Hothouse Flowers in New Zealand
Celtic soul performers Hothouse Flowers are famous for two things in New Zealand; one is, well, the thing they’re famous for everywhere - Don’t Go - and the other is ALT, says Scott Cara of the New Zealand Herald.
ALT was the 1995 Liam Ó Maonlaí collaboration with Tim Finn and Andy White that resulted in the album Altitude:
I had been to great places in music with the band and I found that with Tim and Andy we were hitting similar places and I felt that we had done our share of records - polished and otherwise - and it felt like a good time to hop on an atmosphere. And lo and behold when we went into the studio to make music we just had a sound
Note that the Herald article calls Andy White, Andy Rourke. White is a former Irish Songwriter of the Year award winner in a year when nominations included Bono and Christy Moore, and a folk superstar in his own right, making ALT truly a folk supergroup. New Zealand’s Tim Finn is hugely popular in Ireland, and his little brother Neil was in a band of some popularity also.
The A of ALT, Andy lives in Australia these days, where he recently performed at the Commonwealth Games, and has continued to collaborate with the L (Liam) and T (Tim) through the years, as well as people like Sinéad O’Connor and Peter Gabriel. You can listen to a few samples from Altitude here on Amazon.
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Years and years ago, and then some, the ole Finn brothers were famous in NZ for a wee group called Split Enz. (The play on national letters is still cool - in fact, you’ll see Kiwi products - fruit usually - now in the US that have the label - ENZA)
They were so popular that when they left NZ (for lack of financial remuneration for their obvious talents,) that the Govt. stepped in and demanded that all NZ radio stations play a minimum of 10% NZ music… The boyz left for Oz, the rest is history and neither of them have ever looked back. Since then, most Pop musicians would take the precedence set, and run to Oz for the $$$.
Not only Pop musicians, however. NZ has a long history of chasing away its talent. The most famous of which was the international opera singer, Kiri Te Kanawa. She left NZ in ‘66 and publicly vowed never to return until NZ had a center for the Performing Arts. 30 or so years later… when that finally occurred, she held true to her word and returned to open it.
I thought there was even less chance of Split Enz reforming than of Crowded House, but shows you what I know - the classic lineup is about to tour Oz - but not NZ. I don’t know why but I guess sometimes they still get frightened.
So naturally, before the tour begins in June, Tim Finn is reminiscing about the beginning of the Enz.
The NZ govt should’ve done what the Brazilian govt did with Pelé when they declared him a National Treasure so he couldn’t be sold to a foreign football club, but 10% is a start.
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I suspect that they still get frightened over the thought of 6 months in a leaky boat and we certainly know that history never repeats…
All things being ANZAC today, poppies making me believe that I can see red, we’ll see if Eric Bogle might get an airing tonite.