Tag: live concerts

I finally got around to quitting Spotify at the end of last year, but not before their silly-ass “Wrapped” feature told me that my musical age was about 77 years old. A bit rude, I thought. 

I admit my musical tastes run old-school – I did just review concerts by 78-year-old Iggy Pop and 73-year-old David Byrne after all – but like a lot of middle-aged dudes, I’m trying to be hip and keep up, and this year’s Laneway Festival featured a great line-up of acts with a median age of under 30 – Geese, Wet Leg, Wolf Alice, Pink Pantheress, Benee, and the hottest act of the moment Chappell Roan. Auckland felt like a cultural capital again for a minute –  Geese just played Saturday Night Live and Chappell Roan was very much in the news this week for her wardrobe choices at the Grammys. 

It was a fantastic, life-affirming if exhausting day in the hot February sun at Western Springs, with somewhere around 40,000 people, most in their 20s, having the time of their lives. As an old dude in his mid-50s (I can’t even say EARLY 50s now) and the first proper festival I’ve been to in eight years, I was worried I couldn’t hack it. I’m sore as heck and blast furnace tanned and had a weird cramp in my leg at 4am, but I had an absolute groove.

I caught up with old mate writer Chris Schulz (who has his own great thoughts on the day) and then I kicked off with the poppy indie rock of Alex G, who put on a fine short set – their bouncy “Runner” is one of my favourite singles of the decade – although they might’ve been suited to a more chill indoor venue rather than the 25C afternoon sun. I was disappointed to only catch half of the set by Geese, whose crunchy, woozy rock is the acquired taste of the moment. Their songs always sound like they’re about to fall apart and serve up some serious Pixies/Modest Mouse vibes, and what I heard was very cool – but thanks to festival scheduling I had to zip over to see one of my absolute faves and missed the last half. 

And that fave was Wet Leg, who put out quite possibly my favourite album of 2025, moisturizer, and their fist-pumpingly cool rock is full of earworms I can’t shake. Rhian Teasdale has turned into one of the sexiest, most confident frontwomen in rock, dancing around the stage with sweaty glee, and they put on a hell of a great show. I was also blown away by Wolf Alice, a band I was only partially familiar with (their single “Bloom Baby Bloom” is dynamite), but their frontwoman Ellie Rowsell may well have been the best singer of the day – powerfully versatile and able to wail and croon through a great set – it’s always awesome to really discover a band at a festival and Wolf Alice are high on my list to hear more from. 

But honestly, I’d say a huge chunk of the 40,000 or so people jamming the field and stands were there to see the bombastic, hugely entertaining set by Chappell Roan, her first ever concert in New Zealand. I really don’t tend to see the truly big pop star concerts and it’s a whole different level to be surrounded by 20-something women loudly singing every word. Roan is an absolute star power, taking the stage on a bloody impressive huge fairy tale castle set and emerging with one of her trademark elaborate costumes looking like a Heavy Metal magazine cover come to life. But Roan’s got the chops to deliver on her showmanship – I’ve been listening to songs like “Good Luck Babe,” “Pink Pony Club” and “HOT TO GO!” and getting hooked on her yearning, empowering songwriting. Proudly queer, like many of the acts at Laneway, Roan cheered on NZ Pride Month and reminded us that even a small town girl from Missouri like her can become an inspiring global superstar no matter how screwed up America is at the moment. 

Sure, my back hurt a bit and I was very aware I was older than most of the Laneway crowd, but it was a festival of optimism and the power of music in a kind of dark time in history for a lot of good people. Maybe I was lucky, but I didn’t see any ugly drunken “bro” behaviour or angry moshing, just a whole heap of young New Zealand folks out to dance the world away and as Chappell Roan sings, “Not overdramatic, I know what I want.”

I thought of a lyric by another band from the old days who t-t-t-talked about their generation once, and I left with a crowd of thousands of people of all genders, dress codes and amazing futures, and even to a mildly ancient dude like me it felt like the kids are all right. 

Explorers have long searched the world for a fountain of youth, but maybe it was hiding in a rock and roll song all along. 

Two legends of the trade – punk godfather Iggy Pop and queen of rock Joan Jett – testified to the immortal power of a hard-out tune at Spark Arena Thursday night.

