Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Positively George Street by Matthew Bannister Matthew Bannister (musician) Matthew Bannister (born 1962) is a New Zealand musician, journalist, and academic. Originally from Dunblane in Scotland he moved to New Zealand with his family when he was 17. Contents. Musical career. After a stint as a teenager in the late '70's playing rhythm guitar in working men's clubs and other unlicensed venues with Gavin Keen (lead guitar), Graeme Dooley (drums) and Spike Quinn (bass) in 60's covers band Feedback. In 1981, while he was a student at the University of Otago in Dunedin, he co-founded the band Sneaky Feelings, for which he was lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. After the band dissolved in 1989, Bannister moved to Auckland, where he formed Dribbling Darts and worked as a journalist and reviewer. Both bands had music released on the Flying Nun record label. He has also worked briefly with The Mutton Birds. He released a solo album, Moth , in 2007 as One Man Bannister. In 2008 he released an album with The Weather called Aroha Ave , and in 2011 a self-titled album with The Changing Same. Positively George Street. In the mid-1990s, Bannister began writing a memoir about his experiences as a musician in the 1980s Dunedin scene. Partly, this was a response to concerns he had over being "written out" of New Zealand's indie music history: "I published a book . about Sneaky Feelings because I felt we were being written out of the label's history and indeed out of indie history, for example our non-appearance in various articles about Flying Nun, in indie discographies, and in local . rock polls". [1] This book, Positively George Street , appeared in 1999. Academic career. In 1998, Bannister returned to full-time study as a PhD candidate in the Department of Film, TV and Media Studies at the University of Auckland, graduating in 2003. His thesis was entitled White Man's Soul: Pakeha masculinities in popular music of New Zealand / Aotearoa . A revised version of the thesis appeared as a book, White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Guitar Rock , in the Ashgate Popular Music and Folk Series in 2006. He now works at the Waikato Institute of Technology (WINTEC) as Theory/Post Graduate advisor in the School of Media Arts. Personal life. Both Bannister's parents were academics working at Otago University. Bannister is married to Dribbling Darts/The Weather bandmate Alice Bulmer. [2] Johnstone's World. In 1981, Christchurch record store manager Roger Shepherd launched Flying Nun, a label that was to change the face of the NZ music industry forever. Among the labels first signings was Dunedin Band Sneaky Feelings, a guitar driven rock/pop ensemble who featured on the labels second release, The Dunedin EP . They went on to record 3 albums for the Flying Nun- Send You in 1983, Sentimental Education 1986 and 1988s Hard Love Stories . Sentimental Education was an anomaly for a label that had built an international reputation for its lo-fi alternative sound. Multi-layered and finely crafted, the album was a critical and commercial failure that earned the ire of the godfather of the Flying Nun scene Toy Loves Chris Knox who told the band – “I’ve heard your album, and it stinks”. Knox believed that Sneaky Feelings brand of “bland and wimpy soft rock” had no place on the label. But he completely missed the point. Label mate The Verlaine’s Graeme Downes remembers: “To like the Sneaky’s you had to appreciate the songs first and foremost and had to be prepared to forego all the other aspects that are usually the hallmark of the successful rock and roll package.” Sneaky Feeling took their name from an Elvis Costello song and drew their influence from artists as diverse as Burt Bacharach, 60s soul, Fairport Convention, the Kinks, the Hollies, Motown and The Beatles, Dave Brubeck and Tom Verlaine. The players were David Pine (vocals, guitar), Martin Durrant (vocals, drums), John Kelcher (vocal and bass ) and Matthew Bannister (vocals, guitar), who writes in his book Positively George Street, a biographical history of Flying Nun: We were a bunch of wooses, wimps, tossers, MOR bourgeois-buggering pop-picking schlock-sucking wet-as-wankers. We liked pop music. Bannister was 17 when his family migrated from Dunblane Scotland to Dunedin NZ, and he came ashore with a dream, to score a recording contract and make finely crafted and heartfelt albums like the ones that had thus far inspired