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| Cover photo of Pitch Black - Tony Nyberg. Design - Peter McLennan |
I BELIEVE YOU ARE A STAR
(202 pages, official publication date May 20, RRP $19.95 from Slowboat Records, RPM Music (Wgtn), Conch Records, Real Groovy (Akl), FlyingOut mailorder (NZ) and amazon.com. More outlets soon. Also available on Kindle. ISBN 978 148 2692457
I BELIEVE YOU ARE A STAR is a collection of magazine interviews written between 1992 and 2003 by Peter McLennan. He talked to locals just starting their recording careers (P-Money, Stellar, SJD, Black Seeds), through to established artists (Salmonella Dub, Shayne Carter, Bailter Space). They are fascinating insights of where these artists were at, and provide a look into their creative process.
The book launch will be held at Conch Records, 115a Ponsonby Rd from 3pm, Saturday May 25th, with special all-NZ vinyl DJ set from Dylan C, and complimentary beer from the good folk at Hallertau. Books on sale on the day - first 25 copies come with a free mix CD of recordings mentioned in the book. Read about the artists and listen to them at the same time!
Before starting his blog Dubdotdash in 2003, Peter was a freelance magazine journalist for a handful of magazines, including Real Groove, North and South, NZ Musician, Rip It Up, Pavement, Selector, Planet, Lava and Stamp. This collection of interviews draws together some of the articles he wrote and is focussed on local musicians, DJs and artists.
There's some interesting threads in these interviews, like Stellar discussing their sizeable album budget and comparing it to what Straitjacket Fits or JPSE got, then Fiona McDonald having a similar conversation round her album budget, citing JPSE and Stellar.
There's Tigilau Ness (Che Fu’s dad) talking about how he got sent to prison after the 1981 Springbok tour protests, which is a pretty heavy story. Tigilau got chucked out of school for refusing to cut his afro, how staunch is that?
Or Shayne Carter, explaining why he didn’t want to send out advance copies of his debut album as Dimmer (after making me sit with him in the Sony boardroom and listen to the album in its entirety), and me suggesting that if I’d had the album before the interview, I could've written some pertinent questions. To which Shayne replied with words to the effect of “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”
Peter says “I got to meet some fascinating people writing these pieces. I feel very lucky to have met them - that’s part of the reason why I got into magazine writing. I wanted to meet these creative people and find out their process, and they turned out to be people I’d want to meet anyway.”
Other interviews include... SJD, Pitch Black, Sola Rosa, HDU, Darcy Clay, Graffiti art in Aotearoa: DLT, Otis Frizzell & Dan Tippett, Roger Perry, Dawn Raid, Kog Transmissions, Subliminals, Solid Gold Hell, Weta, Hinewehi Mohi, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Phase 5, Jakob, DJ Sir-Vere and the ITF DJ champs PLUS: articles on the Aotearoa Hiphop Summit 2001 (and a NZ hiphop timeline), and the state of NZ music videos in 1992, and 1999.
The book is published independently by Dunbar Noon Publishing, thru the print on demand service, Createspace. Book and cover design by Peter McLennan.