Hi Alison,

I have just watched the Gathering documentary. I was there. Watching those dance scenes just bought on such great feelings. That was a magical event. Dancing in the hot sun with the gathering team firing water over everyone… absolutely epic stuff.

I just want to take this chance to thank you and the Gathering team for the wonderful parties you put on over the years. I can`t really thank you enough because I have had some of the best times ever at these events (I went to three – and am 39yrs old  now).

Maybe you could pass this on to the team… “Thank you so much for your hard work and the parties that I will never forget”.

Yours sincerely,
David Montgomery

Thanks David! We really appreciate your thanks!

I was thinking as New Year ticked over a couple of weeks ago that it was exactly ten years since we were up on Takaka Hill seeing in the new millennium and wondering if the skinheads were gonna come and get us – and it’s now 12 years since we filmed The Gathering documentary – so it’s just brilliant that people still watch it and still love it and still feel motivated to say “thanks”.

I think it says a lot about the awesomeness of The Gathering as an event, and about how strongly TheG imprinted itself on our national psyche. Very cool.

To me the most important part of David’s email is the thanks he sends out to The Gathering crew – and it’s why I asked him if I could post it on the blog.

Every one of the hundreds of crew members worked their ass off every year at TheG, for not much (if any) money, and in enormously stressful conditions – and for the most part it was done in style, with smiles, and with complete dedication. Individual crew members didn’t always get thanked for all their hard work, so it’s really nice to have an opportunity to pass on a Gatherer’s thanks to the people who made it all happen.

I haven’t quite got through them all yet, so if you haven’t heard from me yet, don’t despair, I’ll be in touch over the next few days, and your stuff will be going online very soon.

And if you’ve been meaning to send me stuff and haven’t got round to it yet -  SEND IT THROUGH! The more the merrier…

You guys rule. Thanks!

The Gatherers
Friday 25 January at 7.30pm
National Radio 101FM
or listen live online at www.radionz.co.nz

You can also grab the podcast from the Radio New Zealand website at radionz.co.nz/popular/music/talk – search on “G”.

Yaay!

I got an email a few weeks ago from Kirsten Johnstone at Radio New Zealand. She’d seen The Gathering archives website and was so inspired by it that she decided it was high time to do a documentary on The Gathering and the Gatherers.

She interviewed me a week or so later, and I put her in touch with a bunch of other Gathering crew and Gatherers. She’s been interviewing them too, and putting together the hour-long documentary.

Here’s how they describe it on the Radio New Zealand website:

1:06 pm The Gatherers

Looking back on a New Years party that everyone seems to have a story about: The Gathering.

Starting in 1996, this three-day event at the top of Takaka Hill near Nelson drew in fifteen thousand people at its peak. Everyone was there to have a good time, contributing to an amazing sense of community spirit along the way.

We recall the crawl up the single-lane dirt road to Caanan Downs, the sound of a dull ‘doof doof’ in the background and the twinkling of glitter up ahead. We reminisce with musicians, organisers and punters about the golden age of dance music in Aotearoa, the freaks and the faeries, the filth, the sun, the rain, and the partying.

There is a new on-line archive of stories and photos celebrating The Gathering, and the original venue will host a dance party again this New Year’s Eve.

They’re broadcasting it on the afternoon of December 29, which is timed to coincide with the start of the Canaan Downs Festival. How cool! They asked me about my expectations for the festival, so it’ll be interesting to see what they include.

Here’s how to listen – on the radio, online, via Sky Digital, Freeview, or afterwards for a week or so as a podcast on demand.

Don’t miss it!

I was thinking how we don’t have very many stories on the website yet, and that for some people that might be because they don’t like writing stuff down. Or at least, they don’t feel very inspired to write stuff down if they think it’s going to take a while. Too much like homework, maybe?

So… I’m thinking… seeing as I’m going to the Canaan Downs Festival this year and there’ll be a bunch of Gathering crew in attendance – why don’t I get myself a little tape recorder and do some interviews? Then I can put them up on the website as sound files which you can listen to.

Oral histories!

And then I thought… I could probably find Gatherers too and do the same thing… and then I thought… I could invite you to do the same and send them in to me and we can put those up too!

I’ll have a chat with the guys at Shift on Monday and figure out the best way to do it – what digital format is best, how we access them on the website etc – and I’ll create a new page on the website in the How to send us stuff section – with instructions on how to do it and what I need you to send me.

What do you reckon? Think it might work?

Personally I was involved with five out of the six events and all I have to show for it is a couple of Tech Crew T-shirts, a few stickers and a G frisbee. Plus a small and very precious collection of old photos. So the archive is a incredible resources that I already cherish.

He goes on to say:

What is remarkable to me is how strong the work of the Gathering stands, how bold the art work was and how real the hopes and dreams of the party remain. Be nice humans! Despite the financial breakdown of the event the memory that has stood the test of time is one of a radically positive life changing experience.

How true! Check out his post – and thanks heaps for the mention, .simon!

And while we’re on the subject – a huge big CONGRATULATIONS to .si and Megan on the birth on 12 November of their 9.11 pound baby girl, Georgie Queenie Kong. Yaay!

I’ve also been working on a whole bunch of new newspaper articles about TheG – spent a few more hours in the National Library today, searching through the microfiches. New articles should be up online in the next day or so I hope.

You can access them from the G2000 photos index, or go straight to Matt’s page. He’s also letting me have a bunch of images from G1, which I will add to the site over the next few days.

I’ve also been adding a whole lot more media coverage from various years. I have the text already – now I just need to go to the National Library and search through the microfiches to find the articles themselves. I’ll put those up sometime later in the week once I have thumbnails of the articles.

I’m also meeting up with Steve from the Sure to Rise parties, who’s going to let me have some posters and stickers from The Gathering 96/97. Yaay! Thanks heaps, Steve.

Keep those emails and comments coming, folks – there are lots of gaps to fill!

I emailed the hundreds of people on the old Gathering mailing last last night (welcome, guys!) to let them know about the site – and I have already started receiving photos and offers of scans of this and that, which is awesome, and exactly what I hoped would happen once the site went live.

I’ll be doing regular updates on this blog of what’s new on the website, which I hope will give you a reason to come back regularly and see what else we’ve added, and what other cool stuff has been sent to us by Gatherers and crew.

The other thing I did today was to register with Wikipedia and add a bit more detail to the New Zealand music festivals page, which was looking rather thin (and inaccurate) on Gathering-related stuff. There’s still more info to add, but I’ll need to put my writing hat on – and get hold of some of the tech crew to get the tech info. Or someone else could update it instead!

I think I’m going to compose a full page on The Gathering for Wikipedia actually – all the other big festivals have their own page, so it’s only right that we should have one too! The one on Nambasa is particularly good, I think.

If anyone else feels like doing it instead – go for your life!

In the meantime, hope you’re enjoying the site (it looks like you are!) and please feel free to leave comments here (good or bad!) to let me know what you think of The Gathering archives website, and how you think we could improve it.