Wellington – Last Stop

January 14, 2010 | Category: by Thomas

Wellington is windy and it knows it. Wind sculptures of all kinds greet you as you make your way quickly into the heart of this small, blustery city. The place is alive and constantly in flux, its residents can’t linger very long in the gale so they must get on with it, they must act.

One of many plaques that form another public arts project captures the Wellington vibe nicely.

The players in Wellington?

There was our host Joe – trumpet player from Fat Freddy’s Drop and general legend-about-town.

There was his son Ben – dancer, performer, t-shirt illustrator, rock-star-in-training and general sage on most topics.

There was Fred – our producer, driver, photographer, sorter-of-shit, drinking companion and soon-to-be-great-friend. Note: Pretty much all the photos in this blog entry were taken by Fred – aka Fryderyk Leszek Kublikowski.

Before we had barely even arrived in Wellington, we were invited to a massive feast for Alicia’s birthday.

Ian, keyboard player for Fat Freddy’s, took care of the cooking.

Their friend Craig (half man, half seal) looked after the hunter-gathering.

Next day, Craig took us to do some of our own hunter-gathering in the freezing waters of the south Pacific.

Under his strict supervision we went free-diving with wetsuits and weight belts trying to catch Crayfish from holes in the reef with our bare hands. Needless to say, Tim and I neither hunted nor gathered. But there’s nothing like and hour and a half in the ice-cold water to get the blood flowing.

We concluded the evening listening to one of Joe’s other bands, ‘The Canapes’ play at Havana bar. Joe swapped effortlessly between Tuba, Trombone and Stylophone. We discovered our drink for the weekend, the delicious dark and stormy.

Friday involved more gigging. We saw a really chill Phoenix Foundation show at Slow Boat Records.

More junior rock stars in training.

Then we saw our favorite new band of the trip at a great bar called Mighty Mighty. The band is called Orchestra of Spheres and they’re fucking weird. They play the biscuit tin, theremin, axis, gamelan, electric carillon and skins. Say no more. Just look out for them.

The following day we went back to Mighty Mighty in the afternoon for some Dr. Sketchy life-drawing action. Drinks, dames and drawing. Nice way to spend a few hours.

On Sunday, Walter (a roadie from Fat Freddy’s) took us off-roading along the South coast out past Devil’s Gate. He had been driving since he was four so we felt pretty safe. He drove us up vertical inclines and we drank Epic Armageddon when we weren’t spilling it all over ourselves.