The first person I ever wrote about for a Tauranga newspaper was Ritchie Pickett.

I was pretty excited and even arranged for a friend to draw a caricature of Ritchie to accompany the article.

I don't remember exactly when it was and have no form of archiving system, but it was a few months after the first Crowded House album, because New Zealand radio had completely ignored it and we talked about how commercial radio here was destroying Kiwi music.

So, that makes it about 30 years ago.

(On a tangent: that's a true story. It was only after ‘Don't Dream It's Over' became a huge hit in America that commercial radio here, much of it at the time run by the National government's current Fixer-In-Chief Steven Joyce, deigned to play Crowded House.

At the time his response to a possible government-funded youth-oriented station playing Kiwi music was that his network would cut all their New Zealand content if that happened. Thanks Steven.)

Legendary

Ritchie was a bit of a legend here in those days, which were, as that radio anecdote suggests, very different: few New Zealand artists were played on radio; there were almost no recording studios; even making an album was a rare and special thing.

Ritchie had done all three. He regularly featured on television on the popular show ‘That's Country' and had even scored a genuine (if minor) radio hit with a song from his ‘Gone For Water' album, produced by Kiwi icon Ray Columbus.

That was the first time I met Ritchie, and over the following decade in Tauranga – before he moved to live in Hamilton and Cambridge – he had a huge impact on the music scene. Ritchie was simply the best and most prolific songwriter, the best live performer, the man with the best band and, as the title of Graham Clark's new biography suggests, the wildest of Tauranga's musical wild bunch.

Ritchie stories

Stories about Ritchie were almost as legendary as he was. The drugs! The drink! The women! The trail of broken pianos! Ritchie was Tauranga's very own rock star and Graham has done a sterling job of documenting a lot of it in his new book ‘Thanks For The Clap! The Extraordinary Life and Times of New Zealand's Wildman Of Country Music Ritchie Pickett 16/02/1955 – 13/03/2011'.

The first 200 pages are an episodic history of Ritchie – from school through early bands such as ‘Graffiti' and ‘Think to Gone For Water', touring Australia, his many Tauranga bands, adventures in East Timor – a plethora of wonderful stories and jaw-dropping antics.

Then Graham turns over the following 200 pages to reminiscences from friends of Ritchie, from Tom Sharplin, Larry Morris and Ray Columbus to a bunch of locals, including Chris Gunn, Damian Forlong, Nigel Masters at The Boatshed Studio who released Ritchie's second album and Simon Elton, Ritchie's loyal latter-day bass player who recorded two late live albums.

Simon will be one of the musicians appearing to play a slew of Ritchie tunes for the book launch this Sunday, June 25 at No 1 The Strand (2pm, no charge). So will Ritchie's long-time drummer Paul Higgins and three local singers/band frontmen who were just emerging during Ritchie's ascendency and were all influenced by him: Graham himself (Brilleaux), Derek Jacombs (Kokomo) and John Michaelz (Hard To Handle, The Stone Babies).

There will be more. Graham has tapes and video of Ritchie and of course there's the magnificent book, currently only available on the day. Tauranga musical historians, and everyone with a long enough memory – see you there!

On Saturday...

And, sorry to not have the space to do this justice: on Saturday night (6pm, June 24) ‘The Miltones' and ‘Paper Cranes' are playing at the Historic Village Theatre. They are both pretty fantastic and have made impressive albums. This is, in fact, the album release tour for ‘The Miltones' who are sorta Americana with a dose of scary gospel. Their new single ‘Glory' is an impressive case in point.

‘Paper Cranes' are more eclectic and delicate. They're an Auckland duo who have visited before and have recently relocated to Tauranga. Check them out online papercranes.co.nz – you won't regret it. And the gig, incredibly, costs a mere $5.

watusi@thesun.co.nz