28

Postcard from the Edge of the World

Feb 1/99

Dear Henner,

First email of '99 topics:

1. New York Times
2. Toronto vs. New Zealand (see pix)
3. That guy in Poland

Half the Hens played in New Zealand about a week ago, at the soon-to-be-notorious Sweetwaters Festival. (The fact that the promoter went bankrupt during the event fiscally effected us approximately 1 percent as much as it effected Elvis Costello, who incidentally introduced his first song as "You Never Give Me Your Money".) Like Southern Culture on the Skids and Dogstar, Run DMC didn't even show up. But Dan Hicks did, which was of more interest to us anyway. So did the Finns (not a long trip), Grant Lee Buff, The Stranglers etc. Even Donovan! We saw him do that song about wearing yer love like ...?

We're getting ahead of ourselves. There was a blizzard the day we left, and we thought we'd never get out. We felt like we were trying to leave Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. All flights heading east from Toronto - to New York, Boston, Phillie etc - were canceled because the entire eastern seaboard was shutting down. Blessedly, flights with western destinations were taking off. At an airport magazine rack we picked up the New York Times (Jan 14) and read the article "Treats for Off-the-Menu Tastes" in which the NYT's five music critics each picked their top 10 albums of '98 that were not well-known or easy to find. And lo and behold if Ann Powers didn't have The Hens' Desert Cure on her list! So we pocketed that clipping and toasted Toronto from above as the plane broke through the blizzard into the sun.

New Zealand was a paradise of beaches and jungle foliage and rolling hills. Buck Croydon and Ellen McCrae took us all over the place. Late in the week Buck organized a concert at his studio and we played a set after a band from Auckland called the Jews Brothers, and Dan Hicks and the Acoustic Warriors from San Francisco. Hicks was typically hilarious. But the monitor system was acting up, and he said at one point that he got better sound in his bedroom. He grumbled a bit more, making everyone laugh and get nervous at the same time. "I think it only fair that The Henrys have the same monitor mix as we do," he said between songs. Everyone loved his music so he did an encore. When Buck told him after his set that The Henrys were an instrumental group, meaning we wouldn't need to use vocal monitors, he winced and said, "Just my luck!"

Buck had hired ex Split Enz drummer Mal Green and a guy named Nigel Gavin to round out the Henrys, since only two of us had made the trip, and they played great. By the time we did our set at the festival, on the Monday of a three-dayer, the audience was probably delirious with sunstroke (NZ is virtually ozone free), but they liked us anyway.

If you're planning a trip down to New Zealand, go to Russell in the Bay of Islands, and to the beaches at KareKare and Piha, and the Atomic Cafe, and One Tree Hill (even though the one tree got attacked with a chainsaw by a Maori protester), and Ruakaka, and sit in the mechanical chair at the Victoria Market in Auckland and get powerfully massaged for 2 bucks, and if you're really hungry, hit the veggie restaurant on High Street. But don't be looking for Sweetwaters 2000. The promoter will have a severe case of cranial Y2K syndrome and be without a personal operating system in the NZ music community for millennia to come.

Yours,

The Henrys

P.S. For those of you who insisted we send a CD to that slide-playing cat in Poland, we did. Our generous act, however, did not prompt him to return to the typewriter to pound out one of those old-fashioned thank you letters.

P.P.S. See the photos from our trip.

P.P.P.S. Number of Hengigs on the horizon: 0

 

Next Letter

BACK ISSUES INDEX

Main page