Writers // Ngā Kaituhi


Adam Gifford

Adam Gifford is a journalist, broadcaster and author, with a particular interest in Māori music.

Aleisha Ward

Aleisha Ward holds a PhD in music from the University of Auckland where her thesis was on jazz in New Zealand 1920-1955. She writes about jazz in New Zealand (and occasionally other music related topics) at her blog nzjazz.wordpress.com.

Alexander Bisley

Alexander Bisley is editor-at-large of The Lumiere Reader.
He writes about music for varied publications including The Guardian, NZ Listener, and RipItUp.

Andrew Dubber

Andrew Dubber is Professor of Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University, an advisor to Bandcamp, founder of New Music Strategies and author of several books about the music industries. He can be found here.

Amanda Mills

Amanda Mills, who lives in Dunedin, has been working with national music collections and writing about popular music for a number of years. She has recently discovered that she is a record collector.

Andrew Schmidt

Andrew Schmidt has been writing on New Zealand music since 1983. Editor of indie fanzine Ha Ha Ha, he has degrees in history and journalism. A former Metro staff writer, he was principal writer and editor for magazines Social End Product and Mysterex His blog, Mysterex, delved into the dusty corners of Kiwi music culture from 2008 to 2013.

Barney McDonald

Barney McDonald is a freelance writer, photographer, critic and DJ. Barney was the founder and editor of Pavement magazine. His work features in The Pond, The New Zealand Herald, NZ On Screen and on George FM.

Ben Eldridge

Ben is originally from Auckland though he currently resides in Christchurch. He has been a member of Heavy Jones Trio, The Reduction Agents, Dictaphone Blues and has also played with artists like Nadia Reid, LA Mitchell, Aldous Harding and Ivy Rossiter/Luckless. Presently he spends his time playing with The Goldonies, aka the best covers band in New Zealand, as well as doing theater work and performing with jazz groups. Last year he was briefly employed by The Press as their street style photographer and scribe. He is married with two children, three cats, and one dog.  

Bryan Staff

Bryan Staff is a photographer, writer and broadcaster. He was also the owner of former Auckland nightspot XS Café and Ripper Records.

Chris Bourke

Chris Bourke is the author of the award-winning Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music, 1918-1964; Good-Bye Maoriland: the Songs and Sounds of New Zealand's Great War: and Crowded House: Something So Strong. Editor of Rip It Up from 1986-1988, and a producer for Radio New Zealand, he writes about early New Zealand pop at his Blue Smoke blog. In September 2016 he became Content Director at AudioCulture. 

Christine Mintrom

Christine Mintrom is a New Plymouth-born, semi-retired occupational therapist. She lives in Melbourne and is currently researching and beginning to write about New Zealand musicians who, after some success in New Zealand, moved to Australia in the years 1959-1976. She is the author of Tommy Adderley (1940 – 1993): the man and his contributions to pop, jazz and rock music in New Zealand (iUniverse, 2003). Christine blogs at www.kiwimusiciansinoz.wordpress.com

David Herkt

David Herkt is an Auckland-based writer and TV director/researcher. David can be found here.

David Maclennan

David Maclennan is a Wellington-based writer currently working on a book describing the capital’s punk and post-punk scene during the 1978-81 period.  He also DJs, specialising in trashy rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly and punk.

Dianne Swann

Dianne Swann started her first band Everything That Flies in Auckland in 1984. She went on to become a member of When The Cat’s Away, and left that group in 1991 to travel to the UK. She formed the critically acclaimed London based band The Julie Dolphin with fellow expat and ex-Mocker Brett Adams. The pair returned to New Zealand in 2003 and have resumed their collaboration under the name The Bads

Duncan Greive

Duncan Greive is a former editor of Real Groove, and has often written about music and sports for Metro and North & South. He is the editor and publisher of the Spinoff website. Follow him @duncangreive

Gabe McDonnell

Gabe McDonnell is a playwright, actor, TV and fiction writer. She is also one of the creative forces behind Wellington's Real Hot Bitches dance troupe, which celebrates in lycra the music of the 1980s.

Gareth Shute

Gareth Shute is the author of five books, including Hip Hop Music In Aotearoa (which won an award at the 2005 NZ Book Awards). He is also a musician who has toured overseas as a member of The Ruby Suns and The Brunettes. He is currently a member of The Conjurors and The Cosbys.

Garth Cartwright

Garth Cartwright is an Auckland-born, London-based writer, broadcaster and DJ. He is the author of several books including More Miles Than Money: Journeys Through American Music and Sweet As: Journeys In A New Zealand Summer. Cartwright regularly writes for The Sunday Times and Songlines magazine, and blogs at Alligator Justice. www.garthcartwright.com

Gary Steel

Gary Steel has been inflicting his rancid music critiques on the good citizens of New Zealand for 35 years and counting. He is unrepentant. He can be found here.

