See Me Go
The following was a personal memoir of The Screaming Meemees written by myself for the 2009 re-release of the album If This Is Paradise, I'll Take The Bag. The original can be found in three parts on Amplifier.
Sweetwaters, January 1983. The Screaming Meemees had just, that week, released their final, and to my mind, best single, the stomping Stars In My Eyes. It came in two formats, the 7”, and the 12”, which featured the first extended remix released by a New Zealand artist, (and an almost On U Soundish dub of a track from their album on the flip, inspired by the early work of Adrian Sherwood amongst others).
It was the first record produced by the band themselves, or a least a member of the band (Tony, with soundman Tom Sampson and Glyn Tucker Jr) and was easily their most definitive and mature statement, a solid pointer towards the future.
They were on the main stage of Sweetwaters, in front of a crowd of some 30-40,000 amped up bodies, who after two days of drinking, dust and sun were at best unpredictable and could go either way, at 8pm on the Saturday night, the prime spot for any local band, before Simple Minds (or was it The Psychedelic Furs?), who were the headliners.
The Screaming Meemees were one if the two biggest bands in NZ (DD Smash was the other) and just as they were going on I was told the cricket score from the game in Australia…NZ were winning (yes I know it’s unusual, but there you go) so I told, in what if I may pat myself on the back, was a moment of genius, Tony to announce this, which he did, and the massive crowd, which stretched back into the hills behind, went absolutely nuts as they did for the rest of the set. It was a triumphant moment and the world beckoned.
Within 4 months it was all over and they went out with the biggest crowd numbers ever at Auckland’s Mainstreet Cabaret, bigger than any international, bigger than Split Enz.
What happened?
I guess, basically they grew up.
In the years since NZ has basically forgotten Meemee mania but for a couple of years these 4, Tony Drumm, Michael O’Neill, Peter Van Der Fluit and a drummer who just went under the name Yoh, were something of a phenomena. Formed in the music room of the Catholic boys school, Rosmini College, they led, in late 1979, early 1980, the Rip It Up tagged North Shore Invasion, when what seemed hundreds of bands (but was in reality only a couple of dozen) stormed across the harbour bridge and filled the stages of any inner city venue that would allow them to support a ‘name’ band.
The poster that came with the first 500 copies of the Sunday Boys 7".
Photos: Anthony Phelps, Layout: Murray Cammick
The post punk revolution meant that there were venues everywhere in the city and these bands arrived just at the right moment to fill them, so fill them they did.
Influenced by the ska bands coming out of the UK, and sixties pop (The Monkees would play a bigger part in their sound than The Clash), these Shore acts soon garnered large and very loyal followings from the crowds whose elder siblings had followed the punk bands of 77 / 78, but none more so than the still under 17 year old Screaming Meemees whose innocently dumb, but really very smart originals included the infectious Till I Die (with lyrics from Catholic hymns), the inane, but extraordinarily catchy Pointy Ears, and Can’t Take It, which, in late 1980, after months of supports to the likes of The Features, The Clean, Shoes This High and The Spelling Mistakes, was recorded as a one off side of a double A sided single (with The Newmatics).
The sleeve to the unreleased 12" of Day Goes By, designed by Michael
O'Neill. Instead, Stars in My Eyes was recorded and the 12" version of
Day Goes By ended up on the flip.
I’d seen the Meemees countless times and wanted them badly for my new Propeller label, so I plonked them on my forthcoming Class of 81 album and signed a long term deal with the band, putting them into the studio before Can’t Take It, which came out in March, 1981, entered the lower end of the singles chart (and was, as a bonus, picked up as the theme for a kids music video show).
The obvious debut single proper was the live favourite See Me Go, which they’d demoed earlier (and had appeared on a Radio Hauraki new band collection, and thus had found it’s way on to the Radio B top ten, peaking at number one).
By late Feb, early March, managed originally by David Merritt (now a poet in Palmerston North), they were about the biggest thing in the city, with sell-out gigs, often two a night.
See Me Go proved tricky to record. Down at Harlequin Studios it was proving hard to nail a version that equalled the original, Steve Kennedy produced, demo. We’d bought in Pop Mechanics vocalist Andrew Snoid as a producer, keeping Kennedy as engineer, and there were now three or four versions, including one produced by Harlequin owner Doug Rogers.
Auckland Star, March 1981
I’d decided on a limited numbered edition of a 12” with four tracks, including two of the takes of See Me Go, Till I Die also recorded at the sessions, and a live take of another early favourite, Poison Boys.
500 copies and that was it. Shops started taking orders. There was to be a 7” too, with just two tracks, See Me Go and Till Die, available from the distributor (Festival) for just one week.
The band had also made their first jumps outside of Auckland with hugely successful trips to Wellington and Christchurch (the Class of 81 gig there was a sold-out Easter Monday at The Gladstone).
I’d also assumed management duties, after the band had told me it was either me or a break-up. And so it was to be, rather reluctantly on my part.
