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New twist
by Bruce Ansley
A rock revival in Christchurch later this month brings to mind the heady days of the 1960s, when men were men and girls could be as frosty as their hairdos.
Spencer St was a great Christchurch dance hall in the 60s. Actually it was a church hall, but most of us didn’t know that, or care. Christchurch had so many dance halls. The church halls like Spencer St, and St Nicholas, St Teresa’s, Daniel’s Den. Dance halls such as the Caledonian and the Hibernian, Carlyle St. Even clubs like the Plainsman, the Safari, Dolphin Lounge, Pride of Place, Copper Cat and Surf City, where you stomped.
And that’s just a start. Who would think, now, that you could go along to something called the Horticultural Hall every Saturday night and witness what is now said to be the golden beginnings of rock’n’roll?
At Spencer St you could rock to Ray Columbus and the Invaders and Max Merritt and the Meteors. Or, if you were like me, you could fit yourself into the social hierarchy of the time and calculate that you ranked alongside the curly egg sandwiches on the supper table, second sitting.
For the dances were life’s great levellers, except, like Roger Douglas, they made some less level than others.
There was no way of avoiding them. If you didn’t go, you might as well not exist.
So along you went in your stoves and winkle-pickers and your skinny tie and your hair so prodded and lubed that it was no wonder it gave up the fight for life not so many years later.
You sidled inside and sized up the opposition, namely an armada of sheilas in puffy dresses and frosty hairdos. Unfortunately, they were sizing up you also. What they saw here was a skinny guy with a horrible lisp and a terrified look in his eye. Why would they want to waste time on someone who looked as if he was being strangled and wanted to bolt? And danced as if his hernia was desperately seeking his Adam’s apple? Answer: they did not.
I once succeeded in persuading one of these alien creatures into my car. It was an Austin 7. (I tried racing a Ford hotrod. Its chrome V8 snorted in contempt.) When I tried to kiss her, I missed and got stuck in her hairspray. The adhesion only momentarily delayed her departure.
Yet I went back for more. Probably she did, too, although she may have started frequenting the Horticultural Hall instead, just to be on the safe side.
The heroes, then as now, were on the other side of the mike. Ray Columbus made his debut with the Invaders. Peter Nelson and the Castaways wore, I think, black suits with skeletons painted on them that were picked out by ultraviolet lights. Dixon McIvor of the Vigilantes wore a gold suit. Johnny Parker and the Downbeats, the Wildcats, Phil Garland and the Playboys, oh, they were all giants.
I’ve met a few of these godlike creatures since. Years later I wrote the scripts for a TV show that Ray Columbus was doing. He seemed to have got a lot smaller, even though I was still prostrating myself. Diane Jacobs became Dinah Lee. Dion from Dion Shannon and the Shamrocks turned out to be Dion Murphy the boxer and when I last ran into him he was a mediator at the Disputes Tribunal. Dixon McIvor became a scrap-metal magnate.
Brian Thomas, of the Vigilantes, became my friend, far too late to do me any good with his groupies, however. Then he became an Anglican priest, and now he is organising a rock revival called “Spencer Street Revisited” with as many of those old rockers as he can cajole into appearing. Many of them will. Even Max Merritt wanted to come, except that he is in Los Angeles and his band is in Melbourne. The Rev Thomas said, “Many of today’s grandads and grandmas did their courting at church dances, and the music of that time still evokes the headiness of young love.” Well, that certainly made me feel better.
So, at the end of this month, in two free concerts on September 29 and 30, they’ll all rock and we’ll all shuffle and Bob Consedine will get back his old job as compere and as the mother of all church hall dances it will be held, of course, in the Christchurch Cathedral. Evidently all the performers are very excited. Thomas said he might have to insist on medication. He said an oxygen tent would be set up off-stage. I’m not sure if he was joking.
