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PART THREE.... Cause Célèbre and The Box+The Box (Those grotty old doors @ 35 High Street were once the best club address in Auckland) (1990-97 and then a bit)Tom and myself had both been to London and New York in 1989. I'd gone over to London with Rhys B for the 89 DMC Championships and changed my ticket early to go across to see my buddy, Harry (The Bastard) Russell, who was working for Rough Trade. On my first night 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 funk band on one side of the club and Pal Joey on the other.
I came back to NZ - Tom had been to the same place and 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, 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 famous Le Bom Dean Martini Club... The concept was for a semi-sophisticated members club playing jazz on one side, quite elitist, with a non holds barred, raw, dance club on the other. And that's what we tried to achieve. The Box was to have a small cover charge and Célèbre was, by invitation, free. That, of course, was tosh and lasted about two weeks before we turned the lights down in Célèbre. We opened on Easter Friday, 1990.
The 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 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 house, he was a hip hop and funk boy at heart. 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 wanted to raise money for decks and we hired the place. Tom & I were astounded at the number of kids and the djing skills. So we offered 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 other things. When you coupled Rob's instinct with the best soundsystem in NZ (tuned by Tom, the best sound engineer in the country, daily) he was unstopable. 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. From 1990 to 1997 Box and Célèbre had an average of 800-1000 customers through every Friday night. From 1am, when De Brett's closed, you really had trouble moving in the Box. 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). There were a variety of support DJs, but Box from 92 to 95 was always about Rob Salmon. He developed a 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 at The Box. +Box 90-95 Killers:
Rob wandered off to NY, where he needed to go, 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. I'd seen Greg Churchill play at Noah's in Christchurch, whilst on tour down there and was blown away. Really, there was no-one else, so I approached him. He said he couldn't (he had a job) but offered his girlfriend Sue. I reluctantly agreed but Sue wasn't what we wanted. A week or two later Greg rang and said he was coming up. Sue got demoted and the reign of Greg Churchill, the second DJ to make the Box his home, began. 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. Oh, and Mr Stoffells and his business partner, Patrick, made a small fortune selling sausages outside the door. 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 the 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, Stephen Green, Miro, Jason Holloran, Rob Warner, James Chesterman, Richard Farmer, Sam Hill, Grant Kearney, Simon Flower, Skylock, Mechanism and the others had established and defined. +Churchill's Box:
+Cause CélèbreYou came down the stairs, went straight ahead into Box or took a hard left into the other side of the club, Cause Célèbre. It was quite a different experience but part of the same thing. Even when we held internationals (and Box was the primary location for these for years), Célèbre was always open to the regulars. The only exception to that was the night that U2 hired the room for a private party...but we put Paul Oakenfold in the Box for $5 to compensate. Célèbre was firstly and foremost about jazz, soul and funk - and it was the best bar in town for years. It was the place where all the touring acts came, where Tom Jones bought girls Moet, where Eric Clapton sneered at Jimmy Barnes, where Hall & Oates were barflys, where you could see David Soul at one end of the bar and John Hurt at the other, where Ice T lay on the floor singing "My Funny Valentine" or where Mick Jagger tried to get in free (Riseti said he could afford $5 and had to pay...he did).
But it was really about the bands and the DJs that played between them The regular Bluespeak Thursdays, or Tommy Adderley and Frank Gibson doing jazz standards, or Murray McNabb's outstanding sets, Freebass (with the Haines and Harrop Bros), the Lawrence Quintet with Peter Urlich, Mark de Clive Lowe, Supergroove on Fridays, Nigel Kennedy sitting in, Tony Hopkins' wonderful lineups, or, Nathan Haines and the Enforcers, who played every Saturday and quite a few Fridays for four years to standing room only crowds. It was the only place where you could catch a band that came on at 1.30 am and played till 5 with sweat running down the walls. Coupled with the DJs, Manuel Bundy, Gerhardt Pierard and Bevan Keys, there was nothing quite like it.
I sold the place on 9 December 1997, nine years to the day after Tom and I opened it (Tom sold up in 1996) and to me that was the end but Greg kept the spirit going for a while, although the club after he left had little to do with the spirit or concept that it had started with. What made the Box and Cause Célèbre special for many of us was that it was almost a family, there was a sense of camaraderie, and kinship that revolved around the people who worked there and the music we played and worked with, and many of the people who spent so many nights there. It crossed racial boundaries unlike most clubs now but primarily it was about the music.
more to come...Roma / Quays / Barcelona / Alfies |
