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Mad / Max
Mad / Max

Pop CultureMarch 6, 2017

A harrowing report from the Max Key VIP experience

Mad / Max
Mad / Max

Max Key is touring the country to promote his new single ‘All The Way’. The Spinoff sent known recluse Madeleine Chapman along for the full VIP experience.

“You paid to be here? That’s crazy.”

The young man laughed as I hurriedly explained that no, I hadn’t paid $59 for a VIP ticket to Max Key’s DJ gig, my work had. It didn’t matter to him, the damage was done.

“All you had to say was ‘I’ll hook up with you’.”

I pondered the idea as the young man kept talking. Could I have saved my work $120 by simply suggesting a hook up with Max Key? Had anyone else gotten into the VIP section using that method? What did I have to say to get some free drinks? The man was still chatting as I zoned back in, something about how he went to school with Max but had never heard his music. He was openly keen on getting his name in this article but I’m sorry to say that I’ve forgotten it, along with a sizable portion of the night’s events.

What I do remember is that I didn’t want to go. My preference is to not go anywhere, full stop, but especially not a DJ set, and especially not as a VIP. Unfortunately, my preferences were not a concern for my boss, who happily paid for two tickets so that I could take a friend along on what would turn out to be the longest, worst episode of Entourage I’ve ever seen.

VIPs

On Wednesday I asked my friend Kathleen if she would come to the gig with me. It’s the most I’ve ever asked of a friend and, in a move that genuinely surprised me, she said yes. We both knew we couldn’t go sober so we embraced the spirit of O Week by pre-gaming at our flat and leaving late for the 10pm show (as stated on the ticket).

Turns out we’re very old because we arrived shortly after 10 and there was no one there. That’s not an exaggeration, there was literally no one there. Nothing says ‘I spent real money to be here’ like showing up before the opening act.

We got some drinks, sat down in what was definitely not the VIP section, and waited for something, anything, to happen. After a little while, we spotted a red velvet rope across the room and realised that was where we, the Very Important People, were supposed to be. Ten minutes later and we were sitting in virtually the same seats, only this time we had wristbands on. Our concierge for the night introduced himself and told us that we could order drinks through him “to avoid the big lines”. We looked around at the deserted bar and thanked him for his service.

Note the grey bandana

We had been promised the chance to “meet and party with Max Key” but at 11 o’clock he was still nowhere to be found. Instead, I talked to a fellow VIP who was very secretive about why and how he was there. When I asked him if he had paid for his ticket, he said “I paid a lot of money to be here.” When I asked if that meant paying for a ticket, he said “No, I bought a lot of drinks and paid a lot of money to be here.” Then another man came over, said “no more interviews” and that was that.

Later on in the night, the man who paid a lot of money to be there took Kathleen’s phone from her and asked if it was bugged, checked that she wasn’t recording anything, then gave it back. In my notes on my phone, there’s a quote: “I feel like you don’t understand my commitment to North Korea. We do what we have to do.” I don’t remember writing it. Kathleen doesn’t remember writing it. But it’s there, right above “Friend’s phone got confiscated.”

By the time Max Key finally showed up at midnight, I had hounded our concierge for our promised free merch and was shamelessly wearing my bandana with ‘Max Key’ embroidered on it. I’d also asked for our signed laminate, whatever that is, and he’d looked confused and walked away. Despite the life and times of Max Key being well-documented, I was starting to wonder if they’d planned on anyone actually buying the VIP package.

Not the real Max Key

Max Key had a lot of friends who acted as his security. I know this because I asked all of them. I wasn’t even interested in whether they were friends or employees, I was simply trying to find a single person in the VIP section who had actually paid to be there. I found none. Who I did find was Lucy Zee from The Wireless who had been sent on the exact same mission as me. We were the only people up in the roped section who hadn’t worked with Max Key in some capacity, and boy were they aware of it. Every conversation was interrupted by someone saying “she’s media” or “no interviews” or “those drinks weren’t for you.” Frankly, I don’t know what they’d all have done if we weren’t there.

