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Shihad Pacifier
Shihad during their Pacifier phase, circa 2002. (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureFebruary 18, 2023

Twenty-one years ago, Shihad changed their name. Then all hell broke loose

Shihad Pacifier
Shihad during their Pacifier phase, circa 2002. (Photo: Supplied)

Shihad, or Pacifier? Two decades on, the debate over whether or not New Zealand’s biggest rock band should have changed their name still rages. 

When four Wellington lads needed a name for their new band, they turned to Dune. Jon Toogood, Karl Kippenberger, Tom Larkin and Phil Knight had become huge fans of David Lynch’s 1984 sci-fi film, which incorporates many Arabic phrases and ends with a “Jihad”. Calling themselves “Shihad” was a mistake. “We couldn’t even spell it,” Larkin, the band’s drummer, has been reported as saying. Toogood, the frontman, confirms it. “It was a name that we came up with as a bunch of stoned bogan metal fans,” he says. “We were … 16- or 17-year-old kids. It was, ‘Far, that’s a cool name for a speed metal band’ … I stole the Motorhead font and wrote ‘S.H.I.H.A.D’. I misspelled it because I didn’t know what the fuck it was from.”

Formed in 1988, Toogood, Larkin, bassist Kippenberger and guitarist Knight released their first four albums under the name Shihad. It’s the word that adorns the covers of their debut Churn, then Killjoy, 1996’s self-titled “Fish Album” and 1999’s No. 1 hit The General Electric. It’s also the name their growing fan base were chanting before and after Shihad’s pulsating live shows. “It was the name,” says Toogood. “That was our name. And we’d made that name what it was.” It wasn’t until Toogood was a little older that he began thinking about the word’s real meaning. “I’d be waking up in hotel rooms when I was 26 going, ‘My God, I’m in a band called ‘Holy War’.”

Shihad (L-R: Karl Kippenberger, Jon Toogood, Phil Knight, Tom Larkin) (Photo: Supplied)

By 2001, Shihad were living out their wildest rock and roll dreams. The General Electric was turning them into a huge drawcard across Australasia, with constant airplay making ‘My Mind’s Sedate’ and ‘Pacifier’ their most popular songs. With a freshly-signed contract with Warner Music, they were lured to America to record their next album and attempt to crack music’s toughest territory. At Hollywood’s Pulse Recording Studios, producer Josh Abraham added a radio-ready sheen to their metallic angst. “It was just that dream we’d had,” says Toogood. “So many of our favourite bands came from America. We wanted to see what it was like.”

Looking back, Toogood describes that time as “craziness … the whole thing was madness”. It was, he says now, “the worst timing in the world”. Soon, the Taliban would send New York’s Twin Towers crashing down. In response, President George W Bush went to war in Iraq. “Jihad” was suddenly a household word in the US, and it was clear that any band using it – or even a word that sounded like it – wasn’t going to be embraced by radio stations or television networks. With their fifth album nearly finished, Shihad faced an impossible decision: change their name and continue chasing their US dreams, or tuck their tail between their legs and head home. “Shit A or Shit B” is how Toogood described it at the time. 

The band chose Shit A, and changed their name. At the beginning of 2002, just before Shihad were due to play the Big Day Out, they announced it would now be known as “Pacifier”. It sparked a furore: band members were split about the decision, fans refused to accept it and labelled them “sellouts”, and reporters would not stop asking about it. A NZ Herald story covering the announcement put the boot in by including a dictionary definition of a pacifier as “a baby’s dummy”. At that Big Day Out, fans refused to use the new name, defiantly chanting, “Shihad! Shihad!”. “No one’s ever chanted, ‘Pacifier’ at us,” says Kippenberger.

Now, 20 years on, Shihad are finally ready to reclaim that period of their lives. On a Zoom call, Toogood and Kippenberger admit they have a fresh outlook on the outrage. Occasionally, they can even laugh about what became the toughest time of the band’s career. But it’s taken time. In the aftermath, they couldn’t play Pacifier songs live. Hearing them again brings back memories, often not good ones. “Five years ago [is when I] probably came out the other side of this album,” says Kippenberger. “You can look back more fondly on the experience. You fall back in love with songs you’ve fallen out of love with. Things start to become more nostalgic.”

