Contributors
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Music Review: Change, For a Fiver
Barry G Barry G is an Irish singer, songwriter and impressive strummer of strings who is a familiar figure on the Southern Lakes music scene. His first album, Change, For a Fiver, showcases everything his audiences love in his live performances to great effect. There’s his voice, which has an endlessly listenable Passenger vibe, except…
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Book Review: Dirge Bucolic
By Jasmine Gallagher (Compound Press, 2022) Jasmine Gallagher’s debut collection is like a series of fractal prisms. She takes moments, spaces and stories, then breaks and turns them so we see them from all sides. As implied by the oxymoronic title, there’s a lot here. Dirge Bucolic delves into and through Jasmine’s personal experience of…
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watching us, watching them
1. Toroa ingoingo. In 1937 there was one pair on the Peninsula, marked and wrapped by Doctor Lance Richdale, breeding. Better banded, perhaps, than starved, egg-sucked, stuck in ship masts or dismantled for muffs, tobacco pouches, cigarette holders and walking stick handles. 2. Now they flock to the camera like Kardashians and we sit and…
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Rationalise this
Because we’re nothing but a cross between Caligula and monkeys wearing pants. THESE DAYS, EVERYONE’S AN ENVIRONMENTALIST. TO BE OTHERWISE IS TO RISK BECOMING A SOCIAL EXILE OR HAVING YOUR BUSINESS BOYCOTTED. OUR SOCIAL CHANNELS MAKE US ALL SEEM LIKE THE LOVE CHILDREN OF JANE GOODALL AND DAVID ATTENBOROUGH. MESSAGING CORRECT, BRANDING ON POINT. It…
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Waste not, want
IT ALL STARTED WITH A FIELD FULL OF RUBBISH. IT WAS NEW YEAR’S DAY 2020, AND RUBY URQUHART WAS HELPING WITH THE CLEAN-UP AFTER THE RHYTHM & ALPS MUSIC FESTIVAL, IN THE CARDRONA VALLEY. Scattered amongst the usual post-party detritus (beer cans, vape cartridges, flickering smart phones with shattered screens), there were a heck of…
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![Great Grandmother’s stories [fiction]](https://1964.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Gulls-page-FINAL-1-scaled.jpg)
Great Grandmother’s stories [fiction]
Cromwell, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2219 Once upon a time, Great Grandmother told you stories. Stories about a world – she said it was this world, only different – where the gulls would snatch children’s food, but not their hands. Where humans were the top of the food chain and did whatever they wanted. Where they…
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The wheels of history
How the quest for a nicely fitting knicker suit changed the world. IN MAY OF 1894, THE NEW ZEALAND RATIONAL DRESS ASSOCIATION (NZRDA) LAUNCHED IN CHRISTCHURCH. The aim was to “bring about that change in women’s dress which her wider life and increased activity seem to demand”. Basically, it was about the right to wear…
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Those dam Italians
Are Te Anau and the “alternative media” caught in a bad Rome-ance? THERE ARE A LOT OF STRANGE THEORIES CIRCULATING THESE DAYS. STANDOUTS INCLUDE THE RUMOUR THAT NEW ZEALAND IS A NASA HOAX POPULATED BY PAID ACTORS; THAT KEITH RICHARDS IS, IN FACT, JFK; AND THAT REPTILES ARE SECRETLY RUNNING THE WORLD. THE LAST ONE…
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The satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt
“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN BUSH-BASHING WITH AN IRONING BOARD? IT’S AWFUL, IT’S REALLY AWFUL. BUT WE DID IT EVERY WEEKEND,” REMEMBERS SACHA KNIGHT. SACHA IS THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY TRAMPING CLUB AND, CRUCIALLY, ONE OF THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF ITS EXTREME IRONING DIVISION (EID). HIS NICKNAME IS TRAIN TRACKS. MORE ON THAT…