Part 4: I meet a girl
The Big House was cool as. The people were mostly laidback, tho the Clown in the bach out the back was a bit weird (he was a clown..it was his job…). Kurtis also had a wicked Alternative Tentacles collection as well so I plowed into listening to that. My fave was ‘Pepe the Sailor’. We were printing and selling patches in Cook Street market, Kerry Terrorways shop (he was always great to us!) and to our mates. We made a killing (well 110$) selling Anti-Apartheid patches at the HART marches that we stuck back into materials and a bit of food. We went on an ANZUS countermarch (we were the Anti-ANZUS side…). Only 10 or so Pro-Anzus marchers showed up to their march! Compared with the 20-25 or so Punks that showed up on our side. The cops let us march up the footpath on Queen street but kept us away from the other side by making us stop at lights. We sold patches at the Nagasaki/Hiroshima memorial day and presented one to a survivor of Nagasaki.
We started doing fanzines (Kurtis had made a few before) called ”Blind Attack’ and another one he’d done called ‘Urban Indians’. There were a number of gigs I went to featuring The Morning Horns, Dead Image (Warners). Shows at the Uni hall and I would still go to The Venue now and then. One day when I was off to pick up screen printing stuff in Newmarket I had the strange feeling people were looking at me. Everywhere I went people would look. Not the normal ‘scummy crustie’ look either. On the bus to Newmarket the person in front of me asked if this was me on the cover of the paper… Fuck me! On the front page was a piccie of me at a protest march! Eeeek! We also hung around the Unemployed Workers Rights Centre a bit and gave them some 5 day old homebrew (not yet ready but we all drank it anyway!). Some of us got the shits…some of us were constipated.
Then one day Kurtis and I were sitting out on the porch, when this straight looking chap walked in and asked if there were any punks living here. Kurtis, ever the opportunist, said ‘Yeap! That’s us!’ (tho I’d like to think my mohawk and Kurtis’s twin mohawks sorta gave it away) The journos name was Bruce Connew and he wanted to do an article on us. Kurtis worked out the details and even tho no money exchanged hands for the next couple of weeks Bruce followed us around taking pics and shouting us food.
He took masses of pics and gave us a stack to keep (which unfortunately are now gone). We also did an ad for Levis and an article in ‘Charlie’ magazine (:roll:) about punks.
Around this time I met some punks from Manurewa (Semp, who now plays in Horror Story) and some who had moved up from the Hawkes Bay and who were later to become part of the NPHC crew (Slug, Sid). Also there was Phil, who lived at the Big House. He listened to American Hardcore! (bloody weirdo). Phil and I were going into town to see the concert in the Square but once we got there and saw how many people there were we decided to flag it and go to the pub. We’d been in the pub a coupla hours when a riot erupted at the Square and quickly spread down Queen street. The pub closed the doors and wouldn’t let anyone in or out (fine by us…no cops could get in…we were underage). They also headed up our way and rioters chucked packets of liberated cigarettes thru the open windows to us as we cheered them on! They finally let us out and we lurked back to the Big House avoiding the large police presence. We got back to amped up punks wanting to go looting in Parnell, the few that were foolish enough to go got busted even tho we had told them there were masses of pigs around!
We got busted for smoking pot in the park by the Uni. The cops were scum. They told us to give us a confession now or we’ll beat one out of you at Central. I told the other guys to keep quiet. In the paddy wagon on the way to central the two cops in the back went on about how they were scoring wicked Oz’s from some guy and they were gonna get stoned as fuck after work…(tossers). Then I got kicked out of the Windsor Castle at the Unrestful Movement gig for being underage but ran into Pommie mates GF and she blew me out. Tho I never saw any bands, the cops wouldn’t let me get my money back…grrrr. Then we got busted for stealing paving stones to build a rock garden (the cops even tried to say I was rioting, they had a pic of a guy with a mohawk with an armful of watches…I pointed out my side spikes and the pictures lack of side spikes and they let me go..). But life went on…
Not long after that I met Richard (original Toxic Avengers/ Evilis) at a reggae gig in Ponsonby. Kurtis had been telling me about this girl that ‘followed him around a lot’. I nodded my head knowingly (even tho I didn’t really know WTF he was on about). Why would a girl follow you around? (As I said I was pretty naive back then). Not long after, we were at the Dept. of Labour when we bumped into two girls that knew Kurtis. Kurtis whispered that she was the girl who followed him around. I checked her out. She had blonde hair, grey eyes and a pretty face. Not long after that, Bron and her friend Tia started coming around and would sit there for ages watching us screenprint. I couldn’t figure out why the hell two pretty girls would want to watch us print. I had girl mates but usually we just got on the piss, went to gigs or hung out. Girls hanging round watching us do menial shit was weird. I had a nervous feeling all the time…
Richard was in a band so we’d cruise over and watch them jam in Grey Lynn (‘Dioxin OD’, Turakina street). I met a young Heath (Sausage guy) there and Colin Long. Richard would get me to drop off tapes on my way home at BFM to Neil Cartwright’s show and I wouldn’t leave til they played them. It turned out Bron was Richard’s younger sister! We started hanging round together heaps but she still made me nervous… Slug hassled me one day about her. “She likes you man! Go for it!” ….But my experience with girls was errr…minimal… I thought at the time that GF’s took too much time and I could see if anything happened it would cut into my Punk rock career!
Not long after that Turakina street had a party. It was wicked! Bonfire, Alcohol, hell sounds! And I ended up in Brons bed…nothing happened, we just talked…But in the morning I was awakened by 3 mates of Brons who had been to the EGGs ball still dressed in their ball gowns. Her mates made me get up and make them a cuppa and I scrabbled around trying to find my t-shirt. I couldn’t, so quickly done a runner so they couldn’t see my nekkid chest (I abstain from public nudity if I can help it even if it’s only my chest). I’m weird like that…
But it was too late, I was fucked, my carefree, batchelor days were numbered… Bron would come round and we’d hang out and listen to music and talk or not talk. Then one night, she stayed and we ‘hooked up’: oops.
A new chapter had opened in my life…