Getting It Right Netherworld Dancing Toys

Rip It Up, Issue 96, 1 July 1985, Page 12

Getting It Right Netherworld Dancing Toys

By now, you’ll probably have heard Netherworld Dancing Toys’ ‘For Today’. It’s one of those local singles that gets looked upon favourably by TV (RWP, RTR) and, more significantly, radio. No surprise really, it’s got a nice melody and a classic singalongasuburbia chorus, friendly enough for all the family But don’t take it as indicative of the rest of the the Netherworlds’ debut album, Painted Years. The band’s first really good record, the LP gels the rocksoul influences that have fluttered about the music for the last three and a half years; convincing but thankfully clear of the dreaded littlefeatus tedium that can settle on white boys who go in to the studio with guitars, horns and a penchant for soul. Painted Years was recorded over about two and a half months at Wellington’s Marmalade Studios. It was produced by Pelicans soundman/producer Nigel Stone and rounded out with contributions from some of the country's top session players and singers. But it’s no technical masterpiece its merits lie in a certain sense of urgency and the songs of Malcolm Black and Nick Sampson. Probably the way it should be ... The idea’s probably poisonous to some of you. but there’s a certain classicism about divvying up a big packet of hot fish ’n’ chips and settling down to ease its passage down the gullet with a little cold lager. Netherworld Dancing Toys are the right kind of people to do it with too; friendly and unaffected. Licking the salt off their fingers are three of the four who make up the Netherworlds’ nucleus, guitarists/singers Malcolm and Nick and bass player Graham Cockroft. Drummer Brent Alexander has retired to bed with a debilitating case of This Winter’s Flu. The paper is screwed up and everyone settles back with Grease Belly for The Interview: the new record is the first time Netherworld Dancing Toys have really got it together on record, agreed? Malcom does, “wholeheartedly." “It’s because we had so long," Nick continues. “And also, all the records we’ve done up to this stage have been part of the learning process. We haven't been happy with records in the past but they’ve all got better. The Real You’ was the first one we were actually happy with and now in retrospect we can see that this one’s better than that." Graham: “I think with the maturity in record-

ing, it really started with Don (McGlashan) inspiring us to take a new outlook on things. With The Real You’ we started working with Don in July of last year and didn’t actually finish the recording until September-October. Prior to The Real You’ we really went into the studio and reproduced the songs live. But Don said no, don’t do that, take it back to its bare bones and build it from there. On The Real You’ I think we did that, but not as well, because we didn’t have as much time and money and so on as we did this time and it really has been a result of that change." The length of recording time available to the band was thanks to Virgin Records NZ, which has come good on its promise to invest in some local talent. Counting time spent recording demos, the whole project spanned about four months. And yet the feel is live rather than laborious ... “That was one of the things Nigel liked doing,” Graham explains. "All the rhythm tracks were done live, with bass and drums recorded at the same time and the vocals and guitar going too. We had a crack at it the other way and it just didn’t have the same feel. It was amazing I was never aware of that sort of difference." Nick: “Nigel was great in the sense that we’d do something and then he’d say ‘come up to my place,’ he lives two or three miles from the studio, and we’d spend an hour sitting round drink-, ing his gin, which we probably never repaid him for, listening to what we’d done on his good stereo in a different environment and we’d decide what

worked and what to keep and go back to the studio.” “Also, at Marmalade we were quite lucky in that on some nights when things just weren’t happening we’d be able to say ‘Okay, it’s not happening, let’s go home,’ ” adds Graham. “And we could, there was no pressure to finish it that night or by the end of the week or whatever. That arrived with the mixdown.” But even with that time, you’ve left in a few rough edges ... “Yeah," says Graham. “That was something we had a bit of a battle about within the band how smooth we wanted it to sound.” Nick: “As Huey Lewis said and Malcolm and I talked about this a lot it’s often braver to leave in a mistake than to take it out." “That was something we were really conscious of," Malcolm agrees. “Because we could have gone over the top and made a really heavilyproduced record, but we wanted to make it sound as raw and honest as possible.” When the Netherworlds play live now, they bring in the Newton Hoons (Chris Green, sax, and Mike Russell, trumpet) and backing singers Anne Crummer and Kim Willoughby. Those four were present for the recording, as were a number of other guest musicians all extremely proficient with their instruments. So what was it like working with musicians of that character? “Very humbling,” says Nick. "Especially when, v say, you’ve got a guide vocal down and it sounds

