Dragon - O Zambezi (1978)

Dragon's story is an interesting one. They started out as a prog-rock group in the early seventies but were met with general indifference. It took some personnel changes and a move from Auckland to Sydney for their careers to take off.

The most notable of the personnel changes was the addition of vocalist Marc Hunter who replaced the departed Graeme Collins at the request of his brother and Dragon guitarist, Todd Hunter.

Marc Hunter looked the part and had the voice and the change of venue was just what the band needed. The move to Sydney put Dragon on a stratospheric trajectory in their adopted homeland.

Following their success in Australia they decided to try to crack the US market on a disastrous tour supporting Johnny Winter. After inciting a crowd in Texas by derogatorily insinuating they preferred the romantic company of the same gender. Marc Hunter related the story in a 1994 interview:

I remember seeing someone standing holding a pistol and shouting 'Im gonna kill you, you son of a bitch'... I didn't know it but by this point the rest of the band had left the stage. I was still singing because I could still hear the music in my head. It took ages to clear the pile of debris on the stage - broken glass, bottles, chairs, half a table - but I was totally unaware of this, I thought I was going over really well and I'm standing there in a crucifixion pose with my arms out, really gone, with heaps of eye make-up on, looking like some sort of twisted priest. And apparently Johnny Winter was taking bets on the side of the stage as to how long it would take before somebody shot me. Then I turned around and saw no one was on stage so I realised I wasn't going over too well after all and I went back to the dressing room and everyone was just standing there... I said 'We went great, weren't we terrific?' At that stage of the band I was really a shocking sod. And all the record company people were just staring at me like I was an insectoid from Mars. And so that was it for us for that trip to America."

O Zambezi was released just before Dragon's ill-fated tour of the United States in 1978. From start to finish this album is a catchy capsule of late seventies rock. The album only peaked at 17 in Dragon's native New Zealand but in Australia it was a much different story as the album shot all the way up to #3 largely on the strength of the #1 hit single Are You Old Enough? and the catchy Still In Love With You. To this day, O Zambezi remains Dragon's highest charting album and largely on the strength of their catalog from this era of the band, Dragon was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2008.

If you're new to Dragon O Zambezi is an excellent album to start with as it's a snapshot in time of the band at the pinnacle of their success when they were firing on all cylinders making infectious uptempo pop music.

On a sad footnote keyboardist Paul Hewson died of a drug overdose on January 9, 1985 and the excesses of the rock and roll lifestyle also caught up with vocalist Marc Hunter. He was forced to retire from performing when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. Unfortunately, he inevitably succumbed to cancer on July 17, 1998.

Related Links
Are You Old Enough (music video)

Still In Love With You music video

Dragon (Fan Site)
Dragon (AllMusicGuide)
Dragon (wikipedia)
Take Me To the April Sun In Cuba (excellent article by Chuck Miller)
Todd Hunter (wikipedia)
Marc Hunter (wikipedia)
Kerry Jacobson (wikipedia)

Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All by Christina Thompson

Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is both a history and a memoir wrapped in a unique little package. It's a story of both Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man and the history of the relationship between the Paheka (Europeans), Maoris, and other Polynesians. It's also an observation of how the perceptions the Paheka have of the Maori and vice versa have shaped those cultures since the first meeting of Maoris and Paheka.

The book succeeds quite well as a history. Thompson's approach to the history of the relationship of the two cultures is both informative and engaging. Where the book gets a little more shaky is as a memoir. At times I could relate to Thompson's description of the pull she felt towards the South Pacific as I too have felt a similar pull. But at other times when writing about her life, Thompson came across as so detached from what was going on that she seemed to be more an observer than a participant in her own life.

From an anthropological standpoint, this actually works quite well and certainly to Thompson's benefit. Yet at the same time it left me wondering whether she was actually living her life or was merely along for the ride, content to watch. While I felt a connection to Thompson early on, as the book progressed her writing style seemed to grow increasingly more detached. I almost felt as if I was watching the shift first hand, from participant to observer of one's own life.

There are certainly benefits to objectivity and for a history book, objectivity is certainly something to strive for. But in a memoir, generally readers prefer to feel some connection to or empathy for the author and when an author is too objective that connection becomes increasingly more difficult to make.

With all that said, this is still a book I would recommend as Thompson raises excellent and intriguing points and questions. In a letter to her three sons which she included in the book she even goes so far as to say:

“in each of you is a little bit of the conqueror and the conquered, the colonizer and the colonized.”

How does one reconcile being the child of both a culture that was ravaged by European conquest and the child of the European culture that ravaged them? And how do mixed culture parents raise children in such an environment?

In the end, as much as I enjoyed this book, I feel I would have enjoyed it considerably more had it been a bit more personal and a bit less detached. The connection I felt with Thompson early in the book faded as the book progressed. The history was intriguing, the questions raised were thought provoking, but in a memoir there should be a bit more of an emotional investment on the part of the reader. But it's the obligation of the author to create that connection. And while Thompson certainly created that connection, I found it to be much weaker than with other memoirs that I've read.

Related Links
Come On Shore (official website)
Come On Shore And We Will Kill and Eat You All (Amazon.com)