Mark Broatch

Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, 2019), 408pp, $40

Not many memoirs sit on my shelves because most people’s lives are boring. Shayne Carter’s life has not been boring.

Probably best known for Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer, Carter has also played and guested in so many other bands he’s deeply woven into the soundtrack of this nation. Dead People I Have Known, though, is much more than just an autobiography and an account of the alternative music scene. Sure, Shayne Carter, child and rock star, is front and centre as he should be. But the book is like a Venn diagram of insightful and often humorous personal revelation, an insider’s view of the Dunedin rock scene as the fast-beating young heart of New Zealand music, and of an upbringing in a household reeking with booze, domestic violence, psychiatric dismay – and love. [Read more…]

Garth Cartwright

Goneville: A memoir by Nick Bollinger (Awa Press, 2016), 293 pp., $39

The Kiwi music memoir has arrived with a vengeance in recent years. Leading the way was Simon Grigg’s How Bizarre, chronicling his journey with South Auckland Polynesian pop-rap outfit OMC to the top of the world charts and then all the way down through bankruptcy, madness and, finally, death. A wild ride and a fine book. 2016’s In Love With These Times found author Roger Shepherd detailing how, in 1981, he founded the Flying Nun record label in a Christchurch record shop, crashing it in London some 15 years later. Shepherd writes sloppily – no cliché is left unturned – but he observes the rise of the South Island indie scene well and is unsentimental when passing judgement. [Read more…]