In the rearview telescoping of time, it could seem our 1980s were just Flying Nun, some reggae, polished mainstream pop and a few noisy guitar bands.
But to the far left was a vibrant, experimental scene in Auckland around composer/guitarist Ivan Zagni, short-lived collectives like Big Sideways, Avant Garage and 3 Voices, the rise of From Scratch and the Heptocrats along the jazz axis.
There were strange bands on cassette-only releases.
In Wellington – from the late 1970s to their final concert at the Michael Fowler Centre in March 1986 – the Primitive Art Group carried the banner for improvised music.
Because they didn’t tour and their albums ran to just 300 copies, they had about as much impact outside the capital as the Auckland artists had down there.
But the PAG had quite a story.
By their own admission some weren’t musicians and couldn’t read or write music. That hardly mattered in an era of post-punk, a volatile social climate before and after the 1981 Springbok tour and the repressive National government.
In the 350-page Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and Braille Collective Story, Wellington sound artist Daniel Beban focuses a keen eye, evocative words and astute attention on the music and lives of the PAG: David and Anthony Donaldson, Neill Duncan, Stuart Porter and David Watson.
They appeared on their own PAG albums and also in different configurations as the Black Sheep, Jungle Strut, Rabbitlock, the Family Mallet ….
This ensemble of moving parts, with others on their periphery, recorded eight albums in two years on their Braille label.
Provocatively calling themselves “the punks of jazz”, PAG weren’t accepted by mainstream jazz listeners and critics, and admittedly sometimes adopted a default position of untutored Dixieland strut.
However, the inspired amateurism and enthusiasm of these largely self-taught performers carried them forward and, inevitably, they improved as players and improvisers.
PAG, they say, weren’t trying to copy the free jazz or improvised music they’d heard on albums like the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Fanfare for the Warriors and Ornette Coleman’s early recordings, but just to be themselves.
“To me it seemed more akin to punk than jazz,” says Porter, “because we were just making it up … there was a recognition that creativity and experimentation and doing something different was a common link between all of us.”
Beban’s excellent biography places them in the context of their lives, the city and the times: there’s the chill wind off the Strait, draughty rehearsal spaces and their improvised music sometimes holding on by the skin of its teeth as anarchic chaos beckoned.
The well-illustrated book (100 photos, posters, album covers) opens with that final concert when the venerable but staid jazz aficionado and radio host Ray Harris reluctantly introduced the group whose music he admitted wasn’t to his taste. Only to find the audience very much on the side of the upstarts.
The story then goes back to origins through conversations with the musicians about formative influences and how they washed up in Wellington.
Beban’s oral history and structure are like improvised music: characters are introduced – stepping into the spotlight for their solo, as it were – and the writer captures their spirits, eccentricities and opinions in colourful, evocative interviews, which place them in their context then and now.
PAG’s profile will be deservedly elevated by this account and also by the current tie-in double album compilation Primitive Art Group 1981-1986.
It comes to life with the 12 minute Swinging in the Rain, a dawn chorus of agitated saxophones that devolves into more measured avian dialogues.
Immediately, you can hear why PAG would accompany dance and theatre groups, and why some – who hadn’t ventured into American free jazz – recoiled.
There’s a storytelling aspect to PAG’s musical conversations in the question/answer and forceful saxophone on the previously unreleased Cecil Likes to Dance. Their attempts at swing and bebop are fun and Pickpocket Rag locates itself somewhere between tropical Dixieland and Coleman but ends up like a dance band in a saloon.
The arrival of guitarist Watson added colour (Predicament), there’s shameless enjoyment in Charles Mungbean, and the bluesy mood of Truck Driving Man would become more familiar when Tom Waits moved into experimental sounds.
The Gander at the end shows Primitive Art Group had honed its skills and were capable of standard ensemble playing.
But times changed, gigs became scarce, side-projects like Four Volts (which morphed into the very popular Six Volts) were more rewarding, Watson went to New York and the players’ tastes increasingly differed.
It had been a bold experiment and if sometimes not as successful as it might have been, the collection shows how entertaining and challenging PAG were, and still are.
And Future Jaw-Clap is an evocative, revelatory and important book about these innovators and disruptors, the kind we need more of.
Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and Braille Collective Story, by Daniel Beban (VUP, $50), is out now.
Primitive Art Group 1981-1986 is available on double vinyl and digitally.
