Chris Matthews with The Headless Chickens, Big Day Out, Auckland, 1995. - Photo by Becky Nunes/Simon Grigg collection

System Virtue – Emma Paki

Emma Paki’s beautifully melodic and passionate plea for system virtue around the world was, like Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’, something of a clarion call for the dignity and equality of historically marginalised and oppressed people everywhere to be recognised and upheld – particularly here in Aotearoa New Zealand. ‘System Virtue’ almost seemed to appear out of nowhere in 1993, and accompanied by the striking B&W cinéma vérité music video of Emma and her wider whānau, it immediately embedded itself in hearts and minds across the nation. You couldn’t turn on the radio or TV or go to a cafe three decades ago without getting Emma’s ethereal earworm lodged in your frontal lobes. Not surprisingly ‘System Virtue’ won three awards at the NZ Music Awards in 1994 for her singing, her song, and the music video. One thing that often goes unacknowledged in music is the studio production, and personally I think Jaz Coleman’s empathetic arrangement and production sprinkled some fairy dust on Emma Paki’s great song and made it sound even greater. Just bloody wonderful, as John Campbell used to say.

Models – Fanatics

Auckland electro-punk/rock duo The Fanatics (David Green, vocals and machines, and Tom Clark, guitar and machines) kind of sounded a bit like Bailter Space playing to Trent Reznor’s rhythm tracks on their 2004 self-titled EP. But David took Bailter Space’s famously minimalist lyrical approach to the extreme with ‘Models’: “Give me money. Give me models.” Is it a mission statement or a critique of neoliberal capitalism? We may never know, but they also had the excellent good taste to record a stonking tooled-up cover of Snapper’s mighty motorik classic, ‘Buddy’, which actually has quite a few words. The Fanatics punched well above their Young Skinny White Guys weight class and topped the national alternative radio charts in 2004 with 'Models' which garnered them a pantsload of nominations at that year's Student Radio bNet Music Awards. If you watched NZ’s Next Top Model back in the olden days of 2009-2011, then you would have heard an instrumental mix of ‘Models’ as the show’s theme music. Although, unlike in their fantastic music video, no models from the TV show were marched into a factory, put in jars and then sold to small strange children.

Maybe – Split Enz

I don’t need to tell you who Split Enz are, but even though their 1975 debut album Mental Notes went Top 10 in New Zealand and Top 40 in Australia, the ‘Maybe’ single didn’t even chart, which remains an unfathomable mystery to me. I won’t bang on about the songwriting genius of Phil Judd and Tim Finn (and later Neil Finn) or what incredible singers they are or even what an amazingly iconic and diverse group of musicians made up Split Enz over the years. But I think ‘Maybe’ is one of the most perfectly off-kilter 2'30" pop songs of all time; there are distant echoes of the more jaunty Beatles and Kinks hits from 1966/1967, but ‘Maybe’ is uniquely original and catchy as hell with a huge singalong chorus that begins to dissolve into rowdy chaos towards the end, like art school students at a drunken costume party. I first heard and saw Split Enz on the telly in 1977 via their Dadaistic appearance on Telethon (ask your dad) miming to ‘Maybe’, and bedazzled by such brilliance I subsequently acquired Mental Notes and then Dizrhythmia later that year, and both albums are still personal favourites. I got to see Split Enz at the Auckland Town Hall in 1979 on their Frenzy tour and it was a life-defining event for me: ‘Maybe’, ‘Give It A Whirl’, ‘Charlie’! Fantastic.

Seconds – Joe Dukie & DJ Fitchie

Dukie and Fitchie are the noms de guerre of Dallas Tamaira and Chris Faiumu from the longstanding and enormously popular Fat Freddy’s Drop. Tamaira was an actor in Wellington when he met sound engineer Faiumu, who had first arrived on the Wellington scene in 1991 as part of the long-running DJ collective Roots Foundation; Tamaira was following in the musician footsteps of his father Joe and a grandfather nicknamed Dukie. The pair started to work together in 1999 with the beginning of the Fat Freddy’s Drop project and on Tamaira's first solo album Better Than Change; Dallas Tamaira became Joe Dukie while Chris Faiumu turned into DJ Fitchie and/or Mu. The heart of Fat Freddy’s Drop (and other projects) was always the loops and beats created and manipulated by DJ Mu on his iconic MPC sampler and you can hear on Dukie and Fitchie’s early track ‘Seconds’ how gifted he already was at mixing and matching disparate elements to build a soundbed for the gorgeously soulful voice of Dallas Tamaira. Tragically for the local music scene, Chris Faiumu passed away unexpectedly in July last year. RIP Mu.