him. He didn’t have to wait long finding himself at the right place in the right time as he did. While the first Sneaky’s album, Send You , was largely a David Pine driven affair, the next album was Bannister’s baby. The band had taken on Jeremy Freeman as their manager. A sharp operator, he had secured the band a series of lucrative gigs which allowed them a healthy recording budget for their next album, Sentimental Education . The album was recorded at Mascot Studios in Auckland and cost $13,000, a considerable sum of money for a local indie band at the time. It took two weeks to record with a few extra days for mixing. It was recorded by Victor Grbic with some assistance from Phil Yule. Bannister: “We didn’t want it to be like Send You which was basically recorded live over a 3 day period. We wanted to take a little more time and move away from that albums guitar driven sound. We also wanted expand our musical pallet with the addition of brass, piano and violins.” In particular the band were keen to add a Hammond organ to their sound. Finding the synthesiser organs unsatisfactory they set about seeking out the real thing which they borrowed for the duration of the recording process. The Hammond added its particular gift of melody and harmony to the Sneaky’s sound, allowing the band to fully flesh out the ‘rousing’ emotional notes that are a hallmark of Sentimental Education. Bannister: “We wanted to pursue a layered recorded process, building up the tracks rather than banging them out. We wanted to experiment, and like the Beatles, we wanted to progress rather than make the same music over and over.” At the time the band was listening to Burt Bacharach and wanted emulate the sophisticated arrangements and unusual time signatures that were a hallmark of his music. Sentimental Education wasn’t at all what Flying Nun fans were expecting. Bannister: “The main movement then in alternative music was toward loud and nasty and the Sneaky’s were moving away from that.” Well received overseas, especially by the English music press, the reaction back home was “cool” to say the least. Bannister: “It was disappointing for the band but we were artists who weren’t afraid to experiment and we couldn’t expect everything we did to be successful. One of the things about Sentimental Education was that I wrote most of the material, it was a heavy burden for me and because it didn’t go down well with our audience I took it rather hard, but I dealt with it as you do. It seemed that people preferred David’s stuff to mine.” As for me, I was 24 years old when Sentimental Education came out, the same age as Matthew, and we shared, as I learned through the course of our interview, a remarkably similar taste in music which I guess accounts for my continued attraction to the album. Back in the day I was a staunch supporter of local music and spent all my spare cash on every new release. I loved what I was hearing but nothing touched me in the way that the Sneaky’s music did. Sentimental Education was a complex record of seriously emotive pop songs that appealed to my musical sensibilities. I played it over and over and knew every song by heart. As for the Sneaky’s, they made one more album in 1989 but by then they had run out of steam. For an epilogue I return to Bannister’s book Positively George Street: It wasn’t a very Beatles ending. There was no messy divorce. No one sued anyone. David [Pine, singer-songwriter with Sneaky Feelings] and I didn’t exchange put-downs on vinyl. Our record company didn’t drop us, but then they had never really taken us on in the first place. It was more like the Transit van on the road between Dunedin andTimaru, coasting to a standstill in the silent landscape. Bannister continued making music with his bands The Dribbling Darts of Love and The Weather and continues to do so with The Changing Same and as a solo artist – One Man Bannister. He also did a stint with Muttonbirds. These days he works as a thesis supervisor at the Media Arts Department at WINTEC in Hamilton. Pine spent some time with Dunedin band Death Ray Cafe and is currently NZs High Commissioner to Malaysia. Kelcher played in The South Tonight and recently stood as a Green Party candidate for the Christchurch seat of Ilam and as for Martin Durrant? He graduated University with a Phd, that’s all I know. Positively George Street by Matthew Bannister. Positively George Street a personal history of Sneaky feelings and the Dunedin Sound. Bannister, Matthew. Published by Reed (1999) Used - Softcover Condition: Very Good - Near Fine. Quantity available: 1. 