Rough Opinion (KOS 163 & R.I..Q.) interview, 1992

Rough Opinion (KOS 163 & R.I..Q.) interview, 1992, by Scope Magazine.

Nowadays they’re the upfront duo in rap band Rough Opinion, but first they were street artists, from the old school. Kos 163 and R.I.Q (Rhymes in Quest) were into bombing in the mid-80s, when the first hip hop wave hit NZ: the breakdancing, the early rapping, the stylised murals or bombs that started appearing around the streets.

Back then, street art was inextricably linked with hip hop subculture. Kids were out there, getting their names up— like today—but with one important difference: respect. For property. And for themselves.

Now Kos and R.I.Q reckon that a lot of kids “got no respect... they're like sheep following something what's happening”.

No marker pens for them; they would always use spraycans. “We're true graffiti artists; they don’t have the context, the history”.

A lot of tagging, they say, is “vandalism., nothing to be proud of”. No different from the likes of "I wuz hair", declarations of love “4 Eva” and banal political no nukes sloganeering: “limited, unimaginative trash,” they say.

“They don’t add creativity,” says Kos, “You got to create your own style, you can’t just go and fuck over other people’s property... people, they’re hurting out there...”

Though they admit doing some damage to other people’s property in their youth.. “now, thinking about it, it’s really stupid.”

Kos still keeps his hand in—he’ll be doing a wall at the new Espressoholic when it opens—but even back in the 80s he was doing major stuff.

Bombing a train on the Upper Hutt line, or freights that would be seen in Hamilton and Auckland: that was real style - sending messages to the rest of the country. And messages are what it’s about, Kos reckons, and what the taggers now-a-days should be doing “if they're hardcore like they think they are”.

Kos likens it to hip hop music, with kids whose musical education started with Hammer or NWA thinking they have the whole picture.

Taggers today, he says, need to find out where things came from, so that they can learn—and earn— respect. And they should think about what they're doing.

“If they want to do real graffiti, they should find some abandoned buildings or walls, and go throw on that.... people shouldn’t have to fork out for damages.”

At the same time, he can see why it happens. Kids lose out in the system, at school and with families. “Older people always have the say; kids are pawns in the game. They’re growing up a lot faster too— having sex out there at 11 an’ shit. Morals are breaking down, with the family, there’s less discipline...”

Then there’s the lack of positive role models—particularly male— within the family. “Two parents are a thing of the past. Kids turn to a father figure, a guy to hang out with, and get influenced...”

With little being offered to youth for a future—‘“society don’t give them nothing”—and little available in the way of positive direction and entertainment, it’s no surprise that some choose to hang out, and write their names on walls.

They're bored. And in Welli, there’s no youth centre like Boystown in Auckland, where you can exercise, shoot some baskets, hang out.

The council here, they reckon, are forgetting about young people. Sure, the civic centre’s fine, great library, but considering children are supposed to be the furure, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of investment in that future.

Attitudes have changed. Once it used to be “what I don’t have I'll make, now it’s what I don’t have’ll
take.” Or write on.

Rough Opinion will play with Auckland’s Hallelujah Picassos at Bats Theatre on March 5.

Liquid Liquid live

This is cool - the first time Liquid Liquid played the song "Cavern" in NYC 1982. They recorded it for NYC label 99 Records in 1983 - the label was also home to other local talent like ESG and Bush Tetras.

'Cavern' got sampled without permission by Melle Mel for 'White Lines'. 99 Records took Sugarhill Records to court and won, but then Sugarhill went bust so they were unable to collect. 

Nina Simone - The story behind “Mississippi Goddam!”

Great watch, a ten minute doco short on on Nina's classic.

Deepdive into Phil Fuemana's music

Enjoyed listening to this, Martyn Pepperell does a great summary of where Phil and his family started, and what they created. Nice shout out to yours truly too, which is appreciated.

"Fuemana's 1994 long player New Urban Polynesian dropped on Deepgrooves Entertainment right in the middle of what's been dubbed the "Polynesian renaissance" of the 1990s. Martyn Pepperell joined Josh Dom on The Vault on Wellington's Radio Active for a dive into what went into Phil Fuemana's family infused masterpiece and what came out of it, just ahead of its full reissue to both digital and vinyl on Melbourne's Gazebo Records.

The Vault is brought to you by AudioCulture: Iwi Waiata, the noisy library of New Zealand music and made with the support of NZ On Air Music."

RNZ's Music 101 interviewed Tony and Christina Fuemana about the reissue, listen here. 

from RNZ's interview: 

"We weren't in a good place when we were kids, so coming out of all that, for Phil, it was about being family, being able to survive the times," Christina said.

