Something to watch tonight: Thursday 23 January

7 Worlds Collide (Casserly, 2001)

A month ago, I read this piece by local music journalist and friend of F&S, Chris Schulz, about the sad state of the St. James Theatre in Auckland.

In short, over the past decades, this beautiful inner-city venue has fallen into increasing disrepair and the current mayor of Auckland appears to be on a mission to sabotage any attempts at restoration.

I lived in Auckland from 1996 to 2000 and the St. James was still an important working venue at the time. I was working for a ticketing agency and we would get free tickets to shows occasionally which is why I’m sure I remember watching Michael Barrymore* be very funny there during that period where he was living in New Zealand.

While the Civic was being refurbished, the St. James was also the main venue for the New Zealand International Film Festival and I recall many great screenings there, including my first watch of Citizen Kane on the big screen.

In Chris’ article, he mentioned Neil Finn’s famous 7 Worlds Collide series of concerts there in 2001, and the new owner’s forlorn hope that such an event might be recreated in the new venue. We should live so long.

But that encouraged me to see if the video of Finn’s concert was available online anywhere. The CD was a staple of many New Zealand households for a long while and I still have that (and the DVD which featured nine additional tracks).

7 Worlds Collide was the first major example of Finn using his remarkable address book to create a supergroup of sorts and he persuaded Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway (from Radiohead), Lisa Germano, Johnny Marr, Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing), Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) and various members of the Finn family to spend a week out at the beach in Piha rehearsing a bunch of Finn, Crowded House and Split Enz songs, and then play them in a series of gigs at the St. James.

When I reminisced about this online the other day, a number of friends told me they had been at one or other of those concerts.

Pre-Christmas, when I was planning this update, I was sure I’d seen that this was available on Prime Video but now I can only find the 2009 edition (which I am less familiar with and less fond of).

Rewatching the DVD, I was thrilled at how terrific it sounded and how good it looked (in a letterboxed 4:3 presentation of the original standard definition video, my Blu-ray player blew it up to look very fine indeed – modern gear is good!).

There does appear to be a playlist of clips from the show on YouTube which is in now way as good an experience as the DVD (or watching it live!) but it’s the best I can offer at the moment.

I’ll highlight one track, a song that never fails to give me pause when it shows up in my iTunes shuffle It’s a song that at the time hadn’t been recorded by Neil and Tim Finn but they promised it was to be on their next album due in 2002. That album didn’t arrive until 2004 (Everyone Is Here):

(Paying subscribers get some bonus material after the paywall.)

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Where to watch 7 Worlds Collide