Posted on Aug 13, 2007
NEW ZEALAND
Charlie (Panther), Claire, and me. Photo by Blink, full-size on my Flickr.
NEW! Video down below!
Fucking New Zealand! Let's start with this series of photos:
Auckland: We were met at the airport by a very interesting man named Matthew Crawley, a national celebrity here in New Zealand, mostly for his radio show on 95bFM and his TV show on Alt TV, but also famous for his devastating good looks. We vibed with this man almost immediately, especially after he made a Very Good Joke about getting us a discount on our hotel room based on the fact that we'd be sharing it with "dead people." Just watch the promo for his music video show:
At first I was afraid that no one was coming to the show in Auckland, then all of a sudden there were something like 250 people out of nowhere. Here's a photo of Claire and I playing The Summer Song, right after the monitor caught fire. This was my second experience (so far) with speakers catching on fire during the show (see YACHT on a yacht). I thought there was a hidden fog machine at first but once I caught wind of the actual smoking speaker smell, I understood what was going on. No worry, the show went on and ruled! Thank you Matthew, bFM, and Auckland!
Here's a photo gallery of the YACHT show from Alt TV's Cheese on Toast host Andrew Tidball. Here's a photo gallery of the Panther show, too!
Wellington: That's when we met Blink. Blink runs something called a low hum, which used to be a zine, then graduated to a magazine, then became a magazine with a CD, then toured bands, and now tours bands and puts on a yearly festival called CAMP A LOW HUM that takes place in the summer, which is February here. We played a nice and small show at the San Francisco Bathhouse and ate one of the more amazing meals I've eaten in my life, at a place called Aunty Mena's that's right next to the club on Cuba street. I had the vegan chicken Laksa and it destroyed. I wish I could eat this every night.
Christchurch: THE SOUTH ISLAND. Blink is pretty much the only person that tours bands on the south island of New Zealand. I'm not even sure if anyone I know has even been here, let alone toured here, before us. It feels real special! We took a ferry from Wellington and drove four hours from Picton and finally arrived in Christchurch. Blink was so good at making sure we saw all that New Zealand has to offer in the way of its natural beauty. Did you look at those photos up there? MAN!
In Christchurch we met some incredibly hospitable people. Thank you so much Chris and James for letting us stay with you for so many days! Thanks to Frase and Bri, a dance pop band and all around good people, for taking us around and eating vegan junk with us! We also met a group of kids that were so pumped on our show that they drove five hours to Dunedin to see our show there, even though we added a second last minute Christchurch show the day after! Check out Chris' photoset of the Christchurch show on Flickr.
Dunedin: It is very much winter here. We had heard that Dunedin was a weird place with lots of dudes on acid, but it turned out to be a pretty normal college town, including a pretty large amount of drunken kids that took over the main strip after dark, much like zombies. The show was at a small cafe and literally every single person at the show was dancing during both the YACHT and Panther sets. It was super, super nice. For some reason I started off a couple of the New Zealand shows with talking. Lots of talking. Chats. The Dunedin show was no exception. I started right off with a Q & A and got some questions, one of which was asking my estimated life expectancy for people in Portland. My answer was 80.
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