Pop CultureAugust 20, 2024

The good and bad of Auckland’s newest venue Double Whammy!

Staff writer

In just two weeks Backroom and The Wine Cellar were transformed into Double Whammy! and Whammy’s Public Bar. Gabi Lardies went along to the grand opening to suss the changes.

On Saturday at about 8pm, Chlöe Swarbrick cut a shiny red ribbon strung across a stage in a large underground room. The smell of fresh paint lingered in the air. There was a small crowd, who cheered and shouted their approval, but with a sold out grand opening featuring six local acts, this was the quiet before the storm.

The underground room, about 15 metres long and 8 metres wide, was two rooms just two weeks prior. The smaller of the rooms was Backroom, once a late night spot mostly for electronic music which was accessed through Whammy’s narrow stairs. The bigger of the rooms was the Wine Cellar performance space known for having Persian carpets on the walls and being a rite of passage for New Zealand’s bands for the last two decades. A few walls have been busted down to join the spaces into a new venue called Double Whammy! It is accessed through what was The Wine Cellar, a 20 year long institution of Karangahape Road and New Zealand music, and is now Whammy’s Public Bar – a bar in its own right but also the gateway to Double Whammy.

“We’ve poured our hearts, sweat and sledgehammers into this project,” announced the Whammy! Facebook page in a promotion for the grand opening. So what’s changed?

The good

Poopy smells are gone

In case you haven’t noticed, the smoking area has smelled like sewage for at least the past five years. On Saturday, there was nay a wisp of this curse. When I commented on this newfound cleanliness, sitting at a barrel next to a stainless steel bowl of ciggie buts, a punter told me that a leaking sewer pipe had been found during the renos. It was apparently a nightmare for the landlord to have fixed, and I would say 100% worth it for not having to smell a health hazard when you’re trying to look presentable at 1am.

The outside area got a glow up

The swing doors are gone, and so too is the oversized table and wobbly benches. Removing these old bits of ply has opened up a rather long space that now feels like a trendy laneway in Melbourne or some shit thanks to strings of fairy lights running across the length of the ceiling, and the ceiling having a fresh coat of black paint. If you don’t look too closely (or have enough beers) it might just be the night sky rather than concrete. There’s a few barrels dotted around to lean or sit at, and some booth-y benches have been built against one side and painted a glossy salmon colour!

It’s big

Double Whammy! is bigger than Whammy!, bigger than The Wine Cellar was, and waayyyy bigger the Backroom could have ever dreamed of. It has a 400-500 person capacity. I’m assuming it neared that on Saturday since tickets were sold out, but it didn’t feel cramped.

Co-owners Lucy Macrae and Tom Anderson string up the red ribbon for Double Whammy! opening. (Photo: Priya Sami)

Somewhere ‘not embarrassing’ for international acts to play

A friend commented that ever since The Kings Arms closed in 2018 there hasn’t been anywhere of the right size and vibe for good but niche international acts to play. Finally, we have somewhere “not embarrassing” for that, she said.

No posts on the dancefloor or stage

While I love the enterprising spirit that has wrapped pleather covered pads around the posts in the original Whammy! it is certainly preferable not to have posts breaking up the dancing and stage areas. The musicians on stage were free to roam and the drum kit didn’t have to be so far back. Also, it felt almost like maybe this wasn’t a repurposed basement no one else wanted to rent but maybe even a proper venue.

Fancy lighting

The stage had sooooo many lights that could do soooo many different things. Towards the end of the night people who were definitely not trained in lighting and definitely had no idea what they were doing (not me) were somehow let behind the desk to press random buttons. By pressing pretty much all of them, they showed what the lighting setup is truly capable of.

Happy musicians

It started with Ruby Walsh of Na Noise looking like they were ascending into another realm while playing their conga drums and other percussion instruments. It continued with every other musician giving thanks for having the space and the people who made it possible. It stretched out with muso audience members saying they couldn’t wait for the things that are possible in there.