When I eventually got my photo and time with the big star himself, I was fuming about his tardiness. It got worse when he told me he wasn’t going on till 1am. I had been trying to figure out how to ask him if he’d read my story about us having the same look and ended up going with “HEYIWROTEABOUTHOWWELOOKTHESAMEDIDYOUSEEIT?” He nodded, “On the Spinoff? Yeah. It was kinda funny. I saw the photo on Twitter.” In that moment I noticed he was wearing a grey bandana. Earlier that day I had picked out a bandana at Look Sharp for the gig, being very careful not to get one I thought he’d wear. I’d worn it jokingly to the club but then swapped it out for the crazy embroidered one. The bandana I’d picked was the same grey. When would it end.

The real Max Key

I asked him if he minded the haters and the bad press. “No, I know I’m a good person so I just ignore it.” Can I ask two important questions? “On or off the record?” On. “You can ask but I might not answer.” Why is your video just a woman walking away from the camera?

Right on cue a man appeared and shooed me away, saying “he doesn’t want to answer these questions, he’s here for a good time”, which was probably lucky because I hadn’t thought of a second question yet.

The next time I walked past him I hurriedly asked who he would have voted for in the US election. He just shook his head. “I’m not answering any of your questions.”

Back in the booth, I counted all the mosquito bites on my legs (8) and blamed all of my misfortunes on Max Key and my boss. Then Kathleen excitedly told me to turn around. Behind the booth, hidden from sight, Max was bent over something. One of his security friends told us he was nervous about the gig and throwing up. I was doubtful and started to raise my phone which was quickly pushed down and we were told to stop looking.

During his set, I spoke to the woman who featured in his latest video walking away from the camera. When I asked about it, her friend told her to say she wasn’t in it, right after she’d just said she was. Then I spoke to an American man who said it was his job to “make Max Key great”. And had he done his job? Was Max Key great? “No,” he said, then added “not yet.” We spoke for either five minutes or three hours but I remember very little of what he said besides something about the cocaine being “premium” and telling yet another interrupting security friend that yes, he knew I was media.

By the time we left the club it was after 3am and I had left behind our goodie bags with the poster and free download cards, but I didn’t care. I’d had the full Max Key experience and it was about as ridiculous as I imagined it would be. Going through my drunken notes about the event, one of the first quotes I recorded was from a security friend of his. “He’s just trying to make it like everyone else.” Yes he is. He’s trying very hard.


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nr860

Pop CultureMarch 4, 2017

‘You can’t take it too seriously all the time.’ Nadia Reid on her new album and taking her music to the world

nr860

When your first album sees you described as the savior of folk music, how do you turn around and make a second album that’s even better? Nadia Reid talked with Calum Henderson about her new album Preservation, released yesterday.

For months after Nadia Reid’s debut album Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs came out, it seemed like nothing was going to happen. The Port Chalmers-based musician says she kind of just accepted that was the way it was: “[for me] it was more about that feeling of creating something, seeing a project through.”

The project was a long time in the making, crowd-funded and eventually self-released in late-2014 after being turned down for NZ On Air funding (“Making Tracks, which is enough for a lot of bands to fund a whole album”) and not getting any bites from any of the record labels Reid approached with the finished product.

“So I got it pressed myself and then sent it away to these 100 or so people [who had funded the release] – wrapped it up and hand-posted it all off.” While the album got a positive response from those already familiar with her music, it had seemingly failed to break through to a wider audience.

But then a copy landed on the desk of Aaron Curnow, the founder of Spunk Records in Australia. “He emailed me and said, ‘I can’t stop listening to it – I didn’t want to put out another female folk artist from New Zealand but… blah blah blah blah … Can I put it out?”

The label, which has also put out records by Tiny Ruins and Reid’s childhood friend Aldous Harding, released Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs in Australia in March 2015. “Which was great, because they had all this infrastructure to support a proper release. I had done everything in my own way and then they came and did it all a little bit more efficiently.”

Even then, nothing much seemed to change. “It was just like this release and I played a few shows [in Australia]. But then this guy Andy [Moss], who’s now my manager – he runs a record label called Melodic Records and they distributed it in Europe and England. And that’s when all the reviews started coming in.”

