. It means limes, feijoas, and people collecting chestnuts by the river.
And as usual there’s plenty to see, eat and do… this month: why you should be taking notice of Hamilton’s high school theatre, revisit the 1980s Gallagher kidnapping, and the h-town wiki what it said about our music seen in the 00s – plus five of its epic pages.
What’s on
Film
British horror classic The Wicker Man, with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, is playing at the Hamilton Film society on May 8, at the Lido. Note: you need to be a member: details are at www.hamiltonfilmsociety.org. Also note: this is not the 2006 Nicolas Cage film of “not the bees!” fame. Hopefully they’ll consider that madcap Cage caper for its own special screening.
Music
From next month…
Art
Those who know Hamilton’s coffee heritage trace it all back to The Vienna — run by WWI German-Jewish refugees Kurt Philips and his wife Trude. Kurt’s sister Margot, who was often seen waiting tables there, became well known in her own right for her Waikato landscapes. Her work is showing at the museum from May 12, until September. The Laree Payne Gallery has a solo exhibition by Laura Williams, titled From Arsenic to Found Grace (below), from Wednesday 3 May, or join them on Saturday 6 May from 11-3pm for coffee and donuts with the artist.
Laura Williams, Bonfire of the Vanities, 2023, Acrylic on board. 450mm H x 300mm W x 70mm D. Image courtesy of the artist and Laree Payne Gallery.
In person
Someone at the Hamilton City Council sure does love the word precinct — that’s how they’re describing a new shared entrance to both the zoo and the underrated Waiwhakereke Natural Heritage Park, which also has a new viewing platform. “Precinct” is also what the Gardens is calling their new development — although it really just looks like a new visitors’ centre and retail shop, but whatever. If they’re using the word to evoke a conscious lack of vehicle access, then that’s great. In the same neighbourhood as the zoo, the Astrological Society building got a new lick of paint. How much or why this matters at night we’re not sure, but good for them. They have their usual monthly public night May 3. Go, and peer into their high-magnification Total Perspective Vortex.
Lastly, the Waikato Role Playing Guild have a Morrinsville event they call, charmingly, Dice in Districts.
Theatre
1. Hamilton Operatic Society: Downtown Musicals. May 2, 2023, Nivara Lounge. Ham Op's Downtown Musicals nights, each a themed session, are a platform for up-and-coming theatre talents, those wishing to try something new, or people getting back into performing. This month performers will bringing their favourite comedic musical theatre songs to the stage for A Comedy Tonight.
2. Love Belongs, performed by Fraser High School. 3-5th May, Clarence St Theatre. Hamilton's high schools are bursting with talent and their products are amongst the best in the city. (Recently, Hillcrest High School’s Pippin and Waikato Diocesan’s A Midsummer Night's Dream were both absolutely incredible). Fraser High's performance of Love Belongs is bound to be another example of talented high school theatre.
3. Penny Ashton's Promise and Promiscuity. 6th May, Meteor Theatre. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a theatre script must be in want of an audience." Penny Ashton parodies Jane Austen in this sharp and sparkling musical; an absolute laugh and a half. For the past ten years Penny has been touring the world with this show, and it shows. It's sharp and polished, and witty.
4. Dakota of the White Flats, performed by Red Leap Theatre. 10 - 13 May, Meteor Theatre. An adaptation of the novel by Philip Ridley, Dakota is a fearless 13-year-old, who lives in a bleak housing complex next to a polluted canal. With her best friend Treacle, a huge secret propels them across the water to the Broken Glass Fortress on Dog Island. Described as a "high-action, pulpy punk noir", it combines comedy, horror and live music, and is recommended for age 11+.
5. Young Frankenstein, performed by Hamilton Musical Theatre. 13 - 27 May, Riverlea Theatre. Who doesn't love Mel Brooks?! This adaptation of Mel Brooks' successful film tells the story of Victor Frankenstein's grandson Frederick. With the help of his sidekick Igor, Frederick finds himself in the mad scientist shoes of his ancestor.
Compiled and written by Louise Drummond
On the web…
Hamilton Zoo’s record-breaking Sumatran tiger Mencari has died – a grand old dame at 23. Remind yourself of the strange chapter in Hamilton’s history when, in 1987, Jenny Gallagher was kidnapped with the demand of a $1m cash and $500,000 worth of uncut diamonds. Consent for two local solar power farms has been fast-tracked. You should also care about our neighbours at North Waikato’s Spring Hill prison - one of three facilities where ongoing Covid restrictions mean it’s been three years since prisoners had visitors. We’re enjoying friend of the pod (and former Nexus editor) Joshua Drummond’s Substack where he takes self improvement and “does journalism to it”, improving both it and us. In case you missed it, don’t chuck lithium batteries - commonly in vapes - into the recycling. All batteries can be dropped off for free to the Lincoln St Resource Recovery Centre. Who hasn’t thought about shimmying in the motorcycle parking when you nip in Duck Island? (But, don’t.) And the new ACC building on the corner of Collingwood and Tristram Street, built by Tainui Group Holdings, opened at the end of April.