Coalminer’s Song – The Gordons

My first sighting of anything Gordons-related was in December 1980 in a long-forgotten local fanzine stocked by one of the record stores I frequented in the Auckland CBD. The Gordons had a double-page spread with an interview, the cover of their debut ‘Future Shock’ single, and the date for their upcoming 1981 gig at the Auckland Uni Café. But the most striking thing about that article was the high-contrast B&W photo of John Halvorsen, Alister Parker and Brent McLachlan which made them appear to be Robert A. Heinlein’s Strangers in a Strange Land, their otherworldly kinetic energy radiating from a still photograph. I bought the single and went to the gig and of course the experience was exactly the way everyone else has described it: Brutal. Assaultive. Incredibly Loud. You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cry, You’ll Hurl. Well, that last one is from Wayne’s World, but it was accurate. The Gordons had their phasers set to Stun and were Shockheaded Peters in a world of Janets & Johns. They invented a new form of loud guitar music that resonated strongly throughout Aotearoa and around the globe and it was AMAZING and still is. The lyrics were different too; the ideas from Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock were distilled to their pure essence, so the Gordons song has “Future shock! Future shock! Are you ready for future shock?!” as its only lyrics. Then there’s ‘Adults & Children’, which took the instructions from the back of a packet of medication for its lyrics.

By the end of 1981, The Gordons released their first eponymous album and changed loud guitar music again. John Halvorsen told me in 1983 that there is no note on a guitar that doesn’t go with any other note on a guitar, which is a pretty fundamental truth. I love the whole record, but ‘Coalminer’s Song’ just happens to be my favourite. And then, of course, The Gordons lost Alister in 82, gained a new bass player, recorded a second album as Gordons Mk 2, split up in 83, Brent McLachlan and Nick Roughan from Skeptics started the iconic Writhe Recording studio in Wellington in 85, John joined the Skeptics and then Brent joined Skeptics as second drummer from 86-88, then after the Skeptics’ untimely demise Alister, John and Brent regrouped as Bailter Space and changed loud guitar music again for the next 25 years or so. And tragically Brent McLachlan died on December 12 after a long illness. RIP Brent.

Man With No Desire – The Expendables

I first met Jay Clarkson in 1984 on the legendary Flying Nun Looney Tour Roadshow of New Zealand with The Chills, Doublehappys, my band Children’s Hour and Jay’s band, The Expendables. By then Jay had already been in the strident and angular indie pop outfit The Playthings, who released two excellent singles between 1980 and late 1981 before splitting, and then she formed They Were Expendable in 82 to showcase her increasingly mature songwriting on the ‘Big Strain’ EP released that year, with the title track being a standout. By 1983 T.W.E. had also split and the name was shortened to The Expendables with a new rhythm section joining Jay; it was this three-piece lineup that recorded the excellent Inbetween Gears mini-album and the wonderful ‘Man With No Desire’ single for Flying Nun in 1984. ‘Man With No Desire’ was a new high benchmark in Jay’s songwriting: an expansive, slow-burning skeletal dance to the end of love in 6/8 time. Maybe there are ghosts of early Joni Mitchell, vintage jazz-noir and country ballads ­– and Jay loved all of that – but ‘Man With No Desire’ existed entire unto itself as does the rest of her music before and since, and all still sounds completely timeless to this day. Jay Clarkson continued to have a long and storied career both solo and with new bands – Breathing Cage won the Rheineck Rock Award in 1988 – and is still releasing great new music 45 years after that first Playthings single.

Stations – Shihad

F**k it, let’s throw our goats up and have some Shihad. The first time they came from Wellington to play Auckland was at The Powerstation in 1991 and they were promoting their debut EP Devolver. The original bass player was still with them then and, while they were good, the sound and the songs didn’t seem to be quite there yet. But when they came out for an encore they launched unexpectedly into ‘AFFCO’ by the Skeptics and it was incredible but quite odd to see a bunch of young longhaired kids perform an iconic and adrenalised song by a strange and marginalised band like the Skeptics, who had only ceased to exist a year earlier. In interviews the following year Jon Toogood confirmed the band had a new bass player and a new approach to making music and when the Churn album dropped in 1993 I think an awful lot of jaws hit the floor. Shihad was now a fully-fledged industrial-metal riff monster, inspiring carnage on the dance floor at every gig. A lot of goats were thrown for all of the songs on Churn but I especially loved ‘Stations’. Not only because I could hear the influence of The Gordons and maybe some of the slower brooding songs from Soundgarden’s ‘Badmotorfinger’, but the lyrics are about Catholicism’s Stations Of The Cross and the narrator is considering faith and finding Christianity old, empty and meaningless. Also, I love the ‘Stations’ music video because the video director, Josh Frizzell, (who also made the fantastic video for Emma Paki’s ‘System Virtue’) cast Children’s Hour and Headless Chickens drummer Bevan Sweeney as Jesus suffering on the cross – which, if you know Bevan, is pretty fucking hilarious.

