Under Alan’s Mum’s house was a studio that he’d hewn out of rock-hard clay, with pick-axes and shovels and such. Pretty much everything we did in the kiwi phase we did here.

Somewhere down there…

Looks beautiful from a great height… down a 30 year time-tunnel. In the 80s, Porirua was kindof like Compton. It’s main claim to fame was that it was the first place in NZ to have a McDonalds. This was not an accident.

Still, cool little studio. Had a room big enough for a band to rehearse in, and a separate room for the desk etc… an 8-track reel-to-reel type recording setup, a vocal PA… drum kit. All our rehearsing and recording needs.

I’m not sure why, but The Wild Poppies always did infrastructure really well. The whole time we were together, in NZ, England, Wales, we never shared a rehearsal space. In England, we rehearsed in this big open-plan space with 30 ft high ceiling to floor windows overlooking the Thames. You’d have to sell your soul to Satan to get a place like that today. It cost us 5 quid a day – I think Alan managed to charm someone.

Anyway, back to NZ… Ian (The drummer, and resident conjurer of great and terrible ideas) managed to persuade us that it would be all punk and rock and roll etc, take loads of speed and stay awake – nail the whole thing in three days. The problems with this idea were as follows:

1) we didn’t have any speed.

2) without speed, you can’t stay awake for 3 days

3) neighbours etc.

Still. That’s what we decided to do.

It came, it went. I can’t remember if we managed to do it in 3 days. I think we did – we just didn’t stay awake the whole time, and the mixing bit happened about a week later.

I can clearly (only) remember 3 things:

1) At about 4am on the first (or second) night, Ian was recording drums, the rest of us were in the control-room. The main room was filled with this soft, stygian glow – almost dark…. low-watt red floor-lights… so full of pot-smoke that you could hardly see from one side to the other. Vibes man.

At some point, we all became aware of this ethereal figure all dressed in flowing white robes standing in front of the drum-kit. We didn’t know what the fuck it was, so we all just kindof ducked. Ian carried on playing.

It was the old lady from next door – couldn’t stand the noise any more… managed to get in somehow (how tho? FFS). Ian just assumed it was another hallucination so carried on.

It was as spooky as fuck. And hilarious. I’m not sure what happened after that. I slept in the car with my sleeping bag pulled up to my chin, with eyes like saucers, giggling to self in a terrified sort of way.

 

2) We recorded the whole thing… sat around mixing it etc. It was ok… then we took a week off…

…and when we came back, Andrew had remixed the whole thing, and it sounded fucking great.

It kindof went from “hobby” to “career” at that point I think. Listening to it now, I don’t even recognise most of it – and I’d only been playing for a couple of years, and we’d only been together for about 6 months… so I’m not so sure it sounds so great now – but it was symptomatic of a time I guess. We were just kids when we recorded this, and I think that possibly shows… and maybe (just maybe) looking down the wrong end of a really long telescope… maybe that isn’t a bad thing.

It has a kind of innocence I think – and that’s why I find it so hard to listen to now. It’s not that it sounds bad, it’s just kindof heart-breaking. I haven’t come full-circle yet.

 

3) The studio had a proper rock and roll PA – you don’t see them so much now… I’m not sure if the technology has moved on, or if everyone plays quieter… our PA consisted of two massive speaker-stacks that stopped about 1 inch below the ceiling. When we wanted to be, we could be really fucking loud.

On either the 2nd or 3rd night, we’d discovered that we could put this raw-frequency generator through the PA… and make this loooong sound that started off so high-pitched you could hear it, then got lower… high-pitched whistle… down through the mids… into the bass-zone, into sub-sonics so low you couldn’t hear them, but all the cups and plates etc clattered and things fell off shelves.

It was like some sort of experimental WWII sonic-weapon. Everyone else thought it was as funny as fuck – it made me feel like I was going to throw up – seriously physical sub-sonics.

I couldn’t deal with it, so went outside.

From outside, you couldn’t hear the highs or the mids… but the bass made the whole fucking house shake – it sounded like someone had got a giant helicopter filled with gravel and was tipping it over the house.

It was about 4am, and in the peaceful scented air of the kiwi suburban night, every dog within about a 10 mile radius was going utterly and completely insane.