Hutt Sounds

Hutt Sounds is an annual festival in its second year, held at Brewtown in Upper Hutt. Brewtown? What’s that? It’s like an industrial park…for breweries! The anchor brewery there is Panhead, who have established themselves in the Wellington area over the last few years; but there are other breweries, a gin distillery, and other related industries like, er, axe-throwing?

In their inaugural year, the line-up had a distinctly Antipodean feel to it, headlined by Aussie rockers Hoodoo Gurus, and supported by Mi-Sex and Stellar*, both kiwi bands of yesteryear; those are the ones you’ll have heard of, anyway. This year, however, the theme was definitely Eighties. This started with Kiwi band The Mockers, and The Choirboys. We didn’t really care about them. 

The event is held in an open field, with food and beverages available from the adjacent covered area. Despite the weather forecast two days out looking like it would be a washout, by the time we got to the day this had been revised to sunshine, and this is how it turned out. We’d taken the decision to skip the first three acts, and arrived just in time as Nik Kershaw kicked off his set. Arriving late has two distinct disadvantages: finding somewhere to park (we found a space a few hundred metres away), and then finding a place in the crowd…for this is not a festival for those young folk who can stand around for hours on end. No, this is a festival that you bring your camp chairs to; this is Dad Rock. The ground had been divided up into standing at the front, sitting on rugs next, then low-back chairs, and finally high-backed chairs at the back. These were set out in serried rows by the punters who’d been there all afternoon, and we had to try to find somewhere to squeeze in. We managed, though, and were soon sitting and listening to the strains of Nik Kershaw. He’d sensibly decided to leave all his new material at home, and just belted out the classics. He’s got more hits than you probably remember, not just The Riddle and Wouldn’t It Be Good. He also mixed in his pension plan (in case you don’t know, he wrote world-wide hit The One And Only, sung by Chesney Hawkes) and gave us a cover of Yazoo’s Only You.

Next on the list was Go West. Why were they higher up the set than Nik Kershaw? They’ve only had one hit! (We Close Our Eyes, in case you’ve forgotten). But it turns out that their album was a huge seller in New Zealand – triple platinum! OK, triple platinum in New Zealand is only 60,000 records (compare UK 900,000, US 3,000,000), and this is what justifies them being higher up the ranking. Meh. I only know one of their songs, and from the sound of them, that’s the only one worth knowing.

But what we were really there for was the headline act: The Human League. Yes, Phil Oakey and the girls (ha! Both in their sixties now), with a new band behind them playing the instruments. They cranked out all the hits you know and love. They also slipped in what I consider some of their more recent works – Tell Me When and One Man In My Heart (from 1995’s Octopus album - so recent!) and a cover of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Behind The Mask. After finishing their set with the inevitable Don’t You Want Me? They returned for an encore of what might be considered non-canon works – Being Boiled, from when the Human League included Martin Ware and Ian Marsh, who later left to form Heaven 17; and Together In Electric Dreams, which was Phil Oakey/Giorgio Moroder, from the film of the same name.

As the venue is in a residential district, I assume that there are regulations about late night activities. The gig ended early and we were heading for the exit at the prescribed finish time of 8:40.