Old Gigs:1992

In 1992 i was living in this old country house on the way to Central Otago. That was when me and Tonga first started trying to put music together, sounded like shit, although most of those tunes eventually became Bazooka songs in one way or another. One Sunday we were mooching about doing fuck all, and i read that Dead Moon were playing in Queenstown that night. "Lets go!" yelled Tonga, and we piled into his old Holden Special, The Dogmobile he called it, and hit the road. Ten minutes into the trip and we picked up a hitchhiker. Ten minutes later and he was rolling a smoke, and asking if we needed anything, and we were fucken stoked, cos we'd been straight as the doctor for a few days.
We stopped in Cromwell and called in to see some friends, and one of them, Mana, was straight in for the ride. So up through the gorge to Queenstown, where we parked up by the Lake and got on it.
The gig was at an upstairs nightclub, Chicos...maybe, and there were quite a few people there. Got a shock to bump into Al from CHCH who was looking semi-straight, clean-cut, what the fuck? He started telling me it was his third season about to start at Milford Sound, and he was hoping to hop up the chain a bit, plans, etc, then asked "you don't wanna buy some downers do you? I need more piss money." Hahaha. "Yeah no worries Al, we'll claim them. As you were." Then he went over to the support band, SMAK from Auckland, all out of it and excited, and said "yup, saw you guys in CHCH last night and it was fucken wicked, and here i am again." Their singer, some guy called Marty Sauce, replies " Oh yeah, i remember, this guy actually left a message for you." Al all excited says "Did he?". "Yeah, he wanted you to fuck off!"
SMAK got up and played a high energy set with plenty of cock-rock antics from the frontman, and got a few laughs from the audience. By now some of the crowd were getting pissed right up, particularly this young local dude who was throwing himself about and diving on people and crashing into everything. Hilarious. I remember Smak being fast and tight with a Punk/Hard Rock kinda sound, plenty of passion, and plenty of alcohol.
Then came Dead Moon, and they were fucken wicked. I remember them having this candle set up mid stage and all leaning over it for the three way handshake, then the drummer sitting down behind one of the most minimal drumkits i've ever seen live, and launching into their first song with 100%. The guitarist and bass player were husband and wife, and this came out in the tightness and intensity of their Punky/Bluesy kinda sound, although one of the punters kept telling Fred the guitarist he was playing in the wrong key, and another one, Simon, kept yelling out "Send them to Somalia!!", cos he reckoned that Toody the bass player was "too skinny and needed a good feed." And the young pissed guy was still diving all over the place. A small scuffle even broke out. Queenstown was going off!
Afterwards a big group of us adjourned to the carpark and all packed into the Dogmobile for a big session. A few of them left after a while, and we meandered away to drop Simon off on the way out of town. By now it was about 3 a.m. and there was noone on the streets except for us and the lone cop car that pulled us over straight away. Probably didn't help that Tonga was only going about 10kmh, and the car was chocka block with smoke. Tonga was taken back into the cop car, then the cop came back and told us we reeked of pot and he was gonna search us and the vehicle. Everyone tried to ditch stuff, with the most classic being Mana doing a slight backward stumble as he got out of the car and blatantly backhanding a card of downers into the gutter, right in front of me and the cop....but the cop didn't notice! In the end, Mana and Tonga were taken away to be charged for possession, while Simon got to walk the 50 metres to his house, and i had to wait in the car. So i retrieved the 'discarded dangers', dropped some downers, and woke up in Mana's driveway in Cromwell.
We were all moving really slowly the next day so there wasn't much achieved, apart from eventually making our way home. The following day Tonga and Mana went back to Queenstown to go before the beak, and i dragged my sorry ass back to work. Dunno which was worse really.
Managed to see Dead Moon again on their next tour, possibly around '96(?), and read an interview where they said their '92 tour was one of the craziest experiences they'd had where "everyone they met seemed to be straight out of the wild west".