When Joan Jett and the Blackhearts took the stage, it was with the confident and open-hearted attitude befitting rock royalty. Jett kicked off her career at just 16 years old with the all-girl punk band The Runaways and has been a trailblazer for women in rock for decades. 

Clad all in black and as dynamic as ever, Jett and the Blackhearts bashed their way through an hour of classic pop-punk nuggets. 

The expected gems like ‘I Hate Myself For Loving You’ and the Runaways’ ‘Cherry Bomb’ got terrific airings, but there were also some fine surprises in her fast-paced hour-long set. A cover of the empowering tolerance anthem ‘Androgynous’ by the Replacements was a delight, while a real treat was a guitar-powered take on the late Sly Stone’s ‘Everyday People.’ 

Jett, a proud New Yorker, couldn’t let the current instability on the American scene go unmentioned, and made a brief but compelling statement on what she called the many in the US who are horrified at what has been happening in Minneapolis and elsewhere. “Change is gonna come… Oh yes, it is,” she said, before a blistering run through her 2006 slice of optimism ‘Change The World.’ 

Newer songs like ‘(Make The Music Go) Boom’ and ‘If You’re Blue’ had the same fine energy of the classics, but of course it was the anthems like ‘I Love Rock And Roll’ that truly got the arena crowd up and fist-pumping. Jett hasn’t lost a step despite more than 50 years in the business, and the Blackhearts backed her up terrifically, with lead guitarist Dougie Needles particularly sharp. 

Now, I only want to say this once, but it’s worth highlighting – proto-punk legend Iggy Pop is 78 years old … 79 in April. 

I say this because this leathery icon and headliner stalked onto the stage with just as much passion and raw power as he’s had ever since his legendary band The Stooges put out their first album way back in 1969. 

Iggy ripped off his shirt nanoseconds after he took to the stage and immediately tore into a set heavy on Stooges classics and raggedy and raw in all the right ways. His commitment should inspire bands half his age.

Backed by a terrifically tight band and an excellent horn section that pounded their way through an hour’s worth of mostly hard-rocking bangers, Iggy put on a master class in sheer star magnetism that showed you can bash them out as hard at 78 as you can at 25. With age, Iggy has morphed into a kind of punk Yoda, as uninhibited as ever, gyrating across the stage with charm and wit. 

The set was primarily Stooges tunes – and why not? Their molten, uncompromising hard rock is the primal ore from which dozens of bands from the 1970s to the present have emerged, and songs like ‘Gimme Danger, ‘Search And Destroy’ and ‘Raw Power’ still quiver with life more than 50 years on. 

Iggy strutted his way through nearly a dozen Stooges classics, a real treat for fans of this iconic and still somewhat under-appreciated band, of which he’s the last surviving original member. At one point he talked about how radio stations and record labels sneered at the Stooges back in the day, but “the stoners liked it.” It’s a sign of the uncanny power of those untamed songs that an arena full of folk from gray-haired to mosh-pitting Gen Z youth could all proudly dig them now. 

There was a playful, charming edge to his showmanship, with plenty of profane crowd banter and encouraging audience singalongs. The songs may still feel dangerous but Iggy… well, he seems kinda nice, really. He even put in a plug for a Kiwi wine brand, stopping to have a sip of Sauvignon Blanc between tunes, as you do. 

There were a few times when the band’s powerful wall of sound felt a bit muddy at Spark Arena, with Iggy’s vocals getting a little lost, and the Stooges-heavy set meant that a lot of Iggy’s still excellent later work got the short end of the stick. Most of the songs were from the 1970s, and there was nothing from his terrific 2016 Post Pop Depression, and only one song from his quite strong latest album, 2023’s Every Loser. 

But that’s the problem when you have as rich as catalogue as Iggy Pop, who originally made his name as a hellraiser but who’s also dabbled in lush ‘80s pop and a delightful album of crooning pop and French standards. 

When he came off the stage briefly during a roaring take on ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog,’ it wasn’t quite clear if it was on purpose or not, but this septuagenarian singer kept on playing – and when he was helped back onto the stage, the crowd couldn’t help but cheer him on. 

“I suppose I’m going to have to die pretty soon … but not tonight,” Iggy joked at one point. 

And yet mere minutes before he was belting out the chorus to the Stooges’ ‘Search And Destroy,’ screaming ‘I am a world’s forgotten boy,” and making everyone believe it.

