Features
GOD SAVE THE CLEAN
When I agreed to do this piece, I resolved to keep personal distance from a band I knew and revered. My plan was to give a simple, detailed account of New Zealand’s great musical export the Clean and their canonization via the vast influence they had on their countrymen, their subterranean music scene, and indie rockers to follow their template on foreign shores.
GOD SAVE THE CLEAN
Diving in with the antipodean deans of DIY courtesy of a new book
Brian Turner
When I agreed to do this piece, I resolved to keep personal distance from a band I knew and revered. My plan was to give a simple, detailed account of New Zealand’s great musical export the Clean and their canonization via the vast influence they had on their countrymen, their subterranean music scene, and indie rockers to follow their template on foreign shores. However, a brand-new chronicle of their travels, In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul (Feral House), got me in a different mindset. Authored by veteran Kiwi zine editor Richard Langston, this book is as much a story of the people around them as it is the Clean. Please Kill Me-style quotations, personal diaries, letters, and flyers focus distinctly on those surrounding their ascent. Everyone in their orbit had a sense of awe, and a lasting pride, as evidenced by the book’s No. 1 chart position in New Zealand at the time of this writing.