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PART 3.... Cause Célèbre and Box

(Those grotty old doors @ 35 High Street were once the best club address in Auckland) (1990-97 and then a bit)

The Box dancefloor, 1994.
Photo: Karl Pierard

Tom and myself had both been to London and New York in 1989 in the gap between The Playground and The Siren (which was one of the reasons we'd run down the cash we'd had after The Playground and The Asylum...that and buying three new cars, one for me, Tom and Roger..silly times). I'd gone over to London with Rhys B for the 89 DMC Championships and changed my ticket early, as London, after the champs had finished, had started to bore me silly as it often does, to go across to see my buddy, Harry (The Bastard) Russell, who was working for Rough Trade Records in the Big Apple.

On my second night (the first was a haze of frozen mojitos) Harry took me to a club in Manhattan called Nell's and I stayed till dawn (and had to walk back to Brooklyn because we had no money left but that's another story) dancing to a very cool nu-funk band playing original, and quite cutting edge, music on one side of the club and NYC house legend, Pal Joey, spinning discs rather uncompromisingly on the other. I went back twice in the next week or so. It was such an obvious formula but it worked and relied on being completely uncompromising on the quality of the two styles on offer.

Ben, doorman on the dancefloor.
Photo: Simon Grigg

I came back to NZ - Tom had been (we'd both been overseas at the same time but missed each other in NYC) to the same place and it seemed we had a concept going for the new Siren, which we had always planned to renovate since we opened.

We closed for a week (true..the whole place was done, both sides, painted, rebuilt and upholstered, including a large new bar, and a couple of new DJ booths, in 7 days and nights) and bought in a junior partner, Kevin "The Hat" Hewson, probably the best cocktail barman in Auckland and late of the infamous Le Bom Dean Martini Club...

And like Nell's, the concept was for a semi-sophisticated members club playing jazz on one side, quite elitist, with a non holds barred, raw, underground dance club on the other.

And that's what we tried to achieve. Box was to have a small cover charge and Célèbre was, by invitation or to members (who only had a card by invitation, free. That, of course, was tosh, and like Peter and Mark's plans for a dance club playing jazz at The Six Month Club, lasted about two weeks before we turned the lights down in Célèbre, and made it one cover for both (initially just $2, then later $5 for the best, and most innovative musicians in NZ and DJ elite of the country!) with VIP members getting free on both sides.

We opened on Easter Friday, 1990.

Box...

I always wanted resident DJs to build a club following and build the DJs. Our first line-up was Jon Davis and Roger Perry (Sam Hill had to be fired for playing records by Biz Markie and Snap, but we're still friends) but Roger decided to go to London and was never that happy with just house, he was a hip hop and funk boy at heart, although he remains NZ's first house DJ, and was later hugely influential with his work at Calibre and as a producer and DJ.

Photo: Brigid Grigg-Eyley

I was at a loss for a new DJ until this 16 year old kid came down with his buddy, Charles, to hire the club for an underage party. They were a couple of Auckland Grammar 6th Formers with a passion for house. They wanted to raise money for decks and we hired the place to them in mid 1990 on a Sunday evening.

Tom & I were astounded at the number of kids that streamed through the doors and the kid's djing skills. So we offered him, Rob Salmon, a job as trainee resident and he started, balancing school with club life, and indeed, often arriving in his school uniform, to rehearse in the afternoons. Rob was a natural though, the most intuitive DJ I'd ever encountered.

I sat in the booth with Rob for much of the next few years but he quickly made the club his own and Jon soon left to wander off and do his other things, including bringing a few of the big international mainstream dance parties to NZ later in the decade. When you coupled Rob's instinct with the best soundsystem in NZ (a Cerwin Vega system tuned nightly by Tom, the best sound engineer in the country, daily) he was unstoppable.

Feb, 1994

His arrival coincided with the rise of Progressive House and Wild Pitch and both sounds, along with dark dubby tracky house became Rob's trademark, as he pushed the bass bins to the limit... one of our ads in 1991 had Saddam Hussein pleading for the Box sound system as a WMD.

We hired another young DJ to do the 2-3am slot late in 1990 and for the next two years the Box was Rob from 10-2, then that young DJ, Manuel Bundy, who had been hanging around our clubs for years, to do the last part. While Rob played the housier end of the dance spectrum, Manuel played contemporary hip-hop and funk.

From 1am, when De Brett's (the cornerstone pub in High Street) bars closed, you really had trouble moving in the Box. From 1990 to 1997 Box and Célèbre had an average of 800-1000 customers through every Friday night, and about 800 on a Saturday.

Manuel left in 92 (although he featured in Célèbre when we put DJs in there from 95) and Rob moved to the late slot (extending to 6am when the late license came in at the end of 1993).