very guidish, and someone like Rob Winch comes in to do a little bit of stuff for you and he’s a guy who really knows how to sing ... It really made us think about performance I think. When we’re back into playing live again, I think it will strengthen the band, because everyone's going to be listening a lot better” Graham: “We weren’t aware of musicians that competent in this country at all. You think there isn’t anyone like that in New Zealand and all of a sudden there’s a room full of them in Wellington.” "Wellington’s a great place like that...” affirms Malcolm. Nick: "It’s really good for a young bunch of upstarts like us ...” “At the same time I think we were really good for them as well,” adds Malcolm. "It’s just ideas and a different way of looking at things. Like they’d say ‘What beat of the bar’s the accent on?’ and we’d say ’I don’t know, just play that, so it feels good.’ ” Nick: "I spent about two hours after we finished one night discussing with a couple of them the Dunedin sound and Hunters and Collectors, things like that, and they couldn’t understand why it was so good, because they were saying the musicianship wasn’t very good. And I put across a different point of view and in the end they could see what I was driving at. So it was good for them and good for us.” Were you worried about a soundalike danger, being swamped by the playing of others/ “I think our basic incompetent style always comes through, so it’s okay,” Nick smiles. "That’s why we play the soul songs we’ve always played, why they’ve got that particular NDT flavour we can’t play them as well as these people and we’re very enthusiastic, so they come out like that. And I think that the flavour of the band has always managed to come through.” Graham: "We’re still in control. As far as decisions that have to be made, on a very basic level you could say we’re employing these people. We’re hiring them for their skills and for what we want to do. So we give them a little brief on what we want them to do, they have a crack at it and we say ‘Well, modify it a bit like this.’ ” Nick: "I was there for all of the horn stuff and the arguments we had with the horns some nights... it was ‘No, it’s got to be played like this,’; ‘But that’s not how we want it played, we want it played like this,’; ‘But that’s boring!’ But we were drastically wrong on several occasions.” Graham: "Yeah, and they’d say that, That’s stupid, the timing’s all wrong,’ and we’d say Well, we don’t really care whether the timing’s right or wrong, what we want is this.’ Which is good in a way, because we’re hopefully introducing some

new ideas to them and they’re teaching us how

to express ourselves musically. We're not great music readers and when it comes to actually being technically proficient at expressing how a particular piece or arrangement should go. we’re not very good.” When the band decided to forgo a full-time horn section last year, it took things down to the nucleus that had been together since the beginning not of four, but of six, including Tex and Ged, sound and light men respectively. As Graham explains, the absence of a permanent horn section removed the obligation to use horns on every song. “And we're a bit sparser in our horn arrangements now," adds Malcolm. “With the four of us now, with the way we take song, Nick or I might come along with a song and we arrange them as a four-piece and the songs actually sound quite complete, with much more emphasis on guitar and rhythm. So the horns are more dressing on the top now. Whereas before when we’d bring a song to practice maybe a horn riff would be the first thing that would be chucked on top of it and Nick and I wouldn’t really bother worrying about the guitar line or anything like that. Now, we’ve got the songs and they’re just about

ready to do live and we’ll say, well, what more can we do to them?” Has the shrinking of the lineup thrown more emphasis on songwriting? Nick: “Yeah, and I think the emphasis has shifted to songwriting a little more too with recording, because the songs then become a lot more important. When you’re playing live you lose a lot of the subtleties. And when you’re watching a band live you’re less sensitive to subtleties than you are when you’re sitting at home listening to it on your stereo.” Graham explains that the shrunken band works as much through personal unity as musical: “In a lot of things we have similar tastes. We’re basically from similar backgrounds, all middleclass white boys and all those sort of things that go with being one of those.” Interesting, because Malcolm in particular in songs like The Real You; ‘Nurse Next Door’ and Too Full To Fight' would seem to have a preoccupation with the middle-class condition. "Well, it’s the thing that / know most about. Dunedin’s a pretty sheltered place I think everyone from Dunedin would probably agree with that. It’s a fairly insular sort of existence down there. And it’s hard to write about things

that you don’t know anything about.” “Touring's been good for us as individuals in that it has broadened our outlook a hell of a lot more than if we’d stayed in Dunedin,” Graham adds.

