Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Explorers Club: Antarctica reviews

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks in the South Island, with shows from Nelson down to Milford, all in beautiful venues and with lovely crowds, with old friends and new ones. The Explorers Club: Antarctica is picking up some nice reviews this week - the Nelson Mail called the show a 'tour de force,' and a 'masterful performance' here, and the album got four and a half stars in the NZ Herald ('these spare, quiet and pointed songs cut to the quick'), four stars in the ODT ('delicate warmth and assured touch'), and Sweetman went kind of nuts about it on his blog, calling it a 'work of rare genuis,' among other nice things.

We were also whooping it up a bit in the van on the way back to Auckland yesterday when we saw that the Explorers Club: Antarctica album made it to number 13 this week on the NZ album charts. 13 seems like a suitably doomed and cursed number for the material, but it was nice to see it in there nevertheless. If you like the look of it in there, feel free to buy more copies over on our bandcamp site, or from www.amplifier.co.nz if you'd like a physical copy.

The tour grinds on this week with our Auckland show at the Voyager NZ Maritime Museum on Thursday, then we're in Wellington next week at the Museum of Wellington City & Sea with Veronika Meduna on the 8th of Nov, the Sarjeant Gallery on the 9th, Oamaru Opera House on the 15th, MTG Hawkes Bay in Napier on the 22nd and the Rogue Stage in Rotorua on the 23rd. See you at the shows!
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Friday, October 11, 2013

The Explorers Club: Antarctica Album

Here it is! We've spent quite a while on this one - we played the songs from Bayly's Beach to Milford Sound, we drew pictures and we told stories and we went into the studio and we banged it out live in two and a half days, Emily made amazing cover art and our friends at Banished From The Universe are releasing it for us today.

Album cover by Emily Cater

The Explorers Club: Antarctica - nine songs telling the stories of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.  It's out in the world today and you can download it from our bandcamp page, you can buy it from community record stores, or you can come and see us somewhere round the country over the next five and a half weeks and we'll gladly sell it to you in person.

And here is a new video for you as well - the images from the show, taken by Scott and Ponting on the ice over a hundred years ago, along with the song 'Great God! This Is An Awful Place.'



Explorers Club: Antarctica Album Launch Tour Oct/Nov 2013

Thurs Oct 17: NELSON: Nelson Arts Festival - The Playhouse Cafe and Theatre Restaurant Mapua Show at 8 pm

Fri Oct 18: TAKAKA: Nelson Arts Festival - The Mussell Inn, with Bat Country, show at 8:30 pm
Tickets from Mussel Inn, 03 525 9241 or haveabeer@musselinn.co.nz

Sat Oct 19: HOKITIKA: Hokitika Museum, 7pm
Tickets from Hokitika Museum 03 755 6898

Sun Oct 20: OKARITO -Donovans Store, with Bat Country, 7:30pm
Tickets at the door

Mon Oct 21: WANAKA: Cinema Paradiso with Bat Country, 8:30pm
Tickets 03 443 1505, abccinema@xtra.co.nz

Tues Oct 22: MILFORD SOUND Throwdown in the Sound at Blue Duck Cafe And Bar,  with Bat Country
Free if you're in Milford Sound

Thurs Oct 24: OAMARU: The Oamaru Opera Housewith THE EASTERN and Barry Saunders

Fri Oct 25: DUNEDIN, Platos with The Eastern and Barry Saunders

Sat Oct 26: CHRISTCHURCH: 241Chambers Gallery,  7pm, with Jed & Hera - Tickets from www.undertheradar.co.nz or at the door 

Thurs Oct 31: AUCKLAND: Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum with Great North, 7pm
Tickets 09 373 0800 info@maritimemuseum.co.nz

Fri Nov 8: WELLINGTON: Museum of Wellington City & Sea with Veronika Meduna, 7pm
Tickets 04 4728 904 museumtours@wmt.org.nz

Sat Nov 9: WHANGANUI Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui, doors as 6:45 show at 7pm
Tickets 06 349 0506

Fri Nov 15: OAMARU: Oamaru Victorian Heritage Celebrations at Oamaru Opera House Festival Explorers Club

Fri Nov 22: NAPIER: MTG Hawke's Bay, 7pm

Sat Nov 23: ROTORUA: The Rogue Stage
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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Radio with pictures

If you happen to be listening to Radio New Zealand Arts on Sunday today, you may hear me wittering on about the crew of the Endurance, and the hi-jinks they got up to in order to pass the time while their ship was stuck in Antarctic ice.  Here is a photograph of their midwinter celebrations - midwinter is of course the most important night of the Antarctic social calendar, and the crew celebrated in high Edwardian style with cross-dressing, blackface and banjos.