There were a variety of support DJs, but Box from 92 to 95 was always about Rob Salmon. He developed a very devoted following and its fair to say that just about every major house record that broke in Auckland from 1990 to 1995 was broken by Rob Salmon at Box.

Rob wandered off to NY, where he needed to go, and where he would make quite a name for himself, in late 95 and we needed a replacement. There was a clamour to replace him but I really didn't want any of the local DJs. I was after a guy I'd spent many evenings on the door when he was in Auckland buying tunes, discussing dance trivia with.

Rose in Karen Walker staff jacket. All one off designs.
Photo: Simon Grigg

I'd seen Greg Churchill play at Noah's in Christchurch, whilst on tour down there a few times and was blown away. Really, there was no-one else, so I approached him. He said he couldn't (he had a day job too) but offered his girlfriend Sue who was keen to move to Auckland. I reluctantly agreed but Sue wasn't what we wanted and, as much as we liked her, was a bit of a mismatch. A week or two later Greg rang and said he was coming up and wanted the job. We breathed a sigh of relief; Sue got demoted and the reign of Greg Churchill, the second key DJ to make Box his home, began.

Greg's style was a step on from Rob's.. it was tougher, more techy and his sets took the club on quite a journey from beginning to end.

There were a variety of very cool techno nights on a Thursday with a loyal following, and regular one off Retro or Madchester (or whatever theme Grant and Sam or Nick D'Angelo or Scotty or Greg Stoffells (who were always part of the Box family) could come up with) nights that were part of the club theme.

Auckland's first regular Drum'n'Bass night was in Box, hosted by Stephen Green, and we, in 1995, opened up a much smaller room just off the main room, which we named The IceBox, and featured a more tech-house style in there.

Oh, and Mr Stoffells and his business partner, Patrick, made a small fortune selling sausages outside the door.

We released, mixed by Greg and Dean Webb, the first NZ DJ mix album, called simply Box, in a metal tin in 1996. It was limited to 1500 copies and is pretty collectible these days. In the years before that Rob mixed a series of cassettes called Box Mix 1, Box Mix 2 etc, which we sold over the bar. These too, are ridiculously rare now.

Rob Salmon.
Photo: Antman

With Rob, and then Greg, I hosted Beats Per Minute on 95Bfm, every Thursday, essentially providing a Box weekly radio show of the the batches of new vinyl that we imported at some cost from the UK and the US.

From 1995 until he left, Greg absolutely dominated the Box and Auckland dancefloors. His regular eight hour sets were legendary (with more than a little help from firstly, Dean Webb, then Rob Warner, and, like Rob before him, they took you on a journey). Many arrived at door opening time and stayed on the floor until 6am. Once Greg left the club, in real terms that was the end of Box. There was a club with the name in the space but it really had nothing to do with the club that Greg, Rob, Manuel, Dean Webb, Chelsea, Stephen Green, Miro, Jason Holloran, Rob Warner, Per, James Chesterman, Richard Farmer, Sam Hill, Grant Kearney, Simon Flower, Skylock, Mechanism and the others had established and defined, and that Tom & I had nurtured and directed.

After 1998 the scene moved up to Calibre in K Rd where, ironically, Roger Perry and our former doorman, Soane Filitonga, took up the baton and moved forward to be Box's natural successor as the Auckland club of record.

Over the eight years up till then, Box was the epicentre of the Auckland club scene and it's status all these years later is justifiably legendary, with a Facebook group. The number of folks who claimed to have been there regularly all those years back has grown year by year.

This page is for Al, Esther, Scotty & Gaelyn, and all the others who battled through the wall of sound to run the best club bar ever in Auckland..

Internationals

Design: Simon Grigg / Myk Reilly

Box was the first club in NZ to regularly host international DJs. The first was actually in the waning days of The Siren and was a rapper with DJs. Ice T came to NZ to promote his second album, Power, and played three nights in the new Siren. It was sold out and unbearably hot & sweaty. He asked for Champagne and we gave him Moet on the first night. After he used it to spray the crowd, he got got Chardon thereafter.

The next was Norman Cook, with the Beats International crew in mid 1989. It was huge, with live vocals. The highlight of the visit was when he was taken for a Saturday night drive to South Auckland by a few of the boys. How long have you had this car he asked. About half an hour they responded.

The real biggie was Weatherall. Auckland had seen nothing like him. He inspired a whole generation of DJs.

Gilles Peterson came a bit later and confused much of the large crowd by stopping records to explain what they were..

Then there wered the legendary Subtronix Drum'n'bass gigs. Intense. Tom and I used to comment that, year in, year out, they'd get almost exactly the same number of punters..438!

To the best of mine and a few others' memories, this list covers the DJs who played Box:

Photo: Simon Grigg

Design: Gideon Keith

Design: Myk Riley

Grant Fell, 1992.
Photo: Simon Grigg

and next door, past the coatcheck we go to Celebre...