Toogood puts it another way. “That album had so much baggage that it was fucking hard to listen to,” he says. “We compromised our name. We made the biggest compromise possible. That was the problem.”

In 2002, Toogood was happily wandering around Wellington city with his step-daughter when a Shihad fan approached them. This wasn’t out of the ordinary – as the frontman for New Zealand’s most popular rock act, Toogood was a familiar face around his home town. But this wasn’t to be a pleasant interaction. “This kid walked up to me going, ‘Ya fuckin’ sell out c***,’” says Toogood, shaking his head. “It was like, ‘I get it.’ But you shouldn’t be saying things like that in front of a six-year-old … It was coming from all sides, man.”

Shihad had spent months agonising over whether or not to change their name. It divided the band. Toogood and Kippenberger were firmly in the don’t-change-it camp, while Knight and Larkin felt there was no other option. “I was just hoping that one day I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be a problem,” says Kippenberger. “Like, we could just keep that name and everyone would sort of forgive and forget. But it just got worse.” Toogood: “We were between a rock and a hard place. It was a real test from the universe. It’s like, ‘You can have everything you’ve been waiting for since you signed that terrible deal when you were young, you can finally release an album in the States and give it a go. But you have to change your name.'”

They searched for historical precedent, something to base the decision on. Surely another band had gone through the same thing? There was none. “Like, ‘What would The Who have done?'” says Toogood. “Well, they never had to fucking do that.” The more they delayed it, the more opportunities went begging. A representative for Rob Zombie saw the group play at Los Angeles’ Viper Room and asked if Shihad would join his tour – with one stipulation. She told them: “I love the band – but we can’t have that name on the poster.” Radio stations said the same thing: “I love the song [but] I’m not gonna say their name on the radio.” “It really became something that just choked our opportunities,” says Kippenberger. “It became apparent that if we didn’t change our name, we were probably gonna be sent home … If we were living in New Zealand, we probably wouldn’t have given a shit. But we were over there trying to work it. It really did matter.”

Hindering the decision was what their new name would be. Choosing one wasn’t easy. “Every time we came up with a name, it was like, ‘Well, there’s about three bands called that,'” says Toogood. He continued struggling to make the call. “Right up to the last minute, it was, ‘Do we really have to do this?'” Pacifier was chosen because, by then, it had become Shihad’s most popular song. “Pretty average band name, but at least it’s a song that everyone knows,” says Toogood.

But there was another problem. A Brooklyn punk band also called Pacifier told them they couldn’t have their name unless they paid them. “The American record label had to pay them $40,000,” says Toogood. Pacifier’s album wasn’t able to be released until a contract was signed. “Held ransom,” is how Kippenberger describes the incident. To the band, it was another situation they didn’t want to deal with. Toogood still can’t believe the last-minute wrangle. He refused to sign the contract that would go ahead without his signature. “Who would call a fucking band ‘Pacifier’? Seriously? Unless you had to …”

Finally, Shihad bit the bullet. The album was finished. The payout was made and  their name was officially changed. Toogood wrote Pacifier’s fiery first single, ‘Comfort Me,’ about the situation they’d found themselves in. “This was about being in LA when the World Trade Center went down, the Pentagon got hit, 9/11 is happening and the whole world is fucking going crazy,” he told Rip It Up magazine. “The last place I wanted to be in the world was LA. I wanted to be home. I just wanted to get the fuck out but I couldn’t. Planes weren’t flying. I had an album to make. What the fuck was going on? I was extremely confused and extremely frightened and anxious.”

Pacifier
A press photo from Shihad’s Pacifier era. (Photo: Supplied)

Back home, the decision tanked. No one liked it. Everyone had an opinion, and not just Shihad’s very vocal fan base. Backstage at the 2002 Big Day Out, New Order’s Peter Hook told Toogood: “I can understand … but it sucks”. On the same tour, Faith No More’s Mike Patton had a more visceral point of view, telling Toogood: “Jonny, if you change your name, I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna slit your throat.” “It was just … shitty,” says Toogood. “We were going, ‘Fuck this’.”

