Dave Dobbyn's masterpiece
Rec Room #9 – Things we've been enjoying this week
Kia ora, welcome to this week’s newsletter.
One day when I was around eight or nine we got home from school to find a man in full motorcycle leathers sitting on the deck. Mum cautiously slid open the ranch slider and asked him what he was doing there. He stood up, turned around and gave her a hug – it was her brother, and he’d come all the way from Scotland for a visit without telling us.
Those were a good couple of weeks. We took him for a big drive around Fiordland, and in the car we listened to some of the cassettes he’d picked up on his trip down the country. He let me keep them when he went home, and there was one I listened to all the time – Twist by Dave Dobbyn.
Recorded with Neil Finn after they’d both moved back to New Zealand in the mid-90s, Twist is Dave Dobbyn’s masterpiece. It’s got some of his best songwriting, and has a real distinctive sound. To me it’s always had the feel of a rainy, humid summer’s day.
It’s one of those albums I revisit once a year or so to make sure it’s still as good as I remember. For ages only half the songs were on Spotify for some reason, but when I went for my annual listen this week I was happy to find the whole thing is now available. It remains a classic New Zealand album, and I strongly recommend it.
–Cal
Firstly I’d like to recommend The Guardian write-off of a story broken in last week’s edition of Rec Room: ‘Fragrant hand sanitiser ticks boxes for New Zealand’s early voters’. It’s since been confirmed that the nice hand sanitiser is the purple one in Earthwise’s Nourish range, and is presumably flying off the supermarket shelves right now.
In more contemporary New Zealand music news, Josie recommends Blue Smoke Draft, the latest single from Cut Off Your Hands. “You can say that rather than cut off my hands, it makes me want to glue on more ears!” It truly is an extremely beautiful tune, and Josie has an interview with the band coming out later this week on thespinoff.co.nz.
Following last week’s huge Shania Twain rec, Eli recommends the hits of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. “So many tunes! I feel like they were never given enough cred for the sound of the time. All Cried Out will take you on a journey, I dare you to not at the very least bob your head to Lost in Emotion and I Wonder If I Take You Home [interpolated by the Black Eyed Peas in ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’!] will make you want to take someone home.”
Mad recommends another version of All Cried Out, the Allure cover from 1997. “This was my third most played song on Spotify in 2019 and never fails to make me Dramatically Feel Things. Listening to it turned up loud while walking home from work adds a sense of melodrama to the mundane that no one needs in 2020 but which I crave nonetheless.”
Toby Morris recommends the documentary Feels Good Man, which is coming to DocPlay later this month. “It starts of as a portrait of Matt Furie, the alt-cartoonist who originally created the character Pepe in his comic Boys Club, painting a really clear picture of how it feels to have something you created slip away from you and morph into something horrific, then moves into using Pepe as a way to talk about 4chan, memes as fuel, the disaffected kids that 4chan fed and housed, into the rise of the alt-right and the influence of trash meme online nihilism in the rise of Trump. Really sharp on a big murky amorphous topic. Feel for the poor guy.”
Joe recommends another new streaming service, OnlyOne. “It’s set up by ex Nat Geo photographers Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen – think Netflix meets change.org and focused on ocean conservation and climate action. Their titles are set up as 'journeys' where you first learn about a topic by watching and reading content and then have the opportunity to take action by signing a petition or contributing to the cause. They also have more series, short films and written content on there, everything free to access unless ya decide to give regularly.”
Sam recommends Brian David Gilbert's Unraveled series on YouTube. “It combines my two favourite things: video games and unreasonably passionate devotion. He's been making these videos for Polygon which involve deep dives into various types of video game culture, including trying to explain the plot of every Kingdom Hearts game and what reading every single Halo novelisation has taught him. Bizarre, funny, charming as hell.”
Finally, a piping hot reader rec – Ella recommends French comedy series Call My Agent! on Netflix. “Its three seasons follow a group of agents at a top film agency in Paris and the disasters, drama and regular backstabbing that comes from trying to manage France's most famous and talented. To add a delicious twist, every episode features a famous French actor who stars as themselves for that episode. I binged all three seasons in a week and I'll never be the same again.”
The Spinoff’s NZ Web Fest Award finalists
Cool news announced this week – two of The Spinoff’s video series are up for awards at this year’s NZ Web Fest – Scratched: Aotearoa’s Lost Sporting Legends is up for Best Show (NZ Factual), and José Barbosa is up for Best Director (NZ Factual) for On The Rag, which, just quietly, has a new episode coming out on Monday.
The third leaders’ debate in two and a half minutes
José has seemingly ingested every second of campaign coverage for the last month and a half, at no doubt great personal cost. Highlights from the last week include this supercut of the Christchurch leaders’ debate, part two of hit series What’s That Person Doing? and a two-hour royalty-free trance mix set to a dramatic crash zoom on Winston Peters.
Gone By Lunchtime
It’s a bumper week for Gone By Lunchtime – Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee Mather and Ben Thomas are in the studio as we speak for an episode out later this afternoon, and Toby is being joined by The Bulletin’s Alex Braae for a pre-election special out tomorrow. Then on Sunday the usual trio are back again to talk about everything that happened the night before.
The Fold
The New Zealand magazine industry is in the middle of a remarkable period of regeneration after the collapse of powerhouse Bauer Media, with new independent publishers popping up left, right and centre. One of those is School Road Publishing, set up by former New Zealand Woman’s Weekly editor Sido Kitchin. She’s launching not one but four new titles this year, and joined Duncan Greive to talk about it on the latest episode of The Fold.
That’s all for this week. If you have any piping hot recs please get in touch, and of course feel free to share Rec Room with anyone you think might like it.
See you next Wednesday 👋