Bruce Blucher

Bruce Blucher's name won't be known to many but to my mind he's a key New Zealand musician, having been in some of the best Dunedin bands of the 80s and 90s. Recently I took a look at Flying Nun releases I would like to see re-released now the label is back under the control of Roger Shepherd. One of those was an EP that features Bruce Blucher - the Alpaca Brothers Legless EP. The Alpaca brothers also included future Snapper and former Clean member Peter Gutteridge and former Look Blue Go Purple member Norma O'Malley. The song 'Hey man' from that EP made it onto the Flying Nun boxset, but the whole EP deserves re-release.

Blucher has played both guitar and drums for any number of other Dunedin and New Zealand acts such as This Kind of Punishment and Sandra Bell but it's for a couple of his own bands that I best remember him.

One is Cyclops a Dunedin super band including Blucher, former another Look Blue Go Purple member Kathy Bull and Peter Jefferies. They were active in the very late eighties and early nineties and released some great singles, mainly on obscure American labels. Cyclops recorded material was collected together on the Goat Volume CD in 1999, sadly it too is now very hard to find.

Following on from Cyclops Blucher formed Trash - a band with a darker heavier sound who released 3 albums Grit and Butts, Not Gate and Mihiwaka.

Trash split in the mid 90s - I was there to witness it as they literally disbanded one night on stage at the Empire Tavern with Blucher throwing down his guitar and about to storm off, until drummer Robbie Yates told him to pick the f***king thing up, plug it in and play.

In 1994 Blucher recorded with Viv Crowe as Brown Velvet Couch on a single called Once in a Very Blue Moon. The single shows the influence of The Renderers also active in Dunedin at the time. I'm not sure but I think Viv may have been the publican at the Empire Tavern.

Later in the 1990s Blucher performed as Pointy Little Stick - unfortunately only a couple of tracks remain on long out of print Arc Records compilations - 'The Walk' appeared on Arc Records comp Flying Way Too High and 'Aha' was on the 1999 Arclife comp.

I'm not sure if Bruce Blucher still makes music - around the turn of the century he took up a career as a stonemason - but I'm a big fan and I hope he's still churning out those dirty chords.

And - there's one particular Blucher project I haven't been able to track down that I'd dearly love to hear. It was a band called Pink Plastic Gods, they released an album called In The lap of the Gods in the 90s. If you can help me out please email or leave a comment.

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Second (Arc)life

My recent rediscovery of the Arclife Records catalogue unearthed some amazing female artists, some of whom featured in a recent Counting The Beat episode. However, that wasn't all that deserved an airing so this episode continues the exploration of the Arclife catalogue, the recording offshoot of Dunedin's Arc cafe.

Kitset released the album Testpot on Arclife in 1999. It's guitar based pop in the Dunedin tradition but has an epic, wind down the car window, open road sound that reminds me a bit of the kind of driving drone of Snapper or Bailter Space. Kitset were to release a second album on Archhill Records, but as far as I'm aware it never came about. 'Headlights Gone', a song that was destined for that second album did appear, however, on the 2002 Arclife compilation Arc Beats and follows in the same vein.

Appearing on the same compilation is an otherwise un-released track from Martin Phillipps of the Chills. The song 'I Don't To Live Forever' was performed by both The Chills and Martin Phillips over a long period of time and was demoed for the Chills Sunburnt album. The version on the compilation was initially recorded in 1993 but then given some gussying up for inclusion on the compilation. While the song itself is a good one I'm not so sure about the choice of a fairly dinky sounding keyboard, I would have liked to have heard this given the full band treatment. I once saw Martin Phillips play an Arc Cafe Christmas party to a packed room and finish his set joined by David Kilgour to play some Velvet Underground covers. I've put a clip for a more sedate recent live performance on the video page.

Mestar seemed indicative of a change in the Dunedin music scene from a determinedly alternative outlook to a more pop focus. While on Arclife the group released two albums, Mestar (1998) and Porcupine (2002) and an E.P. Steamer (2000). The song 'Turtle Control', a great noisy melodic pop song, comes from that E.P.. Mestar later made the move to Archhill Records for their latest album Shut the Squizwot Factories Down.

My memories of seeing Suka live were of a maelstrom of guitar. Matthew Thornicroft, the guitarist always seemed to end up with bleeding fingers and he would have specks of blood splattered over the front of his shirt. Listening now to 'Dancing To Tibet', the title track from Suka's 2001 E.P. you would never pick that. This is jaunty little number with a Velvet Underground chug, some 'ahh, ooh's' and even harmonica. If it is the noisy Suka you're after try and track down their 1995 album Nimrodiaboligue.

Finally in this run down of Arclife releases is a track from Pointy Little Stick featuring Bruce Blucher, formerly of two great Dunedin bands Cyclops and Trash. The music is a relentless guitar grind of the kind Blucher specialises in, while the lyrics tell the tale of some one with nothing to do walking the streets of Dunedin waiting for something to happen, disappointed but all the time knowing that nothing will. Blucher later gave up on music ot follow a career s a stonemason. If you're lucky you might still find some material by Cyclops here and Trash here and here courtesy of kiwitapes.blogspot.com

Picture credit: Arclights: Mestar 29-10-98 by James Dignan, http://www.grutness.co.nz

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