Is there a danger of getting into another kind of insularity that of "being in a band” touring and so on? Malcolm: “There could be if we did it for too long. But just now, when we’re not working with the band, most of us try and get away from it. Everyone’s got very separate existences." “And also, I think even when we’re away we don’t lead what I would call a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle we go out running during the day and that sort of thing,” Graham adds. “We’ve never broken anything the TV’s still got its screen,” Nick grins. “We’re fairly straightlaced boys in a way." You’ve long had the "Dunedin student” image, or non-image ... Malcolm: "Yeah, it worries the shit out of Annabel (Carr, the band's A&R person, helper and invaluble friend at Virgin) trying to market a band with no image. But no one feels like trying to be anything we're not.”

So has enough been done for people to stop regarding Netherworld Dancing Toys as a bunch of university students on an extended holiday? Particularly early in their career, they could often suffer a severe case of not being taken seriously. Nick relates the story of their first Dunedin Battle of the Bands, when they made the final after having been together a matter of months. Already they had an attendant flock of student fans, who “got on their 10-speeds and rode out to the Shoreline” to make up more than half the audience. The NDTs played a messy, enthusiastic and very well-received set but were beaten by a young band playing covers. A local radio personality who had been on the judging panel took them aside and told them they would have won but for the fact that they were a bunch of students out for a good time, whilst the winners were "a serious young band with international prospects”. A year later, the same personality interviewed them on TV and quizzed them about their “international prospects” “So have we shaken off that varsity image?” asks Malcolm of his two compadres. “I don’t know,” shrugs Nick, turning to the interviewer. “You’re more objective than we are. Have we?" With this record, yes. No question.

Naturally enough, the Netherworlds would like to take the band overseas, just for the sake of travel as much as anything else. They have their sights set on Japan, but any trip there would be conditional on the local Virgin distributor,

Toshiba-EMI, picking up on the album. Which, in turn, will depend on how successful the record is at home.

What sets the band apart in some ways is the fact that, although they’re professional musicians now, “real” professions beckon. They all have university degrees under their belts Malcolm, for example, has completed his law studies. Is he going to find it hard to go back into the mainstream after the lifestyle of a musician? “Yeah it’s going to be very hard. Ideally, if I’d been carrying my profession through to what I should have done, I should be working this year. But I’m just not that interested. I think the band has maybe given me an alternative. Because making music is a lot of fun and it’s very fulfilling.” Nick: “Yeah, if you’re writing songs you’re being creative and you’re enjoying being creative. And if you’ve been doing that for three years and you go out and get a job and you can’t fulfill that creative urge, you get unhappy.” Graham: “Of course the thing that always comes back when you’re thinking about the two options is that you won’t lose your degree, no one is going to take your degree away from you, the opportunity to work in that field isn’t going to disappear. But your involvement in the band depends on the other people being involved as well

“It’s here and now,” Nick puts in. “Right, it’s immediate. And if you flag it away or leave it and say you'll come back to it in two years, you can’t." • Malcom concludes: “Music is also ... like you do a record and you think, ‘Well, the next one will be better? the next one you do will be really good. It’s the same with songwriting, you know your songwriting is getting better. Matthew, our old sax player, said a couple of years ago that he hoped the band wouldn’t break up then, because it’s really typical of all New Zealand bands, once they begin to get quite good at what they do, they split. It’s just a waste of the learning.”

So Netherworld Dancing Toys find themselves, three and a half years on, committed to something probably a long way away from what they had their sights set on when they rolled up to their first enrollment at Otago University. They’ve spent those years developing skills and talents within themselves that they probably didn't know they had. Even when they were enjoyable rather than exciting, they generally had the right idea. In a sense they’re four pretty average young men. And, given that they're drawing on music that they love, they’re poised to make a respectable stand in the middle ground of the country’s music scene. And that’s really what the band and Painted Years are thoroughly respectable.

Russell Brown