"I remember [Phil] talking to me and saying music was that thing that would take us out of poverty, because we didn't really have that much and music was one thing that we had, really, in abundance," Tony said.

"It's a timeless album and Phil was really ahead of his time... I'm just so proud of him, I just know that he'd be so stoked."

The foundation for the record was laid when a representative from Motown Records came to Tāmaki Makaurau and challenged Phil to "better his music", Tony said.

The oldest Fuemana sibling began working hard on his lyrics and song production and "started to shape the style of music that he wanted to hear".

Tony says the Motown rep was Frank Wilson, a name that will be familiar to northern soul fans for his extremely rare single Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), of which only two copies are known to exist. 

Fuemana - "New Urban Polynesian" album preorders

Flying Out in Auckland have the Fuemana - "New Urban Polynesian" reissue LP up for preorders - they have limited copies so get in quick. Available April 5th 2024.

Also still available for preorder via Gazebo Records' Bandcamp page. 

Young Marble Giants live

 via SFJ: "Here is a clip of Young Marble Giants playing "Wurlitzer Jukebox" live on the BBC in 1980. I think about this band all the time, because of how fully they make the music school approach obsolete [Fave comment under the video: 'I roadied for them in 1980 on their short tour of Scotland. Not much lifting involved, however. Nice people."]

"Here is a full 45-minute set from November of 1980, in black and white. If you have the option of thinking about what your instrument could do rather than learning what it has done, you might end up with your own Young Marble Giants. I always forget a little bit what instruments they played, beyond the fact that they had no drummer. There should be more bands without drummers!"

Norah Jones new album produced by Leon Michels

 Norah Jones released her latest album Visions last week. It's produced and co-written with Leon Michels, of the Dapkings/El Michels Affair. I came across a video of it and gotta say, I dig it a lot. Great raw sound with soulful vocal harmonies.

If you haven't thought about Norah Jones since 2003 when she had her breakout hit Don't Know Why, this is a bit different. I remember that album seemed to be in the cd player of every cafe in Auckland. 

LA Times: 'Since then, Jones has used her talent and her curiosity — not to mention the resources she enjoys as one of the last success stories of the CD era — to pursue all kinds of projects, including collaborations with Willie Nelson, Danger Mouse and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong; a scrappy country trio called Puss N Boots; a podcast in which she jams with friends like Dave Grohl and Mavis Staples; even a foray into acting with her role in Wong Kar-wai’s 2007 film “My Blueberry Nights.”

Leon Michels told Everything Jazz: “I met Norah probably somewhere around 2016 or 2017. She was working on a record and called Dave Guy and me to do horns for [it]. That’s how we met. She occasionally called us to do the horns whenever she needed them. Then she moved up to Hudson [Valley] during the pandemic, and I lived upstate. We just started talking at one point. It was the pandemic, so we hadn’t gotten to anybody then. When it loosened up, she came over, and we just jammed.”

“There wasn’t a concept. I think [the songs] came together like halfway through the record. When we started, we were just writing. Maybe Norah had a different idea, but in my head, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just making these songwriting demos,’ so I would put one mic on the drums and haphazardly one mic on the piano, but a lot of those like, quote-unquote demos just became the recordings.”

“I think her songwriting was very open, and a lot of the songs came together really quickly. [Norah] would come over and have like these loose ideas. She would come over while the kids were at school, so from 10 am to 3 pm, and we would usually knock out a song within that timeframe.” 

The video above gives you a look into that process. 

LA Times: “In the beginning it was pretty ratty-sounding,” Michels said of the recording process. “I was thinking to myself, OK, cool, eventually we’ll call in players and do really clean versions, which we tried a couple of times.” He laughed. “Every time, Norah was like, ‘This is not better.’ So a lot of the songs that made the record are just our demos.”

From Grammys.com: 'When Jones had a shred of an idea — a few lyrics, a sketch of a melody — she would sit at a piano or guitar, Michels would get behind the kit, and they'd jam it out, garage band-style.

From there, the collaborators would add "a ton of harmonies" as well as bass, guitar, horns, organ, or whatever else would elevate the songs.

"The live energy you feel on those recordings is from me and him playing drums and piano or guitar," Jones says, "and just having fun."

This is the second time she's worked with Michels, the first was on her 2021 holiday album.

LA Times Q&A:

What was on your mind when you were writing the songs on “Visions”? They talk about home and solitude but also about yearning for freedom.

