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***the biography continues***

02 Summer days (Folks, Rock!, 1996, Track 4)
Building on the success of Bowie, Barry insisted we put out Summer Days over the phone lines too. The timing was right with our new distant fan base, since this was June 1996, even though we were heading into winter ourselves.

And Summer Days proved just as much of a hit as I like David Bowie had (see notes to Track 1). Once again mp3 and the internet, along with student dorms and college radio proved the perfect combination to produce another indie hit, even though no-one in the US knew who Barry Starr was or that he lived across the Pacific Ocean. In the post-Grunge/Reality Bites era, something warm and honest seemed to strike a chord.

Summer Days is infused in almost every line with personal relationships and real stories. Though for me this is one of Barry's least complex tunes, emotionally speaking, it resonated with the college audience. Probably this is because even where he's ridiculing us, there's clearly love at the heart of the tune. It's got that sitting round the fire sense of impromptu singalongs. It builds on the Maori strum of his native land (think Hawaiian ukulele rhythms and you're half-way there), half-mocking but half-reverential (see Track 1 I like David Bowie for a similar ambivalence).

And we recorded this one in that spirit, inviting heaps of our mates to Doug’s Dad’s church to shake shakers, slap skins and jangle tambourines. Funnily enough, I didn’t end up playing on the recording for this track, despite the cast of thousands because the recording session got moved forward to the morning and no-one was able to contact me in time to tell me about the revised schedule.

The whole middle ‘rap’ sequence, Barry claimed, was made up of actual lines, debates and proclamations verbatim from the barbecues we used to have in those early days. I was there for quite a few of these myself and one of the lines is even mine (I bet you can guess which one!).

On the strength of these two hits Barry called us all together for a meeting. We had to go where the fans were, he told us. We didn’t have to think about it long, so along with the others I packed my vibraphone into a packing case, using my clothes as packing, and put it on a container ship. Together we headed for the unknown of the US Pacific Coast, flying out of Auckland for Oakland, CA, where an old school friend of his was studying at the California College of the Arts.

There would be no looking back.

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from Best of Barry Starr: the part I played, released April 1, 2013

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Mermaid Guitar New Zealand

If you like it: enjoy it. If you really like it: pay what you feel. Each album has bonus material for download.

Mermaid Guitar music is not earnest navel-gazing. It's indie rock with humour and hidden depths.

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