You know, maybe the real fountain of youth was Iggy Pop all along. 

This review also up at RNZ!

It’s only the third week of January, but David Byrne’s dazzling performance at Auckland’s Spark Arena Wednesday night will go down as one of the concert highlights of the year. 

The legendary frontman for the Talking Heads made a triumphant return to Tāmaki Makaurau with his Who Is The Sky? tour, filling the arena with a constantly moving dynamic 12-piece backing band, a life-affirming blast of treasured pop songs and giving us all a much-needed blast of optimism. 

If between wars, attacks and political chaos 2026 has perhaps already seemed like a bit of a bummer, David Byrne was here to make us feel the love again. 

Byrne was once the patron saint of anxiety in the ‘70s and ‘80s, with Talking Heads’ twitchy earworms like “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down The House” capturing the vibe of a generation. These days, the vibe’s all about hope and doing the best you can with what life gives you. 

An energetic two-hour romp, the show was packed with Talking Heads favourites as well as plenty from Byrne’s loose and cheerful new album Who Is The Sky?, and even a few rarities and a cover of Paramore’s “Hard Times” that surprisingly drew one of the biggest cheers of the night. 

From a beautifully moving take on the Heads’ “Heaven” that opened up the show to underrated gems like his 2001 track “Like Humans Do,” it was a survey of an eclectic yet consistent musical career that’s now lasted more than 50 years. 

His American Utopia tour which visited NZ in 2018 was a stunner – if you haven’t seen the concert film by Spike Lee, rush out and do so immediately – reinventing the stage as a swirling kaleidoscope of dance, performance art and endlessly spinning sound. The Who Is The Sky? tour carries on that energy, with the band constantly swirling around the stage dancing, forming drum lines, even occasionally lifting each other up or Byrne himself as they all continued singing and playing. 

A vivid screen lit up the stage with abstract designs and sharp photographic backgrounds ranging from the Moon to Byrne’s own New York apartment. For “T Shirt,” the screens played a variety of fun slogans, including “Auckland kicks ass!” Perhaps the most cathartic moment of the night was when the screen filled up with fiery confrontational images of ICE protests and violence unfolding in America right now during the Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime,” the screens splintering into smaller and smaller images. 

Video screens during concerts are expected now, but the clever deployment of them made them feel like more than just a gimmick, like when Byrne’s apartment began spinning around the dancers, or a witty moment when Byrne’s huge shadow behind him seemed to take on a life of its own. 

The newer songs like the endearingly silly “I Met The Buddha At A Downtown Party” or “My Apartment Is My Friend” may not have gotten the crowd up and dancing as much as the familiar hits, but Byrne and company performed them all with an upbeat charm. 

The Talking Heads highlights kept coming – a colourful romp through “And She Was,” which Byrne introduced as a take on an old friend’s blissful acid trip, or a throbbing “Slippery People” with the four drummers pounding their way across the stage. 

White-haired Byrne is now 73 years old – unbelievably, as he looks 20 years younger – but he’s still full of that contagious energy of nearly 50 years ago, tempered by a wonderfully zen perspective on life and an elder statesman’s authority. He’s still playful and witty, but he’s also been around the block a few times by now. He talked about how Covid lockdowns inspired some of his newer works, and how it reminded him of the importance of human connection, a huge theme in this tour. 

The Talking Heads were always hard to pin down – they were part of the CBGB’s sound but they weren’t precisely punk, they had a lot of funk, and Byrne’s long been interested in world music. Maybe that’s what Byrne’s sound really is when it comes down to it – music for the world. 

At one point, Byrne referred to the growing and cheerfully contrarian notion that love and kindness might be the real punk rock in this age of outrage – and why not? His songs have always married that nervous paranoia with a keen eye for the little moments that bring us joy.

The near-capacity crowd at Spark Arena was a mix of grey-haired fans and sparkling youth, a testament to the sturdy timelessness of Byrne’s songs. Talking Heads have never stopped being cool. They’ve also famously never reunited, so Wednesday’s show was as close as we’ll ever get. 

The encore turned the night into a literal house party, with a gospel-inspired revamp of the excellent American Utopia track “Everybody’s Coming To My House,” followed by – what else? – a barn-burning closing take on “Burning Down The House.” 

“Hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather,” Byrne famously sings in that song, but you know what? On a damp and steamy January night in Auckland, with David Byrne and his 12 mates along for the ride, it somehow felt like everything might just work out after all, as for a few hours, music made the world go round once more. 

This review also published over at RNZ with many terrific photos that aren’t by me!

I did say a while back that 2025 is my year of punk rock and so it’s proved. So I couldn’t pass up seeing one of the first and best punk acts of all time, or at least 75% of the founding members.

It may be 50 years after they first formed, but I finally got a chance to catch The Sex Pistols live with frontman Frank Carter. Turns out it was a punk rock delight!

Here’s my review over at Radio New Zealand:

The Sex Pistols at Auckland Town Hall prove punk is not dead

Anarchy!!

So on Saturday evening I somehow did an Old Man Thing (TM) and put my back out, or nearly out, to the point where I was kind of afraid to move lest my spine shatter into a million delicate pieces. 

And top of my mind was “Oh crap, I hope I can still go to the Amyl and the Sniffers concert Sunday night!”

Fortunately for your hero, a bucket of painkillers and super-hot bath helped and I hobbled into the sold-out Powerstation for the Aussie punk act’s final sold-out New Zealand show. And after 90 minutes or so of amped-up feminist punk anthems and cautiously staying well away from the heaving mosh pit, lo and behold, I felt healed. (OK, I was still a little sore. But you get the picture.)

The Melbourne band has been kicking around for 7-8 years now but really broken through with their excellent 2024 album Cartoon Darkness, and the very NSFW single “Jerkin” which slams toxic masculinity in a grandly profane fashion. 

Watching frontwoman Amy Carter and the band stomp, bounce and shimmy through their propulsive catalog, I kept thinking, “This band should be a household name.” Maybe they will be soon – they’ve got the talent, and the fuck-the-system ethos that 2025 is desperately calling out for. Amy is a whirlwind of motion on stage, bouncing, sticking her tongue out and gobbing a bit in the time-honoured punk fashion, tossing her blond hair around and climbing up the speakers. She has true star power and it’s easy to imagine she’s just at the start of where she’ll go. “How you f—in’ doing?” she asked several times, and we were doing fine. 

Punk still somehow has the bad rap of being angry and violent, but it felt inclusive, particularly important coming the same weekend when a bunch of thug so-called “Christians” violently disrupted Auckland Pride events.

For “Me and the Girls,” Amy welcomed on stage a random chorus of audience members of all shapes and sizes and it felt bloody celebratory. Amyl and the Sniffers’ tense anthem about violence about women, “Knifey,” struck a chord with never-ending misogyny still everywhere you look, while poppy nuggets like “Chewing Gum” and “U Should Not Be Doing That” marry plentiful hooks with a bit of throbbing anarchy.

I wrote more about punk (and Amyl) not too long ago and if anything, the vibe has gotten even more spirit of 1977 in my headspace lately. What a joy, then, to see Amy take the stage with swagger and anger, but also, kindness. Her first words to the audience were if you see someone fall in the mosh pit, pick them up, and don’t touch anyone who doesn’t want to be touched. Don’t be a jerk. It shouldn’t be that hard.

It was a show full of joyful rage against the cartoon darkness we’re all living through. I thought a bit about one of my favourite writers, Tom Robbins, who died just last week at age 92, and his mantra: “My personal motto has always been: Joy in spite of everything.”

There was joy at Amy and the Sniffers Sunday night, in spite of everything. Even my back. 

A couple other great reviews by people who are not me:

Chris Schulz at Boiler Room

The 13th Floor

Emma Gleason at the NZ Herald

People have been saying rock and roll is dead or dying for decades, but in a whirlwind blast through Auckland this week, guitar hero Jack White was determined to prove them all wrong.

After my friend Chris said they blew the roof off the intimate Powerstation Monday night, White and band put on their final show of the year at a filled-to-capacity Auckland Town Hall Tuesday night, pounding through a frenzy of his solo work and hits with the White Stripes.

Somehow, it’s been 25 years this year since that first White Stripes album came out and helped launch the brief garage rock revival of the early 2000s, but White still looks lanky and youthful even as he’s, shockingly, about to hit 50 next year. 

His career has gone through all the configurations – scrappy indie stardom with drummer (and ex-wife) Meg White as the Stripes, top ten records and breaking up the band at the height of success, followed by a series of solo albums that range from rowdy to wildly eccentric, all culminating in this year’s stellar No Name. 

