Local Listens #15: Smashing Pumpkins, graveyard radio, and indie club nights: the gig scene in Tāmaki Makaurau and how Matthew Crawley got into music promotion

LOCAL LISTENS | COLUMN | PUORO O AOTEAROA / LOCAL MUSIC

Written by Sofia Roger Williams (she/her) | @sofiarogerwilliams | Contributing Writer

It’s easy to slip into feeling like Auckland sucks. As with any place, the longer you’ve lived here, the smaller it feels, the more repetitive it can be, and the easier it is to feel unsatisfied. I’ve had my fair share of friends move to the big cities overseas that I romanticise despite never visiting, so I understand wishing for something more here. That being said, I’m an Auckland defender until I die. With our expansive arts scene and talent, an impressive range of top-quality restaurants and eateries, hidden gems, and a damn good gig scene, we’re spoiled for choice, really. For me though, what makes my experience of Tāmaki Makaurau never get old, is the music. Little did I know that the person behind so many of the gigs I’ve found myself at over the years has been Matthew Crawley. 

As a promoter, DJ, musician, and all-around music connoisseur, Crawley is a champion of Aotearoa’s music scene. From his early days volunteering at 95bFM, working in record stores, and hosting indie club nights, to running the entertainment programme at six different venues, including the preeminent Golden Dawn, and bringing major international acts to our shores through his touring company Strange News, Crawley is one of Tāmaki’s best music promoters. If anyone knows music, it’s Crawley. 

Ahead of Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa NZ Music Month, I sat down with Matthew in the 95bFM studios to get insight into how he got to where he is, his perspective on our music scene, and the importance of having a month dedicated to celebrating Aotearoa music. 

Has music always been a big part of your life? Do you remember where your love for music came from?

Kind of. I grew up in a Christian household that didn't have popular music at all in the house really. I came to music through The Muppet Show. I think I probably heard the Beatles songs sung by The Muppets before I heard The Beatles sing them. And then ‘The Simpsons Sing the Blues’ when The Simpsons first album came out. And then “Weird Al” Yankovic. I heard his parody songs before I heard most popular songs. 

But then, when I became a teenager, we moved to Melbourne and I ended up going to a really alternative school and it was the first time my ears were really opened to music. I was at a school with people who were listening to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and things like that, and my friends back in New Zealand were sending me little mixtapes and stuff. That's when I really learned to latch on to music. Latching onto music was also a way of dealing with the angst of moving country as a teenager. It wasn't the coolest music that I was angsting with - Crash Test Dummies and Counting Crows were my first two musical obsessions that I was listening to again and again. 

Whatever gets you through.

That's right. And then Smashing Pumpkins were kind of the ones that rose to the top and became my proper, proper obsession. I wanted to be Billy Corgan. I even went bald. Every inch of my bedroom was covered in Smashing Pumpkins, writing, and posters and everything. I then had a covers band at school. We were trying to play these songs, but my best friend was a Nirvana guy, so we did both. And then bFM came to my high school 1996 which was when I was like, “Oh, maybe I'll do this.” Something like two or three weeks later, I dropped out to come and start volunteering up here at bFM. That was 29 years ago. And that’s terrifying. 

And here we are.

Still here. 

Do you have a record or song that particularly hooked you into loving Aotearoa music? 

That's a good question. Again, I was in the Christian world for quite a long time, until I was probably about 19 or 20. There was this band called Drinkwater. They were very wacky, almost like Red Hot Chili Peppers but Christian, singing about things like Bad Jelly the Witch. So it appealed to lots of different parts of me, none of which really appeal to me anymore, except for Bad Jelly the Witch. I hadn't really thought about that before, but I'd say that was the band that hooked me. I mean, I went and saw them when I was a teenager. In West Auckland, where I grew up, there was an all ages nightclub run by a church called The Fridge. It was not really ‘Christian-y’ as such. I keep talking about my Christian upbringing, but none of it was strict or anything – it was just how it was. But The Fridge had two bands. It was $5 once a month on a Thursday night. You could go and just watch punk bands, grunge bands, and it was so cool. So I got into going to shows quite early, because all ages shows weren't really a thing otherwise, especially not in Henderson. So I was really lucky. 

But also at high school I stopped thinking about academia. I found a blank stack of music room passes, where I could just fill in any day and time and just give it to the teacher and go to the music room. And so school work became less and less of a thing and we just ended up going to the band room all the time. In hindsight, I would love to have a better brain, but it's pretty much too late now. It's just all full of music junk. 

You've been involved with bFM on and off since you were 16. How did starting to volunteer there change your trajectory? 

100% it did. With my band, Thee Golden Geese, we sang a silly song called Georgie Pie, where I sing about quitting school and ending up working at Georgie Pie, but also volunteering at bFM. Those two things were kind of happening at the same time. And thankfully, Georgie Pie only lasted a few months but bFM - I'm still going. Thankfully bFM won. 

I distinctly remember a guy saying, “Don't do the graveyard shift for too long, because it'll ruin your life.” 

Well said. 

Yeah. Because it used to be midnight till 7am without a computer. 