Long[er] Reads
Modern Manners: feijoa edition
Autumn brings mountains of feijoas - and very quickly you just can’t even give the stuff away. So begins the ritual of staff room feijoa dumps - brought in in an unmarked bag in the early morning, remaining unclaimed when it starts to rot in the bottom. I did something similar when, in the original lockdown, my MIL sent us some of her grade A feijoas in the actual post. Some of them got forgotten about in the kitchen for months and were discovered after we moved out. Floor boards were softened. Don’t be that dick.
If you are the kind of person that likes feijoas but lacks a tree, those with surplus soon start circling, as if your name has been circulated on some kind of dark web somewhere. If you have a hint of the people pleaser about you or hate to see fruit go to waste you will soon have a problem. Learn to say no. There are plenty of freejoa roadside stalls and this seems win win for everybody.
And what of foraging? Only take what you need, leave no trace; don’t enter private property, even just a little bit. In the case of fruit overhanging the footpath from someone’s house - feijoas are fair game. If it’s a passionfruit, chuck it over.
The H-town wiki: a brief history
Google any aughties Hamilton music trivia and you’re bound to come across the h-town wiki. An incredible rabbit warren and chronicle to the Hamilton music scene, from the heady days of the “artists’ dole” (ahem, I’m sorry, the Pathway to Arts and Cultural Employment (PACE), which ran from 2001 to 2012), and when radio stations had a voluntary quota of 20% local music content.
One of its founders, Dan Satherley, says that actually two or three people really came up with the idea at the same time, around 2006, to fill a vacuum created by the demise of the contact/UFM/generator complex in 2003. (One of which is University of Waikato Associate Professor Ian Duggan - you can read about his musical extracurriculares here).
“I don't think I was the only one, from memory, but having already started/been involved with other online things - like the egroup/YahooGroup email list in 2000, and then htown.co.nz [an online forum he ran from 2003 with a guy who's online name was “drift”, and who’s real name he’s since forgotten]… I guess I was the most likely to actually bother to do it.` Satherley also “80% ran” Hamilton zine Clinton from 2000 - 2001, which also faithfully documented the Hamilton music scene at that time (its back catalogue can be found, you guessed it, on the wiki), and worked for both UFM and then Generator (both, in that order, were iterations of what used to be contact fm, the original University of Waikato student radio station).
Satherley says there was nothing especially difficult or unique about what they were doing; just a willingness to set up and contribute to projects like the zine, the wiki, and the forum. “It honestly surprises me there weren't equivalents in other cities around New Zealand. All it took was having an idea, a willingness to act on it, and then someone who had the technical chops to carry it out, which by 2006, wasn't that hard anymore.
“None of us were so technically minded as to know how to even change the logo [of the wiki] - as you can see, 17 years later it's still the default image,” says Duran.
Peter Smith, who for a time was the bassist for Wellington band Family Cactus, often found himself in Hamilton because of his then-girlfriend, but specifically remembers the h-town wiki and how it captured the vibe of the scene; how it was different to Auckland and Wellington. “It made it seem like there was a positive, inclusive community in Hamilton. It didn’t really seem to matter that much who you were or what music you were making, people just liked that you were making music in Hamilton. Dynamo Go? Rad. Mobile Stud Unit? Awesome. Katchafire? Sweet.”
“It had an endearing combination of self-mythologising and self-deprecating,” he continues. “If your band had only played one show of covers? You could have a page, and you probably did… While Auckland and Wellington bands were probably writing their own pages on actual wikipedia, quoting Cheese On Toast reviews calling them ‘the new Strokes’ or whatever.”
Returning to Duran, perhaps some of motivation for the h-town wiki was a proverbial middle finger to these other scenes. “I think maybe the reason we went so hard was we had this impression that others saw Hamilton as a musical backwater,” he says, “and we wanted to prove them wrong. Auckland bands would come down often and get their arses handed to them by local bands, and we were wondering why our bands weren't getting coverage in the magazines. And by the early/mid 2000s most of us were online, and it was virtually cost-free, so we went for it.”
And unlike the myspace of the day, it’s all still there for our present-day enjoyment, and is infinitely more readable as a companion to the era. Duran continued to post to htown.co.nz even once he’d moved to Auckland, although this is the year, he says, where he will finally have been living in Auckland for longer than he was ever was in Hamilton (he moved here age 7). “As Datsuns producer Scott Newth once told me, you can leave Hamilton but you'll never get the stink out… I'm pretty sure my old Fender guitar amp in the garage has a UFM sticker on it,” he says, “and a 'student debt $5 billion' sticker, which shows its age..”
The five greatest H-town wiki pages
Issue 19 included a thinly-veiled takedown of UFM management of the day
“Borne out of everything from patriotism to derision, there have been a number of songs inspired by Hamilton.” They are compiled here.
Hamilton circle jerk was a long-running Hamilton event where Hamilton bands would cover each others’ songs. A later attempt to renamed it Harden up Ow was hopeless; the original name just stuck.
Jed, whoever he is: “Cantankerous driving force behind Truckers Move America and The Sadie Hawkins Atom Bomb, and guitarist for SophieXEnola. Relocated to Wellington in a fit of pique.” We are all Jed.
RIP the Wailing Bongo. We still don’t understand their hack whereby they could serve alcohol to 18-year-olds prior to the law change, but sacred heart girls of a certain vintage will remember it well.
Contributors: Sylvia Giles, Jessica Begovich, Jason Marshall, Louise Drummond
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