Bookshelf

In Love With These Times: My life with Flying Nun

By Roger Shepherd (Harper Collins)

Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd has sat down, picked up a pen and put together a a collection of memoirs reaching back to the early days of Flying Nun from the early 80s where it was dreamt up in the back rooms of a Christchurch record shop through to it's present day incarnation. Simply put it is the inside story of New Zealand's iconic independent record label by the man who made it happen.

See: https://publicaddress.net/hardnews/friday-music-roger-writes-the-hits/

and

https://www.harpercollins.com/9781775491262/in-love-with-these-times/

Hardcopy and ebook through:

https://flyingout.co.nz/products/roger-shepherd-in-love-with-these-times

Stranded in Paradise

By John Dix (Paradise Publications, 1988/Penguin, 2005)

Published in 1988, 'Stranded in Paradise' immediately became the definitive (and hard to find) history of New Zealand rock music. The local music industry has boomed since then and developments within the last twenty years necessitated a revised edition (now also out of print). Covering musc from 1955 to the Modern Era (well two of them), this is a "must-have" reference book for anyone interested in New Zealand rock music.

from the SOUNZ site: https://www.sounz.org.nz/

See: https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/john-dix-from-pembrokeshire-to-paradise

The Dunedin Sound: Some disenchanted evening
Ian Chapman
(Bateman publishing)

The Dunedin Sound is celebrated nationally and internationally as being a unique event in popular music history.Throughout New Zealand, a generation of youth during the 1980s and early '90s revelled in the fact that something had been created in Godzone that we could truly call our own - the original Kiwi DIY rock form. There was no aping of foreign sounds or looks; this was home-grown music to the max. Meanwhile, overseas, fans of indie music throughout the UK, Europe and the US recognised that something new and very special was emanating from the most unlikely of places - a small city at the bottom of the world hitherto known only (if at all) for its university, its architecture, and penguins. With its inseparable connection to the Flying Nun record label, the Dunedin Sound's impact upon popular music endures to this day.

from:
https://www.batemanpublishing.co.nz/ProductDetail?CategoryId=0&ProductId=1588

also see:
https://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/blogs/post/the-dunedin-sound-some-disenchanted-evening/

and listen to an interview at Radio NZ here:
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/201823929/the-disenchanted-diy-chic-of-the-'dunedin'-sound

Time flowing backwards: a memoir
Graeme Jefferies
Mosaic Press (2018)
This book is co-published with Assembly House Books

This memoir is the fascinating and revealing story of Graeme Jefferies - one of the most inventive and influential musicians to emerge from New Zealand's vibrant independent music scene in the 1980s. Time Flowing Backwards spans over three decades of Jefferies career spent with bands Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, and The Cakekitchen as well as a solo artist. 

In a candid and in-depth style, Jefferies recounts his recording and songwriting process along with riveting tales from incident-filled tours with the likes of Pavement, Cat Power and the Mountain Goats. 

This truly original and inimitable inside story highlights intense collaboration and DIY innovation, records made in hallways and houses rather than plush studios and a dedication to produce challenging and remarkable songs. 

see: http://www.mosaic-press.com/product/time-flowing-backwards-memoir/

PS; and yes that is Chris Knox’s TEAC 4-track recorder on the front cover!

Dead people i have known - by Shayne Carter

In Dead People I Have Known, the legendary New Zealand musician Shayne Carter tells the story of a life in music, taking us deep behind the scenes and songs of his riotous teenage bands Bored Games and the Doublehappys and his best-known bands Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer. He traces an intimate history of the Dunedin Sound—that distinctive jangly indie sound that emerged in the seventies, heavily influenced by punk—and the record label Flying Nun.

As well as the pop culture of the seventies, eighties and nineties, Carter writes candidly of the bleak and violent aspects of Dunedin, the city where he grew up and would later return. His childhood was shaped by violence and addiction, as well as love and music. Alongside the fellow musicians, friends and family who appear so vividly here, this book is peopled by neighbours, kids at school, people on the street, and the other passing characters who have stayed on in his memory.

Available from :

http://vup.victoria.ac.nz/dead-people-i-have-known

and good booksellers

Review: https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/matters-life-and-death-0