207p Fading spine VG - Near Fine With illustrations, a book about the 'Dunedin Sound', Sneaky Feelings, and its effect on NZ Rock music Size: 4to - over 9�" - 12" tall. Reed, 1999. Soft Cover. Condition: Very Good - Near Fine. First Edition. Positively George Street: Sneaky Feelings and the Dunedin Sound Bannister, M. Bannister, Matthew. Published by Reed New Zealand (1999) Used - Softcover Condition: Used: Very Good. Quantity available: 1. BOOK SHOWS SOME WEAR WITH SLIGHT CREASING TO BOTTOM-RIGHT OF FRONT COVER. STILL AN EXCELLENT READING/REFERENCE COPY. CONTENT CLEAN AND TIDY THROUGHOUT. **SENT FIRST CLASS MAIL FROM UK STOCK.** "Always choose Readerz3, the best deal around for YOU and me!" 21. Reed New Zealand, 1999. Condition: Used: Very Good. Tell us what you're looking for and once a match is found, we'll inform you by e-mail. Can't remember the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Eye of the Taika. Eye of the Taika: New Zealand Comedy and the Films of Taika Waititi is the first book-length study of comic film director and media celebrity Taika Waititi. Author Matthew Bannister analyses Waititi’s feature films and places his other works and performances—short films, TV series, advertisements, music videos, and media appearances—in the fabric of popular culture. The book’s thesis is that Waititi’s playful comic style draws on an ironic reading of NZ identity as Antipodean camp, a style which reflects NZ’s historic status as colonial underdog. The first four chapters of Eye of the Taika explore Waititi’s early life and career, the history of New Zealand and its film industry, the history of local comedy and its undervaluation in favor of more "serious" art, and ethnicity in New Zealand comedy. Bannister then focuses on Waititi’s films, beginning with Eagle vs Shark (2007) and its place in "New Geek Cinema," despite being an outsider even in this realm. Bannister uses Boy (2010) to address the "comedian comedy," arguing that Waititi is a comedic entertainer before being a director. With What We Do in The Shadows (2014), Bannister explores Waititi’s use of the vampire as the archetypal immigrant struggling to fit into mainstream society, under the guise of a mockumentary. Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), Bannister argues, is a family-friendly, rural-based romp that plays on and ironizes aspects of Aotearoa/New Zealand identity. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) launched Waititi into the Hollywood realm, while introducing a Polynesian perspective on Western superhero ideology. Finally, Bannister addresses Jojo Rabbit (2019) as an "anti-hate satire" and questions its quality versus its topicality and timeliness in Hollywood. By viewing Waititi’s career and filmography as a series of pranks, Bannister identifies Waititi’s playful balance between dominant art worlds and emergent postcolonial innovations, New Zealand national identity and indigenous Aotearoan (and Jewish) roots, and masculinity and androgyny. Eye of the Taika is intended for film scholars and film lovers alike. Johnstone's World. One Man Bannister – The Matthew Bannister Story. Matthew Bannister (born 1962) arrived in Dunedin with an itch. His head was filled with dreams of The Beatles, The Kinks and Fairport Convention and a vague notion of making music like they did, big bold albums defined by great playing and lofty musical experiments, songs drenched with harmony sitting atop soaring melodies and chorus’s that hooked and wouldn’t let go. Fortunately for Matthew he was at exactly the right place and time because a musical revolution was about to sweep over Dunedin that would make that kind of dream possible for those so inclined. Scotsman Bannister is 17 years old and swimming the unfamiliar cultural waters of Otago Boys High. On his way to join the schools guitar club he walks into David Pine. Pine points to Bannister’s guitar case and they start talking music. Inspired they are spurred into action decide to form a band but first Pine needs to learn the guitar so while that is happening Bannister joins an established covers band called Feedback. While the music is not exactly Bannister’s thing, he finds in bands leader Gavin Keen something of a mentor and in the band a suitable education. A little while later Bannister and Pine, now studying at Otago University, put together a band called itself Sneaky Feelings. On a trip to Christchurch