Timeline test

 

 

 

Music walk

 

Ngā Puia o Tāmaki Makaurau Takahitanga

Discover the mountains and hills of Auckland which are easily accessible for short hikes. They are mapped here and below each is indexed by name with more information on each mountain/hill.

Mt Richmond

Mt Eden

Juxtapose experiments

The juxtaposed images below are an attempt to emphasis what has changed (and what has stayed the same) in the musical culture of our cities. In each case, a historic photo has been overlaid with a more recent photo taken at the same location. Some locations have been surprisingly resilient in continuing to be a hive of musical activity for decades on end, while others have left little sign of their existence (if not being wiped off the map entirely).

Wellington Town Hall

The Wellington Town Hall officially opened on 7 December 1904 and hosted music events right from its earliest days. In 1980, it was scheduled for demolition with the Michael Fowler centre constructed right next door as its replacement, but the NZ Historic Places Trust managed to argue for it to be saved. Probably the most historic concerts held at the venue were visits in the 1960s from The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, though it continues to have musical performances and has even seen headlining shows from local acts in recent years.
On the left: The Rolling Stones play Wellington Town Hall in 1966 (Photo by Morrie Hill. National Library of New Zealand Ref: 35mm-18183-9-F.).
On the right: Shapeshifter play a soldout show at the same venue in 2013 (photo: Pat Shepherd).

Captain Cook Hotel

The Captain Cook was first built in 1860. It's biggest place in local music history was probably during the late 70s and early 80s, when it was a regular haunt for the city's most well-known Flying Nun bands. The Enemy played there in 1979, before morphing into Toy Love who played their last Dunedin show at the venue in 1980. It also saw gigs by The Clean, The Chills, The Verlaines, and Look Blue Go Purple.
On the left: The Captain Cook Hotel in 1875.
On the right:  This shot taken in 2009 shows the venue in its student pub days. The heavy drinking culture eventually saw it shut by the university in 2014. However, Michael McLeod subsequently took it over and re-established it as a music venue (including gigs by McLeod's own bands, Shifting Sands and Bad Sav). These days, only the upstairs area has gigs, but at least the music lives on!

The Odeon 

This building was originally known as the Tuam Street Public Hall. It would go on to be known as the Opera House (in July 1984) and was used as a venue for music and vaudeville acts for many decades. In 1930, it was renamed the St James and became predominantly known as a cinema, though live music and other performances also took place regularly. In 1960, it took its current name, the Odeon.
On the left: An illustration of the "Tuam Street Public hall" in around 1885.
On the right: The Odeon as it was until the Christchurch Earthquakes, when the back wall collapsed. The exterior you see here is now supported by a stack of shipping containers while the future of the building is decided.

Bowl of Brooklands

In 1956, it was recognised that a sloping hillside area of the Brooklands park formed a natural ampitheatre and so the swampland below was transformed to be the setting for a stage (with a parabolic soundshell to project the sound). Music has been performed here regularly over the decades including some bit overseas acts that including: The Seekers, Lionel Richie and John Farnham (2014); Sting and Paul Simon (2015).  
On the right: A Jon Stevens and Sharon O'Neill in 1980. The band onstage seems to be the support act, which consisted of Wayne Mason (keyboards), Bob Smith (synthesiser), Ross Burge (drums), Clinton Brown (bass), and Dennis Mason (saxophone). (Photo credit: Puke Ariki, WD.042985).
On the left: The main stage of WOMAD in 2019 (credit: Gareth Shute).
 

King's Arms

On the left: The Kings Arms Tavern in 1890s. (photo: Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 4-RIC53)
On the right: The same venue in the 2010s, by which time it had been a music venue for many decades.



On the left: Once again we see the Kings Arms in its heyday.
On the right: The construction site where apartments are in the process of being built in the same location (in 2019).

Ace of Clubs

On the left: The Ace of Clubs nightclub above Cook Street markets.
On the right: Roughly the same view from Aotea Square in 2019, with Cook Street entirely removed to create Mayoral Drive and the Aotea Centre.
 

Albert Park Band Rotunda

On the left: The Albert Park band rotunda in 1904.
On the right: The Naked and Famous playing the bFM Summer Series in 2010 (photo: Jacqueline May).

Auckland Town Hall

On the left: A choir plays at the opening of the Auckland Town Hall in 1911.
On the right: Marlon Williams plays the Auckland Town Hall in 2018 (credit: Doug Peters).

 

Crystal Palace

On the right: a crowd gathers outside Crystal Palace in 1958 (credit: Auckland Libraries, Rykenberg Collection).
On the left: A gathering of people who were working/practising in The Lab recording studio in 2019: Olly Harmer (engineer/producer), Jol Mulholland (Mulholland/Gasoline Cowboy), Sam Flynn Scott (Phoenix Foundation), Reb Fountain, Sean Donelly (SJD) and Brett Adams (The Bads, The Mockers). (credit: Gareth Shute)

Montmartre on Lorne Street

On the left: The Mike Walker Trio on the opening night of Lautrec. They were known as the resident band in the venue, Montmartre, which was upstairs. The band from left to right are: Frank Conway, Neville Whitehead, and Mike Walker.
On the right: The same doorway at 57 Lorne Street in 2019. This was previously the entry to Pizza Pizza in the 2000s, which hosted many gigs including a surprise performance by the White Stripes!

Experiments

New Town Hall

NZ Reggae Timeline

70s map test

70s map

The seventies were a turning point, with hints of the future coming into focus even while the old dancehalls still lived on - at the Crystal Palace Bob Paris played music “for the more mature dancer” while at the Orange, Arthur Skelton’s orchestra played right through until 1980 (their approach little changed from when Skelton’s started at the Westhaven Cabaret in 1949). Yet changes were on the horizon.
The gradual easing of the alcohol laws saw the big breweries getting involved in the music business and taking an interest in how bands were booked at the bars that they supplied (they even started some of their own cover bands). At the beginning of the decade, this was hard on independent operators like Tommy Adderley - he tried to operate a private club, Grandpas, above his venue Granny’s so members could drink alcohol but was eventually busted and had to sell his house and car to cover the fines. In the end, the big venues to survive from this decade - like Mainstreet and the Gluepot - were ones that could serve booze legally.
At the same time, new genres of music were beginning to find a home on our shores - like punk, new wave, funk, and disco. A couple of years after Granpas was closed down, the spot was reopened as punk/new wave venue Zwines and bands from this scene also took over underutilised spots like Disco D’Ora’s. Funk acts switched between sister venues Cleopatras (in Panmure) and Alladin’s (next to the Civic).
At the start of the decade, the old Club A Go Go in Newmarket's Rialto Arcade was replaced by John’s Place, which advertised itself as a ‘discotheque’ (though it still had live acts) and a few years later you’d find Mon Desir listing one of its disc jockeys alongside the band on its ad. This all laid the groundwork for the explosion of disco clubs that would peak in 1978, showing that a crowd could just as easily dance to a vinyl record as they could to a live band. Gay club, Backstage, took this to the limit by eschewing the hits of the day in favour of any song that could make the crowd move - a notion that eventually gave rise to club culture in the late 1980s.
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