Gavin Bertram

Gavin Bertram is a Dunedin-based freelance journalist who has written for publications including Real Groove, RipItUp,  Listener, The NZ Herald and the Sunday Star-Times.

Gavin Burgess

Gavin Burgess is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, studio engineer/producer, and an archivist of New Zealand recordings. He has released several albums and EPs of on his own Gavland label and is currently completing a CD and book documenting the history of recording artists from the Whanganui region. Gavin's music and info on other projects can be found here: www.gavland.co.nz

Glen Moffatt

Glen Moffatt has been a newspaper reporter, a professional musician, a van driver/storeman and a subtitle captioner, but it is as a songwriter he most identifies himself. His 1995 debut album Somewhere in New Zealand Tonight was hailed a classic by The New Zealand Herald, its title track saw him a finalist in the recording industry's songwriter of the year, and his 2014 album Superheroes & Scary Things features co-writes with Larry Killip, Bill Chambers and Dragon's Kerry Jacobson. www.glenmoffatt.com

Gordon Spittle

Gordon Spittle was a writer and journalist active from 1968. Amongst his works are Beat Groups and Courtyard Parties, the definitive Dunedin 60s book, and Counting the Beat, the history of the New Zealand song. He died in August 2022. 

Graham Reid

Graham Reid is a longtime writer on music, travel and culture who founded the Auckland Jazz News then Passages: The Magazine of Jazz and Elsewhere in the Eighties. From 1987 to 2004 he worked at the New Zealand Herald as a senior feature writer, record and concert reviewer, entertainment editor and arts, politics and travel writer. A contributor to many magazines, websites and radio programmes, in 2016 Reid was content advisor for the Auckland War Memorial Museum's exhibition Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa. He currently lectures in the School of Music at the University of Auckland and hosts his music, travel, and arts website, Elsewhere

Grant Gillanders

Grant Gillanders arguably knows more about 60s-era New Zealand music and music makers than anyone alive. He has compiled many collections of New Zealand music and is currently working on a history of Zodiac Records.

Jeremy Templer

Recently returned to New Zealand, Jeremy Templer is best remembered locally as former co-editor with Roger Jarrett on Hot Licks, and a writer for The NZ Listener and RipItUp. He also documented the late 70s Auckland punk scene in a photo exhibition (“The Fan Club”).

John Dix

John Dix is a writer and author who has worked extensively in the NZ music industry. In the 2000’s he has been Artistic Director of the Ponsonby Alive Festival and an administrator of the Parihaka International Peace Festival. He is the author of the landmark history of New Zealand Rock and Roll, Stranded In Paradise.

John Pain

Hallelujah Picassos bassist/keyboardist John Pain also makes music as painspeople. He works in the animation industry.

Jon Chapman

Jon Chapman is an Ex-NY New Zealander. He is a painter of people's peoplified pets; electroacoustic psych-drone-rocker with Dunedin improvisers, Eye, and occasional music blogger for Switched Out.

Josef Shaw

Josef Shaw is a Polish writer, currently working on the definitive biography of Darcy Clay.

Keith Newman

Keith Newman is an award winning journalist with 40-years of writing for mainstream and trade media. He’s written four books on New Zealand history, one on the history of the internet in New Zealand and is an occasional producer for Radio New Zealand’s Musical Chairs programme, having written, narrated and produced around 30 shows on Kiwi artists, including The 4-part Blerta Years which won Best Produced Music Feature in the New Zealand Radio Awards, 2007, Radio New Zealand National, 2007. Keith has two adult children and lives with his wife Paula Novak in the coastal township of Haumoana, Hawke’s Bay. His rough attempt at chronicling Kiwi rock involvement in the international market (1950s-70s) is under Rock from the Edge on his site:: www.wordworx.co.nz

Kerry Doole

Kerry Doole is a New Zealand-born, Toronto-based freelance music journalist. He has written on music for newspapers and magazines in Canada, the US, the UK and New Zealand including RipItUp and Real Groove over more than three decades. Kerry is co-author of Private Universe, a biography of Crowded House.

Lee Borrie

Dr Lee Borrie teaches art and music history and research at Ara Institute of Canterbury. He completed his PhD in 2007 on the rise of rock and roll and youth culture in the 1950s in the context of Cold War America's containment culture.

Lewis Tennant

Lewis Tennant is a DJ, broadcaster, raconteur, amateur chef, and media lecturer, currently completing a PhD at AUT that involves record shops.

Martyn Pepperell

Martyn Pepperell is a Wellington based freelance music, arts and culture journalist, broadcaster and blogger. He is also a contributing editor at Vanguard Red Magazine

Max Oldfield

Max Oldfield is an Auckland based writer and broadcaster. His day job is with Auckland's famed radio station 95bFM.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown works as Curator, Music at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. His personal website can be found at notunlikeatrumpet.

Michael Canning

Michael Canning is a writer based in Europe.