they come to the attention of Roger Sheppard who invites them to record for his fledgling Flying Nun label. They contribute to the labels legendary 1982 Dunedin Double E.P (alongside The Clean, The Verlaines and The Stones) and over the following 6 years record and release 6 singles and 3 albums of original material. Of the three albums it is 1986’s ‘Sentimental Education’ that gives us the best portrait of Bannister as the young artist, songwriter/arranger. The bands first LP 1983’s ‘Send You’ had been driven by David Pine and was a great success both commercially and critically. For album number two Pine stepped back and Bannister up. Contributing half the songs, drafting the arrangements and directing recording process, this was Bannister’s baby. Drawing deeply from his love of sophisticated pop music, this album was less Beatles (Bannister’s musical touchstone) and more Burt Bacharach, a composer Bannister had long admired and whose style had coloured Bannister’s musical palette as much as anything he had taken to heart. The Bacharachian influence abounds throughout ‘Sentimental Education’, an affair filled out with strings, brass, lush harmonies and Hammond organ, it was more Brill Building than Flying Nun and in that context went down like a lead balloon with many of the labels inner circle who had nothing but contempt for The Sneaky’s thoughtful and ‘wet’ approach to music. Chris Knox (the labels conscience and spiritual leader) famously said to the band of the album as it was being prepared for release “I’ve heard your album and it sucks.” This statement combined with poor sales and middling reviews (from the local press, the British and European press were more enthusiastic) stalked Bannister for a long time after reinforcing his doubts and uncertainties and confirming his belief that the audience preferred Pines words and melodies to his own. Bannister took it hard. Sneaky Feeling: Husband House. History has been much kinder to ‘Sentimental Education’ and for other Bannister penned Sneaky’s songs notably ‘Husband House’ which the subject of a loving article written by Canvas Magazines deputy editor Greg Dixon. The album has been written about a number of times over the years by a variety of people who had fallen in love with it when it was released and had never quite gotten over it. I was one of those and in 2015 tracked Bannister down and recorded an Audio Documentary with him that explored the album’s creation and aftermath. After we had finished the documentary I asked Matthew what he had been doing since The Sneaky’s parked the van up in 1989. He pulled out his i-Pod and over a few beers dazzled me with tracks from his post-Sneaky’s catalogue. The Sneaky’s last hurrah was a rather desultory 1989 European adventure that left Bannister washed up in Rennes France, broke, bereft and alone. He limped back to NZ and got a job at the Auckland University Library where he met multi-instrumentalist Alice Bulmer and found a new lease on life. Alice replaced David Pine as Matthew’s main muse and together with Alan Gregg they formed The Dribbling Darts of Love, later shortened to the Dribbling Darts (Bannister, a Shakespearian scholar, lifted the name from the great mans play ‘Measure for Measure’). Between 1989 and 1993 The Darts released two albums, 2 E.Ps (through Flying Nun) and scored a minor chart hit with their 1999 single ‘Hey Judith’. The Dribbling Darts Of Love: Hey Judith. The Dribbling Darts faded and music generally took a backseat as Bannister and Bulmer focused their attention on raising and supporting a family. Over the next few years Bannister worked as a journalist/music reviewer, checked the accuracy of crossword puzzles for the Women’s Weekly and sub-edited at Rip It Up, scrapping together a living however and wherever he could. In the mid-1990’s Bannister decided to write a book about the Sneaky’s and get some stuff of his chest while setting the record straight. “I felt we were being written out of the label’s history and indeed out of indie history, for example our non-appearance in various articles about Flying Nun, in indie discographies, in local rock polls and worst of all, our exclusion from 1991 Flying Nun 10 year retrospective Getting Older”. ‘Positively George Street’ was published and released in 1999 to rave reviews. Part musical autobiography part historical account it examines place and time with irony, humour and at times a measured but withering acerbic fire that is squarely aimed at Bannister’s critics within Flying Nun, notably Chris Knox. There is a strong case for marking ‘Positively George Street’ as one of NZ’s best musical biographies, but whatever that case, for Bannister the writing was an exorcism that put to rest the ghosts of the past. Suitably set free Bannister returned to University to study for his PhD (in media) graduating in 2003. His thesis later appeared as his second published book ‘White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Guitar Rock’. He otherwise filled out the decade playing lead guitar for The Mutton Birds (1999). 