Norah Jones: I’m not sure. I don’t really know until things are out that I was feeling a certain way. I was just mom-ing around, you know? Same juggle as always: working, hanging with the kids, figuring out after-school activities.

Do you carve out time from your home life to write songs?

I’ve never been good at that. I’m more likely to pick up a melody that’s bouncing around my brain and record it real quick so I don’t forget it. Of course, there’s no time when your mind can be quiet because there’s always somebody asking a question. So it really happens in the bathtub when the door’s locked. A lot of my voice memos have the bath running in the background.

You’re pro-bath.

There’s a really beautiful Sylvia Plath [line] about how a hot bath can fix just about everything. I’m on board with that notion.

Hiphop Holiday turns 30

The first ever local hiphop single to hit number one on the charts was this week in 1994 - 3 The Hard Way feat Bobbylon, with Hiphop Holiday, released by local label Deepgrooves. Still catchy as hell. 

It reached number one on March 6 1994, two weeks after it entered the NZ single chart. It stayed there for three weeks.

3 The Hard Way knocked another local group off the top spot - The Muttonbirds with The Heater. When 3 The Hard Way returned almost a decade later in 2003 with their second album, their single 'It's On' hit number one, once again knocking a local off the top spot - Scribe. 

Their album Old Skool Prankstas got a digital reissue in 2012 and I was lucky enough to write the liner notes for that. Read more about 3 The Hard Way at Audioculture. 

Here's the story of the song, via RNZ.

Fuemana - "New Urban Polynesian" album remastered and reissued this month

It's great to see some of the Deepgrooves catalogue resurfacing, looking forward to this! It will be available locally, I hear Flying Out will have preorders up soon. Out March 29th

"Thirty years after it was released on CD and cassette [by Deepgrooves here and in Australia], Fuemana’s cult classic New Urban Polynesian album is finally available on vinyl. 

"Born from the blood, sweat and tears of the late great Polynesian renaissance man Phil Fuemana and his family and friends, Fuemana’s music transports the listener back to the autumn and winter days of 1994 in the antipodes, where they turned love, loss, grief and acceptance into the finest R&B/street soul album ever recorded in Aotearoa New Zealand.

"Fuemana spent several late nights tracking one-take sessions at The Lab Recording Studio with engineers Simon Taylor, Chris Sinclair and Mark Tierney. From there, New Urban Polynesian came together quickly. Across the album, Phil showed off his prodigious skills as a multi-instrumentalist and producer, playing most of the smooth, sophisticated, and heartfelt music himself. In the studio, he shared the lead with Christina and Matty J, supported by a cast of backing vocalists, musicians and guest vocalists, including a young Carly Binding."

Via OMC's Facebook: "This is for those who have followed our family’s music over the past few decades. We have teamed up with Gazebo Records and have remastered and are rereleasing the "Fuemana - New Urban Polynesian" album. This will only be available on vinyl in mid March 2024, and we will celebrate with a release party in Melbourne around that time. 

"A special thank you to Nick Saw & Daniel Beaton for falling in love with the music, and thanks to Martyn Pepperell for making sure we stayed true to Phil’s dreams. The album will also be available online."

Lost James Brown song from 1970 released

Via udiscovermusic: "More than two decades after the release of his last single, listeners will be able to hear a new James Brown song. Titled “We Got To Change,” the song is a lost track by the musical pioneer, recorded in Miami at Criteria Studios on August 16, 1970. UMe will debut “We Got To Change” on February 16, 2024 in unison with A&E’s James Brown: Say it Loud, a 4-episode documentary, premiering February 19 and 20, 2024.

"The track was recorded with the core original J.B.’s, Brown’s band from the 70s and 80s, including Bootsy Collins, his brother Catfish, and Clyde “Give the Drummer Some” Stubblefield, a.k.a. The Funky Drummer. Looking at its place in Brown’s musical history, the song was recorded in-between early 1970 tracks “Sex Machine” and “Super Bad” and late 1970-early 1971 tracks “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing,” “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved” and “Soul Power.” 

"James Brown: Say It Loud is a two-night documentary event tracing the trajectory of Brown’s life and career from his beginnings as a 7th-grade drop-out in the Jim Crow-era South to becoming an entertainment legend with a unique impact on history and culture. 

The new documentary features never-before-seen archival interviews and performances, plus interviews with friends, family, musicians, and proteges including The Rolling Stones’ legendary frontman Mick Jagger, Questlove, Bootsy Collins, LL Cool J, The Rev. Al Sharpton, Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Dallas Austin, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, his children Deanna, Yamma and Larry Brown, and many more."