My old mate recently found a bundle of music posters in the garage, rolled-up and long-forgotten. When he posted photographs of some of them to a Facebook group, the response was as if he'd unearthed a cache of valuable lost works of art. Which, in a very real sense, he had.
Old mate and I went to school together in Christchurch and our gang had its first experiences with live music together 40 years ago, not really grasping our good fortune in coming of age when we did. The posters all came from 1981, with particular musical memories attached: Toy Love, The Gordons, The Androidss. Most of the posters themselves had a story: who designed them, who printed them, when and where, fragments of provenance. Memories were summoned and advice was exchanged on framing and preservation.
For various reasons, 1981 was quite a year in New Zealand – but for the purposes of this story, it was the year that word went around that Roger, the friendly, slightly distracted guy who managed The Record Factory in Colombo St, was starting a record label. Roger was, of course, Roger Shepherd and the record label was Flying Nun.
The story of the label's founding and subsequent global cult status has been frequently told, not least by Roger himself. But there's another story, one connected to the city's identity as an arts town, to previous generations of artisan printers and, ultimately, to a bohemian fringe that has always been part of its character. From that ferment rose the art of Flying Nun.
Did we understand all this at the time? Of course not. The artists were simply among us; dancing, drinking and getting into trouble in the city's busy early-80s live music scene. It was an easy scene to enter – frequent the record shops, go to the gigs, find out where all the parties are – and the students of Canterbury School of Fine Arts turned up like everyone else did.