No Name has reminded fans that while White isn’t quite the omnipresent music hitmaker he was a few years back, he’s still one of the best guitar slingers out there and keeping that rock and roll flame burning high. 

Auckland Town Hall’s crowd knew they were in for something special when White kicked off not with one of his standards, but a roaring, simmering take on the Stooges’ underground touchstone “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” For nearly two hours, White and band spun out a stew of garage rock nuggets that dipped into punk, blues and country with ease.

Genial but focused, White stood tall at the town hall, ripping through the music with a few friendly smiles, a little polite banter and a whole lot of windmilling guitar solos (I lost track on how many different guitars he rotated through, but it was at least half a dozen). 

He played several jaunty White Stripes tunes like “My Doorbell” and “Hotel Yorba,” but the band also stretched out for ecstatic takes on bluesy gems like “The Hardest Button to Button” and “Catch Hell Blues.” There were also deep cuts from his other bands The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs, including a fierce take on the latter’s “Steady As She Goes” just before the encore.

“The new stuff” doesn’t always go down well at big shows but ripping and propulsive No Name songs like “That’s How I’m Feeling” and “What’s The Rumpus?” were strong highlights, and the terrific insistent quirky preacher’s rant “Archbishop Harold Holmes” particularly stood out from the encore.

Jack White, at 49, knows who he is and plays with the confidence that decades surviving in the music biz brings. Famously, he’s in love with the retro aesthetic and been known to ban or discourage cellphones from his shows. Fortunately the town hall crowd seemed on the same page and a little less clogged up with the endless glowing screens than some gigs are these days. Sure, you could try to capture the whole thing for your TikTok or you could just put the phone away and bask in the ringing chords.

Of course, the show had to end with perhaps the White Stripes’ biggest hit, the clap-and-stomp along anthem “Seven Nation Army.” To see the jam-packed Auckland Town Hall floor filled with hundreds of fans waving and singing along, the crowd rippling to the music, it felt like rock and roll was not only not about to die, but it might just take over the pop culture world again at any second. 

White’s probably played “Seven Nation Army” thousands of times by now, but the wide grin on his face as the crowd pulsed along made you see this was a man who loves his job. “Merry Christmas,” he shouted during the standing ovation at the end – and to all a good rockin’ night. 

The 90s are having a moment. 

There’s something about this year in particular, where every time I turn around I see headlines blaring the 30th anniversary of things I lived through and considered cultural touchstones in my life – the death of Kurt Cobain, OJ Simpson’s freeway chase, the release of Pulp Fiction, the debut of Friends, whathaveyou. Watching elements of your life turn into nostalgia is always strange. 

And then there’s the Dandy Warhols, Portland, Oregon’s psych-pop cult sensations, who hit Auckland on their 30th anniversary tour this week. How is a band I still kind of think of as new-ish turning thirty, for crying out loud? But the Dandys still put on a spirited and rollicking old-school rock show at Auckland’s Powerstation, even if the band is – cough cough – like yours truly entering their 50s now. 

The Warhols never quite ascended to the level of superstars like Pearl Jam or Green Day, but in some ways that’s their strength – they’ve felt free to play around in the murky area between hummable pop nuggets and sprawling psych-jams.

Live or on record, the Dandys have never quite settled on one signature sound – the impossibly catchy stuff of singles like “Bohemian Like You” and “We Used To Be Friends,” the yearning drone of druggy anthems like “You Were The Last High” and “Godless” or the clattering, Velvet Underground-adjacent jam of “I Love You.”  Most of their hits got a workout in Auckland as well as some twisty new gems from their latest album Rockmaker. (The bouncy single “Summer Of Hate” really captures that caught-in-purgatory 2024 vibe well.)

Courtney Taylor-Taylor still has the easy charm of the pin-up frontman, while terrific drummer Brent DeBoer, guitarist Peter Holmström and keyboardist / bass / singer Zia McCabe all clicked with an effortless precision. The show perhaps lacked that spark of unpredictability and closing without an encore sapped the buzz a bit, but at their best the Dandys cooked up a warm singalong atmosphere with the honed skill that comes with having done this for (gasp) 30 years now. 

