Circular key

..
we don’t for that matter. One of my more amusing NYE experiences was in
Christchurch a few years ago, when the weather was so miserable the council
cancelled the planned public celebrations and everyone went home early. New
Year’s Eve is just not that big a deal.
However, ticking over into 2007 does give me the chance to check on my trajectory
through life and perhaps make some adjustments, do some fine-tuning. Apart from
belatedly shifting from this sad little Camberwell shack, my immediate priority
is the completion of the Spectrum recording project that has been dragging on
for I don’t know how many years now. The Herald Sun’s Alan Howe
rang me from Mike Brady’s Mike To Midnight show on 3AW on Saturday
night, and I found myself recounting the odd fact that the English blues/rock
band, The Pretty Things, a slightly deranged version of The Rolling Stones,
(with whom they shared some early connections), had toured NZ in 1965, whereas
they were banned from touring Australia. One has to wonder how NZ – which
I would’ve thought to be well up the scale in public prurience and wowserism
compared to Australia – ended up hosting a band whose reported behaviour
on tour would have been considered, even by today’s standards, outrageous
and possibly even subversive.
They might’ve got by in NZ because they were on the same bill as popsters
Eden Kane and Sandie Shaw, in one of the weirder versions of the package shows
that were so popular at the time. My band, The Chants, were Pretty Things devotees,
(along with the almost unheard of English band, then and now, Downliners Sect),
and we not only went to both the Pretties’ Christchuch shows, but we even
met the band at the airport.
The shows themselves were a riot, not so much because of the Pretties’
stage performance or music, although there was something in both for my band
to digest, but mostly due to the erratic behaviour of their drummer, Viv Prince,
who misbehaved in a distracting kind of way while the other acts were doing
their fifteen or so minutes on stage. I remember him prostrating himself on
a prayer mat behind Eden Kane while he was singing, and being somewhat shocked
to see Sandie Shaw telling him to fuck off while he mucked around with a plastic
machine gun while she was in the middle of her trade-mark bare-foot set. At
least he didn’t try and set the curtains on fire, as he allegedly did
in New Plymouth. Viv was a lad.
One really interesting detail of the Pretty Things tour I didn’t find
out till 2002, when former Christchurch compatriot Chris Grosz came over to
my place with some lyrics about that fateful tour that he’d written with
Jack Craw and which he thought I might be able to set to music. The name of
the song, The Jacket Formerly Known As Prince, obviously referred to
the infamous Viv Prince, but I didn’t appreciate the significance of the
play on words until Chris told me the background story and his part in it.
As I said, I can remember going out to meet The Pretty Things at Christchurch
airport with my art school buddy, Tony Brittenden, in my grandmother’s
(aka ‘granyips’) old Kingswood, and there we encountered a press
reporter who had been sent out to cover the story. To be fair, he had no information
to go on – TV was still a novelty and there was no such thing as promotional
video clips in those days – and so he assumed that as I had excessively
long hair, I must be a Pretty Thing. If I’d been a bit quicker, I could’ve
strung him along all day, but Earnest Mike had to confess, and in any case,
the four hairy blokes he was looking for eventually materialised in the terminal,
looking somewhat abject in their crumpled London gear.
As I recall, their luggage had mysteriously been redirected to some other destination,
(you had to ask how this was possible in a country with one national airline
and barely a couple of flights a day), and all they had were the clothes they
were standing in, so it was turning the knife a bit for Viv Prince to then have
his herringbone jacket knocked off – but knocked off it was. There’s
undoubtedly a good and possibly even lurid story that goes with the jacket’s
theft, but in any case, it apparently became some sort of mojo trophy for the
local groups of the day, and was passed from band to band with various guitarists
and drummers photographed posing in it, including Chris Grosz.
In 2002 Chris thought, and still does think today, that the story of Viv Prince’s
stolen jacket would make the basis for a fun movie – he’s even written
a draft screenplay – and hence the genesis of the song. I didn’t
consider it as a candidate for the current Spectrum album originally, but its
gestation mirrors the progress of the rest of the material on the album, and
when I thought about it, it’s like some long missing piece of the jigsaw
containing the essence of my formative days in Christchurch in the early ‘60s
has been restored to the puzzle.
Some people have questioned launching the new Spectrum album at the same time
as the re-issues, but for my part it’s like the belated inclusion of the
Jacket song – it’s the completion of some intangible circle that
has taken the last forty years for me to negotiate. Anyway, it’s provided
me with a deadline, so that’s reason enough.

So, here we are, two days into the New Year already. This piece took
a bit longer than I anticipated and Chris (my Chris) is back at Vermont St
as of yesterday. It seems his restlessness was due to an ear infection, which
he had no way of telling me, but may account for the long and searching looks.
We had fun on NYE even though we didn’t go out: we watched a bit of
Michael Bublé while we ate sausages for tea, (Bublé & squeak),
and then shared the bottle of Chandon while we watched the fucking Eagles,
caught up with some episodes of Dr Who on UKTV, and finished the year with
the scary Cream Reunion show back on ABCTV, (I didn’t know if Jack Bruce
was going to make it). I’m glad all the fuss is over, and I’ll
be even gladder when my regular coffee joint is open again – then my
year will be truly back on track.