Archive for year: 2014

Earlier this year while touring New Zealand, the band found itself wasting some time in a bar at a regional airport when a middle-aged man approached us asking if we were Midnight Youth.

After some pleasantries, a story about his daughter’s love for the band and a few signed beer coasters, the man told us the only reason he knew who we were was because the surgery he helped run used one of our songs in their playlist while performing serious operations. That was some deep stuff to us – our song had possibly helped a surgeon keep calm or focussed while they were saving someone’s life. It was a nice feeling to know that. But this was just the beginning of how this man reminded us how much music can matter.

A week later we received an email from him saying how embarrassed he was to only have known one of our songs and how the next day he bought our album before heading to Christchurch for a week to attend a conference. That was the week Christchurch was hit by an extremely shallow 6.3 earthquake which killed 181 people, the second large quake to strike the city within six months.

He went on to tell us his story of the day the quake hit and how he managed to escape the city’s CBD unhurt before joining thousands at an emergency centre in a field nearby. His words probably tell the story better than mine:

“I was near a group of international visitors who were praying and others started to join in.  At that time all we could do was wait.  The phones were down and I decided to play my new CD in my iPhone (I wish the speakers were a little larger).  The praying stopped, people starting listening and the depressed mood picked up.  I turned the (your) music off thinking that people may not want to here it.  “Turn it back on” was shouted out.

We heard five songs before my battery ran out. I can’t express how comforting it was for people to hear some inspiring New Zealand music, at a time where it seemed the world had fallen around us.

He went on.

“Some of us (in the health sector) have the opportunity to touch the lives of individual people and families.  What you do touches the hearts, minds and spirits of thousands.  Be great, write great music, play great music, inspire the lives of people greatly.  Your music was a bright light in a dark day.  I was lucky to be flying out the next day, I cannot imaging how the people of Christchurch will cope over the coming months.”

This was an emotional time for all New Zealanders, everyone knew someone that was affected and most people outside of the Christchurch region, I’d say, would have felt a little helpless as to what they could do to help – us included.

This message showed us how we helped and how we can continue to help.?As a musician and songwriter, I express a part of myself that isn’t overly evident in my regular daily life – it is quite a mystery to me how it happens and all I know is that I feel satisfied and excited when that process is in motion. But once it leaves my mouth, the stage or a studio, it is out of my control as to how it affects the world around me and it’s particularly hard to rationalise that thought – it’s moments like these that give me a greater sense of the power that music has and the amazing gift I’ve been given and am doing my best to use.

By Jeremy Redmore from Midnight Youth

For me, music is one of the most important things in my life. It is a creative outlet which allows me to release emotions that disrupt my calm if held inside. It is my ability to tell a story about things that are happening in my life but also a way of recognising what is happening in my life and dealing with it.

Blindspott had many successes because people could relate to our stories. People who listen to us have said “That’s exactly what is going on for me.”

Music is like a photograph for me. A still that can take me to a place in time. The first time I heard Deftones and Kyuss I was with my friends sharing some great moments. When I listen to Brothers in Arms it reminds me of my brother who passed away. I hear Boys to Men and I think back to my A Capella group when I was 11. I hear the cure and it reminds me of a break up.

Music has a powerful effect on us. A translation of vibration I call it.

By Marcus Powell from Blindspott.

It was a rainy Sunday in the small and somewhat isolated North Island town of Te Aroha. The gloomy main street was nestled at the base of a muscular mountain. Heavily forested slopes rose steeply above the settlement into a mist that seemed to muffle the hiss of the cars and trucks that passed occasionally. I was there with my girlfriend, happy to escape the city for a weekend and delighted to find a place so eerie and distant from the clatter of suburban Auckland.

The town attracts the odd stray from the main road on account of it’s wonderful hot-springs that well up from the base the imposing peak. But this considerable attraction was usurped by something quite unexpected, something magical and marvellous, something that transported us through time and space in a way we couldn’t have imagined.

As we walked arm in arm towards to centre of Te Aroha we thought we could hear music. It was horse and ephemeral. It had a dream-like quality. As we got closer to the main street the music became a little clearer but it’s source remained a mystery. The tunes were old, from the ’40s of ’50s. Big bands and basic rhythms, voices that crooned and warbled. With the turn-of-the-century wooden shop-fronts and the elderly population, comfortable in cloth caps and cardigans, we felt we’d walked into to a long forgotten episode of life in New Zealand, one that had originally aired when our parents were children. And then we saw the little speakers. Every forth or fifth shop-front had one. They were basic and unpainted. Each bolted to a bracket leaning over the footpath. A few of them had swallows nesting behind them. They were connected to the same wire that sneaked all the way down the main road. The music they played was piped from the local radio station to which they were all hard-wired.

The atmosphere this mono sound provided was powerful. We couldn’t identify any of the performers nor make out the lyrics but we simply floated down the road feeling as though we were staring in our very own period drama.

We soon ran out of main street so we turned around and slowly ambled back to our old hotel. Looking for somewhere to eat we smiled at Te Aroha’s Italian restaurant curiously named Berlusconi’s. The steep hill to the accommodation slowed us a little and the reedy sound from those little speakers slowly faded until we awoke from our time travelling trance with red cheeks and happy hearts.