Musicians do it for the kids

By FIONA RAE

All right! Twenty-four hours of live music without the queues for the loos, the out-of-it hippies and the mud when it rains. Hey, I went to Glastonbury twice, National Anthem at home on the couch should be a doddle. Bring it on!

The biggest single television event since - well, when was Telethon? - kicked off with a rebel yell from Takapuna's finest, The Checks, on Saturday night and, at time of writing, still hadn't let up.

It was entirely appropriate that The Checks should open the show, because if they're not the future face of New Zealand rock'n'roll, I don't know what is. They're also, as a later news item illustrated, fully backed by their school, where they get to practise an hour a day.

Which segues nicely into the purpose of National Anthem, broadcast on TV2, which was to raise money for the Play It Strange charity, which will encourage young people, probably not unlike The Checks, to find the music within.

Not that I need to tell you this, because the hosts endlessly exhorted us to donate via phone, internet, or ATM. The only way you couldn't donate, it seems, was by good old-fashioned mail. That might be appropriate, too - this was an entirely different breed of telethon, a thoroughly modern one. I saw very few "new totals" and no-one sang "Thank you very much for your kind donations" while forming a conga line.

A shame, really. There were also no "challenges". Wouldn't it have been fun to challenge Auckland host Dominic Bowden, or "The Dominator" as I think he should be known, to do 10 push-ups with his shirt off? I'd have happily donated a few bucks to get one of those ska bands to stop playing, or get roving reporter Erica Takacs off Queen St, where she was harassing passers-by with pointless interviews.

In these days of understated Kiwi humour the over-excited hosts were wearying. Jackie Clarke, who presented from Wellington, seemed to have had a few too many Red Bulls; Simon Barnett, in Christchurch, was a little more laid-back, even if he did remind me of comedian Jan Maree. Unintentional, I'm sure. Carolyn Taylor, also in Christchurch, was the Energiser Bunny of presenting. By Sunday, they'd quietened down a bit, thank goodness.

But as a television event, it could hardly be faulted on a technical level. Each venue seemed to have a minimum of 10 cameras (okay, maybe that's exaggerating), including those sweeping booms that give you vertigo. The sound mix was fine, too.

And, Kiwi musik rox, according to the generation for whom spelling is just another creative endeavour. And there was plenty of rocking: there's certainly no shortage of guitar bands in New Zealand. Relief eventually came early in the evening on Saturday from Nesian Mystik, featuring Donald McNulty's new Pippi Longstocking-meets hip-hop hairstyle. Che Fu, even without the Crates, is extraordinary, too.

Naturally, there were some great bands, or "preformances" as the roving Paul Ellis still calls them, and some rubbish. But that's how far we've come - we've got the full spectrum and I think we're mature enough to be able to criticise, don't you? I don't mind saying, at the risk of receiving thousands of angry, misspelt emails, that Zed are rubbish. I'm not saying anything about 4 Man Bob, though. They looked big.

Some highlights: The Verlaines! Doing Death and the Maiden! Absolutely fantastic, until they were interrupted by the Lotto draw; Dunedin's DDTs doing a kind of Ramones-meets-Dick Dale; Apollo, aka Max Maxwell and co on Sunday morning, until they were interrupted, too (not kid friendly, perhaps? And if so, why weren't they on during club-type hours?); Phoenix Foundation; D1 Entertainment; Crumb going big on the audience participation; David Wikaira-Paul, otherwise known as Tama from Shortland Street (what a star); and SJD. Deadlines dictate I didn't see the final acts; but I'm sure they were jolly good.

At times, the charity almost seemed an aside; it's a feat in itself that we can have 24 hours of Kiwis performing, and still there were omissions - plenty of bands who, ironically, are overseas shakin' some action - The Datsuns, Bic Runga, Trinity Roots, Salmonella Dub and goodshirt, who all recorded messages. Not to mention the ones not part of the show at home: Dimmer, The Mint Chicks, The Coolies, Eight Foot Sativa, Deja Voodoo ... the list, and the music, goes on.