Hello Sailor To Release First Album In 17 Years
Hello Sailor has never wanted for an identity. It was identity itself - or specifically, the need for identity - which essentially brought this band into existence, nearly 40 years ago; and to this day, a band which still consists of the same founding members.
It is ironic that the founding trio of Graham Brazier, Dave McArtney, and Harry Lyon came from diverse sides of the track; one the son of a socialist union man; the other two, sons of a banker and a Navy weapons engineer, respectively. But the music instinctively created a class of its own.
In the early 1970's, in the chest of Auckland City, there was a heart beating to the strains of an early form of indigenous Kiwi Rock. That heart was Ponsonby, home to student drop-outs, artists, and a newly arrived Polynesian diaspora. This fresh musical identity was a kind of south pacific punk, all de-buttoned hibiscus flowered shirts and decadent silk regalia. A sub-culture hard to describe in its entirety, however, viewed against the backdrop of a post-colonial Johnny Walker, potato chip and corrugated iron enclave; in the heart of Auckland city, you get the picture - defiant, rollicking, and raunchy, ever-conscious of that sweet beat and its gently swaying South pacific soul.
Rock critic and journalist Nick Bollinger observed that, "No Kiwi rock 'n' roll band before had projected such a complete sense of the landscape they inhabited. Split Enz? Maybe, but Sailor's world wasn't a place where you made mental notes. It was an unlit backstreet you walked down at night if you dared. The songs are strewn with cops and arrests, pushers and hookers, pharmacies and robberies, sex and drugs. It was as though the New York that Lou Reed had written about with the Velvet Underground, or the London of the Rolling Stones' STICKY FINGERS, had seeped up through the streets of Ponsonby."
Any genre was fair game and worthwhile appropriating - Carribean Ska, Calypso, Rhythm and Blues, Country Honk - and turned into what Graham would call Art Naïve. The boys painted, and sang, and swapped acoustic guitars for les Pauls and Fender Strats, thus completing the stylistic, somewhat rolling, loose corrugated iron sound, and they called it Ponsonby Reggae.
Since forming in 1975, Hello Sailor has pioneered the rock music identity of modern-day New Zealand. With six albums under its belt, and a number of top 10 hits - including 'Blue Lady', 'Gutter Black', 'Latin Lover' and 'Lying In The Sand', Hello Sailor returns with its iconic sound in 2012 with a brand new album, Surrey Crescent Moon - the band's first since 1994's The Album.
On October 12, Hello Sailor will release its 7th studio album, Surrey Crescent Moon, via a distribution deal with Warner Music New Zealand. This album, the band says, is an acknowledgment of their city and the central urban area they grew up in. "A new generation of picaresque anti-heroes are marching down old 'K' Rd, under the mournful lustre of a Surrey Crescent moon".
"These tunes reflect a lifetime of grasping at a 2 dollar poker table, hoping for a Royal Flush, but all too often arriving with two sevens. But today, I feel we have 5 Aces," says frontman Graham Brazier.
TOUR DATES:
Friday 12 October
Whiskey Bar, Auckland
Release Party
Supporting Dragon 40th Anniversary Tour
Tuesday 16 October
The Regent on Broadway, Palmerston North
Wednesday 17 October
The Opera House, Wellington
Thursday 18 October
The Mayfair, New Plymouth
Friday 19 October
Owhango Hotel, Owhango
Saturday 20 October
Brewers Field, Mt Maunganui
Sunday 21 October
Feast Gisborne, Gisborne
Wednesday 24 October
Civic Theatre, Invercargill
Thursday 25 October
Sammy's, Dunedin
Friday 26 October
The Bedford, Christchurch
Sunday 28 October
School of Music, Nelson
Tuesday 30 October
Municipal Theatre, Napier
Wednesday 31 October
Founders Theatre, Hamilton
Thursday 1 November
Civic Theatre, Rotorua
Friday 2 November
The Powerstation, Auckland
Saturday 3 November
The Powerstation, Auckland (Gluepot Reunion show)
