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Backyard Breakers
By Stephen Adams, Lava magazine,
November 1999
Meet Peter Mclennan. Muso, writer (for Lava, among others),
filmmaker, radio host, Hawaiian shirt enthusiast. Born and
bred in Auckland, he discovered music at school, formed a
band and got well and truly hooked.
After school he started the Hallelujah Picassos with frontman
Harold (aka Roland de Rioting Radicator) and did a rock n
roll tour of duty that included two albums, an ep, a bunch
of singles, a few music videos and countless legendary gigs
(golden moment: supporting Screaming Jay Hawkins. He caught
the end of their set, and told the band to ‘keep on rockin’).
If the Picassos wrote themselves a page on the New Zealand
music encyclopedia, you’d probably find it listed under
‘I’ for improbable brilliance: Harold, a screaming
bald black man up front, Bobbylon, a sweet-singing drummer
(once described by Stinky Jim as the Clint Eastwood of New
Zealand reggae) at the back, a spiky haired man called Johnny
Pain playing bass and McLennan, a self described geek wearing
a polynesian shirt, on guitar.
It was wild, original, beautiful stuff. It had to end.
“We nicknamed ourselves the four headed beast” says
McLennan in a rarely caught moment between jobs. “Which
captures it pretty well. The creative energy was fantastic;
unlike a lot of bands who suffer at the mercy of one songwriter
in the band, we had four writers, constantly spitting out
ideas. That's why I still work with those guys; they are total
geniuses, and musically, they are on the same wavelength as
me”.
The Picassos disbanded in 1995, and Mclennan went back indoors
to started taking things a little easier. After buying lots
of records but not playing music for six months, he picked
up his guitar and got back into it. Then came the four track
and the sampler, and Dub Asylum was born: a bass-heavy beatbox
with McLennan at the controls.
Dick Dale In Outer Space was released a year later and promptly
spent a month or two in the bFM top ten. A performance at
the 98/99 Gathering followed, then a few months more of intense
boffinry the result of which is a self titled EP, which, by
the way, is an absolute killer.
“(Making the ep) was a little intense I s’pose,
but it was easy in parts as well. Sometimes you suffer for
your art, labouring over a tune, and then sometimes they just
drop out of nowhere, and you go 'thank god I had the record
button on!”
There’s no label and no budget, a neat combination of
‘90's technology and 70's DIY punk rock ethic. “Friends
kept saying to me that they had heard Dick Dale on the radio,
and asking where they could get a copy. So I got some cd's
duplicated, did a small run, and just sold them to my friends.
It’s mushroomed from there. I put my money where my mouth
is, and just did it”.
Distribution is going on by mail and on foot, with brisk
sales reported at recent live gigs at The Factory and Galatos
in Auckland. “I sold some at the ep release gig a few
weeks ago, mainly to people as they were leaving, meaning
they'd heard us play, liked it, and bought the cd to take
home with them, which I'm dead chuffed about. I had absolutely
no idea if anyone would like this stuff, till I put out this
ep. I mean, I like it, but you never can tell, really.”
By Stephen Adams
Published with the kind permission of Lava.
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