Photograph by Frank Hurley, from Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

It was the full Vaudeville routine, which was pretty much the funniest form of entertainment that had been invented by that stage (since then we have developed funnier things like videos of animals falling off things; we have come a long way) - Alfred Lansing tells us 'Shackleton, who was chairman, introduced the participants, Orde-Lees was dressed as a Methodist minister, the 'Rev. Bubbling-Love,' and he exhorted his listeners against the wages of sin.  James, as 'Herr Professor von Shopenbaum,' delivered a lengthy lecture on the 'Calorie'...McIlroy dressed up as a Spanish girls and a very wicked looking one at that, with very low evening dress...Marston sang, Hudson was a half-caste girl, Greenstreet was a red-nosed drunk, and Rickinson was a London streetwalker.'*  Gosh!

One hundred years later it's easy to poke fun at people for poking fun at the mentally ill, people from other countries or races, sex workers and so on, but at the time this was really quite progressive.  A few years earlier the crew of the Beligica had become similarly trapped in Antarctic ice all winter, and lacking such team spirit and so forth they sank into paranoia and depression.  Shackleton, though, knew the value of entertainment as a method of maintaining morale and sanity. After the Endurance was crushed and her crew embarked on their trek across the ice, hauling the boats on sledges, Sir Ernest ordered that personal possessions be limited to two pounds per man, and he set the example himself by throwing a handful of gold sovereigns down on the ice and tearing out the good bits (about ice) from the bible that Queen Alexandra had given him and tossing the rest into an open lead.  However, he ordered Hussey (pictured above in blackface) to bring along his banjo - despite the fact it weighed seventeen pounds - because of it's value as an 'invaluable mental tonic' for the men.  When a banjo is the answer, you know you're in trouble.

*Lansing, Alfred 1959. Endurance: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told, London:  Hodder&Stoughton 


Explorers Club: Antarctica Album Launch Tour Oct/Nov 2013

Thurs Oct 17: NELSON: Nelson Arts Festival - The Playhouse Cafe and Theatre Restaurant Mapua Show at 8 pm

Fri Oct 18: TAKAKA: Nelson Arts Festival - The Mussell Inn, with Bat Country, show at 8:30 pm
Tickets from Mussel Inn, 03 525 9241 or haveabeer@musselinn.co.nz

Sat Oct 19: HOKITIKA: Hokitika Museum, 7pm
Tickets from Hokitika Museum 03 755 6898

Sun Oct 20: OKARITO -Donovans Store, with Bat Country, 7:30pm
Tickets at the door

Mon Oct 21: WANAKA: Cinema Paradiso with Bat Country, 8:30pm
Tickets 03 443 1505, abccinema@xtra.co.nz

Tues Oct 22: MILFORD SOUND Throwdown in the Sound at Blue Duck Cafe And Bar,  with Bat Country
Free if you're in Milford Sound

Thurs Oct 24: OAMARU: The Oamaru Opera Housewith THE EASTERN and Barry Saunders

Fri Oct 25: DUNEDIN, Platos with The Eastern and Barry Saunders

Sat Oct 26: CHRISTCHURCH: 241Chambers Gallery,  7pm, with Jed & Hera - Tickets from www.undertheradar.co.nz or at the door 

Thurs Oct 31: AUCKLAND: Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum with Great North, 7pm
Tickets 09 373 0800 info@maritimemuseum.co.nz

Fri Nov 8: WELLINGTON: Museum of Wellington City & Sea with Veronika Meduna, 7pm
Tickets 04 4728 904 museumtours@wmt.org.nz

Sat Nov 9: WHANGANUI Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui, doors as 6:45 show at 7pm
Tickets 06 349 0506

Fri Nov 15: OAMARU: Oamaru Victorian Heritage Celebrations at Oamaru Opera House Festival Explorers Club

Fri Nov 22: NAPIER: MTG Hawke's Bay, 7pm

Sat Nov 23: ROTORUA: The Rogue Stage
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Friday, October 4, 2013

The Game's Afoot

Well my word, it seems we have much to discuss.  The album, which I suppose we have worked so hard to bring to you (although honestly, it didn't feel like real work, not like hauling a sledge to the South Pole or anything) yes, the album is nearly ready to be sent out into the world, so the first thing our friends at Banished From The Universe records would like me to tell you is that you can preorder that album today from the iTunes store.  So do that, by all means, and listen to the teasing one minute and 29 seconds of each song you're allowed to hear until it is actually 'released' on the 11th of October.  That is thing one.

