‘Punk hit the brothers like a thunderclap’ and they electrified a generation. Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul is out in April and we’ll be celebrating with a four-part tour, starting in Dunedin and travelling up the country, featuring special musical guests and author Q&As.

Christchurch
Lyttelton Coffee Co.
29 London Street, Lyttelton

Thursday 9 April
6pm

Books will be available to purchase at the events courtesy of our hosts and local booksellers.

About the book

In 1978 in Dunedin the Kilgour brothers, Hamish and David, and their schoolfriend Peter Gutteridge, got together to form a band called The Clean. When Robert Scott joined in 1980 the band found a combination that endured for nearly forty years.

The Clean profoundly changed alternative music: hitting the New Zealand charts for months with a single made for $50, ‘Tally Ho!’; helping establish Flying Nun and a music scene independent of the big labels; pioneering a low-fi, do-it-yourself approach to rock music; and touring internationally to influence bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.

Raw and immediate, this is the story as told by members of The Clean and their inner circle – fellow musicians such as Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps, Graeme Downes and Ira Kaplan, friends and family, pub promoters and sound engineers, and their good friend, Richard Langston. From teenagers in a Dunedin practice room to New York City on 9/11 – this is the band’s history as it unfolds.

About the author

Richard Langston is a journalist, poet and television director who has written about the Dunedin music scene since the 1980s. The fanzine he edited from 1984–86, Garage, was issued as the book Pull Down the Shades: Garage Fanzine 1984–1986 (HoZac Books, 2023). He has been friends with the members of The Clean for forty years.