They channelled their anger into incendiary live shows. Fan chants for “Shihad! Shihad!” got louder, and the band responded in kind. The stage was the only place they could take out their rage. “It almost made us more determined to be an even better live band because I was like, ‘Well, fuck you,‘” says Toogood. Fans stayed after shows, continuing to chant their original name. Why so much hate? “It was symbolic because not only were we changing our name for a market, but we were also changing our name for a market that had invaded a sovereign country and was run by Republicans at that time.” In fans’ eyes, the band had, for want of a better term, caved in to the man.

But the decision allowed Shihad to live out their American fantasies. “We got to do what touring bands love to do, which is we got to see the world,” says Kippenberger. “We got to see more of America than a lot of Americans see.” But it wasn’t on their terms. The name change made them feel like frauds, and it infected their entire American experience. “We played shitloads of shows, and we played some really good shows over there,” says Kippenberger. “We played those like nothing else really mattered. There was a point on the road over there where there was nothing left to our lives but to do these shows … wake up every day and play in Fort Lauderdale, Florida …”

It didn’t last. It couldn’t. When the band’s four members returned home, recoupled and began making plans for their next album, the reality sunk in. The name couldn’t stay. When it came time to release Love is the New Hate, Shihad reversed their decision and disowned the name Pacifier. “As much as we believed in what we were doing, and the reasons for doing it at the time – the truth is we were wrong,” they said in a statement posted on their website in September, 2004. “…We are going to continue as we began – under the name Shihad.”

Shihad

Back then, their regrets were obvious. Ask them today, though, and they’ve got a different opinion. “Was it worth it? We don’t know any other alternative,” says Toogood. “It is what it is.” He lists the band’s subsequent albums – Love is the New Hate, Beautiful Machine, FVEYS and Old Gods – and says they may not exist without the Pacifier experiment. “If that hadn’t happened, maybe they those records wouldn’t have happened. Or [we wouldn’t have had] those moments of, ‘Aha, that’s why I’m in this fucking band’. So we don’t know what else would have happened.”

Many of Pacifier’s songs haven’t been played live. Music videos from that time aren’t on YouTube and are hard to find. But, from today, Shihad is reclaiming the Pacifier era. For the first time, the album is being re-released on vinyl, only this time it’s under a different name. It’s called, ‘The Pacifier Album’ and the name on the cover is the same one Toogood messed up the spelling of all those years ago: Shihad. With it comes a new attitude towards the hardest times of their 35-year career. “I love those songs. I love them being part of our history,” says Kippenberger. He pauses, thinks, then says: “It’s OK to fall in and out of love with your own stuff, you know?”

Shihad’s The Pacifier Album is available on vinyl now.

Keep going!
Liam Coleman, Elz Carrad and Cohen Holloway in the second season of Rūrangi. (Photo: Sky, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Liam Coleman, Elz Carrad and Cohen Holloway in the second season of Rūrangi. (Photo: Sky, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureFebruary 17, 2023

Rūrangi doesn’t look, sound or feel like any other show on TV

Liam Coleman, Elz Carrad and Cohen Holloway in the second season of Rūrangi. (Photo: Sky, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Liam Coleman, Elz Carrad and Cohen Holloway in the second season of Rūrangi. (Photo: Sky, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

Its first season made waves and earned international accolades. Rūrangi director Max Currie tells Sam Brooks what’s changed for the second visit back to the small town.

When Rūrangi was released as part of the New Zealand Film Festival in 2019, nobody really knew how far the film would go. It was bracing, fresh and earnest, focussing on Caz (Elz Carrad), who returns to his hometown for the first time since transitioning. It received warm reviews, and then a second life when it was edited into a six-part web series which was later broadcast on Neon (where it’s still available).

It wasn’t just what was onscreen that made the film special; it was made with both of the communities that featured in it in mind, especially the trans community. Over half of the cast and crew on that initial production were non-binary, all trans characters were played by trans actors, and there was an advisory panel of trans people who had veto power over the production.