The bad

A touch of Ponsonby on a budget

I know those globular paper lantern lampshades are ubiquitous but I still never expected to see them in this underground nook of St Kevin’s Arcade. Maybe because they wouldn’t have matched the anarchy flag on the wall. Maybe because if you’ve painted all the walls black you don’t need to worry about softening the lighting. Maybe because they come with the baggage of trying to make a place look “nice” and that has never seemed like a concern for this particular place. But this is The Wine Cellar no more. This is Whammy’s Public Bar and it has about 20 paper lantern lampshades, white walls and exposed brick.

Artist’s rendition of Whammy! Public Bar

The fake plants

Thankfully there aren’t many – just a few on a ceiling grate in the outside area and little squares in the toilet cubicles. I just think – nah. There are also a few real Mānuka baby trees in pots. I have no idea how they will survive without natural light and with a constant dose of cigarette and vape fumes. Someone suggested a plant care service like some corporate offices have, but I just can’t imagine it.

Two additional toilets

The toilet situation is almost the same as before. In the Public Bar there’s one toilet and one urinal as per Wine Cellar. In Double Whammy! there’s four cubicles – two have been added to the two that were previously attached to Backroom. All together that make five toilets – one toilet per 100 people – surely not enough. There is something lovely about being stuck in a line next to someone you haven’t seen in a while, but at the same time, I need to pee and I could chat to them not in the bathroom under harsh fluorescent lighting.

One tiny door

To get in, and out, of Double Whammy! there’s just one single door. On Saturday this caused much clogging before and after acts played, think the tube in London at rush hour. There is a second door (fire exit) but it was closed.

Dancefloor not dark enough

Dancefloors need a certain level of anonymity and since everyone knows everyone in Auckland darkness is essential. This surely has an easy fix, but in the six hours I was there it was not done.

The price of a can of Coke

As circumstances would have it I happen to know the cost of cans of Coke in the mini-fridges inside the rooms of the Cordis Hotel – $6.50. At Double Whammy! they are $5. The difference is that at the former you’re in a fancy hotel that has towel robes, a pool, spa, saunas and jasmine scented steam rooms and at the latter you’re in an underground basement. It is my firm belief that this price is a bit rude to people trying to have a good time without getting wasted. They should be supported in their endeavours.

The verdict

Aucklanders now have no excuse not to go out past 9pm. This is a good thing.

Keep going!

Ride in 2024 and 1990

Pop CultureAugust 19, 2024

A Powerstation show reveals the strange challenges of nostalgia touring

Duncan Greive

Founder

Ride in 2024 and 1990

Ride were one of the most powerful and original bands of the British shoegaze scene. Duncan Greive watches them grow, and wishes he hadn’t.

It’s almost impossible to age with any dignity. For a couple of months earlier this year my elbow had a swollen fluid sac bulging out. A friend finds her fingers numb when she sleeps in the wrong position, while another took his first fall “that felt like how an old person would fall”. We’re all in our mid-40s.

Going to see Ride at the Powerstation unavoidably brought us face-to-face with that reality, as the band has grown in ways the audience surely didn’t appreciate.

Ride formed in Oxford in the late 80s, and were quickly signed to Creation, the indie label which would go on to dominate the 90s through bands like Oasis and Primal Scream. Shoegaze – a genre typified by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive – was a moody, arty music which never really reached mass audiences. It was squeezed by grunge then washed away by the unstoppable rise of Britpop, though lately has had a huge revival driven by its popularity on TikTok, with its textures and hazy, emotive sound matching the current global mood.

In any consideration of the 90s’ most perfectly formed albums, Ride’s debut Nowhere would have to rank near the top. It’s built out of Andy Bell’s guitar, alternately menacing and shimmering, and on top of Loz Colbert’s muscular drumming, with Bell and Marc Gardener taking turns singing in affectingly reedy, post-adolescent keys.

Ride performing in 1990 (Photo: Greg Neate/Wikipedia)

It was Nowhere and its sequel Going Blank Again which drew a decent but not overwhelming crowd – largely male, median age early-50s – to the Powerstation on a wet and windy Sunday night. We were young when those records came out; they meant everything to us. We’re now older and those songs still have that same power, to recall when our stories weren’t written, when our identity was defined by the fact you knew and loved Nowhere more than Nevermind.