Oh my God, and here's me complaining about the 5 to 7am that I had! 

Yeah that was kind of crazy. That was a real crash course. And actually, it was a great thing to do, because you just catch the bus in from Henderson and do this show all night long. Just grabbing stacks and stacks of CDs or carts and records from the library, and learning about stuff, especially in New Zealand, and just randomly picking things that had cool names or whatever. So 100% bFM was what really got me going. 

When did you first get involved with the music industry after that? 

I'm kind of a brat in the sense that I would still claim that I'm not part of the music industry. I think that's a real eye-roll thing for me to say. But, in my mind, I'm still just a periphery kind of weirdo who's just doing whatever. But I understand your question. I didn't start doing events or anything like that until I got back from London. In London, I just went to show after show after show after show, worked in a second hand record store, and went to club nights. I was just obsessed. All my tiny amount of money and heaps of time was spent just going to shows and soaking up music stuff. 

I had to come back to New Zealand in 2002 and my friend and I, who’d just moved back too, decided that we'd try and make something kind of akin to what we used to go to in London. So we started a club night called Kiss and Make Up Club in a karaoke bar above St Kevin's Arcade. That was how I got into it. That moved down to another venue called Edens Bar on Karangahape Road. They needed somebody to be booking their shows. It was this total, total dive bar. If you imagine what a dirty bar with a bad sound system is like, it would probably be about 10 times worse than that. Famous for never, ever, ever having the toilets cleaned. But we just convinced them to do beers for $4 and it was so fun. That was me coming back and basically thinking, you know, I could contribute to making this place a bit more interesting. 

Literally, when I came back from London, I was like, “Where can I go dancing to music I like?” It was either you went and saw the music you liked played live, or you went and danced to house music or drum and bass played on record or CD. And I'd just been over there, dancing to Pulp and The Strokes and all this other stuff, and 60s stuff. That was the idea. I had also started working at Real Groovy. So when I was there, I started collecting people who bought stuff I liked, and saying, “Oh, you're going to come DJ at this thing too.” And that was how it started - just trapping people who came into Real Groovy and putting these club nights on. That's also when I started putting bands on. 

From there, in 2004, I ended up tour managing The Brunettes. It was a really cool band, and they needed a tour manager. So I drove them around Australia and New Zealand. That was my first experience with tour managing and being in another country with music. So when I got back, a guy who I had sort of made contact with in Sydney asked me if I knew anyone who could put on this show for Canadian singer songwriter Hayden. And I happened to be a huge fan of Hayden. And I was like, “Well, I don't know how to do that, but I'll give it a go.” But it was cool - I got to put these shows on and hang out with this guy, who’s music I loved, and drive him around. Not much has changed. I wasn't very good at it. I was very amateur - not amazing with the money side of things, and certainly not great with the organizing side of things. That's still kind of a feature of my style when putting shows on, but I've been lucky enough that they just kind of keep happening. I love putting on the shows and meeting these people and getting to do stuff that makes Auckland more interesting. 

You started international music promotion and touring with Strange News in 2005. Since, you’ve brought some huge international acts to Aotearoa - Sharon Van Etten, MJ Lenderman, Ichiko Aoba, Jessica Pratt, and so many more. What do you look for when booking international artists to come to Aotearoa? 

Literally, if I like it, I want to do it. 

It’s very reflective of your own taste then?

Yeah, generally. That’s why I hope if I’m putting on a show, I hope that someone will say if they haven’t heard of it that they’re still interested. Every time I do agree, for whatever reason, to do something that I don't really care about that much, it shows. It's so obvious and it's always a bad idea. Don't do anything you don’t want to do is my advice. 

You’ve been behind six different venues now - Paradise Bar, Edens Bar, Schooner Tavern, Whammy Bar, Cassette, and, of course, Golden Dawn. Tell me about those experiences. 

Whammy was for just a year or so. Rowan opened Whammy Bar, and I was the first person to be booking it. And then I wanted to go to London in a year or so, just for a month. So I chatted to Rowan, and I was like, “I can't reasonably expect you to hold my job, because I'm going away for like, a month or two.” And at that point, he's just like, “Ah, we're up and running now. I can just book it myself.” But it was cool. It was pretty lovely to be involved in Whammy at its opening - same with Cassette.

And Edens Bar, like I implied, was a strangely run place. Possibly, almost definitely, a front in some ways or another. This guy kind of muscled it and kind of convinced him to fire me and then he was putting hardcore shows on that nobody bought drinks at them because everyone was straight edge. And so they fired him two weeks later and begged me to come back. But by that stage, I'd already started working for the Schooner Tavern. That was down where Britomart, Zambezi, World, and that is. It was like a sports bar on one side, and then the other side was the live music venue. That was my bit. It was this really old school square room. You couldn't dream of it now; it was right across the road from the water. It wasn't a fancy place downtown back then. 

And then Cassette was pretty cool. That was maybe 2008 when it first opened here. Some people from The World Bar in Sydney set that up and copied the programming from over there. So the MUM club night was my baby. It was live music on a Friday, and then DJing until like five in the morning. So it was pretty fun. 