Since then, the series has been picked up globally (on Hulu in the US) and won an International Emmy for Short Form Series as well as a slew of local awards. It was a certifiable hit, so prominent that Elz Carrad featured as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, and director Max Currie featured as a member of the show’s Pit Crew.

The cast of Rūrangi, led by Elz Carrad (third from left) (Photo: Sky)

The second series expands on the world of Rūrangi substantially. Not only do we see more of the town, especially the struggles between the tangata whenua and the Pākehā administration that does everything to ignore the effects of colonisation, but we also see more of the life that Caz has left behind, or run away from, in Auckland. The show is bigger, better, and richer.

The first thing Currie and the team did when they received funding for the second season was to actually go to Ngātea, on the Hauraki plains: literally re-entering the world of Rūrangi. They met with locals ranging from city councillors, to farmers, to the entertaining personalities at the pub that every town seems to have. “There was a real joy and a real excitement to physically go back there,” Currie says. “It was important to share the space with our broader team of writers because we had more resources this time around, and could have more people involved.”

As a result, Rūrangi feels less like Caz’s story, and more like the story of the town; the ensemble is not just larger by number, but their individual characters are beefed up too. This was in response to audience feedback. “What we kept hearing after season one was that people wanted more of everything – more of Anahera, more of Jem – and we asked ourselves what the show would look like if we took an ensemble approach?”

From there, the idea of looking at “where the trouble began” came together – as in, when did regressive and hateful ideas about gender and sexuality begin to infiltrate New Zealand? Anahera (a stand-out Āwhina-Rose Ashby) became the central character to interrogate this, during flashback sequences that could almost be dreams; Anahera’s ancestor suddenly finds herself outcast from her iwi, which has repercussions that linger towards the modern day.

Elz Carrad, Awhina-Rose Ashby and Cohen Holloway in season two of Rūrangi. (Photo: Sky)

What makes Rūrangi stand out, especially in a television landscape that is still struggling with meaningful representation, is how neither of the communities depicted in the series feel slighted. Both tangata whenua and the trans community are represented thoughtfully, even-handedly, with equal amounts dramatic heft and relatable humour.

He singles out Craig Gainsborough, the series’ lead producer, for laying down that alternative way of making the series – where everybody had some sort of a say, or the ability to speak up if necessary. “His decisions were really about giving power to other people, which is terrifying when you’re the creative,” he says. “What do you mean we’re having a panel of intersectional, gender-diverse people who have never written television before, who also have actual veto power?”

As the second season expanded to more explicitly deal with te ao Māori, it was important for them to get their support system for the tangata whenua working on the series up to the same level as the one for transgender people. “I don’t think you can explore these tensions without reflecting on them within the group of people who are making it,” he says, referring to the writing team of Briar Grace-Smith (a new addition for season two, who directed half of the season and served as co-showrunner), Cole Meyers, Awa Puna, Aroha Awarau, Victor Rodger and himself. “The writing was very collaborative. We read each other’s work, we re-wrote each other’s work, we discussed the work together. The idea of having many perspectives and many experiences moving forward together, that’s what happened in the writing in a way.”

He credits Grace-Smith with a lot of the humour in the second season, especially. “If we’re going to stick our fingers in our national wound, I think we have this obligation to make people laugh and to play along with us,” he says. “Briar has brought that in spades, and we both still crack up watching the second season.”

The production took a lot of care around the use of Te Reo in the show, especially when it was and wasn’t subtitled. It led to a lot of conversations about the gaze of the show – who were they centering? Who were they othering? – and that extended to use of te reo Māori. As it is, Rūrangi is one of the more fluid New Zealand shows; characters slip between languages without any fuss, and even New Zealanders least versed in Te Reo will probably be able to fill in the gaps without the need of subtitles.

The care, and the thought, has paid off. Rūrangi doesn’t look, sound, or feel like any other show on TV, here or overseas. Meaningful representation is impressive, but representation that reflects the messy collisions of intersectionality with heart and humour is a downright miracle.

Rūrangi: Rising Lights is available on Neon and Sky Go.
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