The Dandys are always married in the popular imagination with another 1990s band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, whom they costarred with as the subjects of one of the great music documentaries, 2003’s DIG! The documentary follows the steady rise of the Dandys and the clattering collapse of the Massacre and its unhinged frontman Anton Newcombe, and it’s a classic time capsule of 1990s alternative rock struggles. 

Both bands started together and hung out a lot, but while the Dandys courted major labels and huge European crowds, Newcombe’s violent eruptions left that band a heap of “what ifs” in music history. 

Rewatching DIG! again, the music scene has changed so much in the more than 20 years since that documentary came out that it’s like watching an alternative universe – no TikTok, no viral fans, just the hard graft of touring, magazine profiles and both bands constantly worrying about “selling out” (a concept which, as Chuck Klosterman has pointed out, has pretty much ceased to exist these days when everyone’s selling themselves in bite-size video pieces). 

Long after DIG! the Warhols are still steadily driving along and while true music superstardom seems reserved for the Taylors and Beyonces of today, their big NZ/Aus tour is sold out and the Powerstation was jammed with appreciative fans Monday night. The Brian Jonestown Massacre are also still going, to this day, with their own fanbase, but carnage still follows them – they recently ended a New Zealand/Australian tour with a massive brawl on stage – the kind of thing that might have seemed edgy in your 20s but seems kinda sad when the band members are all well into middle age, frankly.

With DIG! it kind of felt like the story was that Anton Newcombe was some underappreciated genius and the Warhols too eager to court fame with their chill professionalism. (A failing of DIG! is we’re constantly told about Anton’s genius without really ever seeing evidence of it.) As I watch it now, Anton’s clear mental illness seems starker and his rambling music honestly lacks the snap and charm of the Dandys’ best tunes. Did the Dandys “sell out” and the Massacre get betrayed by corporate frauds? Or did the Dandys knuckle down and do the hard work and the Massacre succumb to its own pretensions? 

At one point in DIG!, Newcombe rants, “I’m here to destroy this fucked up system. I will do it. That’s why I got the job. I said let it be me; I said use my hands. I will use our strength. Let’s fuckin’ burn it to the ground!”

Meanwhile, the Dandys opened up their Auckland show with the still stinging little satire “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth,” where Courtney croons, “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passe.” And so we all sang along about heroin. The Dandys gently mock the culture that spawned them, and somehow, they’ve survived. Does anyone care about selling out anymore?

Also in that same song: “You never thought you’d get addicted, just be cooler in an obvious way.” 

Part of us is all still about chasing cool, whether it’s the 1990s or the 2020s. Hey hey hey. 

Sometimes I like to listen to depressing songs. Sometimes I like to listen to happy songs.

I’ve got my Cure, my Joy Division, my Depeche Mode and Leonard Cohen. And they’re great when I’m in the mood for it. 

But other times I just want a happy sound – and there’s few more unabashedly happy bands out there in the world than Japan’s Shonen Knife. An all-girl band who marry Ramones thrash-pop with Beach Boys-style wistful harmonies all twisted together with a healthy dose of colourful Osaka charm, they’re a delight to see live. 

Heartbreak? Depression? Shonen Knife don’t do that. They sing about their favourite foods, cute animals, and the silly happy things that, in the end, kind of make this life worth living. And they do it while kicking out some thrashing power chords and rocking with incredible style, dressed in often matching colour-coordinated outfits that seem retro and futuristic at the same time. 

For a band that’s been going for more than 40 years, since the women were all teenagers, Shonen Knife still make a tremendous racket, headbanging hair and all. I’ve been a fan since they broke through a bit in the US in the alternative music-ruled 1990s with celebrity fans like Nirvana and Sonic Youth. They’ve carried on for a pile of albums, rarely altering their sunny, hook-filled sonic approach, and they’re all the better for that. 

Sisters Naoko and Atsuko Yamano have been the core of the band for most of its long run, with excellent drummer Risa Kawano on sticks these days. I’m old and creaky and so I’m kind of out of it with the hip pop music the youth listen to these days, but the appeal of a good cheery song is universal. 

The packed gig at Auckland’s underground Whammy Bar was probably the first time I’d been in a crowded basement club environment since the pre-pandemic era, and it was kind of invigorating to feel that sweaty, borderline uncomfortable shared experience, for a little while. 

