Kiwis hitting a raw nerve in London

Two Kiwi independent bands are in the thick of a revival of ragged rock'n'roll in London. CATHRIN SCHAER reports.

Dolf de Datsun is amused. "You've got to laugh," he says on the phone from London where his band, the Datsuns, are mid-tour. "It's just funny how fashion changes people's opinions of things. Before, we were stupid - now we're genius. Six months ago people were telling us to give it up. And now look at us!"

And so you should, because everyone in Britain is looking at them - or at least, listening to them.

Over in London they're even rioting to get into gigs that the Datsuns are playing. On a Monday night two weeks ago about a hundred people who couldn't get into a Datsuns and Mooney Suzuki show stormed the doors. Very rock'n'roll. "It was pretty wild," Dolf says. "Actually," he adds, clearly still amused; "it was fun too."

While he's not laughing all the way to the bank quite yet - despite causing riots, the Datsuns aren't even signed to a record label - Dolf and his band have every right to smile.

They've been playing their brand of garage rock in this country for the past six years, ever since they met at school in Cambridge. In their time together the Datsuns have released only a handful of singles, all on vinyl and all on their own record label, Hell Squad Records. While beloved of student radio and known for their live performances, they were a relatively unknown group here. And then they went to London.

Perfect timing. They, and another Kiwi band touting similar sounds, the D4, have been just in time to catch a ride on the thundering garage-rock-revival bandwagon that's being driven by the British music press.

One reviewer of a recent live Datsun's show tells it like this: "The Datsuns are the latest genius rock'n'roll band to swarm on London in this astonishing year for music. And as stage time approaches, the atmosphere is faintly insane. Everyone in possession of a chequebook in the British music industry is clustered round the front of the stage, drooling. One major label boss has just flown in from New York on Concorde to check out the action.

"From the moment lead singer Dolf staggers onstage and chucks his fluffy jumper at the drums, to the climax when he keels over bang into the lap of the London music biz, they are quite, quite amazing. The Datsuns are so breathlessly exciting, wild, choreographed and drop-dead hilarious, it's impossible not to be won over by them."

These kinds of they're-the-future-of-rock'n'roll reactions are part of the reason why a record company is paying for the Datsuns to stay in a hotel rather than the band having to sleep on other people's couches, as they did on the first leg of their tour. And why an unsigned band of 21- to 28-year-olds from Cambridge got to play live on John Peel's legendary BBC show.

Happily for New Zealand music, the D4 have had a similar reaction. This band, aged between 26 and 28, was formed four years ago on Auckland's North Shore. They released an EP and then an album - 6Twenty - late last year through Flying Nun but, just like their younger compatriots in rock, were not that well known within their own country.

And just like The Datsuns, while in Europe recently they too garnered rave reviews after getting a contract with Infectious, the same label that's home to chart-topping British rockers Ash and Australians, Gerling. The influential NME nominated the D4 for single of the week, London's widely read Time Out magazine compared them more than favourably with Oasis.

Clearly the Datsuns and the D4 are surfing a wave of hype in Britain as the garage rock revival blows up a storm. Their names are being mentioned in the same breath as other rock bands that are selling to gold record levels overseas like the Strokes, the White Stripes (US) and the Hives (Sweden). Luckily the down-to-earth New Zealand rock pigs realise this could be their 15 minutes of fashionability.

"Actually I don't think it's reached its peak in New Zealand yet," muses Dion, the D4's guitarist. "But it's definitely very 'in' in Britain.

"But this is not just a fashion statement. Bands like the White Stripes and the Hives have been doing this for years - they'd be doing it whether it was popular or not and so would we.

"It's a small but passionate scene."

"Music seems to work in cycles," adds Dolf. "It's all about moments. I think if you're good at what you do, you love it and you keep doing it then eventually that moment will come around. We're all very conscious of that 'fashionable' thing and we know that eventually we are going to be out of fashion again. Easy come, easy go - we accept that. But what can you do?

"You've just got to be yourself. And you've got to remember that there have always been pockets of people making this kind of music."

True, the garage rock sound was born before most of the Datsuns' and D4's members - around the mid 60s and mainly in the US. As one might suspect the name comes from the fact that a lot of the original music was made in garages by testosterone-fuelled lads with guitars and a drum kit. The music is raw, energetic, full-on rock'n'roll.

In New Zealand perpetrators included legendary groups like the La De Das and Chants R&B.

Since then there have been revivals and a growing number of pockets of rock'n'roll resistance. Today's players name-check the Stooges, the New York Dolls and Dead Boys, all of whom came along later.

It's never really been a big scene here- most of this country's proponents seem to breed in small enclaves in either Christchurch or Auckland.

But a lack of "scene" is a good thing, according to Michael "Skinny" Simons, who runs Fast Food Records and its website from Auckland, specialising in 60s garage rock and psychedelia.

"Because there really isn't such a big scene there's more of an original aesthetic," Simons explains.

"No scene means the bands we have here need to satisfy a variety of different musical tastes. So they're not trying to be anything, to be 60s or 70s, or fit into a scene. They are more themselves, if you know what I mean. And in a way that makes them better."

This, he believes, is what makes local bands like the D4, the Datsuns and the Rock'n'Roll Machine unique in the overseas arena. That, and that after 10 years of dance culture and Britpop, a good British garage band is as hard to find as a punk at a rave.

Nonetheless there's always that one major criticism levelled at these bands: lack of originality. "It's nothing new, the Stones did it better," whine the old rockers. But guess what? They don't care what you think.

"I've always thought writing good songs was more important than trying to be really original," Dolf explains.

"We do have our own style but we don't see what we are doing as particularly original or ground breaking," Dion admits. "But we enjoy it. We just want to play rock'n'roll music."

For three years Andrew Szusterman was in charge of selecting music to be played on MTV in Britain; he's recently relocated to New Zealand and is programme director at radio station Channel Z where he's been largely responsible for adding the D4 to the playlist. In England he witnessed the garage-rock comeback.

"I think nu-metal like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit came through first and that made it acceptable to play guitar music again," he explains. "Then along came the Strokes, and then groups like the White Stripes and the Hives, all of whom were putting some vibrancy back into music. And with no synthesisers, no lip synching and supposedly no marketing.

"The music industry was all about selling units and seeing music as a commodity. Programmes like PopStars are about marketing music to the nth degree. And people don't want that anymore.

"As a result there's been a real resurgence in rock music in the UK. Numbers going to dance clubs are falling and people want to go to gigs again.

"We want reality again and groups like the D4 sound so raw and so real, they're right onto it. And when you put it on at a party," he concludes happily, "you get this great sound that just screams out of the stereo."