History? The writing's 'off' the wall

Dr Glam and friends at ReFuel in 2014. PHOTO: BRYCE HOLTSHOUSEN
Dr Glam and friends at ReFuel in 2014. PHOTO: BRYCE HOLTSHOUSEN
An important part of Dunedin’s rock history, has been erased, laments  Ian Chapman.

I heard the news today, oh boy. It turns out the walls of the band room in Otago University's wonderful basement nightclub at the heart of the campus, the iconic ReFuel, have been painted over. ``Who cares?'', some might say. Well, a lot of musicians and rock fans care, that's who. A bland, boring, killjoy layer of paint now covers the screeds of colourful, funny, insightful, sometimes mildly offensive, but never dull graffiti that had accumulated over every inch of the band room's walls over the course of many many years. In probably less than an hour, with perhaps less than a single thought for the obliteration of history that was taking place, some brush and/or roller-wielding person(s) destroyed it all. No doubt they were just following orders, so it's hard to pin any real blame there, for sure. But regardless, she's dead, Jim. It's terminal.

It was down to an unspoken adherence to a wonderful rock'n'roll tradition enacted the world over in band rooms just like ReFuel's that saw decade upon decade of musicians leave their mark on those once proud and grungy walls. You came, you conquered (maybe), and before you left for the next tour venue on the rock'n'roll rollercoaster you'd bestow your chosen signature upon the wall by whatever means at your disposal to record your presence. (At one Dr Glam gig I recall we used lipstick) It might have been a band logo, it might have been a slogan, or some carefully (or carelessly) chosen words of wit or, indeed, vitriol. It might have been a cartoon complete with speech bubble that you left behind to speak on your behalf when you were long gone, or maybe just something as simple as your band's name rendered in your own highly personalised scrawl. It might have involved politics; it might have involved lust; it might have involved beer. The best examples involved all of the above. It might have been an admiring (usually) or derogatory (rarely) comment on another act. Regardless, the incalculable number of such entries on ReFuel's unofficial band register ensured that the band room talked. LOUDLY! Without a doubt it was the most interesting, ad-libbed, culture-rich and free-thinking surface to be viewed anywhere on Otago University's ever-more beautiful campus. You could spend a long time reading those walls if you took the trouble, and the names you'd see from both past and present would conjure up memories of the many wonderful gigs that those who'd penned their monikers had given the students and public of Dunedin.

Student bands, top-line touring professional bands both national and international - it didn't matter. If you played a gig at ReFuel then no matter what your status you had earned the right to make your mark and leave your name on the big vertical rock'n'roll ledger. A decade and a half of my music students did it; their presence deservedly remaining in the venue in which they cut their rock'n'roll teeth during their oft-cherished Dunedin years long after they'd left town. Now, though, their scrawled collective memory is gone too. Gone in a New York (read Dunedin) minute.

It seems that the graffiti-covered walls of ReFuel's band room were not, in fact, a shining example of popular culture in action, nor art, nor politics, nor a record of music students' rite of passage. They were just messy walls that needed bland-ifying because they were deemed ugly or perhaps risked giving offence.

Banksy has suggested: ``People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish . . . but that's only if it's done properly''. In the band room of Otago University's wonderful ReFuel, the jam-packed walls of decades of accumulated rock'n'roll graffiti was done properly all right. It might not have been CBGBs or the Whiskey a Go Go, but it was ours; a big, important part of Dunedin's rock history. To everyone who ever wrote on those walls, I salute you. Viva la revolution, sniff . . .

Dr Ian Chapman is a senior lecturer in music at the University of Otago. Dr Glam was his former glam rock alter-ego.

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