Song titles like “Sweet Candy Power,” “Afternoon Tea” and “Banana Chips” give you the overall vibe of a Shonen Knife show. I can’t think of too many rock gigs I’ve been to where the audience is led in an energetic singalong chant of “Candy! Candy!” 

In a fun interview over at my day job RNZ, Naoko said, “I like to make people happy through music and if our audience or listeners get happy through our music, it’s my happiness too.”

Perhaps it’s just my mood in the very stressful vibe the 2020s have proven to have, but sharing a little happiness no longer seems as corny as it might have once to me. 

In a world as askew as this there’s something blissful about celebrating the little things, whether it’s a funny-looking jellyfish, wasabi being hot or one Shonen Knife song whose chorus is simply, “it’s a nice day!”

And you know what, sometimes it is. 

I missed seeing the Ramones live. And the Clash, and the Sex Pistols. So I sure as heck wasn’t going to miss The Damned, one of punk’s pioneering acts and just about the last great band still going strong from their peers.

Many of my best friends were punks and goths when I was a young wide-eyed lad, but I always felt sort of punk-adjacent. Paradoxically, the older I’ve gotten the more appreciation I have for the unrestrained energy and fury of a good punk tune, and on a rainy Friday night at Auckland’s Powerstation there was nowhere better to be than hanging out with the Damned. Far from some vapid nostalgia effort, it turned out to be the best gig I’ve been to in quite a few years now. 

The Damned sprouted from the UK in the class of 1976. They were the first British punk band to release a single, the unforgettable ‘New Rose,’ to release a studio album and to tour the US. But while their debut Damned Damned Damned was hardcore, over the years they branched out into goth rock and psychedelia, perhaps offending narrow-minded punk purists but impressing those of us who like a band that continues to evolve. 

Even as they’re pushing their late sixties now, they still make a dynamic picture on stage. Lead singer Dave Vanian and guitar guru Captain Sensible are the only two of the original line-up left, but they’re more than enough to summon up the band’s spirit with a solid group beside them. Vanian was instantly the most stylish man in the room with a bespoke suit, fedora and sunglasses, strutting and crooning in his distinctive baritone, while the good Captain, mugging and smiling and wearing his trademark striped shirt, feels like a Beano comics character come to life. 

Punk could be angry and violent, but there’s none of that bad energy in the Damned 2023. For nearly two hours, they pounded their way through classic punk and impressive new songs and reminded you why they’ve endured long after the Clash and Ramones are gone. Sure, there was a churning mosh pit (with a lot of bruised-looking guys my age who you know are hurting today) and even a stage-dive attempt, but it was a place of good vibes. 

A big chunk of the set was devoted to the Damned’s brand new album Darkadelic, a rather bold move when you know that most of the crowd was really there for the older hits. But having listened to Darkadelic a lot the past week or two, it’s actually pretty terrific. It doesn’t try to be some hip rock release from 2023, but more of a summing up of all that the band has built. The Damned gather up their considerable powers honed over the decades into catchy numbers like ‘The Invisible Man,’ the grand harmonies of ‘Bad Weather Girl,’ the comic menace of ‘Beware of the Clown’ or the swoony dark ‘Wake The Dead.’ The new songs all navigate the tricky business of slotting right in among the Damned’s better known work, and they were terrific live. 

Of course, though, the classic punk bashers are what the crowd is there for, and the final section of the show was an unrelenting blast from ‘Born To Kill’ to ‘Love Song’ straight through two encores and concluding with an utterly fiery stomp through ‘New Rose,’ the one that started it all. It’s still a lightning bolt of a song, and the crowd bobbed up and down like pogo sticks, old geezers like me and young girls born decades after the ‘New Rose’ single was released, and by gosh it was fun. 

Punk is momentum, and catharsis, and lord knows we could always use a little more of that in these stressful times. Pound past the angst and the ugliness and uncertainty and just be there. Even if I can’t hear so good the next day, it’s worth it.

The Damned have followed their own quirky path for nearly five decades now, from rapid-fire punk to brooding goth to stadium rock anthems. They aren’t the young men in the ‘New Rose’ video almost 50 years ago, but somehow they’re still nothing but themselves.

What could be more punk rock than that? 

(Here’s ‘New Rose’ performed more than 40 years apart, in Wellington and in the 1970s video. They still got it!)