13 years after the last Dribbling Darts last release Bannister, Bulmer and their new band The Weather went into the studio with producer Ed Cake. The result was ‘Aroha Ave’, a labour of love whose long gestation came close to being financially ruinous. (Bannister describes working with the obsessive Cake both as joyous and as an exasperation he would not ever care to repeat). The album was completed in 2006 did not see the light of day until 2008 by which time the Bannister’s had moved to Hamilton where Matthew had secured a job as a Thesis Supervisor at WINTEC’s Media Arts School. With a small financial grant in hand, he had the album mastered at the WINTEC recording studio by Zed Brooks who also polished up a home made solo album called Moth (released under the moniker One Man Bannister). Both albums received startlingly good reviews and while they did not exactly reignite his career, they certainly lifted his profile. The Weather: Aroha Ave. By this stage the various members of The Weather had dispersed about the world so Bannister set to work on a new project called The Changing Same who released their self-titled debut album in 2011. One of Bannister’s ongoing musical themes concerns ‘place’ (a theme that is partially informed by his fear of being alone and rootless) heard in tracks like the Sneaky’s ‘Husband House’, The Weathers ‘Aroha Ave’ and most recently with The Changing Same’s ‘Hillcrest’, a descriptive song of the Hamilton suburb where Bannister lives and a song that has become something of minor city anthem alongside Chris Thompson’s ‘Hamilton’ but unlike Thompson who states ‘ Greatest little town in New Zealand / But I’d do any thing to get away,’ Bannister has discovered a convivial and easy going city that suits both his needs and temperament. *(Hamilton has produced two musicians named Chris Thompson. The one mentioned here is a folk singer, not the one who became vocalist for Manfred Mann). The Changing Same: Make Up My Mind. In 2013 Bannister watched with interest as his students tackled a recording project where they were assigned classic albums and asked to re- record them. One of the albums was The Beatles ‘Revolver’ which proved too difficult for those concerned and was abandoned but not before it had set Bannister’s creative mind into motion. He decided to have a crack at it himself and the result was released later that year on Powertool Records to universal acclaim. Peaking at number 16 on the national album charts, One Man Bannister’s ‘Evolver’ became his most successful post Sneaky’s endeavour, both critically and commercially. Bannister: “You release something original and the response is ‘Ho Hum’ but then you say ‘I have reinterpreted the Beatles’ and everyone is interested.” The irony has not escaped an artist who has long struggled for recognition but there was an upside. On the back of that success he was approached by boutique German cassette label Thokei Tapes who released the third One Man Bannister album ‘Birds and Bees’ in 2015. One Man Bannister: Tomorrow Never Knows (Evolver) Bannister played ‘Evolver’ in its entirety at the 2104 Hamilton Gardens Festival accompanied by a band and a 12-piece string section. I was a little late arriving for the performance but as I walked up the hill toward the outdoor show I was struck by the lush rich sound drifting through the warm Hamilton night. By the time I arrived on the scene the audience was lapping up the magic Bannister was conjuring. He was mesmerising, a towering figure belting out the tunes of his youth, the very songs that had set him his musical course so many decades before and you might say he had come full circle, but he hadn’t, not quite. The full circle came with the news that Sneaky Feeling had reunited and recorded an album of new material (due for release sometime in late 2016 alongside a planned re-issue of Sentimental Education). One Man Bannister: A Boy And A Girl (The Birds and Bees)