Michael Higgins

Michael Higgins began his long involvement with NZ music at Radio U in Christchurch in the late 70s. He worked on the Give It A Whirl documentary series, and hosted Kiwi FM’s Down the Back of the Couch.

Michael Hollywood

Michael Hollywood is a Paraparaumu Beach-based history nut and pop culture obsessive who contributes to NZ Musician magazine and blogs at http://everythinggonegreen.blogspot.co.nz/

Nich Cunningham

Nich Cunningham is a sound engineer, musician and occasionally reviewer and writer. He's been inflicting himself on the New Zealand music scene since the late 1990's with a particular interest in things underground involving guitars.

Nick Bollinger

Nick Bollinger has written about music for numerous publications. For 20 years he presented the weekly music review programme The Sampler for RNZ National, and for nearly 30 years he was a music reviewer at the NZ Listener. His books include Goneville: a Memoir100 Essential New Zealand Albums, and How to Listen to Pop Music (all published by Awa Press). In 2022 Auckland University Press published Nick’s book Jumping Sundays: the rise and fall of the counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand. Among his many AudioCulture pieces is Ten More Essential New Zealand Albums

Peter McLennan

Peter McLennan is a musician (DubAsylum, Hallelujah Picassos), DJ, broadcaster, blogger and author. His debut book is I Believe You Are A Star. He is currently writing a history of the Deepgrooves record label, and can be found here.

Redmer Yska

Redmer Yska is a Wellington writer and historian. In the 1990s, he wrote NZ Green, The Story of Marijuana in New Zealand and All Shook Up: The Flash Bodgie and the Rise Of The NZ Teenager In the 1950s. Yska’s history of NZ Truth was published in 2012.

Richard Langston

Richard Langston is a journalist who began work as a 17 year old on the Evening Star in Dunedin. After it closed, he had to find other options. He is currently a director for Country Calendar which has the coolest theme tune in television history. He likes to believe it’s played by The Clean.

Robin Nathan

Robin Nathan creates children’s music under the project name fleaBITE. In a past life she has been a radio producer, and member of the vocal trio When the Cat's Been Spayed. 

Roger Watkins

Roger has been a working musician for longer than he cares to remember.  Initially a rhythm guitarist, he switched to drums in the late sixties “so I could sit down all night”.  He is crazy about vintage drums, at one time owning 15 complete kits.  Known by many as The Drum Junkie, he owned a drum shop until redevelopment by the landlord meant the premises were no longer available.  Since then he’s been a civil servant while managing to continue gigging around the country.  He’s played with many pop icons, including Ian “Tex Pistol” Morris, Shane, Suzanne, Ray Columbus and Frankie Stevens  These days he prefers to play blues, working with Dave Murphy in Red Dog Saloon Band, with Prof Warwick Murray in Cryin’ Shame Blues Band and The Kemptones with guitar ace Kemp Turirirangi.  In a past life, he produced two volumes about New Zealand’s pioneering pop and rock bands, and is currently nearing completion of a book on Poland’s eastern borderlands in the pre-and-post World War 2 years.  Not a pop group in sight!!  Says he will contribute items whenever he is struck by the notion that what he has to say about something might be worth reading.

 

Russell Brown

Russell Brown is the host of TV’s Media3 and publisher of the Public Address website. He has written about music for RipItUp, Sounds, Select, Music Week, The Catalogue, Planet, Real Groove and The Listener, among others.

Ryan Kershaw

Guitarist and songwriter Ryan Kershaw is the author Use Your Buzz To Play The Guitar and creator of the industry interview series 'Music Talks'. A recipient of the Music Managers Forum 'Mentoring Success' award, Ryan is currently on the board of Independent Music New Zealand and enjoys helping other musicians through work with schools, teaching and speaking. Ryan can be found at www.ryankershawmusic.com

Sam Wicks

Sam Wicks is a writer and broadcaster based in Auckland. He has edited VOLUME, Real Groove and Groove Guide magazines, and contributes to Music 101 on Radio New Zealand National.

Sholto Duncan

Sholto Duncan is the Web Archivist at Alexander Turnbull Library.

Simon Grigg

Simon Grigg's website and personal history can be found here.

Stephen Heard

Stephen Heard is an Auckland based writer and musician. He is a contributor to NZ Musician magazine and website, and vocalist-guitarist with Clap Clap Riot.

Steven Shaw

Steven Shaw is AudioCulture’s editor. Steven has been writing about music (as well as film) for many years and has contributed to RipItUp, Real Groove, and Pulp magazines, as well as NZ On Screen and OnFilm magazine. An experienced bassist, Steven has performed with many bands.

Victor Billot

Victor Billot was in music groups in Dunedin, Auckland and London from 1990–2000, and released a number of albums over this time, concluding with a solo album in 2004. However his most rock and roll experience was standing for Parliament. More recently he has appeared at both the 2014 and 2015 Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival. He works for the Maritime Union of New Zealand. Website www.victorbillot.com Twitter @billot

Funded by

Partners with