Fatuous Days And Crapulous Nights

Nicola has been playing with Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga (known as “The Svens”) for a couple of years now, as part of their string section. They play live gigs every time there’s a Fringe Festival, and occasionally in between. None of them are called Sven, or Olsen, and none of them are Canadian. (A Canadian chap once turned up to one of their gigs, expecting something Canadian – Celine Dion covers, maybe?)

This gig, was, however, something a little different: the launch party for their pizza box. Say what? Yes, they have released a pizza box:

Inside there are six (count ‘em!) CDs with 63 songs in total, and a big book of lyrics so you can sing along with them! During their live shows there is a rear projection, animations and clips relating to the song, with some of the lyrics on it; but they are (a) often partly obscured by the band members and (b) aren’t always synchronised with the song (deliberately). So here are the undoubted, definitive, guaranteed words to such masterpieces as Kron Of Hastings. It comes with no page numbers or index, so finding your way around it is a haphazard journey through the minutiae of New Zealand life – much like The Svens themselves.

The launch party was in one of their usual venues, the Newtown Community Centre. Food and drink had been laid on, and t-shirts were also available for sale – Nicola and I both availed ourselves of these – as well as the pizza box itself, available for the bargain price of $50! So if you feel the need to dip your toe into the fantastic world of New Zealand’s most obscure pop orchestra, get in contact…they are a limited edition of only 250 (ours is #93), and Nigel Beckford (“Sven”) would dearly love to get them off his living-room floor.

They played a few songs, then broke for a “surprise event”. This, it turned out, was getting the entire audience up on the stage to re-enact the photograph on the cover of Wings’ Band On The Run album. I will no doubt reference this when it is published.

Afterwards we went for a “burger” at Mediterranean Foods.