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 have some prints on my wall which I bought at the exhibition – Jonnie’s great at capturing amazing images of people – both in large numbers and individually. He’s happy to do high-quality prints of any of the photos in the collection – just email him at jonnie@sandwiches.co.nz for a quote.

I’ve divided his photos into Daytime and Night – check them out! Thanks heaps, Jonnie, for allowing us to add them to The Gathering archives collection.

We’ve got video from The Gathering 97/98, The Gathering G2000 and The Gathering G2 – and mighty fine it looks too. Thanks a million to Iain for making such high-quality copies for me to put on Google Video.

I suppose my personal favourite is the G2000 Havoc! “shopping trolley” interview, where Mikey and Newsboy took me up to the Domain, put me in a shopping trolley, and wheeled me around for a couple of hours while we chatted about everything Gathering. I could not believe how many people saw that show, and for months (even years) afterwards, if I ever mentioned it, people would go “Oh my God! Was that you??? I remember that episode so well!”

I still don’t quite know how that all happened. I know I wanted to do the interview outdoors, somewhere nice and nature-ish, which is why I suggested the Domain. And I remember Newsboy already had this shopping trolley idea – although I have no clue why – and he was really, really keen on it… so we compromised and did both. As you do. The only tricky thing was that the bumps on the ground as I was wheeled over the grass tended to make my voice go all jigglyjoggly – you can hear it if you listen carefully.

That was such a fun afternoon! Mikey and Jeremy are really really nice guys – I always enjoyed doing Havoc! interviews – and that particular afternoon I reckon we were all really on form.

I seem to remember one or two of the Gathering crew not being particularly happy with that interview – I think they thought it was too silly, or not respectful enough – but I like it. It turned out to be the most memorable interview we ever did – and I think it’s a Very Good Thing to be able to laugh at yourself once in a while…

Enjoy!

I’m having a bit of trouble getting the high-res version of The Gathering documentary 97/98 online at Google Video – it took quite a few days to upload – and then it failed… I have no idea why. Rats! I’m trying again now…

So in the meantime, here’s a little news report from the same event – I guess this was probably broadcast on 1 January 1998. Nice! Let’s see how it looks embedded on the page. Hopefully the high-res will look ok. I’ll test it here before I put it on the website.

Those of you who’ve already watched the large-screen version of the doco on Google Video will be aware that the quality leaves something to be desired. It looks OK at the embed-on-my-web-page size, but anything larger than that, and there’s quite a lot of pixellation. Well, Iain has fixed all that.

Viewing it on my laptop it’s very close to being DVD quality. I began the upload-to-Google-Video process a few minutes ago, and if the experience with the lower-quality (much smaller) version is anything to go by, it will probably take a week to upload. Literally!

We shall see.  We shall also see how much loss of quality we get once Google have done whatever it is they do to videos. Hopefully not too much. I’ll link to the new version from the original page on Google, and  I’ll let you know in the blog when it’s up. Woohoo!

And once that’s done, I’ll get started on uploading the other new video I’ve got  – also in super high quality.

Watch this space!

I’ve also updated The Gathering documentary 97/98 page with new links to previews and reviews in the media.

There’s also a scan of the G2 flyer in the G2 Gathering artwork section. Thanks to Ritche Nelson aka DJ Domino for sending the scans to me. I’m still looking for any other artwork for that year – were there stickers,  a poster, or a booklet for that year? Do you have them?

Here’s how to send us stuff if you have anything that can fill gaps in the website.

Thanks heaps.

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?