Agitator – Skeptics

Obviously the Skeptics were and are one of the best and most original bands that this country ever produced. It still makes me as a sad thing that not only did the wonderfully talented and unique David D’Ath (vocalist and sampling keyboard maestro) die 35 years ago at the height of his and the band’s creative output, but I never got to see the Skeptics light up the stage again like no other local band I’ve witnessed before or since. They were that great. Chris Knox had never particularly liked the Skeptics’ early 80s records, but he came to The Gluepot with me after Skeptics III was released in 1987 and watched and listened almost in a trance. At one point in the middle of ‘Agitator’ he turned to me with a huge beatific grin and yelled in my ear, “They sound like a prog rock band, like Genesis … but that’s a good thing! It’s great!” I knew Chris was a huge fan of the early Peter Gabriel-era Genesis (I liked a lot of it too), so it was quite the compliment from him.

The reason I wanted to include ‘Agitator’ is because the song is in three different sections that were fairly typical of ideas in their music. The song starts with Nick Roughan’s wonderfully lilting piano in 6/8 time and then some hovering guitar feedback from John Halvorsen and what sounds like a strangely tuned typewriter begin to intrude; it could almost be set in a dusty humid old French café with David singing about feeling the air escaping from a squeeze box while a Buddha weeps in far away Canton … which then segues into a fast industrial rhythmic pulse with jerky stops and starts and random time signatures while Don White’s drums accent every beat and David yells interjections like “Urgent!” and “Yo Mama!” (I think) whenever there’s a gap in the noise … and which then eventually segues into the last section which is a huge string-driven power ballad with John’s guitar winding like a distorted poisonous snake thru everything as David bawls the repeated chorus like his life depends on it:

“June, June, June, June, June, June, June, July… the Winter months!”

If none of this makes a damn lick of sense to you then watch Simon Ogston’s Skeptics - Sheen Of Gold documentary on the NZ On Screen website.

We R The OMC – OMC

I loved ‘We R The OMC’ when I first heard it in the early 90s, not least because of the insanely catchy electropop synth line that runs all the way through, and it still stands out as landmark genre-splicing in the history of Aotearoa hip hop. The Otara Millionaires Club was originally Phil Fuemana, Pauly Fuemana, and MC Herman “Ermehn” Loto. ‘We R The OMC’ was released on the groundbreaking Proud: An Urban-Pacific Streetsoul Compilation put together by Alan Jansson (ex-Body Electric) in 1994 and Jansson also produced – and mostly co-wrote – the album tracks including the classic ‘In The Neighbourhood’ by Sisters Underground. I think Alan Jansson’s genius with unusual arrangements and stellar production helped to make the artists who worked with him sound like they were from the South Pacific and not a generic overseas import. Everyone knows how Alan and Pauly Fuemana went on to write and record ‘How Bizarre’ as OMC in late 95 and how it blew up all over the world and Pauly’s life turned into a whole crazy ride to the top of the pops. But this track is where the ride first began.

Donde Esta La Pollo – Headless Chickens

The Headless Chickens' Anthony Nevison playing in the HMV Shop, 1990

Yeah, I know this is my old band but ‘Donde Esta’ was Ant Nevison’s song. I’d known Ant since 1983 when my band Children’s Hour used to often play gigs together with his band 55 Polish Workers, and then after Children’s Hour self-destructed in 1984 I joined Jay Clarkson’s Expendables on drums and Ant, who was also minus a band by then, joined as second guitarist for a time until he got itchy feet and decided to head overseas to wander the earth looking for new music and other things that piqued his interests. He returned to New Zealand in the late 80s and subsequently joined my band The Headless Chickens (with Grant Fell and Bevan Sweeney from Children’s Hour) who were preparing to start work on our Body Blow album. Ant played us his song ‘Donde Esta La Pollo’ which was the result of his mangled Spanish on a bus ride through Mexico, and had a whole lot of crazy surreal Day Of The Dead-inspired lyrics. It was funky as hell and as catchy as a dose of the clap so it was a perfect fit for the Chooks and I think it was the second song we recorded for the album right after ‘Cruise Control’. Right from the first time we played it live, the crowd always went totally apeshit. When we put it out as the second single from the album it became the most successful of all the singles we released off Body Blow and it is still remembered as one of our band’s best and most iconic tracks. Over the 30-plus years since Ant left the Headless Chickens we remained close – despite the band calling it a day in 2000 – and later played a few reformation gigs together where it was always of great importance to have ‘Donde Esta La Pollo’ on the setlist. Ant’s mental health had not been great in recent years and on November 26, 2025 he decided to check out of this life. We love you and miss you. So long and thanks for all the music. RIP Ant.

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Chris Matthews is a songwriter and guitarist whose bands have included Children’s Hour and The Headless Chickens.