To mark the coming end of Nivara Lounge, HUP's gathering favourite memories from performers and punters. The series begins with Max, with a longtime HUP contributor, two-time Hamiltonian, and one-time Nivara Open Mic Night player.
My two favourite Nivara Lounge memories are both the first time I went to a gig there. The first one goes back to 1997, when Nivara Lounge was known as JBC and I was known by whatever name was on my fake ID. But this story is about the second one.
I had left town at the start of 1999, knowing for sure that I was done with Hamilton forever (ha). By 2016 that teenage life was distant in the rearview mirror: I was an Auckland homeowner and a new dad. Or perhaps it wasn’t: I still collected CDs as if the internet had never been invented, and I’d still rave about Hamilton’s ‘90s indie music scene to anyone who’d listen.
I’d moved around a bit, mostly to places with musical reputations that far outstrip Kirikiriroa’s. Doing my bit to change that I’d gather sceptical Dunedinites, Christchurchsiders, Wellingtonians, Melburnians or Aucklanders around my well-stocked CD shelves. More often than not, the disc I’d pull out was by Inchworm.
Inchworm, man. What more could they have done? As a bright pop-rock trio who could all write songs—bloody good ones—with a useful sense of humour and a bit of shoegazey depth, they were perfectly placed for their time. They had tracks for occasions both obvious (‘Happy Birthday’) and subtle (‘Umbrella’ would be perfect for the PA during cricket rain breaks). Maybe it all could have happened for them, if they didn’t split up in 1999 and move to two different continents north of the equator.
Anyway, 2016. I don’t know how I first saw the news of Inchworm’s reunion gig, but I remember that my heart rate changed. It was a buy-tickets-and-sort-everything-else-out-later moment. The very first night that my wife and I spent apart as parents was the night that I drove to Hamilton to see Inchworm play. I literally left her holding the baby. She’d heard me evangelise over Shiny and You Are Only Here. She understood.
I’d been away a long time. The gig was promoted by Hamilton Underground Press, which I’d never heard of, and was being held in some new place called Nivara Lounge.
Talk about being an outsider in your hometown: rather than knowing the bar, I had to navigate by street address. 266 Victoria Street is near where JBC used to be. I loved that place. No, wait, it’s exactly where JBC used to be. You come back home to see a band from the good old days, and it’s in a venue from back in the good old days. What a funny coincidence.
The people running the door had faces I knew from gigs in the 90s, which triggered serious ‘out-of-place underager’ vibes. I was 35, but it was still a real relief when they stamped my wrist. The place was sold out, filled with former Contact FM DJs, members of more old Hamilton bands than I could name and, most unexpectedly of all, Ivan back behind his old bar selling drinks. That sealed the nostalgia. This wasn’t a bar where JBC used to be, it was JBC’s second coming. I couldn’t have smiled any harder.
More than an Inchworm reunion, the night was a reunion of a music scene that I’d grazed up against as a schoolkid and spent half my life lionising. The room felt like a hug. Some crowds are perfect, and this was one of them. Everyone was automatically your friend, even if back in the day one of you had been a zitty kid who still lived at home, and the other was the unwittingly intimidating university type.
I absolutely did not play it cool. I souvenired a playlist. I grabbed a couple of leftover posters and a HUP zine. I took my CD booklets along and got autographs.
As for the music, the band lived up to expectations. Admittedly they tempered those expectations by explaining how little they’d practiced and how old they were now, but still. They opened with ‘You Get To Me’, then rolled into ‘Umbrella’, two of my favourites. They played some new stuff. They alternated slow ones and fast ones. They didn’t mind when a photographer knocked out a plug and killed the sound at the end of one of the slow ones. They gave all of us exactly what we wanted. They invited everyone to Wonderhorse afterwards.
I’d walked down the Nivara Lounge stairs as a fan who was back for a visit. By the time the Wonderhorse afterparty took us back up those stairs, the gap between band and fan had closed so much that the autographs felt a little embarrassing. But only a little. I mean, come on, it’s Inchworm!
Got a Nivara Lounge memory of your own to share? Email it to hamiltonundergroundpress@gmail.com.
