Part 12: The Mushroom Ball, Colin’s death
The Mushroom Ball is a bit of a legend now (that is, something that happened long ago to some old cunts…a bit like ‘Troy’). This covers them all. Organised by Wafer it brought together bands from around the country with NP bands for a night of HC/ Punk rock and debauchery fueled by Mushrooms, booze and other substances. The substance abuse was just part of it though. It was about the bands man! And the kids! I went to all but the 1st one and the non-official one (featuring Succubus and some other cunts) out in the wops years later.
Picture Punkfest with more skinheads, punkers, metallers, freaks and HC mostly dosed up to the eyeballs on cheap, free or stolen booze and the aforementioned drugs but without the politics I guess. We’d all spike our hair up to the max and don our finest rags and head along in our groups to mingle with the out of towners and slamdance the night away to such fine sounds as The Manson Family (I’m sure they played….It’s all a bit hazy and this list is from all the Balls), Sticky Filth (of course, I knew I should have kept the posters), Toxic Avengers, Kitsch, Afterbirth, Tension, Wretched Skinny, Monkey Puzzle, Reverend Stinkfinger, Casualty, The Warners, Nefarious, Cleopatra Grip, Sadius Fiend, Goat Fucking Nun Rapers…shitloads….Fuck, I can’t really remember who played! Oh, Dead Centre and Snort played one 1 (ask ‘TFC’ who played….my brain’s are not working). I do recall one I went too quite well. I was working at the time and came home to find a keg party going on and a horde of AK’ers, Wellingtonians and Hamscum boozing it up at my house. We cruised down and I dropped some mushies opposite the cop-shop then cruised in and got fucked up. That’s where that memory ends….We’d play soccer the next day, NP vs the rest of NZ and usually make a week of it getting drunk with our mates from around @-o-Terroroa.
One Ball, this huge Skinhead came up to me with a shit-eating grin on his face….I thought ‘Fuck, I’m gone, he’s gonna fuck me up bigtime…but he held out his hand and said “Your Slammy?! Bron sez to say Hello!” …Farmer, he was a damn good mate of my exes. He died that night…Strange, meet some guy who knows a mate, 6 hours later he’s gone, just like that. Oi Oi Farmer! I heard they took his ashes back to Dunedin and mixed them in with a cauldron of mushies and drank them. Crazy Southers!
They was good…a fucking legend. That would have been the height of NP’s ‘power’ (guffaw) 89-93?
Our keg parties continued. One day I was off to pick up the kegs in Spleens car but couldn’t fit my mohawk in, I hit the accelerator as I was trying to look over the dash, squash my ‘hawk’ in and plowed into a tree in the drive….oooopssss…a bit of rough car surgery and we were off on another night of puking punk rock/ HC madness!
I had a competition in my zine to see who had the longest mohawk in NZ, the prize being 1 dozen beers. I won! (Of course it was rigged…I didn’t know anyone else with a 13″inch mohawk) Colin’s entry won the beer but he wasn’t gonna be around long enough to collect it…
Dudley Road split up and we moved into NP (after having a Demo-party with the landlord’s permission…I caught on fire from a dodgy WW2 german lighter I had in my pocket…bloody krauts…and melted my flatmate’s camera that her folks had bought her for graduation… I was broke for weeks paying her back).
The locals breathed a sigh of relief once we left Inglewood. One day when we were being raided by the pigs one of the cops asked why we had moved to Inglewood and why don’t we fuck off back to the cities? Slug replied, “Nah mate, we like it here, we’re staying!”…We would of stayed just to fuck them off. They hit Dudley Rd. heaps! Hey, those bottle stores were liberated by forces unknown to us! I lost track of how many times they raided.
By now we were drinking at The White Hart. A notorious biker pub we made it our own thru persaverance and our usual ‘fuck you’ attitude. It took us about a year before the bikers finally accepted we weren’t gonna go to another pub and stopped hassling us. The back of the Hart would be full of punkers/ HC/ skins from Thursday onwards (I even had a bar-tab there!) One time I heard a bigass biker handcuffed Blowfly to a bar table and kept on making him drink, the bastard wouldn’t let Blowfly go for a piss. I guess BF just pissed himself (he was a scumpunk in the finest GG Allin tradition…we’d invite him round for dinner only if he’d have a bath once he got to our place). I guess it was around 88-89 I met a young punk/ hc kid called Nigel. He seemed pretty cool for a 15? year old dude.
One gig at the Omata Road hall turned ugly. Sticky Filth were playing for the local biker pres’s daughter’s birthday or something. The atmosphere was strange, violence was breaking out inside the hall. There were hordes of people outside just drinking but not coming in. Some girl I knew came in and said one of our mates had been beaten up. So, Richard Toxic, Craig Toxic, Colin Toxic, Shane, Slug and myself cruised out to see what was up. A mate of ours was on the ground bleeding and this Waitara Maori (there was rivalry and many fights between NP and Waitara) said “Where’s a bottle? I’m gonna bottle this cunt!” (verbatim). I said “Fuck off man, you’ve fucked him up already!” Next thing I heard was Slug yelling “What did you say about punk rockers?!”…Fuck…That was it…I yelled out to Richard to ‘grab all the punks and skins from inside’. Next thing, we were getting showered by beer bottles and running for the hall! Some Waitara scum jumped on me and I dragged him back to the hall door punching his stupid head in. As I got there, bottles flew at me and I raised my arm to cover my head. One broke on my left elbow and shattered on the leather I was wearing. I got inside and we slammed the doors (Shane was trapped outside!) Luckily, I had told the GF to go home earlier cos as we got inside some guy sucker punched Slug and dropped him.
Dave (old SF drummer) was yelling for everyone to ‘tool up!’ and we grabbed wine bottles, whatever was to hand and bailed out the doors yelling like banshees! Needless to say, we fucked them up big time…They started it …we finished it. Fuck em…After all the ultra-violence had gone down I knew we’d better bail before the cops arrived so gathering up some crew we left. The cops were sitting round the corner too scared to go down the street! We got back to my GF’s and I went into the bathroom to check the damage. Blood was running down my left arm so I pulled the leather off, surprised to feel it soaked in blood! I cleaned my arm off and the Crimson shit started squirting out of my elbow! Wicked! I yelled out to Belinda to ‘check this out’ and once she saw the red she said ‘errr you better go to hospital man…” “you reckon?”…”yeah…quickly…”. Shane was injured too so we went up to the Med base where Colin was as well! Checking our wounds, we all had the same! A cut on our left elbows and a cut above our eyes! Brotherhood! Yeeehawww! I declined anaesthetic (being drunk and adrenalined out) and watched the medic poke around fishing out bits of glass (I like gore…). Hard fuckin core! A damn good night. After that, the Waitaras left us alone pretty much. I did get busted tho for ‘Wilful Damage’ for the car we kicked in. Ah well…
One night (January 19, 1990) we were at a party in the middle of town. It was great! I had my Sapporo 3L container full of wine and all the crew was there. Someone came in and said some skins were fighting around the corner. ‘Ah, Skins, they can handle themselves…’ a couple of minutes later someone else was ‘hey, Colin’s in a fight round the corner’. Shane and I bailed as fast as we could round to Devon Street. We got there…the paramedics were trying to resuscitate Colin….next thing…the medic shook his head and got up…Colin was dead….
We went back and broke the news to the crew…Colin was dead.