In July 1981, with a single about to be released, we all headed off on the now legendary Screaming Blam-matic Roadshow with other Propeller bands, The Newmatics and Blam Blam Blam, touring the campuses of the nation. In Christchurch the test pressings of the 7” single arrived, and we were shocked to find that Festival’s marketing manager had taken it upon himself to remix the A side…and it was utter garbage. I made a quick call to the studio, to Festival’s production manager, and to the pressing plant and within a few days the offending mix was assigned to the bin and the Snoid mix was on the A side. To this day Festival’s errant marketing manager, who went on to be MD of a major record company, doesn’t know, or couldn’t tell that his mix was dumped.
The delays had caused a feeding frenzy and we had orders for the 12” far beyond the 500 copies so rationing to retailers had to be enforced. We felt like we were being pricks, and I fielded countless calls from often irate record stores asking for a few more, but 500 was 500 (505 actually including test pressings).
Back from the tour, I was in Sounds Unlimited on release day and watched the frenzied mayhem. We sold all the 4000 7” within 24 hours too.
The single entered the chart easily at number one that week, survived a challenge from Radio Hauraki who simply couldn’t understand how a record they’d refused to play (no commercial radio played any NZ releases) had charted that way, tumbled, since there was no stock for salethe fis, to 13 the next week, then into the 40s and gone.
It was quite a thing, the first NZ single ever to enter the charts at number one, and I was rushed into the Festival offices where exuberant managing Director, Ray Porter, suggested we rush out a live album immediately, adding the single, to cash in…uh no.
In fact we had nothing much in the can, and the Meemees, after two years of playing live three or four times a week, had decided that they didn’t want to play in front of a crowd quite so often in the future, setting the scene for the couple of years when the gigs would be less common but rather bigger. Three nights at Mainstreet the largish cabaret in upper Queen Street once a month, and national tours every few months, pretty much all sold out, with extended periods, at some expense, in the studio, became the rule.
Most bands in New Zealand survived by playing extensively but we made the very conscious, perhaps foolhardy, decision to jump head first into Harlequin, with producer Ian Morris, and engineer, Steve Kennedy, and record an album. We didn’t have the funding but we had a sympathetic studio and faith.
Thus for most of the last part of 1981 and the first few months of 1982 The Screaming Meemees were in the studio from midnight to dawn almost every week, and it soon turned into quite a social scene. I tried to haul it in but the sessions were often host to 20 or so people, friends, girlfriends and assorted hangers on. It wasn’t an atmosphere that ideally was conducive to recording a make or break album, and the budget of course rocketed, and rocketed.
But, yes, we had faith, and I guess we weren’t the first indie to put it on the line for an album or two (we had the Blams recording at the same time).
As time passed we worked out that we needed to sell a minimum of about 10,000 albums to cover costs (coupled with the costs that our repeatedly recorded number one single had never recouped) and that figure crept up to 14,000 by the time it was completed. NZ albums sold, on a good day in 1982, with absolutely no commercial airplay unless you were Dave Dobbyn or Split Ends, in the low thousands.
The first fruit of the sessions, with a Murray Cammick designed sleeve, was the anthemic Sunday Boys, released at the end of 1981. It made number 11, but, in Auckland (there were Auckland charts then) hit number one for two weeks. The way-oh way-oh chorus inevitably became a live audience chant, and at Sweetwaters the sound of so many thousands singing it acapella was quite a moment.
The album slowly came together over the next few months, and was wrapped in a sleeve designed by Peter Urlich, from a Philip Peacock image. If This Is Paradise, I’ll Take Bag lifted it’s title from the opening tune My Accent, which in turn lifted it from the iconic kiwi TV figure, Selwyn Toogood’s ‘the money or the bag?’.
The jump for the Screaming Meemees, from the ska pop of See Me Go, a year earlier, was immediately apparent and, to many rather confusing. This was an album that was wide, very adventurous, and thoroughly in touch with the world outside NZ. Even Sunday Boys, added reluctantly to side one (the band wanted At At, the B side of Sunday Boys, but Festival insisted on at least one of the hits) sounds out of step with the rest of the material.
AllMusic probably said it best:
If This Is Paradise, I'll take the Bag was recorded in 1981 with producer Ian Morris and boasted a eclectic range of influences in the mix of power pop, electro, dub, and funk -- styles not usually associated with New Zealand rock sound. Their work for the album brought the Screaming Meemees closer to what U.K. groups A Certain Ratio and Rip Rig and Panic were up to.
The album entered the NZ charts at number 8 and over the next year or two eventually went gold..only one of two NZ rock albums to do so in the period 1979-84. Still it was a very long way from the 14,000 sales the band needed just top cover costs and it proved a burden.
Despite the still strong fanbase and the implied success of an album in the top ten, the band continued to be a little uncomfortable and needed to grow. By late 1982 they’d discarded most of their pre-Paradise material live, even See me Go, with the early All Dressed Up and a couple of others being heavily re-written to reflect the harder edged funk and alternative influences of the band. These were merged into a set of new material that was much tougher, and more rhythmic than anything they’d done before.
