Album of The Month: The Bookshop Tapes, Graham Brazier

I first met Graham Brazier in the mid ‘70s at Carmen’s Balcony in Wellington. I was playing with Red Mole, we were performing the very popular ‘Capital Strut’ a number nights a week. On one particular brisk winter night, the Hello Sailor boys were in town. They were standing at the bar, clearly a bunch sophisticated Aucklanders, injecting a bit fashion flair into the local scene for the evening. We got chatting after the gig and there started many years of bands, recordings, gigs and friendships.

Graham and I over the years played together in various incarnations of Hello Sailor, The Legionnaires and numerous duos at the Grey Lynn pub.  Inside that complicated, and at times challenging man, was the heart of a poet.  Whenever my Mother, May, was in town we would catch up with Graham and his mother, Christine. Graham always knew the fastest way to my mother’s heart was with a recitation of few well-timed poems and quotations that would have her fair weak at the knees. Another fell to his charming ways.

Graham and his Mum, Christine, in the Bookshop on Dominion Rd

When it came to The Bookshop Tapes album we made real his strong desire to record in the bookshop on Dominion Road which was such an important part of his and his mother’s lives. We recorded at night in a very organic fashion, using good microphones for his voice and guitar. I recorded and he let rip.

Around that time Graham had an almost desperate desire to get his music and material out there and I suspect he had an impending sense of his mortality.  I believe this may have contributed to the complications at the time around recording more than one project at once. The Bookshop Tapes was finished posthumously and was delayed in its release.

I’ll be the first admit the sound is raw, but I believe it stands the test of time in presenting Graham as he was, warts and all, the poet.