At weekends they hung around the eastern beaches, working on their tans, the warm bleed of Fleetwood Mac or The Eagles seeping from car radios. I imagined they’d all marry each other and never leave.
November came and went and winter gaped ahead of me. The hostel was somewhere to sleep and a place to leave my things, but there was no comfort there.
Hearing the music in its original context, I could appreciate it anew and it made me think about how mutable songs were. How a stormy day might crank up the angst in a track, the way putting on a particular jumper could change the colour of your eyes.
I don’t feel the need to bump a Smiths track when it comes up on shuffle, for no-one can tear asunder what Morrissey and Marr put together all those years ago.
Our latest Centre Stage column shines the light on New Zealand writer Maria Majsa.
I confess it was more than just clothes that drew me back to Hyper Hyper on those rainy afternoons. There was music. And The Boy. Perched behind the counter, nose in a book, he seemed to exist in some other world, one with particularly rarified air - it was all over him like a scent.
The house lights dimmed, the curtain rose, a hush fell and the assault began. Proximity of screen plus technicolour panavision multiplied by gigantic singing heads equals nausea.
The Scottish lads had all lost their front teeth [fighting, falling over drunk] and at some point they loved to flip out their plates so we could appreciate what proper hard men they were. This may or may not have been some form of Celtic foreplay.
Maria Majsa 93 Edgewater Drive, Pakuranga, February 1982 It was right after the funeral that things began to happen… the lights cut out and the music drained away like water leaving a sink.
21 Swan Crescent, Pakuranga 1974 Under all the fairy floss, trouble is lurking. There are wrong turns, regrets, situations that are easier to run from than face. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is about escape and it wasn’t lost on me that the first place I heard it was my favourite place to escape to