This is what we stood anxiously awaiting, in that beautiful hall. Ride came on stage on the dot of 9pm. Immediately it was apparent that something was different – at least to the mental image we’d built in our heads. Press imagery from the era was all fringes, baggy jeans and enigmatic, withdrawn personalities. Three quarters of the band met that by being solemn and undemonstrative. Andy Bell even had a perfect bowl cut, despite his hair having gone completely silver.

Singer and guitarist Marc Gardener, though, was a problem. For a genre that demands you inspect footwear, his were laceless and pointy in a Chapel Bar-ish way. His neck had a chunky beaded necklace and at least two dog tags, despite not having completed any tours of duty. He wore a blazer. All of this is fine out of context – you have to be cute for you – but was hard not to read as a betrayal of what Ride stood for. It was as if Peep Show’s Jez had taken over the band.

This should be fine, even admirable, because of course he has changed! In the intervening years, we’ve all grown up. Become teachers, lawyers, car salespeople and some unfortunates even journalists. We don’t walk around trapped in our teenage selves. Yet we do expect bands to.

This is the unavoidable tension at the heart of the growing and increasingly lucrative nostalgia circuit: the audience wants the artist to do something that is quite unnatural; something which is on some level antithetical to the modern, pathbreaking origin story of many artists. We want you to transport us back to our youth, by embodying and performing your best impression of your young selves.

Still, there’s growing up, and then there’s growing into the very image of the artist you implicitly stood firmly against. In 1992, Ride’s mystique, their wall of noise and lack of concession to a clean, radio-friendly sound felt both symbolically and sonically powerful. It was jarring to hear the band abandon much of that approach.

The first half of the set was dominated by songs from their recent album Interplay, which Gardener believes to be the best the band has recorded despite evidence to the contrary (to be fair, most artists are trapped in that belief system). The studio versions of these songs are passable. Pitchfork’s review put it well, saying the band “refuse to pander to their classic sound. Their stance is frustratingly laudable – a creative obstinacy to be admired with a slightly heavy heart.” They have dropped the thundering, emotive guitars in favour of boringly competent synth-rock.

Live, they change shape again, and it’s not good. The band they recall most powerfully now is Jesus Jones. The last time Jesus Jones’ name was invoked in this country, it was when The Feelers were commissioned to cover Right Here, Right Now for the 2011 men’s Rugby World Cup – perhaps this century’s most garish act of cultural cringe. Jesus Jones is fine; but they were the exact opposite of what Ride stood for.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’

Duncan Greive
— Founder

It reaches a nadir during Peace Sign, from Interplay. Ride’s lyrics were, in truth, mostly just OK – but that didn’t matter because you felt more than heard them. They have plummeted since. Peace Sign’s chorus goes:

“Give me a peace sign
Throw your hands in the air
Give me a peace sign
Let me know you’re there”

This new sound is weird enough on the new songs, but when Gardener sings Dreams Burn Down like it’s The World I Know, complete with messianic gesturing, it’s breathtakingly weird. It’s as if he’s trying to reframe these beautiful, brittle songs as pre-Oasis pub rock.

Things pick up during a sustained run of early material, especially when Bell – wearing a nice black t-shirt and Adidas Gazelles, perfect – takes more lead vocals. Songs like Kaleidoscope, Taste and the sublime Vapour Trail give us what we came for. But even when the sound is right, Gardener’s generic rock star gestures have a harsh incongruity with the sound and philosophy of the band we came to see.

It forces you into a strange dilemma. Gardener seems happy to be on a stage, and in interviews confident that the music he is making now is closest to the vision they had all along. Yet it feels like a conscious disavowal of what attracted us all there in the first place. The incongruity is hard to shake, even though now, 12 hours later, I remain entirely unsure about which of us has it wrong: him for growing and changing, or us for wishing he wouldn’t.