Newmatics at the Kings Arms

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

In that day's gig guide it sticks out like a time-warp misprint: "Newmatics - Kings Arms".

What was this? One of the three great Auckland bands (along with Blam Blam Blam and the Screaming Meemees) from the Class of 81 - the name of the compilation album which captured that vibrant post-punk period - playing a Friday-night gig in 2002?

This was a group which burned bright but fast with their rugged, energy-before-finesse brand of ska, soul and funk.

They broke up leaving just a few precious slices of seven-inch vinyl as their legacy.

The song they are most remembered for is Riot Squad.

While synonymous with the '81 Springbok tour protests, the song actually came from an incident the year before when the Auckland police task force burst in on a band's show at the long-disappeared XS Cafe and started batoning anyone in their way.

Yes, being the Auckland answer to British acts like the Specials, the Beat and Dexy's Midnight Runners, the Newmatics did attract a bit of a skinhead and bootboy following back then.

But back in the present, if the local constabulary had come into the Kings Arms on Friday night, they'd have been hard-pressed to find anyone who has been asked their age in a pub since CDs were the flash new thing.

There were a couple of year-zero punks who had polished up the chrome spikes on their jackets, but the only skinheads were due to male pattern baldness and good grooming and the only arrests in the offing were the cardiac kind.

It didn't stop them later dancing like the under-age ragers they once were once the band started.

This was another sort of class of '81 reunion.

Everywhere in the crowded venue were "didn't-we-use-to-flat-together?" conversations and "I-was-there" recollections.

Except for the group's exceptional drummer, Benny Staples, who remains involved in Auckland's dance music scene, the band have spent the intervening decades getting on with other things.

Singer Mark Clare is a familiar face as an actor and saxophonist, Kelly Rogers is just back from the Cannes Film Festival where he's been buying movies for his Rialto cinema chain.

Fittingly, the Newmatics started with their Class of 81 track Five Miseries.

And they played just about everything from their limited back pages, which meant old favourites like Judas, Broadcast and Doughboy Do Boy I and their covers of 60s tunes Soul Man and Land of 1000 Dances on which they got veteran Rick Bryant to huff along as guest vocalist.

There was, however, no Square One, their frantically funky swansong single, which probably requires monkey gland injections to play it like they did back then (like Dexy's beating up Spandau Ballet). Or, indeed to dance to it.

There were a few other Class of 81 old boys in the crowd but none took up the invitation of Clare to join them on stage for an encore of Riot Squad.

And so then it's over. While many stayed to talk and reminisce, one old fan left happy.

He had not only got a freshly purchased copy of the band's entire recorded works newly compiled on CD (the reason for the gig) but his dog-eared nearly worn-out copy of the band's Broadcast OR EP with its gatefold sleeve freshly autographed by some of the band. Nostalgia does funny things to people.

The signed sleeve sits propped by my computer screen as I finish writing this.