Saturday Night Jams at Foul Farm
RIP Robbie Robertson
I was saddened to learn that Robbie Robertson passed away from prostate cancer at the age of 80. It is a silent scourge that catches many men unawares. In New Zealand, around 4,000 people are diagnosed with it each year, and every year around 700 men die from it. Most either don’t notice changes or have any significant symptoms, and the digit test is enough for them to not bother getting checked out. My message is that they can get a simple blood test, no embarrassment, and get a baseline, then they can monitor it and if there is a problem, catch it early. Most people who die from it, have had it for a long time and if they had been tested early, they might have survived.
Robbie Roberston is the only album of this legend that I ever owned. My influences were more from his days in The Band.
I have some experience with prostate cancer, so am qualified to comment. They found mine early. I am in remission, healthy, and well, but my oncologist, while very happy with my prognosis, made it clear to me that this does not mean I am cancer free. Hopefully, it will not return for decades, if ever, but that was not the purpose of this post. I was just relating my story to the loss of Robertson from the same condition.
In the mid-1970s through my association with the folk scene, and several residencies the Poles Apart club in Newmarket, in the days when it was run by the late Frank Winter, who lived in an apartment accessed through a door on the opposite side of the stage from the entrance. I became one of the many people who hung around at an urban commune, called Fowl Farm, the name interchangeable with Foul Farm in Auckland’s Mt Albert. I will share some memories from that awesome collection of people who became close friends in the future, and how I came to live there myself for a time, initially in the upstairs part of a barn, in a room perfectly built into one corner, and later in my caravan.
Poles Apart was a little different from a lot of the folky clubs in many ways, including the variety of music, which leaned a lot more toward singer-songwriters, bands of the day, and blues. There was also plenty of appetite for Irish drinking songs, sea shanties, and acapella music, which Frank himself enjoyed performing in his rich booming voice.
Typically open on a Wednesday and a Saturday night, there was a kitchen where you could buy toasted sandwiches and coffee, and if you knew the magic words, there was usually wine in the fridge. The tables had candles wedged into wine bottles, with molten wax dripped in rivulets down the sides. Most people smoked as was normal for the times, and the ashtrays quickly filled up. There was also an ashtray on the stage and many of us frequently had a cigarette slid between the guitar strings on the head of our guitars, a common sight in those days.
The tables were usually set up in a U formation with the stage at the top, unless it was really busy, in which case some of the tables were moved out of the way to make room for more chairs. There were also a few comfy old lounge chairs and a sofa. The Poles wasn’t licensed, but you could bring your own grog, as they called it.
A lot of the magic at the club was in the setup room. You had to go through that dimly lit room to get to the toilets. Probably once a cloakroom, it mostly functioned as a place for musicians to tune up their instruments, before going on stage. But there was always a group of people who wanted to jam rather than sit in an audience all night. There were wooden bench seats, doubling as storage on either side, where you could sit under coat hangers and between guitar cases, lined up and frequently moved around to make space for another person to squeeze into the room. Often it was so full you could barely move, and a waft of smoke would curl its way through the side of the door when it was opened, allowing a little fresh air to sneak in.
There were some awesome jam sessions in that room, and if the door into the main theatre stayed shut, it was reasonably soundproof, but if people opened the door, while someone was performing, someone would come and ask us to quiet down. It was usually done in a very friendly way because some of the best talent was waiting in that room. Some of them could be stubborn, and if they got pissed off with being told what to do, would leave and deprive the audience of enjoying their talent.
It was at one of these sessions, word was put out that there would be a session at Foul Farm on the following Saturday. It was someone’s birthday. I don’t recall whose. It was all pretty loose, but several people said they would be going.
The first jam session heralded the beginning of a couple of awesome summers of live music. They weren’t usually planned as such. Given that music was something that tied the bond between the residents of the former chicken farm together, it was inevitable. I guess you could put it down to serendipity.
There were probably around 15 people permanently living there at a time, plus those that came on the weekends for a bit of an alternative lifestyle, and then went back to their daily grind during the week.
Some of the people often there were brothers Bill and John Taylor, Glenn (a great laid-back songwriter and singer, with a dry sense of humor) and Lorraine Cross, Mo(ses) Green aka John Green, who at one time was in the revolving lineup of the Human Instinct). He was tragically lost some 10 years later, falling from a cray fishing boat out of Gisborne on a dark night. He had a really sweet voice and some nice guitars, including an Ovation, a Strat, and a fine 12-string.