The album was released in the UK in December 2015, over a year after its initial New Zealand release. “There is something about melancholic folk singers that they really like. My music goes down quite well there.” The reviews in the hallowed pages of publications like Mojo and Uncut were very positive.

“And then in New Zealand, everyone suddenly goes, ‘Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, she’s a New Zealander,’ and I’m like, ‘Well nothing’s actually changed’. The record hasn’t changed, I haven’t changed, it’s just now Mojo and Uncut and the Guardian have all really understood the music and written about it.”

It’s a story as old as the country itself: the New Zealand artist who has to make it overseas before they receive the recognition they deserve at home. “All of a sudden … Well, I just felt this massive shift of a lot more people becoming interested.”

To those New Zealanders only just beginning to pay attention – people like me – it seemed like Nadia Reid had arrived out of nowhere with this immaculate, perfectly-formed debut album. Of course, this was not really true at all. She has been writing songs “I guess since I was in my early teens… but I’ve probably gotten better.”

Reid’s first live performances were blackboard concerts – “basically like open mic” – at Whare Flat and other folk festivals around the South Island. “It’s a really easy audience to start off with,” she says, “it’s just this big gathering of a whole lot of people and you all camp, there’s a big marquee with a stage, and people just play music all through the day and all through the night. There’s a lot of folk music and lots of children.”

In 2011, after finishing school and moving to Christchurch, she recorded an EP called Letters I Wrote But Never Sent, which is now long out of print (or the modern equivalent, taken down off Bandcamp). “It’s a really young version of myself and it’s just not something I can relate to anymore,” she explains. “It doesn’t represent me the way I want it to, whereas I think the two albums do.”

Still, the EP is an important piece of the story because it brought Reid together with Ben Edwards. The Lyttleton producer, who has also recorded successful records for artists like Tami Nielson, Aldous Harding and Marlon Williams, has been behind the desk for both her albums to date.

As well as Edwards, the main band members – Sam Taylor, Richie Pickard and Joe McCallum – have also remained the same since recording the first album. “They all went to jazz school [in Christchurch],” she explains. “We have a connection and a relationship and a trust – I don’t ever really tell them what I want them to do, they generally just hear [what I’m playing] and play their part.”

The band play a bigger part on Preservation, but the focal point is still Reid’s uncommonly assured songwriting. She says she didn’t feel any of the pressures usually associated with following up a successful debut album. “Oh no, that’s a lie, I did think briefly about the whole follow-up and will it be as good, or… I thought very briefly about it and then I just stopped thinking about it.”

It would have been easy to be daunted by some of the hype around the first album. An interview in Billboard after it was released in the UK was headlined ‘Nadia Reid, Otherworldly Voice of New Zealand, Is Saving Folk Music’. “I didn’t really think about what they were really meaning there,” she says. “I never really thought too much about it, ‘cause it’s so full on.

“Sometimes people will say something really nice about me and in my head I’m like, ‘Oh my god, they’re lying.’ I mean that’s fucked, it’s ‘cause I’m a little bit mental. But I think you can’t take it too seriously all the time. I think I’ve just got to keep doing what makes me feel good and happy and not get too involved in the negative and the positive.”

Preservation was recorded in the middle of 2016. “It was all about feeling ready and having enough songs to make another album and really wanting to make another album. We just did it the exact same way we did the first one and I think the natural progression of time and experience and different life stages just allowed the record to sound different – not better, just different.”

The difference between the two albums is maybe best represented by their covers. Both are head-and-shoulders portraits, but the first one is black and white, the second one colour; in the first one Reid’s gaze is to the right of the camera, the new one she’s looking straight down the barrel.

Musically, it’s the same deal: deeper, brighter, more confident. They’re songs that look you in the eye. Preservation is the kind of record that gets plays on repeat, that hooks you for weeks on the tiniest things – the phrasing of a certain word or the perfection of a particular guitar line.

“I feel really good when people respond in a way where they’re like, ‘I find this music really healing’ or ‘This music really helped me through something,’” Reid says.” Like… the other day, this girl was like ‘I listened to your album while I was giving birth.’

“Music is deep, it provides a lot of comfort, it provides joy and deeper understanding of the world. So when it does its job, I feel really happy about that.”


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