As with everything, there's always a time when a venue or a club night or whatever it is, is just not cool anymore. When it's not heaving anymore, and it's harder work. So you can choose to push through. And if you do, I mean, just look at Whammy bar, for example. There's been times when Whammy went out of fashion and people have moved on to cool new bars. So you can choose whether to stick around and really push and do the hard work to kind of keep it legendary, or you can leave and let someone else take over. So with Cassette, I moved on. And that's when Golden Dawn happened.

That one [Golden Dawn] was actually a case of wanting to stop before it wasn't legendary in a way. We ran out of energy for it. Myself and Nick (Harrison), who was the general manager, found ourselves there seven years later when it was meant to be a pop up. It was meant to be a year and a half, maybe two, and so we were still running at it with the same kind of sprint energy that we had and couldn't keep it up. So we decided to close while people still loved it. I still look back at the decision and I’m like, “Ugh…”. 

Do you regret it at all? 

I don't regret it. I do regret that nothing's taken its place so much. That's not to say that none of the bars here are good. There's some really great places, especially now. I love Goblin and other places that have popped up. The whole point of Golden Dawn was that it was for everybody. It was a nice, accessible place that was for everyone. And the music was such a part of it. We did around 2000 nights of music across the seven years we were there. Do I regret it? Yeah, of course, in some ways I do, for sure. Because life was never the same, but life is never the same anytime. 

You can’t get held up on regrets.

Nah. It's more that people constantly talk to me about it and want us to do another one. But let's hope that the people who are running Goblin have taken care of that. 

What is your current focus for local music promotion and organizing gigs with local artists in Tāmaki? 

Well, it's an interesting time. By the time this comes out, who knows? For the last little while, I've been booking these jazz shows at San Ray, which has been fun. But that was just a seasonal thing, so we did a summer's worth. And then I've also been booking the Auckland Art Gallery music and I've had a bit to do with some of the Civic music stuff. But it's an interesting one. I think especially with winter coming, there's going to be this kind of gap where I'll have actually plenty of time and plenty of room and energy, hopefully, to put more shows on. So I think I'm entering into a time where I'll either be extremely unproductive or I'll have a really great idea and something new will happen. But what that is - and I'm not being mysterious - I actually have no idea. 

What do you think is the importance of Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa New Zealand Music Month? 

I've come and gone on this. Originally, myself and a bunch of other people my age and experience have been like, “New Zealand Music Month, whatever! We don't need it, it's just a commercial thing.” But that's an old, old opinion. It's actually great. Anything that drags a focus onto Aotearoa music is important. The fact is people do just get into it more. You can sit around being a scrooge and want people to be just as passionate about music 24/7, but the fact that there's a whole month and everyone's basically forced to care about New Zealand music for a month is pretty cool. 

Things like on 95bFM, like when I did the Back on the Good Foot show playing soul and funk, and all the specialist shows are really forced, once a month, at least, to think about purely local music of that genre. bFM is so good at playing local music anyway. But those days where it’s 100% local is such a cool time, because you get to really sink your teeth into what's happening right now, and also music from the past and music from specific genres. I think it's really healthy. I think there's always more room to kind of find ways to celebrate it. But I think it's a really sweet little spot on the calendar. 

I agree. Who are some artists from Aotearoa that you're particularly loving at the moment?

I love Nieve Strang’s album [‘Find Me in the Rabbit Hole’]. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen her three times with The Veils and Tom Lark in the last few weeks. I love Tom Larks’ album [‘Moonlight Hotel’]. The Veils’ album [‘Asphodels’]. I think MĀ is amazing. 

We did Exploding Rainbow Orchestra last year. That's been a really special thing that's been happening over the last few years. Through that, there’s been quite a lot of time trawling through what’s happening. It's always a really fun process of discovering - getting old school legends involved, but also finding new people. Keira Wallace was someone whose music I discovered, and I think they're incredible. RNZŌ was amazing at that as well. But yeah, I also always love Half Hexagon… There's so much. I do get a little obsessed. I also can't wait for the new Na Noise stuff to come out. I know they’re recording. 

What do you think of the music scene currently in Tāmaki? Is there anything you would want to see more or less of to improve it and better support local musicians?

I always want more people to be going out and going to the shows. People always say there needs to be more venues. There's some great venues, we just need to support them. And the people who are running these venues are doing a really good job. I just love seeing where Whammy has gotten to. The amazing storyline there and the celebration of Rowan and how I never, ever thought that losing the Wine Cellar could result in something that changed Auckland for the better as well. Double Whammy, we’re so lucky. 

There’s positive things happening all around the country, actually. It's been fun to go on tours recently and see our new venues like Meow Nui popping up. There’s some cool stuff happening everywhere. It could always be better. But I think there’s people popping up who want to be doing what I used to do, which is to put on shows. Not for the first time ever, but it seems to be that people are understanding that if you want something to happen you just have to do it yourself. That is 100% my message to the kids - make some mistakes, put on some stupid stuff at a karaoke bar, and make enough mistakes until you learn to do it better. Do what you want and make what you want to see happen, happen.