In late 1982 they entered the studio again, this time Mandrill, and with a couple of new songs from the large batch of unrecorded songs Tony in particular had been working up, Stars in My Eyes, a fast, brass and percussion driven funk track, and Can’t Sleep Today, slow, almost grinding. Both were recorded for single release, produced by Tony, Mandrill’s Glyn Tucker Jr., and soundman Tom Sampson, who’d become integral to the sound they’d been trying to achieve live. Stars was chosen as the next single and a couple of extended takes of it were mixed for another 12”. Can’t Sleep Tonight was kept for the next single, and the tapes sadly have gone AWOL.
After the initial track laying for the single, Michael left the Meemees following an argument with Tony over the split with his girlfriend, who just happened to be Mike’s sister. He took no further part in the sessions, and for some long forgotten reason (sympathy for Mike I guess) Peter too was mostly absent after he’d recorded his keyboards and bass.
Mike & Tony, North Shore Netball
Photo: Murray Cammick
Thus it became mostly Tony’s baby and was a quantum leap not only for the band, but NZ rock music in general. Nothing like it had been recorded in NZ, and it sounded like nothing that had come before. Festival Records, forced to sell it, hated it and asked if I could slow it down. Once again, no.
The video for Stars in My Eyes was a budget affair as we had, after the sessions, simply no money at all left, and there were no such things as video grants. We needed to make this one ourselves, feeling that we’d been pretty badly served by those TVNZ videos to date, and the record was too important. My neighbour, Willie Kiddell, was a filmmaker and agreed to do it for love of the song, so after splashing out $129 for some old TVNZ film stock, he and Tony put together the clip, and, as low budget as it very clearly looked, it had it’s moments, most especially the lovely shots of Tony in profile. Mike and Peter were not present for this either, with roadie Terry Towelling, and now Universal NZ Managing Director, Adam Holt, standing in as shadowy profiles.
A reconciliation of sorts was affected at a long, fairly heated, meeting in my office high above Queen Street. There were all sorts of other pressures too, like the standard third parties wondering why they weren’t stinking rich after being on TV and playing to so many over so many years, but that’s what third parties always throw into the mix, and the reality of running an organisation like that for that period usually needs to be inserted into the mix too, as it was.
And so a few more gigs were played including the Brown Trout Festival in Dannevirke, a chaotic (in that crowds went down the street) weekend in Mt Maunganui and the aforementioned Sweetwaters.
After Sweetwaters, with another top twenty single the band sat down and decided that they’d either make the jump overseas, to the UK, which meant years more hard work, or they’d call it a day. In the end it was Mike who decided that was it, and a final series of gigs at Mainstreet were planned and announced as their farewell.
The two nights were mostly to pay off a few bills, and say a farewell to those who’d loyally followed the band since the beginnings, but the queues stretched down Queen Street to the corner of what is now Mayoral Drive. Tony turned up an hour late on the final night but it mattered not.
Peter & Mike @ North Shore Netball Club
Photo: Murray Cammick
And it was over, almost. They played twice more...once at the This Is Serious gigs in August, to help cover the still outstanding album bills, and once at Michael’s first wedding.
And it was over, completely.
For me, the three years were an often stressful but never less than electrifying huge roller coaster that I’d never swap any part of. As manager of a band who were mostly either just out of school or still in school (we used to have to smuggle Peter out of his room at night for gigs, often with his then girlfriend, Charlotte Dawson, waiting with us in the van …girlfriends went everywhere with the Meemees, they were just a part of the ongoing, and often extensive entourage) I had to act as manager, guardian, peacemaker, parental figure and confidant and it was an endless juggle of emotions, tantrums and demands. But a bloody joyful juggle nevertheless.
What I remember most was the huge adventure of it all.
We travelled up and down New Zealand countless times, sitting in one horse towns trying to find gas at 3am; leaning against river walls in Otago with yet another cheap steak pie and less than two hours sleep on our way to a three nighter in Christchurch; battling to keep the road crew from spending all the night’s profits in the house bar without me knowing; being told to leave Te Puke because we were too punk rock; picking Mike up off the floor of the Uni café in Hamilton because some girl, in love with him but angry because she’d been spurned, threw a drink over him and electrocuted him; watching the Waitara boys brawling with the skinheads from Wainuiomata at the Bellblock in New Plymouth, as we hid like Auckland poofters behind the PA stacks; getting taken to some party in Taranaki where a local Maori girl, all 20 odd stone of her, decided that she was having Mike and having to run to the van as fast as legs would carry; the band finding out that the trip to Ruapehu also meant they had to play for 4 hours to drunken ski bunnies; IG4330, the red Bedford Jumbo which seemed to have knack of sucking that very last dollar out of the bank account or petty cash just when it was most needed, and seemed to lose a muffler every week; sending later to be EMI MD, Chris Caddick out on the road as road manager and getting calls from the band asking for him to be fired because he was doing his job too well and not taking shit; but mostly just sitting with Tony, Mike, Peter, Yoh, Tom, Terry, Karen, Jack, Adam or whoever else happened to be on the road with us and laughing endlessly about nothing very much in particular.
See me go, indeed.