The band, apparently waiting for something or other. The dog is Lily; she likes to be involoved.

Thing two is that there is a free download you can have!  For free!  See, our song 'It's All In The Game, Play On!' is swaggering around on the bnet stations in New Zealand at the moment and we're giving it away from our bandcamp site, for free, for no good economic reason other than that we want to and we're grown-ups so we can do what we like, within the bounds of reason and the law. You can too - so go and download it if you want. Or not! It's up to you and I am sincerely sorry to burden you with decision-making on a Friday.



Here is a video on the youtube, which features that song and the illustrations that Emily Cater did to accompany the song.  When we perform our show, which we do pretty much all the time (I think we will have performed it around one hundred times by the end of 2013, no joke) these illustrations are projected behind us as we play and it's very atmospheric; I tell a story about poor old Reverend Arnold Spencer-Smith who died on the Great Ice Barrier laying depots for Shackleton who rudely lost his ship on the far side of the continent and never even saw them, grown men cry, everybody wins.  That is thing 2a.



Thing three is another video, (not embeddable I'm afraid) this time of us appearing on state television here in the Dominion of New Zealand performing the song 'Water Sky,' which is about the crew of the Endurance camping for five months on the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, waiting for the current to carry them north so they could launch their boats and sail home - watching for the 'water sky' that appears over the open ocean. In such times a young man's thoughts turn to love, and I have it on good authority that this song, despite its icy provenance, has been the proximate cause of at least one case of romantic attachment in its short life. I wish I could tell you more, but it is not my place to do so.  Buy me a drink sometime and I will furnish the details.

Thing four is the tour and so on, which you already know about, and which is growing like a weed - as well as all these public shows around the place, we're now doing a bunch of 'community' shows along the way at primary schools and - get this - retirement villages, because why do one show a day when you could do two shows a day? Plus it turns out that these shows are heaps of fun, and what's the matter, don't you like fun? I know I do; especially when 'fun' means waking at desk job o'clock, driving several hundred kilometers blasting Steeleye Span at an inconsiderate volume, loading the gear into a school, setting up, playing a show, packing down, driving some more playing Led Zeppelin at a frankly antisocial volume, loading all the gear into a theatre, setting up, playing a show, packing down, socialising heavily, sleeping briefly then repeating, and repeating some more. Fun! Why are we like this, I wonder?


Anyway, here are the dates, in case you forgot.  I encourage you to buy tickets ahead of time because things have been selling out a bit lately and we wouldn't want anybody to miss out on their dose of Antarctic tragedy.

The Explorers Club: Antarctica Album Launch Tour
Thurs Oct 17: NELSON: Nelson Arts Festival - The Playhouse Cafe and Theatre Restaurant Mapua Show at 8 pm

Fri Oct 18: TAKAKA: Nelson Arts Festival - The Mussell Inn, with Bat Country, show at 8:30 pm
Tickets from Mussel Inn, 03 525 9241 or haveabeer@musselinn.co.nz

Sat Oct 19: HOKITIKA: Hokitika Museum, 7pm
Tickets from Hokitika Museum 03 755 6898

Sun Oct 20: OKARITO -Donovans Store, with Bat Country, 7:30pm
Tickets at the door

Mon Oct 21: WANAKA: Cinema Paradiso with Bat Country, 8:30pm
Tickets 03 443 1505, abccinema@xtra.co.nz

Tues Oct 22: MILFORD SOUND Throwdown in the Sound at Blue Duck Cafe And Bar,  with Bat Country
Free if you're in Milford Sound

Thurs Oct 24: OAMARU: The Oamaru Opera Housewith THE EASTERN and Barry Saunders

Fri Oct 25: DUNEDIN, Platos with The Eastern and Barry Saunders

Sat Oct 26: CHRISTCHURCH: 241Chambers Gallery, 7pm, with Jed & Hera - Tickets at the door

Thurs Oct 31: AUCKLAND: Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum with Great North, 7pm
Tickets 09 373 0800 info@maritimemuseum.co.nz

Fri Nov 8: WELLINGTON: Museum of Wellington City & Sea with Veronika Meduna, 7pm
Tickets 04 4728 904 museumtours@wmt.org.nz
Tickets 06 349 0506

Fri Nov 15: OAMARU: Oamaru Victorian Heritage Celebrations at Oamaru Opera House Festival Explorers Club

Fri Nov 22: NAPIER: MTG Hawke's Bay, 7pm

Sat Nov 23: ROTORUA: The Rogue Stage
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