Viva’s new album reviewer Peter Baker has 30 years of experience in the music biz, and he’s still hellbent on discovering the next great listen.
It was the 1980s, and Peter Baker could think of nothing better than working in a record store. The chance to listen to good tunes all day, to chat to like-minded “oddball” music fans, to hear new albums before anyone else — all of it had him jazzed. So when he waltzed into Virgin Records in London’s Oxford Street during his OE and talked his way into a job, he couldn’t believe his luck.
“It was also completely heartbreaking because I spent the whole day out the back shrink-wrapping videos,” he laughs.
Thirty years on, the passionate music fan and director of Rhythmethod, New Zealand’s biggest independent music distributor, is back where he loves to be — working at Marbecks, New Zealand’s longest-running record store. It’s a place he feels right at home, as comfortable recommending a reggae or pop album as he is the latest soul or country release. Which brings us to his other new gig, as Viva’s new album reviewer, a role he says will broaden his own musical horizons as much as he hopes it will for readers.
“Music is such a communal thing,” he says. “It’s why I love the culture of record stores. It’s about sharing. That’s one of the things that brought me to writing as well.”
Pete and his daughter Eliza, 27, had been writing to each other about music during lockdown, prompting him to make his recommendations official. He’s just as likely to talk music at the Waiheke home he shares with partner Lisa Paris, Womad publicist and owner of The Label. But the hope is that Pete’s new column, publishing on Viva.co.nz from this week, will expand on his broad personal music tastes, resulting in a hotlist of must-hear local and international albums. His plan is to “push the boundaries” and expose readers to releases that might have flown a little under the radar.
“That’s what Marbecks has a long history of doing,” he says. Though record stores are now an endangered species, the Queens Arcade-based store and family-owned business still attracts music fans to its renowned classical department, as does its catalogue of pop, world music, jazz, nostalgia and country, sold as vinyl, CDs and DVDs.
As well as his retail experience here, the UK and in Australia, Pete was in sales at Flying In during the 90s and later Border Music before starting Rhythmethod from his garage in East Auckland.
“Being an independent setup meant we had a much greater immediate impact on the musicians’ livelihood and also the retailers’ livelihood,” he says. “I really loved that. It was a real driving force for me to be able to say, ‘I’ve just sold another 20 copies of this record by this artist’. And even though they don’t know it, they’re better off.”
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Advertise with NZME.In 2021 as the industry continued to evolve, Pete took over the GM role for locally owned digital aggregator, Digital Rights Management NZ, building relationships with digital streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube and iTunes. Through both roles, he’s worked directly with local stars including Anika Moa, Flight of the Conchords and Fat Freddy’s Drop, and international acts Queens of the Stone Age, The National and Adele. (While not one to kiss and tell, he once met the British superstar in the studio when she recorded her bestselling third album 25. “It was just a totally surreal moment,” he says.)
When it comes to selecting what to review for Viva, he’s not biased, he says — the column will feature new releases from a range of distributors, along with reissues, items that have long been unavailable, releases from touring artists... anything he suspects might have escaped the attention of otherwise plugged-in music aficionados.
“I’ll give everything a shot — I’ve recently discovered that I quite like classical music! There are a bunch of records coming out from a number of my favourite artists in the next little while, so that’s really exciting. But I want this opportunity to be about discovering new music for myself as well as for other people. I don’t think it always has to be the hottest and the hippest. It’s going to have some of that stuff, but it’s also going to include stuff that’s just good, albums that might not have had their time in the limelight.”
Find Peter Baker’s expert album recommendations, where he tells you what you need to hear, online every Saturday.