There was Graeme, who had a ramp up the steps by the front door of the main house and rode his Norton Commando through the front door and into his bedroom, where he could sit on his bed and work on the bike. Graeme built the bedroom on the second floor of the big barn, which he passed on to me when he moved into the house. he didn’t play music, but was a huge fan with a great knowledge of music. I remember him telling me a lot about Ginger Baker, the amazing drummer.
He had an extensive record collection. The last time I saw him, he was living with his wife in a beautiful house that he either built or renovated, in the Coromandel ranges, above a huge seam of amethyst.
There was Geoff who lived in a caravan and had a beautifully upholstered Humber Hawk, that we went to many folk festivals in, the car crammed with people up for some fun. He was a big music fan, especially the Brits like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Dozens more came and went, some staying for weeks, others for months.
Accessed down a long dirt driveway off Mt Albert Rd, Foul Farm was made up of a big farmhouse, several barns, and chicken sheds. There was one structure that looked a bit like a Samoan fale. It had a concrete pad that was more than 10 meters long and quite wide, and a roof made of corrugated iron, open all around, providing shelter from some sun, and mostly the rain too, both of which are equally likely to happen on any day, or even the same day, in Auckland.
We started the day collecting firewood and by early afternoon, the drinks were flowing and we had a great fire in the middle of the concrete floor, with river rocks around the sides to stop the ashes from blowing out. The guitars came out and like most sessions, someone would start playing something and the rest of us would join in, whether we knew it or not. We took turns starting the next song, and someone always had one in mind that they were itching to play. The flow of music was pretty much continuous like a streaming service today, but live.
The acoustic music was a mix of pop, rock, folk, and blues and as the afternoon became evening, more people showed up and there would have been around 25 people by the time the sun started its journey to the other side.
Food came out from the kitchen, along with things people had brought with them, and we ate, drank, and became merry.
One of the songs that was often played at these events, was The Weight, by the late and great Robbie Robertson, and with the chorus came the inevitable harmonies, which were also common, given the folky influence.
I pulled into Nazareth
Was feeling 'bout half past dead
I just need someplace
Where I can lay my head
"Hey, mister, can you tell me
Where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand
"No" was all he said
[Chorus]
Take a load off, Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off, Fanny
And (And, and)
You put the load right on me
As the evening went on, more people started arriving, and it probably got to about 40 people. More instruments. Guitars, fiddles, banjo, mandolin, spoons, slide guitar, maybe a bongo. More than half of those people brought their favorite instruments to participate with.
At some stage in the evening, I remember some people left to go into the city, while more arrived and took their space. Several of those who went to the city came back bringing extras with them, having decided that what we had was more fun than what was going on in Auckland City. We went until the early hours of the morning. There were probably some still going when the sun came back around, the fire embers were still hot and there were people in sleeping bags in a rough circle around it.
A few nights ago, I was listening to a music documentary on YouTube as I often do, and someone was disparaging the hippy types who used to string up plastic bags, tie knots in them, and hang them from a roof, lighting the bottom with a match, and watching in a dazed wonder, as the molten plastic dripped to the ground, or into a container of water, making buzzing noises as the molten slag dripped down.
I was introduced to the display on the night of that first jam. They called them zots, which was probably the closest you could get to an onomatopoeic description. A very unsustainable practice, but it was a different time.
The night was a huge success and would be repeated many times over a couple of summers. Most of them were ad hoc, but a lot of people would turn up on a Saturday afternoon or night just in case, and if there were enough of them, it would just happen. We didn’t have mobile phones back then to get the word out, but one way or another it did. We were never short of a crowd of musicians and music lovers.
The Weight takes me back to those days And, and, and You put the load right on me.
Lovely story, Luigi. Another deep slice of New Zealand culture so distinctive, universal spirit with a special local vibe. Also, congratulations on the stable prostate cancer situation. Last month I had a prostate biopsy for the first time. I keep it monitored every year. Results were outstanding: nothing at all to even think about, doctor said call me in a year. This is something men should talk about more: caught early, prostate problems are easily treated.