.. the Rudd boys originated. As a film it exemplified the last embers of ember that were still being instilled in the bosom of New Zealand’s youth. What I had not realised was that the 2.6-metre tall marble statue, which was badly damaged in the earthquake, had been sculpted by Scott’s wife Kathleen. It had…

Half out of the corner of my mind I heard emerge from the noise matrix of a video installation the phrase ’So many people living without me’. Was it a girl’s voice? I paid little attention and continued my way through the art gallery – being oddly impressed by the soft pendulous glooping of the…

Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. ..but it couldn’t make up for the subsequent psychological scarring – it was an utterly humiliating night. To give you an example: there was a farcical minute or two when this guy tried to engage me in a meaningful conversation, blissfully unaware that I was actually playing at the time!…

Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. .. rammed down our throats then and so retained a healthy sense of inquisitiveness and, well, a healthy naivety. I feel sorry for kids missing out on a chunk of their childhood because they’re confronted with adults’ version of reality too soon. No wonder youth suicide is an issue… but…

.. existence, I volunteered that the Max Merritt song I’d commissioned myself to write was on hold while I executed another actual but highly unlikely commission to write some English lyrics for an Italian sixties pop song. The ‘being commissioned’ thing is a good story, but in practice it’s not quite as romantic as it…

S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M M I K E R U D D B I L L P U T T . C O MM M I K E R U D D B I L…

.. in any case, I was on modest stipend (a bursary) that I was contracted to repay by becoming a teacher after graduating. In fact, now that I mention it, ambition is another area I’ve always been deficient in, so you put that together with a lack of vision and you might begin to understand…

…as you turned sixteen. I reminded Dick about the Wolseley the other day and we both remembered the other as having been responsible for dinging it at some stage. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the guilty party, but I do remember a hairy moment on the Summit Road with a few of my friends on…

.. brand-new in-balance ears on that very same night – and not just any mix, but a headphone mix. Now, every recording engineer will tell you that headphone mixes can be very dangerous, especially over a prolonged period. As you and your ears get more tired the volume tends to edge up to compensate and…

..shaped. Firstly came the issue of who should be invited. The number of elders has not changed; in fact it has sadly decreased by one since last year, but the number of children and grandchildren has grown, if not exponentially, at least arithmetically. We are unique amongst the group in only having the one daughter…

..has a great chapter on anarchism and the gross social inequalities that caused it. My research was brought on by a passing reference in last month’s blogette (which you have forgotten already you ungrateful Christmas hung-over swine!) to my antipodean romantic infatuation with the Black Flag of Anarchism. The sheer panic that was engendered by…

.. in the course of being interviewed by Michael I discovered quite a lot about the goings-on of Geof before and after our lives briefly intersected in an exchange of letters back in the ‘70s. This Geof-type information curiously resonated with the first writer, Shane Homan’s brief, which is to record the history of venues,…

..about the issues they raise and are careful to get the tone and the clarity of their arguments just right to pass the editors’ stringent scrutiny, real or imagined. Sure, the letters are still not all great, but the standard is generally streets ahead of the ‘anything goes’ FB sewer. And I suspect that a…

..close makes animosity almost inevitable, rather like sibling rivalry, but fortunately other religions take a more peripatetic view of the calendar and have festivals at other times. Would you have to work at all if you held every possible belief? It was a rhetorical question, so don’t put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard…

..of Waitangi of 1840 is often held up as an example of how to establish a more or less just relationship with the native inhabitants. Which it is, as unlike treaties with other indigenous peoples, it is largely honoured now. The Treaty of Waitangi is short, consisting of a preamble and three articles. The preamble…

..interval between, might be more ‘natural’ than trying to compress sleep into the one eight hour stretch. I seem to recall hearing on a radio program that the segmented pattern of sleep might been preserved in the ritual of monastery life but otherwise the tradition has slipped from modern society’s collective memory. Having said that…